Social Research in the Advancement of Children's Rights

This article argues that investigators doing developmental and social research with children have, for the most part, failed to acknowledge the inherent implications of their work for children's rights. The impact of these studies upon children's rights occurs at every stage; from hypothesis formulation to hypothesis testing to dissemination of findings. This paper addresses the issue in the context of developmental research on children's ability to report experienced events accurately. This particular research area has generated data that has been extrapolated to legal contexts and created a foundation for assumptions about the credibility of child witnesses. This in turn has had profound effects on children's right to be heard and the weight given to their testimony. The argument is made that there is a need for social scientists to explicitly articulate how their work may impact upon children's rights and what is in fact the social agenda in this regard underlying their research.     

Transmission and refutation of organisational rumours: Consumer identification and processing types

If consumers accept rumours without verifying them, considerable damage to individuals or organisations could result. By applying the appraisal theory of emotions, this article provides a framework for clarifying rumour communications by people who identify strongly or weakly with an organisation that is the object of a rumour. Study 1 reveals that when people identify strongly with the rumour object and hear an important rumour, they spread positive information more readily than negative information. They are also more likely to transmit information of high (vs. low) importance when the rumour is positive. Conversely, weak identifiers are equally likely to spread positive and negative information, regardless of importance. Study 2 incorporates a heuristic‐systematic model and demonstrates that strong identifiers process refutations systematically when those refutations refer to a positive, less important rumour. Conversely, they process refutation information heuristically if they confront positive, important rumours or if they receive a refutation of a negative rumour. Identification with the rumour object affects its spread, but rumour objects can develop refutation strategies to halt the spread of negative rumours or encourage the spread of positive rumours about the organisation. Rumour refutation efforts cannot be generalised but instead should be targeted according to consumers' strong or weak identification.     

The Psychological Dimension of Informed Consent: Dissonance Processes in Genetic Testing

This paper discusses the issue of the psychological dimension of informed consent. In this paper, the author proposes that informed consent is a continuous variable rather than a dichotomous one. When clients better understand their motives and actual, rather than just perceived degree of choice in pursuing a particular option in a medical setting, their level of informed consent is greater. Findings from existing literature in the field of genetic testing are examined in terms of dissonance theory. These findings suggest that testing candidates sometimes overestimate their coping skills and minimize the threat to psychological integrity that a particular genetic result may pose. Counseling directed towards realistic appraisal of degree of choice in pursuing testing is examined as an aspect of supporting informed consent and possibly reducing the potential for adverse psychological outcome in the longer term.     

Psychological factors influencing the vividness and affect of visitors’ recall of nostalgic life memories in museums

Current Psychology - This study investigated the effect of nostalgia on museum visitors’ memories of life episodes from the distant past following their encounters with museum objects they...     

Beyond Beauty: Design Symmetry and Brand Personality

Our research explores connections between a fundamental element of visual design, namely symmetry, and consumer inferences regarding brand personality. In contrast to prior work focused on broad affective responses, we propose that symmetry plays an additional, nuanced role in the communication of brand personality. Results of four experiments reveal that asymmetry in visual brand elements is associated by consumers with brand excitement, and that the effect is driven in part by the experience of subjective arousal. These findings contribute to growing interest in visual design and consumer processing, while extending current understanding regarding the communication of brand personality.     

Problems of Measuring Character and Personality

The present study examined whether expressed acceptance of a person with AIDS reflects genuine acceptance or a desire to appear to be accepting. Theory and research on the effects of mortality salience on acceptance of stigmatized people provided the framework for investigating this question. After writing about death or another aversive topic, participants indicated their acceptance of a target with AIDS while connected to physiological equipment that they believed could detect lies (bogus pipeline) or was simply measuring physiological responses to participation in the study. As predicted, participants in the mortality salience/bogus pipeline condition indicated significantly less acceptance of the target with AIDS than participants in the other three conditions, suggesting that acceptance of a person with AIDS is at least partially a result of wanting to appear to be accepting, without necessarily genuinely accepting someone with AIDS.     

Mortality Salience and Perceptions of People with AIDS: Understanding the Role of Prejudice

Study 1 examined the perceived association of AIDS and death by showing that thinking about AIDS increased participants'; death-thought accessibility. Hypotheses about the consequences of this association for perceptions of people with AIDS were derived from terror management theory, which proposes that mortality salience increases derogation of those who threaten people's worldviews unless those worldviews oppose prejudice, in which case mortality salience can increase acceptance of people who are otherwise threatening. Consistent with these hypotheses, conservative participants had less favorable impressions (Study 2) and liberal participants had more favorable impressions (Study 3) of a target with AIDS following a death reminder. Study 4 suggested that the decrease in prejudice among liberals following mortality salience was a genuine decrease in prejudice (as indicated by responses to an unobtrusive attitude measure), not just an increase in the desire to appear nonprejudiced. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.