The purpose of this study is to gain in-depth knowledge of how the members of online communities form impressions of organisations that use online communities in their communication activities. Online impression formation has its peculiarities and in order to succeed companies need to better understand this phenomenon. In order to appreciate and evaluate an interaction, those involved in it must know their own identity. Hence, individuals as well as companies engage in identity production by trying to project a favourable impression. The process of identity production can take place in both the offline and the online world. This study focuses on the online world, more specifically on online communities, by investigating how online community members form impressions of companies that produce their identities in online communities. Technology has changed customer behaviours dramatically. People have embraced the Internet to meet and interact with one another. This behaviour is in line with the postmodern assumption that there is a movement towards re-socialisation. Online communication platforms connect people globally and give them the possibility to interact and form online social networks. These platforms are interactive, and thus change the traditional way of communication. Companies therefore have to embrace those interactive ways of communication. In the online world consumers are quick to react to communication weaknesses. Inappropriate corporate communication activities can affect the image they have formed of the company in question.

To elucidate temporal sequences among and between person and situation variables, this work examines cross-measurement spill-overs between situation experiences S (on the Situational Eight DIAMONDS characteristics) and personality states P (on the Big Six HEXACO) in experience sampling data in two studies. Multilevel modeling of lagged data at tn-1 and non-lagged data at tn grants the opportunity to examine (a) the stability (P --> P, S --> S), (b) cross-sectional associations (S <--> P), and (c) cross-lagged associations among and between situation experiences and personality states (S --> P, P --> S). / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Mak, Ho Ling. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-53). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iv / List of Tables v --- p.ii / List of Figures vi --- p.ii / List of Appendices --- p.ix / Chapter Chapter 1: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Method --- p.23 / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Results --- p.31 / Chapter Chapter 4: --- Discussion --- p.38 / References --- p.49

Although White Americans experience less frequent and less severe forms of discrimination than racial minorities (Schmitt & Branscombe, 2002), White Americans may actually be more likely to make claims of discrimination compared to racial minorities (Goldman, 2001). The present research investigated evaluations of White and Black American discrimination claimants’ political views and prejudicial attitudes. Across two studies, a White American target was evaluated as more politically conservative when claiming discrimination compared to a control condition. In contrast, a Black American target was evaluated as more politically liberal when claiming discrimination compared to a control condition. Both the White and Black American target were evaluated as more prejudiced against the outgroup when claiming discrimination, however the increase in prejudice evaluations was more pronounced for the White American target. The present research suggests that lay individuals make distinct inferences about the political views and prejudicial attitudes of White versus Black American discrimination claimants. / acase@tulane.edu

Following the call for further research on the consumer perspective of corporate ethics, this research sets out to explore and conceptualize the construct of ‘Consumer Perceived Ethicality’ (CPE), referring to consumers’ aggregate and valenced perceptions of a subject’s(i.e., a company, brand, product, or service) ethicality. Results present novel insights into how positive/negative CPE is formed and impacted by various kinds of corporate conduct, thereby offering some explanations as to why some companies benefit from positive while others suffer from negative moral equity.

An agent's facial expression may communicate emotive state to users both young and old. The ability to recognize emotions has been shown to differ with age, with older adults more commonly misidentifying the facial emotions of anger, fear, and sadness. This research study examined whether emotion recognition of facial expressions differed between different types of on-screen agents, and between age groups. Three on-screen characters were compared: a human, a synthetic human, and a virtual agent. In this study 42 younger (age 28-28) and 42 older (age 65-85) adults completed an emotion recognition task with static pictures of the characters demonstrating four basic emotions (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness) and neutral. The human face resulted in the highest proportion match, followed by the synthetic human, then the virtual agent with the lowest proportion match. Both the human and synthetic human faces resulted in age-related differences for the emotions anger, fear, sadness, and neutral, with younger adults showing higher proportion match. The virtual agent showed age-related differences for the emotions anger, fear, happiness, and neutral, with younger adults showing higher proportion match. The data analysis and interpretation of the present study differed from previous work by utilizing two unique approaches to understanding emotion recognition. First, misattributions participants made when identifying emotion were investigated. Second, a similarity index of the feature placement between any two virtual agent emotions was calculated, suggesting that emotions were commonly misattributed as other emotions similar in appearance. Overall, these results suggest that age-related differences transcend human faces to other types of on-screen characters, and differences between older and younger adults in emotion recognition may be further explained by perceptual discrimination between two emotions of similar feature appearance.

[Truncated abstract] The anxiety-assimilation hypothesis (Wilder, 1993) and the capacity constraint plus control motivation model (Fiske & Morling, 1996) predict that anxiety causes people to form more stereotypic impressions of others. Affect-as-information (Schwarz & Clore, 1983) and affect-priming (Bower, 1991) theories predict that anxiety causes people to form affect-congruent (i.e., more threatening) impressions of others. A novel research paradigm was used in Experiment 1 to separate the predictions of these two classes of theories, recognizing that their predictions were not mutually exclusive. Experiment 1 found that anxious persons formed more threatening, but not more stereotypic, impressions of a target person. This result replicated in Experiment 2, with a different population and a different anxiety manipulation. In addition, Experiment 2 found that the anxiety-congruent bias in impression formation was limited to participants? ratings of traits that corresponded to the information presented about the target. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 were taken as support for an affect-priming rather than affect-as-information account of the effect of anxiety on impression formation. Experiments 3 and 4 investigated anxiety effects on encoding and recall that underlie affect-priming explanation of affect-congruent impression judgment biases. Experiment 3 found that anxious participants spent more time encoding non-stereotypic information and recalled less stereotypic information than non-anxious participants. In Experiment 4 anxious participants again recalled less stereotypic information. This study also found that anxious participants? recall and impression judgments were affect-congruent. ... As predicted by the modified affect-as-information theory, the affect-attribution manipulation left participants? anxiety levels unaltered but it did attenuate the anxiety-congruent impression bias. In addition, anxious participants in this study recalled less stereotypic than non-stereotypic information. The findings of this thesis raised several new questions and theoretical challenges. The new experimental paradigms that were used to examine the questions in this thesis will also allow the examination of the interplay of stereotypes and valence in judgments in future research for persons in affective states other than anxiety. Such research would allow for the continued revision and development of theories of affect and social cognition.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-124).

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 1996. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-145). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1999. / Bibliography: leaves 72-76.