“Homeless Killer”: An Analysis of the Media’s Portrayal of the Victims of a Serial Killer

Previous research has examined the newsworthiness of homicide victims and explored many characteristics of victims. To date, there is no research examining homeless homicide victims even though homeless individuals are more susceptible to being victims of violent crimes. This study examines the online media coverage of four homeless homicide victims murdered by a serial killer in 2012 to ascertain how housing status impacts media coverage. Specifically, this study explores through content analysis what kind of coverage homeless individuals receive and how they are portrayed. Findings suggest that housing status is a salient characteristic in the newsworthiness of victims.     

The Overtaking of Undertaking?: Gender Beliefs in a Feminizing Occupation

How gender beliefs are used to explain the division of labor in an occupation can recreate or disrupt inequality. Our study contributes to the growing body of research examining which narratives about gender segregation in male-dominated occupations are more or less oppressive to women. We asked 13 female and 9 male U.S. funeral directors to account for the shifting gender composition of their field. Most funeral directors explained women’s entry into funeral directing and justified gender segregation in the occupation by drawing on gender beliefs about women’s superior nurturing “natures” and men’s “innate” superior physical strength and scientific ability. Our findings demonstrate the strength of cultural gender beliefs for shaping narratives about gender and work and suggest ways individuals grapple in their everyday interactions with “degendering” skills in feminizing occupations.     

Setting events controlling social verbal exchanges between students with developmental delays

The peer social verbal exchanges (social conversational units) between four developmentally delayed students were studied as a function of setting events. A single conversational unit consisted of a verbal exchange in which each individual functioned as both speaker and listener. Each unit included a three term verbal contingency. Data were collected by trained observers viewing videotapes of 20-minute sessions in which running times were burned onto the videotape. Frequencies of social conversational units were measured under two conditions. Comparisons were made between sessions in which the teacher responded only when spoken to and sessions in which the teacher was absent using a combined reversal and multiple schedule design. Results showed that peer conversational units emerged at high rates when the teacher was absent and at low or nonexistent rates when the teacher responded only when spoken to in the living room setting. The setting and audience control for peer verbal exchanges were discussed as functions possibly of either a punishing audience, establishing operations, or response deprivation.     

Quantitative depictions of threatening phenomena in news reports. The scary world of frequency data

Two experiments addressed the question of whether news reports depicting base‐rate data indicative of increasing population size over time would assuage the apprehension and victimization risk associated with another news story depicting frequency increases in a threatening phenomenon during the same time period. Men exposed to the population data manifested lower levels of apprehension and victimization risk than men not exposed to such data, but women showed no reduction in either apprehension and victimization risk than men not exposed to such data, but women showed no reduction in either apprehension or victimization risk after exposure to population data. This interaction was replicated in both experiments. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the same interaction can be produced using base‐rate data other than that depicting population increases over time and that the effects of the base‐rate stories are not merely a product of distraction from the threatening story. Differences in apprehension levels, information processing styles, mathematical problems solving skill, and sex role response sets were considered as alternative explanations for the interaction.     

The Multigenerational Impact of Sibling Relationships

This study examined the impact that sibling relationship patterns in one generation have on the succeeding generation. In particular, it investigated whether calm and tense sibling interactions were similar across two generations and whether calm and tense sibling interactions in one generation would be similar to calm and tense parent-child interactions in the next generations. Statistical analyses were performed on the 220 successfully completed questionnaires. The results support the idea that sibling interactional patterns are transmitted across two generations and that the sibling relationship patterns in one generation appear to influence the parent-child relationships in the next generation.     

Teaching children with autism to ask questions about hidden objects

We taught 2 4‐year‐old children with autism to ask questions of an adult who held a closed box with a toy inside. The treatment package (modeling, prompting, and reinforcement) was evaluated with a multiple baseline design across the three question forms during training, generalization, and follow‐up evaluations. The first question form (“What's that?”) produced the name of the hidden item. The second form (“Can I see it?”) produced sight of it, and the third form (“Can I have it?”) produced the item itself. Both children learned to ask questions about hidden objects.     

Charisma Is Contagious: The Effect of Leaders’ Charisma on Observers’ Affect1

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that charismatic leadership, characterized by nonverbal expressiveness and immediacy, would lead via emotional contagion to the imitation of the leader's nonverbal behavior. In Study I, charismatic leaders were college students whose performance of a simulated campaign speech included more smiles, more intense smiles, and longer and more frequent visual attention to the audience. Observers showed higher levels of all 4 relevant behaviors while watching charismatic leaders. In Study 2, college student participants watched more and less charismatic excerpts selected from President Clinton's and ex‐President Bush's responses during their first 1992 televised debate. Comparing the same behaviors, there was a similar pattern to Study I for responses to the Clinton excerpts, and an almost reversed pattern for the Bush excerpts. The overall results support an emotional contagion effect of charismatic leadership when the leader exhibits truly charismatic behavior.     

The methodology of testing naive beliefs in the physics classroom

Many undergraduates harbor a variety of misbeliefs about physical objects in motion--for instance, that a bomb will fall straight down when dropped from a moving airplane. The evidence that these misbeliefs are resistant to correction by college-level physics courses, however, has often been based on methodologies that lack adequate internal validity. We used a quasi-experimental "before and after" design to assess the impact of two college physics courses, and we examined selection-bias, test-retest, and task-format factors directly. Initial accuracy and significant improvements due to instruction varied considerably by problem category and subject group; thus, in several ways, the results refute the general conclusion that conventional physics instruction does little to correct students' misbeliefs. We conclude by advocating the quasi-experimental approach for studies of naive beliefs in physics as well as for other situations in which the impact of classroom instruction is of interest.