Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 68 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes final project proposal. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-220, 46-50).

This research attempted to demonstrate that faction size affects what people are looking for when they attend to conformity stimuli. It was expected that subjects exposed to a majority look for valid informational reasons to agree with the advocated norm, subjects exposed to one influence source attempt to validate the other's judgment, and subjects exposed to a minority attempt both to validate and understand the reason for the minority's judgment. Reconstrual of the stimulus was the proposed mechanism by which majority subjects could find reasons to agree with advocated norm and minority subjects could come to understand the reason for the advocated norm. Thus, stimulus reconstrual was expected to mediate conformity and facilitate private acceptance. Faction size, norm extremity, and attention to the stimulus were manipulated; conformity, reconstrual of the stimulus, and subsequent private acceptance were measured. The stimuli consisted of trait adjectives that subjects rated for positivity during the conformity task. It was found that conformity was greater with a large faction, high attention, and high norm extremity. A main effect for attention had not been found in past research that used perceptual stimuli. It is argued that this difference in findings reflects some fundamental difference between factual judgments (e.g., perceptual stimuli) and value judgments (e.g., trait ratings). More specifically, it is argued that with factual judgments there is an objectively correct answer, whereas with value judgments "correctness" is determined by social comparison. The mplications of the presence or absence of an objectively correct response is discussed with regard to the balance between normative and informational influence mechanisms. In parallel to the effect on conformity it was also found that higher attention increased reconstrual and private acceptance. However, the Faction Size X Attention interaction, which was significant for private acceptance and marginal for reconstrual, indicated that these effects of attention were more pronounced for subjects exposed to a minority than for subjects exposed to a majority. Majority subjects showed almost the same amounts of reconstrual and private acceptance in response to both the high- and low-attention trials. Since it is assumed that subjects did not have enough time to reconstrue the stimulus before they gave their public response on the low-attention trials, this unexpected finding raises questions about the temporal ordering of conformity and reconstrual. That is does reconstrual precede and mediate conformity or succeed and justify conformity, and does the answer vary according to faction size and attention conditions. The present study could not directly answer these questions. Although no clear answer is provided to the question of whether faction size affects what subjects look for when they attend to conformity stimuli, a number of fruitful avenues for future research are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

by Sit Fung-Ming, Anita. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / LIST OF TABLES --- p.v / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.vii / Chapter / Chapter I --- OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE OF STUDY --- p.1 / Chapter II --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.4 / Human Capital Perspective --- p.4 / Sociopsychologicial Perspective --- p.5 / Sex-role Socialisation --- p.5 / Sex-role Stereotyping --- p.6 / Organisation-Structure Perspective --- p.7 / Major References for Themes and Methodology --- p.7 / Perceived Participation in Decision-making --- p.8 / Upward and Downward Influence Tactics --- p.9 / Chapter III --- THEORETICAL CONSTRUCT OF STUDY --- p.11 / Chapter IV --- METHODOLOGY --- p.15 / Participants --- p.15 / Procedure --- p.17 / Measurements --- p.18 / Dependent variables --- p.18 / Independent (explanatory) variables --- p.18 / Perceived self-efficacy --- p.19 / Position Rank --- p.19 / Length of service --- p.19 / Mentor and sponsor --- p.20 / Informal Networks --- p.20 / Socio-demographic characteristics --- p.20 / Data Analysis Methods --- p.21 / Chapter V --- FINDINGS --- p.23 / Mentor --- p.23 / Sponsor --- p.24 / Length of Service in the Grade before Promotion to the Present Rank --- p.25 / Satisfaction with Career and Personal Advancement --- p.25 / Perceived Level of Influence --- p.27 / Perceived Level of Participation in Decision-making Committees --- p.27 / Perceived Level of Influence in Decision-making Committees --- p.29 / Perceived Level of Influence at Functional Section Level --- p.30 / Perceived Level of Influence at Division Level --- p.32 / Perceived Level of Influence at Department Level --- p.33 / Perceived Degree of Equal Influence --- p.35 / Overview of the findings for Perceived Level of Influence --- p.36 / Perceived Self-efficacy --- p.37 / Workplace Network --- p.38 / Frequency of Use of Upward and Downward Influence Tactics --- p.40 / Upward influence --- p.40 / Downward influence --- p.42 / Chapter VI --- DISCUSSION --- p.45 / Satisfaction with Career and Personal Advancement --- p.45 / Perceived Level of Influence --- p.46 / Frequency of Use of Influence Tactics --- p.47 / Overview of Themes in the Study --- p.48 / Chapter VII --- CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH --- p.53

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The entrepreneurial intentions of university students are important factors to consider when developing entrepreneurship offerings at tertiary level institutions. This research study reports on pertinent findings from a study which set out to determine Rhodes university undergraduate students‟ entrepreneurial intentions and their pull and push factors that have brought them to the decision to become entrepreneurs. A survey, using a 43 question structured web-based instrument was used to capture the responses from undergraduate students across different departments at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Key findings suggest that few undergraduate students intend to enter into an entrepreneurship career immediately after completion of their studies, whereas many of the respondents were more interested in doing so five years after graduation. The vast majority of students were satisfied without having formal entrepreneurial education and factors such as previous employment in entrepreneurial activities, and family influence had a statistical significant relationship with entrepreneurial intention.

Prior research has shown that both lead users and opinion leaders may propel the diffusion of innovation. This raises the question of whether lead users and opinion leaders are positioned similarly in social networks, which we address using a sample of 23 school classes consisting of 537 children. Research among children is very scarce in this particular domain. Our statistical analyses based on hierarchical linear modeling reveal two general results: first, lead users among children appear to possess a variety of links between clusters; second, opinion leaders are locally positioned within clusters of children and have many direct links. (authors' abstract)

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-08-01T11:32:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Catarina Santilli.pdf: 5124968 bytes, checksum: 853c02ce314ebf3095abfe8148ec5c20 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-01T11:32:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Catarina Santilli.pdf: 5124968 bytes, checksum: 853c02ce314ebf3095abfe8148ec5c20 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-06-13 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq / According to Jerusa Pires Ferreira’ studies, popular myths and tales always had a great role in the storage and transmission of elements of a culture. However, due to parents' lack of time, there is no longer a tradition of telling stories to children, and the main sources of these stories end up being the audio-visual animations shown on children's channels or on internet video sites. The problem is, as Norval Baitello Júnior and Vicente Romano noticed, more and more people relate to media images and stop being connected with other bodies, which can decrease sensitivity to deal with others. This becomes more alarming when we realize the contents produced for children, who are in a formation phase, in which they most need affection. From a research by Jo Groebel, it was noticed that children turn to media heroes as role models to help them cope with difficult situations. However, many of these heroes resolve their conflicts aggressively, and pass on the message that there are bad people who should be eliminated, which often generates tension and anxiety. From there, this research has an interest to study how a children's audiovisual narrative can treat love in a way that sensitizes the child to the other and to the important gestures in human bonding. In this case, love is understood as a personal bond that unites one human being to another. For this purpose, the animation Sakura Card Captors was chosen as the study corpus. It is a Japanese children's cartoon, appeared in Brazil in the early 2000s, and it was very successful among the public. It is a narrative that explores a great variety of affective bonds between the characters, in many scenes of banal moments, but in which the small gestures used to deal with the others are perceptible. Starting from the works of the ethologists Boris Cyrulnik and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt about love, and from the studies of the infant psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim on narratives for children, this research intends to throw a phenomenological view on the object, making an analysis of the narrative from the links between the characters. The intention is to check the types of love present in the cartoon, according to the classification of affective systems made by Harry Harlow, and to observe how the characters affect each other during the story. It was interesting to note that the animation is able to explore a series of bonds that children form during their lives, emphasizing some daily life details important to the connection with people and the world / Segundo os estudos da Prof.ª Dr.ª Jerusa Pires Ferreira, percebe-se que os mitos e contos populares sempre tiveram um grande papel no armazenamento e na transmissão de elementos de uma cultura. Contudo, com a falta de tempo dos pais, há uma perda da tradição de se contar histórias para os filhos, e as principais fontes de narrativas para as crianças acabam sendo as animações audiovisuais, exibidas em canais infantis ou em sites de vídeo da Internet. O problema é que cada vez mais as pessoas se relacionam com imagens midiáticas e menos se vinculam a outros corpos, o que pode diminuir a sensibilidade no trato com o outro, como alertam Norval Baitello Júnior e Vicente Romano. Isso se torna mais preocupante quando se pensa nos conteúdos produzidos para as crianças, que estão em fase de formação, em que mais precisam de afeto. Pelas pesquisas realizadas por Jo Groebel, foi possível notar que as crianças recorrem aos heróis da mídia como modelos que as auxiliam a lidar com situações difíceis. No entanto, muitos desses heróis resolvem seus conflitos de forma agressiva e passam a mensagem de que existem pessoas más que devem ser eliminadas, o que costuma gerar tensão e ansiedade. A partir daí, a pesquisa buscou estudar como uma narrativa audiovisual infantil, ao invés de estimular a agressão, pode fomentar o amor. Nesse caso, o amor é entendido como vínculo afetivo que une um ser humano ao outro. Ou seja, a proposta foi estudar como uma animação pode tratar o amor de forma que sensibilize a criança ao outro e aos gestos importantes na relação humana. Para tal foi escolhida como corpus de estudo a animação Sakura Card Captors, uma série japonesa infantil, exibida no Brasil no início dos anos 2000 e que teve muito sucesso entre o público. Trata-se de uma narrativa que explora uma grande variedade de vínculos afetivos entre as personagens, em muitas cenas de momentos banais, mas nas quais são perceptíveis os pequenos gestos utilizados no trato com o próximo. Partindo das obras dos etólogos Bóris Cyrulnik e Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt sobre o amor e dos estudos do psicanalista infantil Bruno Bettelheim sobre narrativas para crianças, a pesquisa lançou um olhar fenomenológico sobre o objeto, realizando uma análise da narrativa a partir dos vínculos entre as personagens. A intenção foi verificar os tipos de amor presentes no desenho, de acordo com a classificação de sistemas afetivos feita por Harry Harlow, e observar como as personagens se afetam durante a história. Foi interessante notar que a animação consegue explorar diversos vínculos que a criança forma durante a vida, dando ênfase a detalhes do cotidiano importantes para se conectar às pessoas e ao mundo

My dissertation aims to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how consumers make sense of online word-of-mouth. Each essay in my dissertation probes beyond the effect of rating valence and explores the role of textual content. In the first essay, I explore negativity bias among online consumers evaluating peer information about potential sellers. I propose that both the likelihood of negativity bias and resistance to change after a trust violation will depend on the domain of information discussed in a review. Three experiments showed that negativity bias is more prominent for information regarding sellers' integrity than information regarding their competence. These findings suggest that the universality of negativity bias in a seller review setting has been exaggerated. In the second essay, I examine the impact of emotional arousal on the perceived helpfulness of text reviews. I propose an inverse U-shaped relationship by which the arousal conveyed in a text review will be associated by readers with lower perceived helpfulness only beyond an optimal level, and that the detrimental effect of arousal is present for negative reviews even when objective review content is controlled for. To test these hypotheses, two studies were conducted in the context of Apple's mobile application market. In Study 1, I collected actual review data from Apple's App Store, coded those reviews for arousal using text analysis tools, and examined the non-linear relationship between arousal and review helpfulness. In Study 2, I experimentally manipulated the emotional arousal of reviews at moderate to high levels while holding objective content constant. Results were largely consistent with the hypotheses. This essay reveals the necessity of considering emotional arousal when evaluating review helpfulness, and the results carry important practical implications. In the third essay, I explore effects of the emotions embedded in a seller review on its perceived helpfulness to readers. I propose that over and above the well-known negativity bias, the impact of discrete emotions in a review will vary, and that one source of this variance is perceptions of reviewers' cognitive effort. I focus on the roles of two distinct, negative emotions common to seller reviews: anxiety and anger. In Studies 1 and 2, experimental methods were utilized to identify and explain the differential impact of anxiety and anger in terms of perceived reviewer effort. In Study 3, actual seller reviews from Yahoo! Shopping websites were collected to examine the relationship between emotional review content and helpfulness ratings. These findings demonstrate the importance of discriminating between discrete emotions in online word-of-mouth, and they have important repercussions for consumers and online retailers.