Resources

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Free downloads of the educational cards, diagrams, and infographics featured on @SOCurious_PhD. Each one summarizes published research and names the researchers behind it.

Relationships

Gaslighting as a social process

Sociological framework of gaslighting: cultural and structural vulnerabilities at the meso–macro level provide scripts and leverage for a power-unequal relationship at the micro level, where tactics include flipping the story, denials, lying, blaming and threats. Work cited: Sweet (2019), American Sociological Review.
Sweet's two layers: the relationship, and the inequalities it borrows from.
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Work cited

Sweet, P. L. (2019). The Sociology of Gaslighting. American Sociological Review, 84(5), 851–875.
PK, P. (2026). Gaslighting as a social process [Infographic]. SOCurious.

Gaslighting is usually treated as a psychological problem between two people. The sociologist Paige Sweet argues it works because of wider inequalities. Stereotypes, like the idea that women are “too emotional”, make one person’s account easier to dismiss.

The term comes from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light and its 1944 film, in which a husband dims the lights and then insists his wife is imagining it. Though you’ve probably seen it all over popular culture since!

This handout illustrates how gaslighting tactics within the micro-interactions of a relationship draw upon, and reinforce, biases and imperfections in our institutions.

Episode: Why gaslighting works

Self

A perfectionist’s attempt at being good enough

The economic principle of marginal costs means every project reaches a point where more input costs more than the improvement it buys. The economist Richard Caves applied this economic thinking to creative work. And Dr. PK applies it to her lifetime recreation of perfectionism.

Two-panel handout. Left: four questions to ask before you keep polishing — what value are you trying to achieve, what is the next input you are considering, what are the opportunity costs, what improvement would it make to your value goal — then weigh it up: go for it, or maybe it’s good enough. Right: a worked example about reading notes for a YouTube collaboration, with the verdict that the cost outweighs the improvement. Work cited: Caves (2006).
Caves’s four questions for deciding when a piece of work is finished — and a worked example where the perfectionist lost.
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Work cited

Caves, R. E. (2006). Economic analysis and steps toward completing the work. In H. S. Becker, R. R. Faulkner, & B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Eds.), Art from start to finish: Jazz, painting, writing, and other improvisations (pp. 135–148). University of Chicago Press.
PK, P. (2026). A perfectionist’s attempt at being good enough [Infographic]. SOCurious.

Caves studied how artists, writers and musicians decide a piece is done. His answer is not a feeling. It is a comparison: what you are trying to achieve, what the next input would cost (in time, sleep, money, attention), and how much closer it would actually get you. When the cost outweighs the improvement, the work is finished — whether or not it feels finished.

The card turns that into four questions you can ask before you keep polishing, and a worked example from the channel where the answer was “stop” and the perfectionist ignored it.

Episode: Perfectionists: How to know when to stop