Just shooting the breeze
What is the Law of Reciprocity? According to a social psychologist, it is the feeling of obligation… the obligation of returning a favour.
Have you returned a favour recently? Why did you do it? Also, how did you feel while you were deciding on returning a helping hand?
Did you feel some sort of pull or pressing needs to return it?
My guess is you probably did. Continue reading “Dennis Regan’s Law of Reciprocity and How It’s Used in Marketing”
How can Solomon Asch’s Conformity Experiment be applied to marketing (or what does it say about consumer culture)?
I’ve talked about this theory before, but I want to go back to it for this post. I want to look at it within a different realm and show you how it is used in marketing.
However, before I do that, here’s a recap of what the Asch Conformity experiment is and what it revealed about people. Continue reading “Asch’s Conformity Experiment and Marketing”
Marketing is really just the psychology of persuasion.
I once had a professor who said that behind every marketing campaign was a psychologist.
The reason, she said, was that marketing is really just the art of persuasion.
And persuasion is something that affects the mind.
And the study of the mind and its processes is psychology.
That’s why marketing really is just psychology, or more specifically, social psychology. Continue reading “Psychology of Marketing”
Ever wonder what the difference between race and ethnicity is? Because, contrary to what some may believe, they’re not the same thing.
In college, I signed up for this sociology course called “Concepts of Race and Ethnicity.”
At first, I thought race and ethnicity were the same things. Race, to me, was what a person was born as –their skin colour, their culture and traditions, etc. I defined ethnicity in the same way.
But boy, was I wrong (and I learned this lesson on the very first day of class)!
In the very first session, the prof talked about what the course is about and what we (the students) are expected to do.
She handed us syllabuses and talked a bit about the assignments and readings –you know administrative stuff.
After about 15 minutes of this, she started getting into the good stuff. She grabbed a marker and started writing some terms down.
Then she explained them to us. Continue reading “What’s the Difference Between Race and Ethnicity?”
Monopoly vs. Oligopoly. What’s the difference between these two terms? In the following post, I break down the difference and give examples of each.
I remember taking an economics class back in college and we had to learn the difference between these two terms.
The first term my prof talked about was monopoly.
I quickly looked up and paid full attention because I love Monopoly! That board game is awesome! But that wasn’t what he was talking about.
Rather he was talking about the economic term. Continue reading “What’s the Difference Between a Monopoly and an Oligopoly?”
Ethnocentrism is a sociological term developed by Austrian sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz. This term explores how people view other (or foreign) cultures.
What is ethnocentrism?
This was a term that I first learned about in one of my sociology classes back in college.
Its definition, according to Dictionary.com, is the belief that one’s own culture is superior or dominant to others.
It also describes a tendency that people often view other people’s cultures through their own cultural lens.
I have this friend.
He is a patriotic Chinese person and he believes that his culture is the best. He believes that all East Asian people are descendants of China, thus making China the dominant nation (and culture).
However, there isn’t much information or facts that back this up, except for ancient Chinese tales and myths.
But because he holds this belief, he is practicing ethnocentrism. Continue reading “What is Ethnocentrism?”
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that a person experiences when he/she has contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values toward others or toward society.
Here are some examples of this psychological phenomenon:
I was reading some news articles and op-eds about pipelines.
The information I was reading was pretty left-wing and listed things that were against pipelines.
It talked about the harm it can cause to the environment. It also talked about how it won’t benefit people as much as it would benefit the oil corporations.
I thought I had a really good understanding of it.
When I went out to eat with some friends, they brought up pipelines. They were saying how it needs to be built and all this positive stuff.
I brought up how it can be harmful to the environment.
So they said that pipelines are the safest way to transport crude oil. Continue reading “What is Cognitive Dissonance?”
What is private equity? I feel like a lot of people are confused with this term (I was one). So here’s a breakdown of what it actually is.
I came across this tweet a couple weeks ago of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) talking about private equity.
At first, I didn’t exactly know what she was talking about when she referred to it.
But I agreed with her just because I had a feeling that it was about corporate corruption, which I am against.
But then I read a few of the replies to the original tweet and I just got confused.
See, if you don’t understand what private equity means, or what it is, you’ll probably think that it means private businesses. And if it is, then I wouldn’t agree with what Ocasio-Cortez said.
I believe that society needs a free market.
I believe that there should be private businesses; not every service should be funded and provided by the government.
However, they need to be regulated (heavily) so that they are unable to do things that should be illegal. Continue reading “What is Private Equity?”