Confirming satisfaction as an attitude within the service‐buying process

This paper presents research that uses cognitive and affective semantic differential scales to construct an attitude measuring instrument to be used in the services domain in the context of long applications to buy a service. The scales measure ‘Attitude to the Application Process’ (AAP) which represents satisfaction, as an internal ‘buying process’ attitude, which moderates the buying intention. Data collected over a three‐year period between 1996‐9, was analysed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The results provide evidence of a robust and useful cognitive scale. Although there were anomalies in the exploratory and confirmatory analysis of the affective scale, a robust scale is presented which represents either one or two factors. The whole measuring instrument of 14 items was developed as a means to access applicant attitudes during the application process to university — an extended and extreme application situation for first‐time consumers. The results identify that the instrument is sound and can be used in its original or modified form, depending on the context of the service‐process monitoring situation. The scales represent aspects of attitude not dealt with extensively in the literature and measure the perception of the application process as simple, open, friendly and helpful. These aspects of satisfaction mirror three attributes of service quality: assurance, responsiveness and empathy identified in previous research. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Party Identification in Emotional and Political Context: A Replication

While testing an affective measure of party identification Burden and Klofstad (2005 ) found that using the phrase, "feel that you are," in place of, "think of yourself as," significantly shifted PID in a Republican direction. I adopt the theoretical framework of Affective Intelligence ( Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000 ) to specify how the timing of their question-wording experiment may have influenced the results. I suggest that the outcome was a function of (a) anxiety present during the survey, which ran just after 9/11 of 2001, coupled with (b) a political environment that favored Republicans. In a 2005 survey I replicate the experiment and collect new measures with which to test expectations. I find no significant shift in PID, and provisional support for the Affective Intelligence explanation. The results validate Burden and Klofstad's measure, qualify their findings, and test the application of the theory of Affective Intelligence to party dispositions. Alternative explanations and directions for further research are discussed.     

"修辞立其诚"的语义学诠释

“修辞立其减”本为孔子读《易》解经之语,但它却对后世的文学评论及修辞学产生了深刻影响,高频率的使用还使它凝结为词——“修辞立诚”。如此,“修辞”与“立诚”在结构上成为平行并列的两个词。但从修辞角度看,二者则有密切的从属关系:“诚”内“辞”外,“诚”主“辞”从,“辞”以“诚”存。“诚”在儒家思想中的主导地位也说明,修辞应以“诚”为本,“辞”要服从并服务于“诚”。所谓“修辞立其诚”,是指以“诚”为前提并以“诚”为主导的“修辞”。     

Lexical configuration and lexical engagement: when adults learn new words

People know thousands of words in their native language, and each of these words must be learned at some time in the person's lifetime. A large number of these words will be learned when the person is an adult, reflecting the fact that the mental lexicon is continuously changing. We explore how new words get added to the mental lexicon, and provide empirical support for a theoretical distinction between what we call lexical configuration and lexical engagement. Lexical configuration is the set of factual knowledge associated with a word (e.g., the word's sound, spelling, meaning, or syntactic role). Almost all previous research on word learning has focused on this aspect. However, it is also critical to understand the process by which a word becomes capable of lexical engagement--the ways in which a lexical entry dynamically interacts with other lexical entries, and with sublexical representations. For example, lexical entries compete with each other during word recognition (inhibition within the lexical level), and they also support the activation of their constituents (top-down lexical-phonemic facilitation, and lexically-based perceptual learning). We systematically vary the learning conditions for new words, and use separate measures of lexical configuration and engagement. Several surprising dissociations in behavior demonstrate the importance of the theoretical distinction between configuration and engagement.     

泛文化的自尊——基于中国大学生的研究证据

过去一直认为,自尊是人类普遍的需要,是泛文化的。但是,过去十多年来,这一观点受到严重挑战。其主要理由是许多跨文化的研究显示集体主义文化下个体的自尊显著低于西方,少有自我促进的迹象。但是,几乎所有这样的证据都是来自自陈式测量。由于自陈式测量难以避免自我展现（Self-presentation）或社会期许（Social Desirability）的影响,并且严重依赖于个体的自我报告,本研究采用新的能够防止社会期许的影响并能触及无意识的内隐测量——阈下评价性启动（Subliminal Evaluative Priming）程序,对中国大学生的自尊进行了研究。结果发现中国大学生对自我持有显著的积极、肯定的评价,中国人存在内隐自尊。这表明,集体主义文化下的个体的自尊需要是存在的,只是以内隐的方式表现或在自我展现的影响最小化后表现出来。这一发现和自尊的泛文化论是一致的     

Reducing Affective Polarization: Warm Group Relations or Policy Compromise?

Hostility between rival political partisans, referred to as affective polarization, has increased in the United States over the last several decades generating considerable interest in its reduction. The current study examines two distinct sets of factors that potentially reduce affective polarization, drawn respectively from a group-based and a policy-based model of its origins. Specifically, we contrast the degree to which warm social relations and policy compromise reduce affective polarization. In two experimental studies (N = 937), respondents read a mock news story about an observed interaction between Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader, and Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader. The leaders either interact in a warm or hostile manner and independently compromise, or fail to compromise, on immigration matters. In both studies, warm leader relations reduced affective polarization whereas policy compromise did not. We consider the implications of these findings for the study of affective polarization and its reduction.     

言语吸引力影响因素探索：物理属性和社会特征

语音吸引力是个体吸引力的重要组成部分。为探索言语吸引力影响因素,以汉语词汇为材料,设计实验分析语音基频、共振峰等物理属性以及词义、声音受喜欢程度和语音性别等社会属性对语音吸引力的影响。结果表明：分析物理属性,基频、共振峰等并未能预测语音吸引力;分析社会属性,较之词语意义,声音本身具有的吸引力水平对言语吸引力评价影响更大;而男性和女性对两种性别言语吸引力评价差异不显著。言语吸引力评价在男性和女性间具有一致性：＂好声音＂比＂会说话＂更加容易被认为具有吸引力。     

A phonetic approach to consonant repetition in early words

The goal of this study was to evaluate movement-based principles for understanding early speech output patterns. Consonant repetition patterns within children's actual productions of word forms were analyzed using spontaneous speech data from 10 typically developing American-English learning children between 12 and 36 months of age. Place of articulation, word level patterns, and developmental trends in CVC and CVCV repeated word forms were evaluated. Labial and coronal place repetitions dominated. Regressive repetition (e.g., [gag] for “dog”) occurred frequently in CVC but not in CVCV word forms. Consonant repetition decreased over time. However, the children produced sound types available reported as being within young children's production system capabilities in consonant repetitions in all time periods. Findings suggest that a movement-based approach can provide a framework for comprehensively characterizing consonant place repetition patterns in early speech development.     

BALDEY: A database of auditory lexical decisions

In an auditory lexical decision experiment, 5541 spoken content words and pseudowords were presented to 20 native speakers of Dutch. The words vary in phonological make-up and in number of syllables and stress pattern, and are further representative of the native Dutch vocabulary in that most are morphologically complex, comprising two stems or one stem plus derivational and inflectional suffixes, with inflections representing both regular and irregular paradigms; the pseudowords were matched in these respects to the real words. The BALDEY (“biggest auditory lexical decision experiment yet”) data file includes response times and accuracy rates, with for each item morphological information plus phonological and acoustic information derived from automatic phonemic segmentation of the stimuli. Two initial analyses illustrate how this data set can be used. First, we discuss several measures of the point at which a word has no further neighbours and compare the degree to which each measure predicts our lexical decision response outcomes. Second, we investigate how well four different measures of frequency of occurrence (from written corpora, spoken corpora, subtitles, and frequency ratings by 75 participants) predict the same outcomes. These analyses motivate general conclusions about the auditory lexical decision task. The (publicly available) BALDEY database lends itself to many further analyses.