慈善活动及其社会利益调节功能

慈善活动是部分社会成员将自己的部分利益自愿让渡给贫弱群体的行为,它对社会利益有一定的调节作用.慈善活动具有自愿性、非亲友间性和损己利人的特点;有"以有余,扶不足"的利益调节倾向.慈善活动对马太效应、市场机制等初次分配机制有独特的平抑作用,有利于社会和谐;但是,慈善活动是需要社会鼓励扶持才能持续的一种利益协调机制,博爱教育、社会鼓励氛围以及政策扶持是慈善事业健康持续发展的必要条件.     

A Field Study of Social Information Processing Mean Differences and Variance Differences

Previous tests of the effects of socially transmitted information have not provided strong support for a social information processing approach to the formation of work related attitudes and perceptions. This study proposes that the attention-focusing effects of social information should be evidenced by unequal response variance and not necessarily in the typically hypothesized between-group mean differences of previous investigations. Three separate assessments of informational influence on work environment perceptions were conducted on a sample of state government emloyees who were relocating to an open office environment. Predictions of smaller within-group variances for employees receiving environment-salient information were partially supported in the hypotheses tested. Comparison of variance versus mean differences suggests that mean differences alone may not be sufficient for detecting social information processing effects on stimulus perception and evaluation.     

COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION AND ACHIEVEMENT IN A PERFORMANCE-ORIENTED BASIC COMMUNICATION COURSE

The study of communication apprehension (CA) impact in the instructional environment is extended through examination of all three CA levels relative to various performance situations in a basic communication course. Results indicate significant differences in achievement indices between all three CA groups on final course grade and the first two of four performance assignments. Moderate and high CA groups were not significantly different from each other on the third and fourth performance tasks. Low and high CA groups were significantly different in all performance areas. No differences were indicated between CA groups on the final examination. Results are discussed relative to the naturalistic nature of the study.