“Do as I do,not as I say”: Using social learning theory to unpack the impact of role models on students' outcomes in education

Role modeling has received much attention in education research, uncovering the mechanisms by which imitation occurs (e.g., the aspects of role models that make them more or less effective) and identifying the outcomes associated upon imitating the model. Nonetheless, certain social‐cognitive processes involved in role modeling tend to be overlooked. This oversight is puzzling given that these processes, such as retention and reproduction of modeled behavior, are of great importance to role modeling processes—the consideration and inclusion of such processes can provide crucial insight. This paper provides an overview of the role model research in education to date, detailing researchers' focus and emphasis on identifying aspects of role model effectiveness. We then analyze how including the component processes of social learning or observational theory can add value and application to advance role modeling research. Finally, we provide recommendations to close the gap between current research trends and what has been previously theorized on modeling to help inform ongoing future investigations.     

Social pressures on organizational website adoption

Innovation adoption research has demonstrated that organizational features and perceived benefits of innovations play significant roles in explaining organizational‐level decisions to adopt new technologies. Beyond such motivations, however, social pressures operating at the interorganizational level have been proposed to influence the decision to adopt innovations, even without regard to any proven or anticipated benefit from the innovation itself. To empirically determine the influence of organizational features, perceived benefits, and social pressures on organizations' innovation adoption decisions, this study examined the decisions of 288 organizations to adopt Internet websites. Organizational social pressures were found to be the most significant discriminators of adopters and non adopters, although they were not particularly important in predicting the likelihood of future adoption for those organizations currently without websites. This finding suggests that social pressures are significant in innovation adoption, but that they may have their strongest effect during the early phases of innovation diffusion. Organizational features and perceived benefits were also reasonable discriminators of adopters and nonadopters as well as effective predictors of the likelihood of adoption for nonadopters. To a lesser degree, these factors were also predictive of the stage of adoption for those organizations that have already adopted websites.     

A Two-Stage Model of Category Construction

The current consensus is that most natural categories are not organized around strict definitions (a list of singly necessary and jointly sufficient features) but rather according to a family resemblance (FR) principle: Objects belong to the same category because they are similar to each other and dissimilar to objects in contrast categories. A number of computational models of category construction have been developed to provide an account of how and why people create FR categories (Anderson, 1990; Fisher, 1987). Surprisingly, however, only a few experiments on category construction or free sorting have been run and they suggest that people do not sort examples by the FR principle. We report several new experiments and a two-stage model for category construction. This model is contrasted with a variety of other models with respect to their ability to account for when FR sorting will and will not occur. The experiments serve to identify one basis for FR sorting and to support the two-stage model. The distinctive property of the two-stage model is that it assumes that people impose more structure than the examples support in the first stage and that the second stage adjusts for this difference between preferred and perceived structure. We speculate that people do not simply assimilate probabilistic structures but rather organize them in terms of discrete structures plus noise.     

Are daily fluctuations in perceived environment associated with walking?

The physical environment is thought to influence walking; however, daily variations in perceived environment have received little attention. The current study sought to examine if key within-person factors (i.e., implementation intentions, social support, affect and self-efficacy) would be associated with walking and if perceived access to supportive environments (e.g., access to nice walking paths) and perceived environmental barriers (e.g., bad weather and safety issues) were uniquely associated with walking after controlling for other constructs. Participants (N = 14, 50.0% men, 78.6% White, M age = 59.4 ± 6.4) were in the intervention arm of an 8-week controlled trial promoting walking via personal digital assistants. Participants completed electronic surveys twice a day (total entries = 804) in which they reported brisk walking levels and psychosocial and environmental factors. Multilevel modelling was used to examine within-person variations in constructs as determinants of walking. Results suggested that daily variations in implementation intentions, social support and positive affect were positively associated with walking. Further, perceived access to supportive environments, though not perceived environmental barriers, was positively associated with walking after controlling for other constructs (p < 0.05). Future research should explore intervention components that target context-specific information about perceived access to supportive environments as part of a broader perspective on intervention development.     

Gender‐role egalitarianism predicts desirable traits of potential marriage partners: A cross‐cultural comparison

We examined whether gender‐role egalitarianism predicted participants' rank‐order preferences for traits in potential marriage partners of the opposite sex, and whether gender‐role egalitarianism mediated cultural differences between participants from North America, Polynesia and East Asia. Participants completed the Sex‐Role Egalitarianism Scale and ranked the following traits in terms of their importance in choosing a potential marriage partner: kindness, physical attractiveness, social level, athleticism, creativity and liveliness. Parallel analyses for male and female participants reveal that traditional males value physical attractiveness more than egalitarian males, and that traditional females value social level more and kindness less than egalitarian females. Gender‐role egalitarianism fully mediated the effect of culture on kindness rankings, but no others. These results expand upon previous findings by accounting for individual differences regarding beliefs about traditional gender roles.     

Accelerating heterogeneous nucleation to increase hardness and electrical conductivity by deformation prior to ageing for Cu-4 at.% Ti alloy

ABSTRACT

Deformation bands, especially shear bands were intentionally formed in supersaturated Cu-4 at.% Ti alloy by groove-rolling with 75% area reduction. Cold deformation prior to the ageing process changed the precipitation behaviour of the alloy. The deformed structure with shear bands was maintained, without showing recovery and recrystallisation, even after prolonged ageing at 450°C for more than one day. The thermally stable shear bands act as nucleation initiation sites and prevent the expansion of discontinuous cellular precipitates. The hardness reached a value of 305?Hv and an electrical conductivity of 15% IACS (IACS?=?International Annealed Copper Standard. 100% IACS is defined as the conductivity corresponding to a volume resistivity at 20°C of 17.241?nΩ), compared to 283?Hv and 13% IACS for conventional solid-solutioned and peak-hardened alloy. In addition, the ageing time to reach the highest hardness was shortened from 720 to 180?min at 450°C.     

Effects of photoaging information and UV photo on sun protection intentions and behaviours: A cross-regional comparison

The physical environment is thought to influence walking; however, daily variations in perceived environment have received little attention. The current study sought to examine if key within-person factors (i.e., implementation intentions, social support, affect and self-efficacy) would be associated with walking and if perceived access to supportive environments (e.g., access to nice walking paths) and perceived environmental barriers (e.g., bad weather and safety issues) were uniquely associated with walking after controlling for other constructs. Participants (N?=?14, 50.0% men, 78.6% White, M age?=?59.4?±?6.4) were in the intervention arm of an 8-week controlled trial promoting walking via personal digital assistants. Participants completed electronic surveys twice a day (total entries?=?804) in which they reported brisk walking levels and psychosocial and environmental factors. Multilevel modelling was used to examine within-person variations in constructs as determinants of walking. Results suggested that daily variations in implementation intentions, social support and positive affect were positively associated with walking. Further, perceived access to supportive environments, though not perceived environmental barriers, was positively associated with walking after controlling for other constructs (p?<?0.05). Future research should explore intervention components that target context-specific information about perceived access to supportive environments as part of a broader perspective on intervention development.     

Effect of grouping of evidence types on learning about interactions between observed and unobserved causes

When a cause interacts with unobserved factors to produce an effect, the contingency between the observed cause and effect cannot be taken at face value to infer causality. Yet it would be computationally intractable to consider all possible unobserved, interacting factors. Nonetheless, 6 experiments found that people can learn about an unobserved cause participating in an interaction with an observed cause when the unobserved cause is stable over time. Participants observed periods in which a cause and effect were associated followed by periods of the opposite association ("grouped condition"). Rather than concluding a complete lack of causality, participants inferred that the observed cause does influence the effect (Experiment 1), and they gave higher causal strength estimates when there were longer periods during which the observed cause appeared to influence the effect (Experiment 2). Consistent with these results, when the trials were grouped, participants inferred that the observed cause interacted with an unobserved cause (Experiments 3 and 4). Indeed, participants could even make precise predictions about the pattern of interaction (Experiments 5 and 6). Implications for theories of causal reasoning are discussed.