When the “Charm of Three” Fades: Mental Imagery Moderates the Impact of the Number of Ad Claims on Persuasion

Given the prevalence of imagery appeals in today’s marketplace, the current research studies the role of mental imagery in how consumers process and react to advertisements with different numbers of ad claims. Past research has proposed “three” as the magical number of ad claims that maximizes persuasion, with more than three ad claims increasing skepticism and reducing evaluation. In the current research, we replicate this so-called “charm of three” effect, but only when consumers do not engage in mental imagery; when they do, however, we find that the effect is moderated, in that more ad claims beyond three produces more favorable product evaluation. Additionally, we provide evidence that the moderating effect of mental imagery is driven by transportation and skepticism toward the ad claims, with mental imagery increasing transportation and decreasing skepticism when there are more than three ad claims. Our research contributes to a better understanding of the “charm of three” effect, its boundary conditions, and underlying mechanism.     

Effet de l’action motrice sur les asynchronies perceptives

In agreement with the hypothesis of differential treatment of the intrinsic (color, shape, category…) and extrinsic (position, orientation…) visual characteristics along the ventral and dorsal pathways of the visual system (Milner & Goodale, 1995), the study of temporal order judgment (TOJ) of the variation of two visual attributes highlighted the perceptual asynchrony even though these changes occur synchronously. In this context, we investigated the role of action in the perception of perceptual asynchrony, especially the effect of a reaching movement on the TOJ of position and color changes of a target occurring at different times of movement execution. In the absence of voluntary action, the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) shows that the color changes must occurr 46.6 ms before the change of position to give rise to a synchronous perception of these two changes. Performing a reaching movement reduced significantly the PSS (12.4 ms), but only if the changes occur near movement end-point. If changes occur during movement execution, the PSS (40.2 ms) was not different from that obtained in the perceptual condition. These results suggest that endogenous signals associated with voluntary motor action contribute to the reduction of perceptual asynchrony in relation to the goal of the action. We discuss the possibility that, in the context of the action, the motor system contributes to the binding of objects sensory attributes as well as to the sense of agency.     

Parental Depressive Symptoms and Adolescent Adjustment: A Prospective Test of an Explanatory Model for the Role of Marital Conflict

Despite calls for process-oriented models for child maladjustment due to heightened marital conflict in the context of parental depressive symptoms, few longitudinal tests of the mechanisms underlying these relations have been conducted. Addressing this gap, the present study examined multiple factors longitudinally that link parental depressive symptoms to adolescent adjustment problems, building on a conceptual model informed by emotional security theory (EST). Participants were from 320 families (158 boys, 162 girls), including mothers and fathers, who took part when their children were in kindergarten (T1), second (T2), seventh (T3), eighth (T4) and ninth (T5) grades. Parental depressive symptoms (T1) were related to changes in adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing symptoms (T5), as mediated by parents’ negative emotional expressiveness (T2), marital conflict (T3), and emotional insecurity (T4). Evidence was thus advanced for emotional insecurity as an explanatory process in the context of parental depressive symptoms.     

Emotional and Behavioral Problems Among Impoverished Kenyan Youth: Factor Structure and Sex-Differences

Data on youth emotional and behavioral problems from societies in Sub-Saharan Africa are lacking. This may be due to the fact that few youth mental health assessments have been tested for construct validity of syndrome structure across multicultural societies that include developing countries, and almost none have been tested in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Youth Self-Report (YSR), for example, has shown great consistency of its syndrome structure across many cultures, yet data from only one developing country in Sub-Saharan Africa have been included. In this study, we test the factor structure of YSR syndromes among Kenyan youth ages 11–18 years from an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya and examine sex-differences in levels of emotional and behavioral problems. We find the eight syndrome structure of the YSR to fit these data well (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.049). While Kenyan girls have significantly higher internalizing (Anxious/Depressed, Withdrawn/Depressed, Somatic) problem scores than boys, these differences are of similar magnitude to published multicultural findings. The results support the generalizability of the YSR syndrome structure to Kenyan youth and are in line with multicultural findings supporting the YSR as an assessment of emotional and behavioral problems in diverse societies.     

Effect of inequality on cooperation: Heterogeneity and hegemony in public goods dilemma

We conducted two studies to explain inconsistent findings on the effect of resource inequality based on two properties of heterogeneity: (a) level of inequality and (b) asymmetry of resource distribution. We confirmed that symmetrically heterogeneous groups cooperated less than homogeneous groups did. We also found that larger resource inequality led to less cooperation. More importantly, the effect of inequality was different among groups with different distributions of resources – cooperation declined in groups with a symmetrical distribution of resources but did not decline in groups with a hegemonic distribution. Hegemonic distribution also affected psychological states as resource inequality changed. High endowment members reported higher self-efficacy when distribution was hegemonic than symmetric. However, they also reported more fear of being a sucker in hegemonic groups.     

An Insider’s Moments of Confucian Ethical Conflict: Reflexivity as the “Middle Way” Response

Cultural ethical dilemmas occur when ethical research practices, as prescribed by the research ethics codes of Western research institutions, conflict with the cultural and social norms of non-Western researchers and their participants. Thus, insider-researchers working with participants from similar cultural backgrounds may experience ethical dilemmas that result in disconcerting cultural estrangement from their communities. Using reflexive narratives, the author identifies moments of cultural ethical dilemmas that necessitate a choice between two competing sets of values. Working out of a Western university, the narratives reflect on cultural ethical dilemmas relating to non-coercion, confidentiality, and beneficence, encountered during interviews in the researcher’s community. Analyzed through the lens of Confucian social and ethical behavior, the paper asks whether there is a need for East–west polarization, or whether research ethics codes based on Western worldviews can be reconciled with Confucian worldviews. The paper suggests the “Middle Way” approach to reconciling and integrating the diverse worldviews of ethics, through the use of an ethical reflexive process that engenders trust in the research process and resolves cultural ethical dilemmas.     

Short report: correlates of functional disability with disease activity in elderly patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) prevalence increases with age and old people are special patient population. The recognition of functional disability related to RA could be challenging in elderly patients because aging itself and potential co-morbid disease may also cause functional disability. In this study, we aimed to look at the correlation between disease activity and functional disability in elderly RA patients. Elderly RA patients, ≥65 years old at their routine visits were included in the study. The composite ‘disease activity score’ in 28 joints (DAS-28) was used to determine disease activity groups. Health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) scores were calculated to describe the functional disability and compared across the disease activity groups. Two hundred and fifty-eight RA patients with the mean age of 71 ± 5 (65–90) and a total disease duration of 8.4 ± 8.5 (.5–50) years were recruited. The proportion of patients with high and moderate disease activity was 70%. HAQ scores were significantly correlated with disease activity (p < .05). Functional disability estimated by HAQ was correlated with disease activity in elderly patients with RA     

Eye-movement patterns in face recognition are associated with cognitive decline in older adults

The Hidden Markov Modeling approach for eye-movement data analysis is able to quantitatively assess differences and similarities among individual patterns. Here we applied this approach to examine the relationships between eye-movement patterns in face recognition and age-related cognitive decline. We found that significantly more older than young adults adopted “holistic” patterns, in which most eye fixations landed around the face center, as opposed to “analytic” patterns, in which eye movements switched among the two eyes and the face center. Participants showing analytic patterns had better performance than those with holistic patterns regardless of age. Interestingly, older adults with lower cognitive status (as assessed by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment), particularly in executive and visual attention functioning (as assessed by Tower of London and Trail Making Tests) were associated with a higher likelihood of holistic patterns. This result suggests the possibility of using eye movements as an easily deployable screening assessment for cognitive decline in older adults.