The Activist Academic

If you do social science research then you have a viewpoint. You believe in some version of the world, and how the world works. Sometimes, most times, you are wrong.

You test your version of the world. Experiments. Surveys. Simple models. Complicated models. Machine learning. And again, you are mostly wrong.

But then sometimes, you’re right. Your model of how the world works is the right model. Your numbers and writing convince a handful of anonymous academics that maybe (but probably not) your model could be right. Your work is published.

And now you have to share your version of the world widely, because you need other people to see the world through this viewpoint, because you know it will help them see the world better, and what is an academic is not someone who wants to shine the light on the truth just a little bit brighter?

If you want to bring about any social change, you have to start with how people see the world. Petty, Cacioppo, and Goldman enacted a campaign to convince the world that the Elaboration Likelihood Model was the right model of persuasion. They were activists. They were better activist than who ever came up with System 1 and System 2 processing.

And if you do social science research, at the highest level, then you are an activist too. Don’t apologize. Push harder.