How Readability Shapes Social Media Engagement

We suggest that text readability plays an important role in driving consumer engagement on social media. Consistent with a processing fluency account, we find that easy‐to‐read posts are more liked, commented on, and shared on social media. We analyze over 4,000 Facebook posts from Humans of New York, a popular photography blog on social media, over a 3‐year period to see how readability shapes social media engagement. The results hold when controlling for photo features, story valence, and other content‐related characteristics. Experimental findings further demonstrate the causal impact of readability and the processing fluency mechanism in the context of a fictitious brand community. This research articulates the impact of processing fluency on brief word‐of‐mouth transmissions in the real world while empirically demonstrating that readability as a message feature matters. It also extends the impact of processing fluency to a novel behavioral outcome: commenting and sharing actions.     

Working memory capacity and the top-down control of visual search: Exploring the boundaries of "executive attention"

The executive attention theory of working memory capacity (WMC) proposes that measures of WMC broadly predict higher order cognitive abilities because they tap important and general attention capabilities (R. W. Engle & M. J. Kane, 2004). Previous research demonstrated WMC-related differences in attention tasks that required restraint of habitual responses or constraint of conscious focus. To further specify the executive attention construct, the present experiments sought boundary conditions of the WMC-attention relation. Three experiments correlated individual differences in WMC, as measured by complex span tasks, and executive control of visual search. In feature-absence search, conjunction search, and spatial configuration search, WMC was unrelated to search slopes, although they were large and reliably measured. Even in a search task designed to require the volitional movement of attention (J. M. Wolfe, G. A. Alvarez, & T. S. Horowitz, 2000), WMC was irrelevant to performance. Thus, WMC is not associated with all demanding or controlled attention processes, which poses problems for some general theories of WMC.     

Sex roles,social roles,and clinical judgments of mental health

This study examined whether clinical psychologists expect similar behavior from males and females in contexts that are traditionally male vs. female. In a modification of the task by Broverman et al. (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1970, 34, 1–7), practicing psychologists (N=104) rated the appropriate behavior of a mature, healthy, socially competent man in the home environment, man in the work environment, woman in the home environment, or woman in the work environment. There was a significant effect of environment, with ratings closer to the pole traditionally labeled masculine in the work environment (p<.001). However, clinicians did not assign significantly different ratings to men vs. women. These data call into question the continued use of feminine and masculine to describe behavior, and emphasize the need to specify the environmental context in research on sex role stereotypes.This report is based on an undergraduate honors thesis conducted by the second author under the sponsorship of the first. Order of authorship is alphabetical.     

Least squares metric,unidimensional scaling of multivariate linear models

The squared error loss function for the unidimensional metric scaling problem has a special geometry. It is possible to efficiently find the global minimum for every coordinate conditioned on every other coordinate being held fixed. This approach is generalized to the case in which the coordinates are polynomial functions of exogenous variables. The algorithms shown in the paper are linear in the number of parameters. They always descend and, at convergence, every coefficient of every polynomial is at its global minimum conditioned on every other parameter being held fixed. Convergence is very rapid and Monte Carlo tests show the basic procedure almost always converges to the overall global minimum.The author thanks Ivo Molenaar, three anonymous referees, and Howard Rosenthal for their many helpful comments.     

Determining career orientations in women from different social-class backgrounds

This study examines career orientations in women from high- and low-socioeconomic status backgrounds, using a longitudinal data set collected over a period of 10 years, from 1973 to 1982. When first contacted, respondents were 18 years of age. The final data collection in 1982 resulted in a sample of some 1300 women. The longitudinal data were analyzed using LISREL structural equation modeling and were guided by a theoretical framework developed by Krumboltz (1981) which focuses on the process of decision-making. Results from the study indicated that there were effects of social-class background in the development of women's career orientations, over the secondary school-early career development stage. Group differences in determinants of orientation were found for political attitudes, occupational interests, senior school achievement, and professional attainment. Differences were also found in the influence of motivational tendencies and work satisfaction on model variables for the two groups of women. The benefit of the decision-making theoretical framework and its further development for use in studies of career development generally are discussed.     

Gender-Related Knowledge Variations Within Geography

In a survey of students from junior high through the undergraduate college level, males consistently out-performed females on a test covering map skills and physical, human, and regional aspects of geography. The gender gap was consistent across all four subfields. It widened with increased education and was significant even after accounting for numerous personal information items that might have explained the difference. This consistent performance difference involving the broad spectrum of geographic knowledge argues against explaining the gender gap as symptomatic of differences in a single underlying factor such as map skills or spatial abilities. Knowledge-based and nonknowledge-based explanations for the gender difference are discussed.     

Underprediction of Female Performance from Standardized Knowledge Tests: A Further Example from the Knowledge of Geography Test

It has been documented that some tests ofbackground knowledge underpredict the performance offemale students in college. This study explored whetherthe underprediction phenomenon would also be found for a test that tapped four subfields ofgeography. Students (primarily White, N = 315) enrolledin nine geography classes at a comprehensive, midwesternuniversity completed the Knowledge of Geography (KOG) test during the first week of the semester andconsented to release their first exam grades, finalgrades, and ACT scores. Replicating a previous study(Henrie, Aron, Nelson, & Poole, 1997), there were gender differences favoring males across allfour subfields of the KOG test. KOG test scorescorrelated with grades, but males and females achievedcomparable course grades despite the lower performance of females on the KOG test. Examples illustratehow small differences between predicted and actualgrades can translate into large gender discrepancieswhenever minimum scores from tests that underpredict the performance of a subgroup are used toqualify students for educationalopportunities.     

Homogeneity of cognitive and behavioural processes underlying the relationship between insomnia and body image disturbance

Cognitive Processing - Specific cognitive behavioural mechanisms related to selective attention, situational avoidance and physical appearance are implicated in the development and maintenance of...     

The relationship of GMA to counterproductive work behavior revisited

Recent research reported that general mental ability (GMA) predicted counterproductive work behavior (CWB), whereas some previous studies failed to find such a relationship. We tested occupational homogeneity of the sample and criterion measurement as two potential explanations for these inconsistencies. Study 1 replicated major design features of one previous study, which found no GMA–CWB relation in a heterogeneous sample, with occupationally homogeneous groups. Results confirmed previous null findings, indicating no effect of sample homogeneity. In Study 2, using a controlled laboratory setting, GMA was again unrelated to self‐reported CWB, but partially predicted observed CWB negatively. Combined findings suggest that GMA is consistently unrelated to CWB self‐reports but may predict objectively measured CWB independently of the likelihood of being caught. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.