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.     

CHINESE VALUE SYSTEM AND MANAGERIAL BEHAVIOUR*

This is a paper which reviews and discusses the implications of Chinese value systems for managerial behaviour in Taiwan. With a central assumption that managerial behaviour and styles are largely shaped by the values and normative systems of senior members of corporate management, a study of 43 industrial firms in Taiwan investigating their organisational structure and the managerial assumptions, values and other socio-demographical features of their senior managers was conducted. The results of the research lead to the construction of a typology of four managerial patterns in Taiwan today, viz. the ‘grass-roots’ type, the ‘Mainlander’ type, the ‘specialist’ type and the ‘transitional’ type. While the ‘transitional’ type is more or less by definition ‘transient’, a tendency is postulated by the authors for both the ‘grass-roots’ and ‘Mainlander’ types to move gradually to converge with the ‘specialist’ type which will become increasingly widespread in Taiwan.     

When are AIDS patients to blame for their disease? Effects of patients' sexual orientation and mode of transmission

This study examined three factors affecting college students' attributions of blame for an AIDS patient's disease: sexual orientation of the patient, mode of HIV transmission, and the sex of the subject. 148 subjects read one of six vignettes describing an hypothetical AIDS patient who was described as either an heterosexual or an homosexual man who contracted HIV through one of three avenues: blood transfusion, sexual contact, or IV drug use. The homosexual AIDS patient was considered more to blame for his illness than the heterosexual AIDS patient, but only when mode of transmission was sexual contact. In addition, mode of HIV transmission was a significant factor in attributions of responsibility, as the patient who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion was rated as less responsible than the patient who contracted HIV through sexual behavior or IV drug use. Women consistently rated the AIDS patient as less responsible than did men.     

Spread of Risk Information Through Microblogs: Twitter Users with More Mutual Connections Relay News That is More Dreadful1

In elucidating the spread of risk information through microblogging, it is important to understand the behaviors of numerous average users, in addition to the activities of authorities. We followed the transmission pathways of 10 actual widely spread tweets concerning several risk information topics, including natural disasters, nuclear disasters, and infectious diseases, and we identified the types of risk that affected retweeting by classifying each tweet based on Slovic's risk-perception model. Furthermore, we examined the types of users who did and did not retweet the information. Users with few connections in the form of followers (i.e., people who are following a user) or followees (people a user is following), or with a low ratio of mutual followers within their connections, had a tendency to retweet a large amount of risk information, regardless of the type of risk involved. On the other hand, users with a high ratio of mutual followers exhibited a greater tendency to retweet risk information when it was perceived as dreadful, though they did not retweet risk information much on the whole. These results suggest that there are two mechanisms by which risk information is spread within the Twitter network: information exchange and social sharing of personal reactions.