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The hoped-for “just recovery” from the COVID-19 pandemic has not occurred. This chapter examines socioeconomic disparities laid bare by the pandemic in the United States. They have left a marked impression, suggesting that the concept of “American exceptionalism” has negative as well as positive connotations especially when compared with other high-income countries. Strikingly, democracy is not delivering for many Americans, and yet that is not a new situation, as much scholarship shows. These findings challenge received wisdom about how this country is in the aggregate labeled “developed” when many Americans live in conditions similar to or worse than those the World Bank categorizes as “developing.” Against this background, the chapter assesses experiential learning models for engaging students on the SDGs to assess these disparities. While researching social justice gaps in Pittsburgh and Atlanta with Carnegie Mellon students, however, the lack of disaggregated data emerged as a human rights issue and major barrier to fulfilling the SDG principle to “leave no one behind” (LNOB). These findings suggest a paradigm shift is needed, using the SDGs to advance human rights, elevating socioeconomic rights, localizing issues, generating disaggregated data to drive policy recommendations, and scaling up the community of practice that is engaged in this paradigm shift. Field building these aspects of sustainable development has the possibility to positively shape policies, outcomes, and help this democracy actually deliver for all, not just for some. For the United States to lead and bolster human rights and democracy around the world, inequalities at home must be addressed.

Advertisements facilitate certain emotions, subsequently influencing purchase intentions. Humor, as an influential way of information expression, is frequently used in ads to elicit emotions. Drawing upon literature on advertisement humor and new product purchase intention and the theory of planned behavior, the study proposes that humor stimulation in advertisements can affect consumers' new product purchase intentions, in which two process mechanisms, namely, emotional arousal and cognitive flexibility, play a mediating effect.

To test the assertions, the authors conduct three experimental studies. The authors' first study assesses the main effect between advertisement humor and purchase intentions. In the second study, the authors show the mediating effects of emotional pleasure, emotional arousal, and cognitive flexibility on the relationship between advertisement humor and purchase intentions. In the first two experiments, the authors study incremental new products. In the third study, the authors study the same mediating relationships for radically new products.

This study's results show consumers that watch humorous ads are more likely to choose new products than those who watch non-humorous ads (Study 1); compared with non-humorous ads, humorous ads can enhance emotional arousal, thus promoting cognitive flexibility and making consumers more inclined to choose new products (Study 2 and Study 3). That said, the authors find that these mediation effects are only partial.

This study's results have important implications for firms vying to enhance consumers' new product purchase intentions by deploying humorous ads.