READING INTERESTS OF CHINESE ADOLESCENTS: EFFECTS OF PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS*

The relation of the reading interests of Chinese adolescents to their personality (introversion), values (intellectualism and academic achievement), and the reading interests of their family members and peers was studied. A total of 2,114 secondary school students participated in the study. The hypothesized relationship was found to be positive. Specifically, the more introverted students were attracted to more literary materials, whereas the less introverted were fond of more action type of materials. Students high on the value of intellectualism were found to read in general more than those low on the value in almost any kind of materials. Compared to the low ones, students high on the value of academic achievement tended to read more but the differences were not extensive; their interest seemed to focus more on the literary and curriculum-related materials. With respect to family and peer influences, students with parents, siblings, classmates, and friends who read tended to read more and have wider reading interests.     

RELIGIOUS SCHEMA AND VALUES*

Past research has consistently shown marked differences between religious believers and non-believers. Such differences were suggested in this study to be due to the presence of religious schema in believers. It was hypothesized that non-believers would be less schematic, or aschematic with respect to religion. This hypothesis was examined by comparing the value system of college student believers (Protestants and Catholics) and non-believers (those indicating no religious faith). Extensive differences were found. Consistent with the hypothesis, the differences were found mainly on the schema-relevant values. In essence, believers showed greater preference for and possession of the moral and relational values, and lesser on the personal-extrinsic, competency, and egoistic values. As predicted, no difference was found on the social and intellectual types of values which are basically schema-irrelevant. The notion of schema availability was also supported. When subjects' religiosity (as indicated by their preference for the salvation value and their self-rated possession of the religiousness value) was controlled for, all the above differences were removed. When high and low religiosity believers were compared, great differences were found. The differences between the high and low religiosity non-believers were however much less extensive.     

Physical self-efficacy and actualization

In his theorizing about self-actualization, Maslow speculated that physical ability and physical self-confidence were two aspects of cooperative dominance which were associated positively with actualization. These aspects of dominance bear close resemblance to the Perceived Physical Ability (PPA) and the Physical Self-Presentation Confidence (PSPC) dimensions of the Physical Self-Efficacy (PSE) Inventory. Accordingly, the PPA and PSPC scores of undergraduate men and women were correlated with their scores on the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), a popular measure of actualization, to test Maslow's hypotheses. The results showed that, contrary to Maslow's claims, PPA is not a positive correlate of self-actualization. However, strong support was found for Maslow's contention that high-PSPC individuals are more likely to be actualizing than low-PSPC people. Also, Maslow's hypothesis that actualizers are high in global sensation seeking (SS) was tested. The data indicated that only male actualizers were high in various aspects of SS, but female actualizers were not. Multiple regression analyses revealed further that both SS and PSPC are primary contributors to POI for men, but only PSPC contributes significantly to POI for women. Discussion focused on the reasons why research findings showing that increases in physical fitness lead to increases in self-esteem cannot be used to support the view that physical fitness and actualization are linked positively.     

Health as a value: methodological and theoretical considerations

The concept of value placed on health is very important in several different theoretical approaches to the study of health behavior. In practice, however, health value is generally assumed to be universally high rather than being directly measured. If this assumption is incorrect, then theories that include health value have rarely been adequately tested. This paper presents a short 4-item Likert scale designed to measure the value placed on health. Norms from the utilization of this scale in five different samples are presented. Health value is found to increase with age among girls, but the increase apparently stops by late adolescence, before full adult levels of health value are achieved. Middle-aged women place a higher value on health than do middle-aged men, although no comparable sex difference appears in a sample of undergraduates. Consistent with theoretical predictions, both health locus of control beliefs and beliefs in the efficacy of certain preventive health behaviors correlate more highly with the performance of those same behaviors 5 to 9 months later among respondents who place a high value of health relative to those who do not value health so highly. However, this interaction is found only when it can be safely assumed that health is the primary value underlying the behavior. The importance of considering a variety of values in addition to health as possible motivators of preventive health behavior is stressed.     

Death by 1000 ‘true fans’: Do marketing laws apply to music listening?

The advice to musicians and marketers is to focus on what they love: a truism for practitioners is to find 1000 ‘true fans’ and make $100 from each of them (Kelly, 2008. 1000 True fans. The Technium). If this advice is correct, we should see musicians with loyal user bases engaging more with their favourite artists and less with other music, suggesting a narrow targeting strategy would suffice. On the other hand, the established marketing laws indicate that the listeners of very different genres should overlap more than conventional wisdom would suggest, supporting the need for a much broader approach to targeting potential audiences. Given these conflicting views, musicians need to know if they should market to their existing listeners, the listeners of music similar to theirs (i.e., the same genre), or if they should try to reach a much wider audience. We turn to established choice patterns from the marketing literature to address these questions in the music context. This study examines 84,000,000 observations of music listening from 27,000 unique global users between 2013 and 2014 and survey data from 2019 containing music listening from over 1000 representative respondents in the United States. The results show that listening follows the Duplication of Purchase law for genres, artists, albums, and songs, at an annual, 6-months, 3-months, 1-month, and 1-week period, with no indication of partitioned music listening. The implication is that musicians should try to reach all potential listeners, regardless of what they already listen to. These findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge about duplication analyses of various durations, extend the contexts of choice behaviour that exhibit this pattern, and managerially, to knowledge about the extent of potential audiences and ‘share of ear’ competition.     

Outflow and inflow in movement duplication

Following prolonged exposure to two vertical grating patterns differing in spatial frequency—one pattern illuminated in green light alternated with the other pattern illuminated in red light—human observers will sometimes report seeing desaturated complementary colors when presented with a neutrally illuminated test field consisting of adjacent halves of the two adapting gratings. The number of such color reports increases as the difference between the spatial frequencies of the adapting gratings increases. This frequency-specific chromatic aftereffect is similar to that obtained with orientation-specific color adaptation and may be mediated by neural “channels,” sensitive to both color and frequency input, which are similar to units known to exist in the visual systems of lower organisms.