Why Scholars Should Take Their Show On the Road
Informed commentary is not at odds with "pull quotes" and soundbites.
Posted October 10, 2025 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
Research across diverse domains—from economic decision-making to social stereotyping—has shown that human beings are “ cognitive misers .” In other words, our default mode for processing information favors bite-sized chunks. Leaving aside individual variability and motivational overrides, we prefer shortcuts and snap judgments over long, winding paths and deliberative thinking.
However, the kind of research that has illuminated these very tendencies is itself the result of both zigzagging trails (including unavoidable dead ends, bushwacks, and backtracks) and systematic analysis. Bodies of research coalesce over time to form mountains of nuances and caveats that would appear to defy simple explanation. Academics and researchers, who have typically advanced by telling detailed stories about their data to each other , are thus at a fundamental disadvantage when it comes to sharing their work accurately and accessibly with a public audience–particularly one that may be increasingly skeptical about the value of higher education .
To make a dent in our dizzying, anecdote-laced media environment, we need to talk in pithy soundbites that can be easily digested by many people. Many would argue that this seems not just at odds with the subtleties of in-depth inquiry but also an impossible task. I would argue that it is not only possible, it is imperative. If we cannot convey our findings and theories in accessible ways, we risk validating the misleading assumption that academia is merely an elitist silo that has little to do with the everyday realities of average Americans. My brightest students, sidestepping the allure of AI , are committed to being able to present their ideas in clear and cogent ways so they can explain to family and friends why a thesis on platonic love relationships in fiction matters or what “post-truth” means.*
We need to shore up our ability to communicate about our respective avenues of inquiry, along with our broader mission to teach critical thinking and evidence-based learning. This means taking the show on the road—saying yes to speaker invites, podcasts, and radio spots. This means writing op-eds and blogs(!). This means training ourselves and each other to speak and write persuasively and succinctly. We need to insist that hard-won information is not at odds with “pull quotes” and headlines. Correlation does not equal causation is an easy enough slogan to continually revisit ( with seemingly timeless application ).
This is not necessarily a ground-breaking idea. Academic psychologists, for example, have long focused on the need to “give science away,” recognizing popular writers and speakers such as Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks who have functioned as effective liaisons between the academic and public spheres. Various academics also now host informative and interesting podcasts that intermingle philosophy or psychology with applied realities of everyday life, write best-selling books about emotion regulation , and give widely viewed TED talks that make neuroscience accessible (some of these talks have generated more controversy than others but have also inspired much follow-up diligence). What is new is the current cultural crisis we are facing, fronted by an administration whose disdain for expertise across any number of domains is not only on full display but has already started to have a negative impact on the general public’s understanding of and ability to access health-related resources and information.
The answer is not to retreat into our offices and labs, but to recommit to teaching, both within and beyond our educational institutions [increasingly a luxury of those of us not currently under threat of removal due to their areas of inquiry]. We should provide bright sign posts for students and the general public alike so they can follow winding trails to the source and carefully consider the information they find there. We should repeatedly insist that the function of higher education is to scrutinize the kinds of offhand assumptions that might crop up at a cocktail party or…press conference.
I always open my Media Psychology course by asking students why it might be important to study media in a systematic, data-driven way. I point out that we all have “hot takes” on various media-related topics, but in order to know whether our intuition is actually on target, we need to subject it to rigorous testing. Is social media really eroding our communities, attention spans, and mental health as popular sentiment would have us believe? The reality is not so simple —as is true of almost anything to do with human beings (pull quote: “it’s complicated!”).
Reviews and meta-analyses of the now sprawling literature on social media and well-being typically do not find strong or even consistently negative associations; more often, it depends on how and why you use it. Are you an adolescent who is in a stigmatized minority group (LGBTQ, Black or Brown, people with autism , etc.)? Perhaps you are finding support and community online . Are you a young adolescent who is using social media at bedtime? You may find your sleep more disrupted , which has downstream effects on mental and physical health.
Academics and researchers may feel hesitant to lean in to the culture of soundbites and clickbait in which we find ourselves, but staying out of the conversation risks that conversation being defined and dominated by the loudest among us. We can have our healthy bite-sized chunks and eat them too by making sure informed voices are part of the story.
*Shout out to Media Studies senior interns Yaksha Gummadapu and Carina Cole
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Dara Greenwood, Ph.D. is a social psychologist and associate professor of Psychology at Vassar College who studies the social and emotional implications of media engagement.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.