Judging a Book By Its Cover: Are First Impressions Accurate?

First impressions are integral to human interactions, and philosophers and scientists have long discussed the idea that the face is a window into our internal traits. We make judgments of character based on appearance daily, consciously and subconsciously. Explanations for this phenomenon include the attractiveness stereotype, self-fulfilling prophecies, or “good genes” hypotheses from evolutionary psychology, but there have been mixed findings regarding the accuracy of such judgments. The current study investigates correlations between three subjectively judged “internal” traits and objective measures of Intelligence, Extraversion, and Neuroticism on 1600 subjects. We regressed these objective measures on their respective subjective ratings and controlled for several potential mediating factors. We found that Intelligence can be judged accurately even when controlling for potential mediators including attractiveness, SES, and perceived grooming, and ethnicity. Extraversion can also be judged accurately, but appears to be mediated by attractiveness, grooming, smiling, and socioeconomic status. Judgments of Neuroticism, on the other hand, could not be predicted by subjective ratings. This suggests that we can pick up on valid cues towards a person’s internal traits without seeing any of their interactions

Judging a book by its cover: interface elements that affect reader selection of ebooks

Digital library research has demonstrated the impact of content presentation on both search and reading behaviours. In this paper, we scrutinise the influence of ebook presentation on user behaviour, focussing on document thumbnails and the first page view. We demonstrate that flaws in presentation increase the volume of short time-span reading, and reduce the likelihood of long-span reading when compared to other documents. This reflects other patterns of information seeking behaviour that demonstrate increased short-term reading when information content is uncertain, and suggests an ineffective use of reader time on less useful content

Judging a Book By Its Cover: The Context Book Covers Provide

This paper seeks to prove how the context of books, specifically the book jackets and bindings, are a crucial part to understanding the history and the text of the story. The paper begins with printing history in order to illustrate how the context of books has changed, and how the Twentieth Century saw a use of book jackets to promote the book. The paper then looks at the books of a particular author, Alasdair Gray, as an example of how the context of the book can be used to enhance and reveal aspects of the text. Finally, this paper discusses how Special Collections libraries play a unique roll in the preservation of the whole book as a material object in order to preserve the full context of the book for future study

The Science of Judging a Book by its Cover

"Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal" was founded in 2017 by Arden Hegele, a literary scholar, and Rishi Goyal, a physician. Its mission is to develop conversations among diverse people thinking about medical and humanistic ways of knowing ... as a “Department Without Walls” that connects scholars and thinkers from different spheres

Judging a Book by its Cover : The Manifestation of the Bodily in Contemporary Autobiography

Since book covers have become the focus of critical attention only in few recent years, there is a small number of studies published that examine the interaction between the text and the book cover. This interaction seems to be especially significant in the case of autobiographies as there are at least two ways for the author to present himself: as the narrator of the text and as the subject visualised on the book cover. This study is based on my preliminary research, which shows that the author’s body as a link between the text of autobiography and the photo image on the book cover has never been discussed before. The purpose of this study is to investigate the expressions of the bodily in autobiography through the lens of intermediality. This study explores four autobiographical texts featuring their authors’ photographic images on the book covers: Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (1998) by Kary Mullis, Mosaic: The Pieces of My Life So Far (2007) by Amy Grant, The Fry Chronicles (2011) by Stephen Fry, and How to be a Woman (2012) by Caitlin Moran. I examine both the visual images on the book covers and the verbal texts by applying the theory of the performative. I argue that self-presentation of the bodily in the autobiography is two-fold because the trustworthiness of the photographic image of the author on the cover in conjunction with the autobiographical text reinforces the audience’s illusion of getting the unconditional autobiographical 'truth'

Judging a Book by its Cover: Using Lectin Microarrays to Identify How Glycosylation is Regulated

Glycosylation involves the post-translational addition of carbohydrates to protein molecules and is an intricate and indispensable biochemical process. Study of this complicated network of interactions is hindered by the lack of a coding template analogous to the genetic code, and by the vast structural complexity inherent to carbohydrate polymers. We use lectins (non-enzymatic carbohydrate-binding proteins of non-immunological origin) as microarray probes to identify carbohydrate features expressed on cellular surfaces. Specifically, we utilized lectin microarray technology to investigate the differences in carbohydrates expressed by the cell lines of the Nation Cancer Institute’s NCI-60 panel. Our investigation identified tissue-specific expression differences in high-mannose N-linked glycans as a result of microRNA-based regulation of key processing enzymes in the N-linked biosynthetic pathway. Thus post-transcriptional regulation at the RNA level affects glycome characteristics

Judging A Book By Its Cover Exploring Body Modification and Employment

This work aims to understand the relationship between body modifications and employment. The body has received much academic attention recently, yet the experience of modified bodies’ remains overlooked, particularly within the workplace. This is surprising considering the centrality of the individual within the UK’s growing service industry. In using the legal industry as its focus, this study reveals the taken-for-granted assumptions regarding ability and the body which are present throughout the contemporary job market. Data was collected through a series of interviews with individuals with body modifications and with individuals working at a large Midlands-based legal firm. In contributing to current understandings of the organisational management and the sociology of the body, this work makes evident the importance of the body within the workplace and discusses the shift in meaning of body modifications in society. In so doing, this work reveals the disparity in treatment between certain bodies and the way in which ‘choice’ is used to legitimate workplace discrimination. Its findings have implications for future bodily research and current understandings of hiring and promoting practice within the job market

Judging a book by its cover: how much of REF `research quality' is really `journal prestige'?

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a periodic UK-wide assessment of the quality of published research in universities. The most recent REF was in 2014, and the next will be in 2021. The published results of REF2014 include a categorical `quality profile' for each unit of assessment (typically a university department), reporting what percentage of the unit's REF-submitted research outputs were assessed as being at each of four quality levels (labelled 4*, 3*, 2* and 1*). Also in the public domain are the original submissions made to REF2014, which include -- for each unit of assessment -- publication details of the REF-submitted research outputs. In this work, we address the question: to what extent can a REF quality profile for research outputs be attributed to the journals in which (most of) those outputs were published? The data are the published submissions and results from REF2014. The main statistical challenge comes from the fact that REF quality profiles are available only at the aggregated level of whole units of assessment: the REF panel's assessment of each individual research output is not made public. Our research question is thus an `ecological inference' problem, which demands special care in model formulation and methodology. The analysis is based on logit models in which journal-specific parameters are regularized via prior `pseudo-data'. We develop a lack-of-fit measure for the extent to which REF scores appear to depend on publication venues rather than research quality or institution-level differences. Results are presented for several research fields.Comment: 50 pages, 19 figure