INQUIRY

New York University • College of Arts and Science
and real-time stories have constructed perceived personal
relationships and understanding between online personalities
and the larger population of social media users. Using
the inherent “instantaneity” of these platforms, bloggers are
able to create a personal narrative and a sense of authenticity,
allowing for the development of a personal “brand” which
appears less mediated than that of a corporation. These
blogger “brands” are therefore viewed with a less critical
eye, which creates the opportunity for bloggers to employ
native advertising and subtly targeted marketing. Using fashion
bloggers as a case study for the larger effects of social
media marketing and online branding, this paper identifies
the specific points of these platforms that currently reshape
the play between concealment and revealment in advertising
and branding. Viewing fashion as a symptom of current
trends—both economic and cultural—this case study allows
for an investigation into the changes in our understanding of
contemporary culture and the ways in which it is represented.
This paper serves to identify both the benefits, in terms of
branding, and drawbacks of social media marketing as well
as the lack of rules currently associated with the budding
possibilities.
The Impact of Perceiver Collectivism and Group Gender
Composition on Evaluations of Task Groups
Danusha Selva Kumar, Psychology
Sponsor: Professor Tessa West, Psychology
Previous research shows that when perceivers who
are members of a task group are high in collectivism,
group gender composition biases their intragroup evaluations
of their group-mates. The current study investigated
whether group gender composition and perceiver level of
collectivism impact evaluations of group members when
perceivers are not members of the group. Participants
viewed simulated interactions of five person task groups.
Despite high power, B = .99, gender composition and its
interaction with perceivers’ level of collectivism did not
significantly affect evaluations. However, lower scores on
two subscales of the collectivism scale (willingness to rely
on group mates and enjoyment of group work) led to more
negative overall evaluations. Moreover, male perceivers
low on a third subscale (concern for the well-being of group
mates) evaluated female targets more negatively than male
targets. Results suggest that gender composition only biases
evaluations when perceivers are members of the group. In
addition, although previous research shows that intragroup
gender biases (based on group gender composition) increase
as a perceiver’s level of collectivism increases, the current
research shows that when perceivers are not members of the
group, gender biases (based on target gender) decrease as a
perceiver’s level of collectivism increases.
Affordable Housing: Is Mixed-Income Housing Delivering
Its Promises?
Manel Sentouhi, Metropolitan Studies, Politics
Sponsor: Professor Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Social
and Cultural Analysis
Over the past decade, more than 100 mixed-income
housing buildings have been constructed in New York City
alone as an attempt to alleviate poverty-stricken neighborhoods
and the ever-growing lack of affordable housing.
Because mixed-income buildings reserve at least 20% of
their units for low-income residents and sell the remaining
units at market-rate, a diversity of socio-economic class
exists within these buildings. In the eyes of the government,
this diversity is seen as a way to decentralize poverty within
urban cities and as a way for residents of all backgrounds to
come together as a community, but recent news and research
may note otherwise. During the summer of 2014, news
sources brought to light a feature of numerous mixed-income
housing buildings which became known as the “Poor Door,”
a separate entrance constructed specifically for low-income
residents’ use. This raises the question whether mixedincome
housing is really aiming for community building
across socio-economic differences. The purpose of this study
is to investigate the effects of mixed-income housing on New
York City communities. With the expectation of building
80,000 new affordable housing units in New York City over
the next 10 years, in accordance to Mayor De Blasio’s Housing
New York: A Five-Borough, Ten-Year Plan, the aim of
this study is to evaluate whether mixed-income housing, in
its present form, is the best solution for addressing both the
lack of affordable housing and the issues of socio-economic
and racial housing segregation within New York City. The
results from this research reveal that mixed-income housing
alone fails to provide an all-inclusive community and fails
to address root causes of poverty, signaling the vital need
of social services to accompany mixed-income housing.
The Effect of Increases in the Federal Minimum Wage
on Domestic Violence Rates: A Differences in Differences
Analysis
Brittany Sherman, Politics
Sponsor: Professor Anna Harvey, Politics
This research project asks the following question: Do
economic conditions impact rates of domestic violence?
In order to adequately address issues of causal inference,
federal minimum wage increases were used as an exogenous
source of variation in individual-level economic conditions.
A differences in differences design was also conducted,
taking advantage of the preexisting variation in state minimum
wages in order to address the possibility that federal
minimum wage increases are correlated with other factors
that may impact rates of domestic violence. The results of
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