Interactive Effects of Habitual Cuing and Media Features on Evaluation: A Dual-Process Model

Consumers tend to express positive attitudes toward communication sources that reflect their predispositions toward these sources, that is, their habitual cuing. To move beyond the effects of communication sources such as advertising, word of mouth (WOM), and critical reviews, this article applies a dual-process model to determine how the interaction of habitual cuing and the media features of a movie influence evaluations of movie advertising. Six quasi-experimental designs and an analysis of variance to assess the data indicate that greater cultural discount of an original movie leads to more favorable consumer evaluations when the habitual cuing has come through WOM rather than reviews; numbered sequels also gain favorable evaluations as a result of forward spillover effects or reduced satiation. Finally, for named sequels, consumers exhibit more favorable evaluations when habitual cuing comes through reviews rather than WOM.     

The Relation of Reciprocated and Nonreciprocated Friendship Nominations to Peer Social Competence for Chinese Elementary School Children

The authors examined associations between different forms of children’s friendship nomination reciprocity (mutual, unilateral given, unilateral received) and other measures of children’s peer social competence (liking, loneliness, overt aggression, perceived popularity) for 501 Chinese third- to sixth-grade students. Using a multigroup path analysis (with gender as group), for both boys and girls, all three forms of friendship nominations were negatively related to self-reported loneliness. Mutual friendship nominations and unilateral received friendship nominations were positively related to peer nominations for liking and to peer nominations of perceived popularity. The path between unilateral received friendship nominations and perceived popularity was higher for boys than for girls. Also, for boys only, mutual friendship nominations and unilateral received friendship nominations were each negatively related to peer nominations of overt aggression. These patterns are somewhat different from research examining the association of forms of friendships to peer social competence for children in Western cultures. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of the relation of different forms of friendship nominations to children’s peer social competence as well as the broad association of culture for these relations.     

Mixed Picture of Readiness for Adoption of Evidence-Based Prevention Programs in Communities: Exploratory Surveys of State Program Delivery Systems

An emerging literature highlights the potential for broader dissemination of evidence‐based prevention programs in communities through existing state systems, such as the land grant university Extension outreach system and departments of public education and health (DOE–DPH). This exploratory study entailed surveying representatives of the national Extension system and DOE–DPH, to evaluate dissemination readiness factors, as part of a larger project on an evidence‐based program delivery model called PROSPER. In addition to assessing systems’ readiness factors, differences among US regions and comparative levels of readiness between state systems were evaluated. The Extension web‐based survey sample N was 958 and the DOE–DPH telephone survey N was 338, with response rates of 23 and 79 %, respectively. Extension survey results suggested only a moderate level of overall readiness nationally, with relatively higher perceived need for collaborative efforts and relatively lower perceived resource availability. There were significant regional differences on all factors, generally favoring the Northeast. Results from DOE–DPH surveys showed significantly higher levels for all readiness factors, compared with Extension systems. Overall, the findings present a mixed picture. Although there were clear challenges related to measuring readiness in complex systems, addressing currently limited dissemination resources, and devising strategies for optimizing readiness, all systems showed some readiness‐related strengths.     

The importance of gender and affect in the socialization of adolescents' beliefs about benevolent authority: Evidence from Chinese indigenous psychology

Belief in the benevolence and moral legitimacy of leaders in central government is theorized as a form of cultural capital consistent with the hierarchical relationalism of East Asian societies with Confucian roots. A reliable measure of benevolent authority beliefs (BAB) is introduced, and its convergent and discriminant validity relative to established measures of institutional trust are established. Its socialization as part of the political culture of Taiwan was examined among high school adolescents aged 13–16. Significant gender differences were found inconsistent with traditional patriarchy. Regression analyses showed that within the relationship with mothers but not fathers, adolescents associated higher reciprocal filial piety, authoritative parenting, and authentic (positive) affect with higher BAB. For daughters but not sons, reciprocal filial piety, authoritative parenting style, and authentic (positive) affect in the relationship with their father were positively associated with BAB. Affect‐based transfer from parent‐child relationships rather than authoritarian obligations based on rote learning was a key socializing factor in a contemporary Chinese society.     

Beauty and Healing: Examining Sociocultural Expectations of the Embodied Goddess

Studies indicate mental health improvement can occur via religious communities offering social support and other resources. Many people from many cultures regard medicine as a supernatural or magical treatment that can somehow lead to a better state of living. In medical advertising, female role portrayal involves the blending of beauty, ritual and attractiveness in combination with the best product image. A Chinese saying suggests that, “A girl will doll herself up for him who loves her.” Female role attraction is a very important ethical subject in gender issues. Moving forward in time, female role visualization and consumption in medical advertising reveal depictions that encouraged women to do some self-searching and find, or develop, inner strength. This study is designed to examine female role portrayals in a restricted patriarchal society. The results indicate that the ideology of motherhood is an accepted social orientation that the public readily identifies with. Results further indicate that beautification through medical products incorporates an emotional element of religious healing and that the objectification of beauty in the media reveals a possible neglect of women’s internal beauty.     

Dissociation of processing time and awareness by the inattentional blindness paradigm

Consciousness researchers are interested in distinguishing between mental activity that occurs with and without awareness (i.e., explicit versus implicit processes). The inattentional blindness (IB) paradigm is an excellent tool for this question because it permits the independent manipulation of processing time and awareness. In the present study, we show that implicit texture segregation can occur during inattentional blindness, provided that the texture is exposed for a sufficient duration. In contrast, a Simon effect does not occur during inattentional blindness, even with similar exposure duration of the critical stimulus. This reveals a dissociation between processing time and awareness, consistent with the possibility of separate processing streams for explicit and implicit visual perception.     

Object memory and change detection: dissociation as a function of visual and conceptual similarity

People often fail to detect a change between two visual scenes, a phenomenon referred to as change blindness. This study investigates how a post-change object's similarity to the pre-change object influences memory of the pre-change object and affects change detection. The results of Experiment 1 showed that similarity lowered detection sensitivity but did not affect the speed of identifying the pre-change object, suggesting that similarity between the pre- and post-change objects does not degrade the pre-change representation. Identification speed for the pre-change object was faster than naming the new object regardless of detection accuracy. Similarity also decreased detection sensitivity in Experiment 2 but improved the recognition of the pre-change object under both correct detection and detection failure. The similarity effect on recognition was greatly reduced when 20% of each pre-change stimulus was masked by random dots in Experiment 3. Together the results suggest that the level of pre-change representation under detection failure is equivalent to the level under correct detection and that the pre-change representation is almost complete. Similarity lowers detection sensitivity but improves explicit access in recognition. Dissociation arises between recognition and change detection as the two judgments rely on the match-to-mismatch signal and mismatch-to-match signal, respectively.     

International students' reported English fluency,social support satisfaction,and social connectedness as predictors of acculturative stress

This study explored age, gender, reported English fluency, social support satisfaction and social connectedness as predictors of acculturative stress among a sample of 359 international students. Results indicate that international students from Europe experienced less acculturative stress than their counterparts from Asia, Central/Latin America, and Africa. Moreover, English fluency, social support satisfaction, and social connectedness were all predictors of acculturative stress. Implications for counselling and research are discussed.     

The Selection of Multiattribute Decision Making Methods for Scholarship Student Selection

Selecting scholarship students from a number of competing candidates is a complex decision making process, in which multiple selection criteria have to be considered simultaneously. Multiattribute decision making (MADM) has proven to be an effective approach for ranking or selecting one or more alternatives from a finite number of alternatives with respect to multiple, usually conflicting criteria. This paper formulates the scholarship student selection process as an MADM problem, and presents suitable compensatory methods for solving the problem. A new empirical validity procedure is developed to deal with the inconsistent ranking problem caused by different MADM methods. The procedure aims at selecting a ranking outcome which has a minimum expected value loss, when true attribute weights are not known. An empirical study of a scholarship student selection problem in an Australian university is conducted to illustrate how the selection procedure works.