<p> In social media settings, many firms issue commands to consumers&mdash;to post, share or like content&mdash;often using forceful and direct (vs. polite) language. However, prior research has shown that commands issued with assertive language elicit negative responses and reactance and also reduce the probability of compliance (Brown and Levinson 1987; Dillard and Shen 2005; Kellerman and Shea 1996; Quick and Considine 2008). In the present research, I show that brands benefit from using assertive language, specifically in the form of increased care and concern from consumers. This is because assertive language communicates an intention to control, and intentionality is one indication of a humanlike mind (Epley and Waytz 2009; Kozak Marsh, and Wenger 2006; Waytz et al. 2010b). Five experiments demonstrate the relationship between assertive language, mind attribution, and care and concern for the brand. Both statistical and experimental evidence of the mediating role of mind attribution are presented. Finally, a boundary effect of this relationship is also explored by examining the role of mind valence, which decouples the link between mind attribution and brand care and concern when a threatening or malevolent mind is attributed to a brand. Thus, this research contributes to the brand anthropomorphism literature by showing that mind attribution, which not only suggests the brand is humanlike but the specific manner in which it is humanlike, can be elicited with subtle linguistic cues and has beneficial effects for the brand. This work is unique in showing a benefit to assertive language. It also offers insights to the mind perception and brand relationship literatures. Finally this work is managerially useful as assertive language can be readily implemented by firms and fits with a wide variety of brand traits and associations. Additionally the outcome of brand care and concern is beneficial to firms. </p>

<p> The goal of this study was to demonstrate that warmth and attachment are two inherently distinct systems by showing how trust is connected more closely to attachment than warmth. Measures of attachment, interpersonal warmth, and trust were taken from CSULB undergraduates. Participants watched an empathetic video or a non-emotional control video before engaging in the economic investment game. Participants were given the choice to send a whole dollar amount of zero to four to another participant as an indication of their level of trust. It was predicted that there would be no correlation between either trust measures with the measures of empathic response. Although weak correlations were found, results showed interpersonal warmth items did not correlate with trust items and the emotional video did not have an impact on the amount of money sent, supporting the theory that attachment and interpersonal warmth may be separated if one examined trust.</p>

The three essays in the present dissertation build on and expand the notion of generativity in the context of a learning (i.e., knowledge creating) organization, and learning (i.e., knowledge based) economy in sequential progression with increasing levels of analysis. Essay One advances a view of individuals' learning motivated by their desire to grow, and the role of a generative individual in motivating and supporting such a desire in others to enable collective and cumulative learning processes in a learning organization. Essay Two expands upon Essay One by examining 1) the dominant value of generativity, "caring for the growth of others," as a core value of the organizational culture in a knowledge creating company to proliferate the generative interpersonal relationship examined in Essay One for enhancing the company's knowledge creating capability, and 2) the evolutionary progression from ba to basho that the company makes in order to amplify its internal creative processes through a partnership with a network of others, based on mutual growth and benefits to them by extending caring, beyond the company's organizational boundary. Essay Three empirically verifies the theoretical perspective of Essays One and Two through an in-depth case analysis of Qualcomm using a pattern matching analysis. We subsequently conclude the dissertation by reflecting upon our journey in the context of a view that a good society should enable and support individual constituents to live as contributing members achieving their individual and collective aspirations.

<p> Research on social judgment typically emphasizes one of three processes that enable unequivocal understanding of events with ambiguous causality. In the <i>social influence perspective</i>, people are susceptible to the interpretations offered by others. In the <i>explicit attitudes perspective</i>, people interpret events in line with their consciously held attitudes and values. In the <i>implicit attitudes perspective</i>, people interpret events in line with unconscious biases. The model investigated in the present study assumes that these processes vary in salience depending on people&rsquo;s mindset. When an event is encoded in high-level terms (i.e., its consequences), people&rsquo;s judgments reflect their explicit attitudes. When encoded in low-level terms (i.e., its details), however, such attitudes are less accessible, rendering people susceptible to social influence. In the absence of social influence, people with a lower-level mindset form judgments that reflect their relevant implicit attitudes. These hypotheses were tested in the context of an altercation between an African-American and a White male for which responsibility could reasonably be allocated to either party. Participants with low versus high implicit racial bias toward Blacks read a narrative concerning this altercation under either a low-level or a high-level mindset and then read a summary that blamed one of the parties or they did not read a summary. As predicted, low-level participants allocated responsibility to the African-American if they had a high implicit racial bias and to the White if they had a low implicit racial bias, regardless of the summary manipulation. Contrary to prediction, however, high-level participants&rsquo; allocation of responsibility did not reflect their explicit prejudicial attitudes. Instead, they corrected for their implicit biases in their trait inferences and affective reactions, in line with research suggesting that a high-level mindset promotes self-regulatory processes in social judgment.</p>

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The three studies that constitute this thesis investigated the influence of cognitive and social factors on reasoning in social environments. The key research issues investigated were: (a) the influence of status on distributed reasoning, (b) the influence of social interactions and status on the type of representational change, and (c) identifying the mechanisms of social interactions that cause representational change. Study one investigated how the status of scientists presenting their research at laboratory meetings influenced distributed reasoning. When the presenter was of high status, the Principal Investigator was an important influence on the distributed reasoning. When the presenter was of low status, other lab members were more likely to contribute to distributed reasoning. Study two examined if social interactions between scientists at laboratory meetings result in minor or major representational change. Also investigated in study two was if the status of the laboratory members influenced the type of representational change that occurred during social interactions. The results showed that a scientist changes her or his representation by generalizing over two or more representations that were discussed during social interactions. The Principal Investigator was a key contributor to representational change involving generalization. Study three examined how dyadic social interactions influenced representational change. It was found that the individual who initiates representational discussion after identifying a problem with her or his representation is the dyad member who is most likely to change her or his representation. Representational change also required that the other dyad member clarify the initiator's representation problem. It was also found that representational change for the initiator involved incorporating a certain representation that was provided by the other dyad member into an incomplete representation. Finally, it was found that the op

The thesis describes a program of research aimed at exploring the consequences of confronting potential perpetrators of discrimination with their own prejudice. An experimental paradigm was introduced that involved confronting advantaged group members with their own potential prejudices in a series of two studies. In the first study, White participants who admitted to some prejudice were, surprisingly, also more likely to genuinely reflect on and challenge their prejudice. A second experiment investigated the interpersonal consequences of stereotype threat in advantaged group members. Male participants were confronted with the possibility of confirming the negative stereotype that "men are sexist". The results indicated that male participants attempted to avoid confirmation of the negative stereotype by making a deliberate effort to appear nonsexist on a gender task. These findings contrast the results of stereotype threat theory found for disadvantaged group members and are discussed in terms of their implications for advantaged group members.

<p> People who have experienced trauma involving serious threats to physical integrity can react in accordance with various response trajectories, including posttraumatic growth (PTG). PTG is characterized by positive psychological change following trauma that goes beyond a return to pre-trauma functioning as the result of reorganizing one's conceptualization of his or her phenomenological world (Tedeschi &amp; Calhoun, 2004). This study was interested in factors that contribute to PTG from a terror management theory (TMT) perspective. TMT, based on existential philosophy, posits that people defend against the knowledge that everyone must eventually die and the accompanying anxiety by investing in cultural worldviews and deriving self-esteem by adhering to the standards and values prescribed by those worldviews (Solomon et al., 2004). Based on TMT research that suggests that when people are reminded of their mortality they tend to place increased faith in their cultural worldviews (Burke et al., 2010) as well as the assumption that reminders of previous trauma would likely make mortality salient, this study employed a directed content analysis to examine cultural worldview expressions among therapy clients who had experienced trauma. </p><p> Qualitative analysis using the directed coding system created for this study resulted in coding 77 cultural worldviews across the 5 sessions from 5 coding categories: other (explicit) (n=32), other (implicit) (n=20), nationality (n=13), religion (n=8), and ethnicity (n=4). The clients referred to cultural worldviews throughout their sessions, even though only one therapist directly facilitated cultural discussion. Worldview expressions amidst trauma discussions were considered potential contributors to PTG as they served a meaning making function. Also, many worldviews and cultural affiliations referenced were different than those commonly studied in previous TMT research (i.e. referenced cultural affiliations other than religion, ethnicity, nationality, or political affiliation such as gender and age/generation; did not discuss political affiliation). Multiple factors such as differences among clients, contextual factors of the sessions, and therapists' style were considered to potentially have influenced the variance in worldviews expressed. The findings described in this study can contribute to ongoing psychotherapy training and research bridging the gaps among PTG and TMT theory, research and clinical practice with trauma survivors.</p><p></p>

This study outlines the use of a digital archive (a data set of staged HIV stigma photographs which were taken by Grade 8 and 9 learners) with educators in two rural schools in KwaZulu-Natal, exploring their views on using it in their teaching to address HIV and AIDS-related stigma. It responds to the need for creative and participatory methods in addressing HIV and AIDS. A qualitative, interpretive, exploratory and contextual design, using community-based participatory research methodology, was used to explore the digital archive, identify, and try out ways in which it could be used in addressing the pandemic. Data was generated using ICT-based focus group interviews involving fourteen male and female educators from two schools some - who have been participating in HIV research projects. I draw on a psycho-social framework within the ecosystemic approach, the values of community psychology and research as social change. A digital archive has potential for communication and transferring information, especially in a rural area. It also shows potential to get both females and males to work together in addressing HIV-related stigma, hence reducing the gendered skewness of this pandemic. From the educators‟ responses to using the digital archive, themes emerged around working with the content of the archive, using the archive for teaching and learning, using the archive for engaging with stigma in the school and for change in the community. The findings suggest that the use of a digital archive in a rural context can enable educators to access and share digital material, which is locally produced, relevant and realistic, to address HIV-related stigma in the school. The tool in use can facilitate community participation and be used to deepen the understanding about HIV and HIV and AIDS-related stigma to a level that has impact on individual behaviour and ultimately on the community. Despite the potential there are still challenges such as lack of access to infrastructure, literacy, and relevant content. This work is exploratory and encourages further work to explore the implications and the trends on the use of a digital archive in other school settings. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

<p>Recent work in cultural sociology has provided important insights into the processes underlying behavior, but does not adequately address the role played by situations in shaping action. Research also emphasizes process at the expense of content, helping us see how motives can shape action, without specifying which motives matter. This project addresses these shortcomings by synthesizing work on culture and action with perspectives from sociological social psychology, psychology, and the study of morality. I argue that identities, values, and morality are forms of culture that can motivate action, and that identities and values in particular help to explain consistencies in behavior across different contexts. I illustrate these general claims in three papers, included as chapters 2 through 4. </p><p>In chapter 2 I argue that a person's most salient identities form a core self that is perpetually active across situations, and that behavioral consistency occurs because people are motivated to act in ways that are consistent with this core self. However, a person's ability to successfully enact an identity in a given context also depends on possessing the necessary cultural skills and competencies. I illustrate the plausibility of my model using two published ethnographic studies. </p><p>In chapter 3 I argue that values also shape a wide range of behaviors, operate across many contexts, and can be processed quickly and automatically, consistent with current models of culture and action. Using data from 25 European nations and a new hybrid propensity score/fixed effects methodology, I find that values predict 15 self-reported behaviors that occur in a variety of substantive domains (e.g., family, religion) and across 25 countries, but that which behaviors values predict depends on the national context. I strengthen the case for causality and draw a link to automatic cognitive processing using a real-time decision task from a large online survey. </p><p>In chapter 4 I use two nationally representative samples of the United States to show how various forms of moral culture are distributed across social and demographic categories. This lays a foundation for future work by providing insight into the moral motivations that can shape behavior for members of different social groups. </p><p>Taken together, these studies underscore the claim that culture matters for behavior and lay the groundwork for future research on culture and action.</p> / Dissertation