Traditional and Rank-Based Tests for Ordered Alternatives in a Cluster Correlated Model

Psychometrika - Methods for the analysis of one-factor randomized groups designs with ordered treatments are well established, but they do not apply in the case of more complex experiments. This...     

Attributions of Responsibility for Obesity: Narrative Communication Reduces Reactive Counterarguing Among Liberals

Informed by theory and research on attributions and narrative persuasion, we compared the effectiveness of narrative and nonnarrative messages in changing attributions of responsibility for causes and solutions related to obesity in the United States. We randomly assigned 500 adults to view one of three messages (narrative, evidence, and a hybrid of the two) emphasizing environmental causes of obesity, or a no‐exposure control condition. The narrative condition increased the belief that societal actors (government, employers) are responsible for addressing obesity, but only among liberals. This pattern of results was partially explained by the success of the narrative condition in reducing reactive counterarguing, relative to the evidence condition, among liberals. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications.     

Attitudes and Attraction: Optimism and Weight as Explanations for the Similarity–Dissimilarity Asymmetry

The positive link between attitude similarity and attraction is one of the fundamental outcomes in social psychology. However, attitude dissimilarity seems to be a stronger driver of this relationship than attitude similarity. The authors review the evidence on this similarity–dissimilarity asymmetry, and discuss two explanations. One is that people generally enter into interactions with optimism, and so supposedly neutral partners are often seen as mildly positive. Another is that dissimilar attitudes carry greater weight than similar attitudes in cognitive processes. Implications of these mechanisms for wider issues in person perception and attitude structure are discussed, connecting them with more recent theories of attitudinal ambivalence and evaluative space.