The Opposite of Backlash: High-SDO People Show Enhanced Tolerance When Gay People Pose Little Threat

We tested how perceived threat to group position affects the relationship between beliefs about the acceptability of social inequality—as measured by social dominance orientation (SDO)—and discrimination. We hypothesized that high-SDO heterosexuals would respond with increased discrimination when they perceived status gains for gays. In a pilot study, we found that SDO correlated with gay prejudice and with perceiving gays to be gaining status. In an experiment, we manipulated the perceived status of gays and measured SDO, traditional values and money donated to anti-gay causes. SDO was correlated with more anti-gay donations, except when gays were perceived to be low in status; then people high in SDO discriminated less, making fewer anti-gay donations in the Low compared to the Gain and Control status conditions. By contrast, traditional values were correlated with more anti-gay donations in all conditions, and the correlation was especially strong in the Low status condition

The Opposite of Backlash: High-SDO People Show Enhanced Tolerance When Gay People Pose Little Threat

We tested how perceived threat to group position affects the relationship between beliefs about the acceptability of social inequality—as measured by social dominance orientation (SDO)—and discrimination. We hypothesized that high-SDO heterosexuals would respond with increased discrimination when they perceived status gains for gays. In a pilot study, we found that SDO correlated with gay prejudice and with perceiving gays to be gaining status. In an experiment, we manipulated the perceived status of gays and measured SDO, traditional values and money donated to anti-gay causes. SDO was correlated with more anti-gay donations, except when gays were perceived to be low in status; then people high in SDO discriminated less, making fewer anti-gay donations in the Low compared to the Gain and Control status conditions. By contrast, traditional values were correlated with more anti-gay donations in all conditions, and the correlation was especially strong in the Low status condition

M-Governance: Exploratory Survey on Kenyan Service Delivery and Government Interaction

Abstract: Mobile phones have been cited by many as the best technology for interacting with citizens due to widespread user uptake; as of September 2011, Kenya had 25.27 million mobile subscribers. However, understanding the opinion of the citizen users is important to assess the real viability of using such mobile technologies to improve service delivery and citizen-government interactions. Therefore, with the aim of investigating citizens' opinions on the best methods to interact with government, one-week of exploratory fieldwork was conducted in Nairobi in November 2011. This paper shares the initial findings from the fieldwork focusing on how Kenyan citizens understand governance and how they currently interact with the government. This information is important as a first step to studying the potential role of technology in Kenyan governance

Culture and Mobility Determine the Importance of Similarity in Friendship

We test whether the ability to start friendships—and end them—determines what we look for in friends. We hypothesized that individual differences in beliefs about relationship choice would translate into differences in similarity of relationship partners. To test the constructs across their spectrum, we sampled both American and Korean relationships (N=1,603). Study 1 field-sampled naturally-occurring relationship pairs in the USA and Korea; independent self-construal was positively correlated with relational mobility and similarity within relationship pairs. Using the entire data set, relational mobility was positively correlated with similarity, but the two were negatively correlated within nations. Study 2 identified two components of relational mobility, Entry and Exit. Easy entry to relationships correlated with high importance of similarity; easy exit from relationships correlated with low importance of similarity. An experiment (Study 3) manipulating both ease of entry to and exit from friendship found the belief that people are relatively free to end an unsatisfying friendship reduced the importance of similarity for friendship selection

Nonverbal Communication of Similarity via the Torso: It’s in the Bag

The human body plays a central role in nonverbal communication, conveying attitudes, personality, and values during social interactions. Three experiments in a large, open classroom setting investigated whether the visibility of torso-located cues affects nonverbal communication of similarity. In Expts. 1 and 2, half the participants wore a black plastic bag over their torso. Participants interacted with an unacquainted same-sex individual selected from a large class who was also wearing (or also not wearing) a bag. Expt. 3 added a clear bag condition, in which visual torso cues were not obscured. Across experiments, black bag-wearing participants selected partners who were less similar to them on attitudes, behaviors, and personality compared to the bag-less—and clear bag—participants. Nonverbal cues in the torso communicate information about similarity of attitudes, behavior, and personality; the center of the body plays a surprisingly central role in early-stage person perception and attraction

Similarity in Relationships as Niche Construction: Choice, Stability, and Influence within Dyads in a Free Choice Environment

A series of field studies focused on the role of similarity as niche construction in friendships. Using a free-range dyad harvest method, we collected 11 independent samples with 1,523 interacting pairs, and compared dyad members’ personality traits, attitudes, values, recreational activities, and alcohol and drug use. Within-dyad similarity was statistically significant on 86% of variables measured. To determine whether similarity was primarily due to niche construction (i.e., selection) or social influence, we tested whether similarity increased as closeness, intimacy, discussion, length of relationship, and importance of the attitude increased. There were no effects on similarity of closeness, relationship length, or discussion of the attitude. There were quite modest effects of intimacy, and a reliable effect of the shared importance of the attitude. Because relationship length, intimacy, closeness, and discussion can all serve as markers of opportunity for, or potency of social influence, these data are consistent with the “niche construction” account of similarity. In two follow-up controlled longitudinal field studies, participants interacted with people they did not know from their large lecture classes, and at a later time completed a survey of attitudes, values, and personality traits. Interacting pairs were not more similar than chance, but for the 23% of dyads that interacted beyond the first meeting, there was significant similarity within dyad members. These two lines of inquiry converge to suggest that similarity is mainly due to niche construction, and is most important in the early stages of a relationship; its importance to further relationship development wanes

Humanitarianism 2.0

It is difficult to overstate the importance of trust in a world where global networks facilitate the constant flow of contradictory information. The search for verifiable leads and trusted sources is a central facet of daily communication and is becoming more so as our connections with one another become more decontextualised, geographically distant and, increasingly entirely virtual. The swell of internet connection rates across the world has meant an explosion of interaction and allowed new opportunities for global collective action. Whilst countless words have been written exploring the dangers of this global network and the threats that “new media” represents to social structures and moral fabrics, this collection seeks to explore the role that new social technologies are having in the world of humanitarianism and conflict response

Plunge Show Card

Haggerty Gallery Inaugural Opening. Show Card for Plunge.https://digitalcommons.udallas.edu/plunge/1000/thumbnail.jp

Reading and Ownership

First paragraph: ‘It is as easy to make sweeping statements about reading tastes as to indict a nation, and as pointless.’ This jocular remark by a librarian made in the Times in 1952 sums up the dangers and difficulties of writing the history of reading. As a field of study in the humanities it is still in its infancy and encompasses a range of different methodologies and theoretical approaches. Historians of reading are not solely interested in what people read, but also turn their attention to the why, where and how of the reading experience. Reading can be solitary, silent, secret, surreptitious; it can be oral, educative, enforced, or assertive of a collective identity. For what purposes are individuals reading? How do they actually use books and other textual material? What are the physical environments and spaces of reading? What social, educational, technological, commercial, legal, or ideological contexts underpin reading practices? Finding answers to these questions is compounded by the difficulty of locating and interpreting evidence. As Mary Hammond points out, ‘most reading acts in history remain unrecorded, unmarked or forgotten’. Available sources are wide but inchoate: diaries, letters and autobiographies; personal and oral testimonies; marginalia; and records of societies and reading groups all lend themselves more to the case-study approach than the historical survey. Statistics offer analysable data but have the effect of producing identikits rather than actual human beings. The twenty-first century affords further possibilities, and challenges, with its traces of digital reader activity, but the map is ever-changing

Schoolbooks and textbook publishing.

In this chapter the author looks at the history of schoolbooks and textbook publishing. The nineteenth century saw a rise in the school book market in Britain due to the rise of formal schooling and public examinations. Although the 1870 Education and 1872 (Scotland) Education Acts made elementary education compulsory for childern between 5-13 years old, it was not until the end of the First World War that some sort form of secondary education became compulsory for all children