Consumer engagement on social media: Evidence from small retailers

This study investigates which characteristics of the social media posts of small firms in Tasmania, Australia elicit higher levels of consumer engagement. Results from an analysis of small retail firms’ social media postings (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) (N = 2,607) illustrate the importance of the content of the post (i.e., businesses‐related vs. non‐business‐related), the activity (i.e., text, image or video), the time of day of the posting and the platform on which the activity was posted, in eliciting responses from followers. Results show Facebook received significantly higher levels of engagement, compared with Twitter and Instagram. Contrary to expectations, the specific day of the week did not have any impact on levels of engagement. This research demonstrates how small businesses can improve their use of social media marketing to engage more effectively with customers and followers.     

Feature Statistics Modulate the Activation of Meaning During Spoken Word Processing

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature‐based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts’ features—the number of concepts they occur in (distinctiveness/sharedness) and likelihood of co‐occurrence (correlational strength)—determine conceptual activation. To test these claims, we investigated the role of distinctiveness/sharedness and correlational strength in speech‐to‐meaning mapping, using a lexical decision task and computational simulations. Responses were faster for concepts with higher sharedness, suggesting that shared features are facilitatory in tasks like lexical decision that require access to them. Correlational strength facilitated responses for slower participants, suggesting a time‐sensitive co‐occurrence‐driven settling mechanism. The computational simulation showed similar effects, with early effects of shared features and later effects of correlational strength. These results support a general‐to‐specific account of conceptual processing, whereby early activation of shared features is followed by the gradual emergence of a specific target representation.     

STANDARDS OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN IN FOUR CULTURES1

Normes de conduite sociale chez des enfants de quatre cultures différentes. — Cette étude fait partie d'une vaste enquéte interculturelle sur les divers systèmes de socialisation, dans le but d'explorer quelle est la part d'universalité transcendante aux frontières des nations et la part de particularisme national dans les normes éthiques. Les AA. ont cherché à mettre en évidence l'effet du sexe, du cadre éducatif (collectif ou familial), de l'âge et du statut professionnel des parents sur l'importance attribuée aux normes de conduite sociale par des enfants d'environ 12 ans, aux USA, en Grande-Bretagne, en URSS et en Suisse (N = I450). Ils ont utilisé un questionnaire comportant 18 exemples de conduite dont la signification est idcntique d'une culture à l'autre. l'analyse factorielle des réponses faites par les garçons et les filles en Grande-Bretagne d'une part, en URSS d'autre part, fait apparaître deux groupements des exemples qui correspondent à deux facteurs, « bonnes manières » et « masculinité »; ces facteurs sont apparentés aux dimensions de « valeur» (bien-mal) et de « puissance » (fort-faible) mises en évidence par Osgood. On retrouve le même schéma dans les quatre analyses. Les résultats montrent, entre autres choses, que — 1) l'importance hiérarchique des conduites évoquées est très semblable pour les 8 échantillons (4 cultures et 2 sexes); les différences entre cultures ne sont pas plus importantes que les différences entre sexes; — 2) dans toutes les cultures, les filles attribuent plus d'importance aux « bonnes manières » et les garçons à la « masculinité », ce qui était prévisible; — 3) les différences sont plus importantes chez les enfants américains et anglais qui ont été élevés au sein de leur famille que chez les Russes et les Suisses qui ont été élevés dans des instituts ou des pensionnats; — 4) quant aux différences entre cultures, les deux sexes étant considérés ensemble, on constate que les Suisses préfèrent les vertus « calvinistes » (travail, indépendance vis-à-vis des camarades d'école, soumission aux adultes), que les Soviétiques accordent plus d'importance aux « bonnes manières » et les Américains aux vertus intellectuelles (dire la vérité, chercher à comprendre); l'importance relative de la « masculinité » est plus grande pour les Anglais que pour les Suisses; — 5) en raison de la faible variabilité des âges dans les échantillons considérés, il apparaît peu de différences dans les normes en fonction de l'âge; elles semblent cependant en rapport avec l'importance croissante du rôle sexuel avec l'âge; — 6) le statut socio-professionnel du père n'affecte pas la hiérarchie des normes pour les enfants américains, mais dans l'échantillon anglais, les enfants de la classe supérieure valorisent le fait de dire la vérité et les « bonnes manieres », tandis que les enfants de la classe inférieure préfèrent la « masculinité ». Le résultat le plus significatif concerne la plus grande différence qui apparaît entre les sexes dans la préférence accordée aux « bonnes manières » ou à la « masculinité » selon qu'il s'agit d'enfants élevés dans le milieu familial avec des méthodes traditionnelles ou d'enfants qui sont élevés dans des internats.     

Sociality effects on the production of laughter

Certain facial displays (typically the human smile) have been found to vary with a situation's sociality. Because the facial display that accompanies laughter is under less voluntary control, it is a stronger test of sociality effects. Participants (N = 162) were videotaped watching a humorous videoclip in 1 of 3 conditions: alone, in a same-sex dyad with a stranger, or in a same-sex dyad with a friend. The frequency and time spent laughing were significantly greater in one or both dyadic conditions than in the alone condition, although no differences existed for self-reported evaluations of the videoclip's funniness or amusement felt. When the self-report measures were controlled for, the dyads of strangers (compared with the alone condition) were associated with the frequency of laughter. Although the results provide further support for sociality effects, the situational demands faced by participants may be a better predictor of facial displays than level of sociality.     

A reanalysis of the CARIN theory of conceptual combination

The competition among relations in nominals (CARIN) theory of conceptual combination (C. L. Gagné & E. J. Shoben, 1997) proposes that people interpret nominal compounds by selecting a relation from a pool of competing alternatives and that relation availability is influenced by the frequency with which relations have been previously associated with the modifying concept. The current authors derived relation frequencies by using a sample of compounds occurring in the British National Corpus and compared them with those derived by Gagné and Shoben. The authors demonstrated that the original relation frequencies are unrepresentative and that Gagne' and Shoben's technique for dichotomizing them into high and low is unreliable. In addition, the authors revealed anomalies in the mathematical instantiation of the CARIN model and showed that it does not provide evidence for competition among relations.     

Automatic Extraction of Property Norm‐Like Data From Large Text Corpora

Traditional methods for deriving property‐based representations of concepts from text have focused on either extracting only a subset of possible relation types, such as hyponymy/hypernymy (e.g., car is‐a vehicle ) or meronymy/metonymy (e.g., car has wheels ), or unspecified relations (e.g., car — petrol ). We propose a system for the challenging task of automatic, large‐scale acquisition of unconstrained, human‐like property norms from large text corpora, and discuss the theoretical implications of such a system. We employ syntactic, semantic, and encyclopedic information to guide our extraction, yielding concept‐relation‐feature triples (e.g., car be fast , car require petrol , car cause pollution ), which approximate property‐based conceptual representations. Our novel method extracts candidate triples from parsed corpora (Wikipedia and the British National Corpus) using syntactically and grammatically motivated rules, then reweights triples with a linear combination of their frequency and four statistical metrics. We assess our system output in three ways: lexical comparison with norms derived from human‐generated property norm data, direct evaluation by four human judges, and a semantic distance comparison with both WordNet similarity data and human‐judged concept similarity ratings. Our system offers a viable and performant method of plausible triple extraction: Our lexical comparison shows comparable performance to the current state‐of‐the‐art, while subsequent evaluations exhibit the human‐like character of our generated properties.     

An exploratory study to assess the impact of work demands and the anticipation of work on awakening saliva cortisol

The goal was to investigate whether cortisol on awakening is higher on Monday relative to Sunday morning, and to assess whether responses vary with job demands and the anticipation of work. 77 white collar workers gave a sample of saliva on awakening Sunday and Monday mornings, and then rated their anticipation for work. Data showed that salivary cortisol concentration was greater on Monday compared to Sunday morning. There were no main effects of job demands or anticipation of work on cortisol secretion. There was a significant interaction between job demands and anticipation of work on Monday, relative to Sunday morning. Cortisol secretion was higher in those reporting high job demands together with a greater anticipation of work. It was concluded that increased awakening saliva cortisol secretion is not necessarily a result of working in a highly demanding environment. Anticipating the impending working day appears to be an important influence on adrenal-cortical activity.     

The effects of gender,long-term need for recovery and trait inhibition-rumination on morning and evening saliva cortisol secretion

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the long-term effects of need for recovery from work and trait rumination on saliva cortisol secretion. The sample consisted of 76 white-collar workers, 52 men and 24 women who had previously provided baseline data four years earlier and volunteered to participate in the present study. In the present study, saliva cortisol secretion was measured over seven consecutive days, on awakening, and at 10 p.m. No relationships were found between the independent variables and morning saliva cortisol levels. High trait rumination at baseline, however, was significantly related to higher evening cortisol levels for both women and men. Baseline need for recovery from work was strongly related to evening cortisol secretion for women, but in the opposite direction than expected. The present results add to the small but equivocal body of literature that has examined the long-term effects of work strain on cortisol secretion.