Bases of political judgments: the role of stereotypic and non-stereotypic information

Um den Gebrauch von Stereotypen bei Urteilen über politische Kandidaten zu prüfen, wurden drei Studien durchgeführt. Die erste Studie demonstriert den Effekt von physischer Attraktivität auf die Beurteilung eines Kandidaten, wenn keine anderen entscheidungsrelevanten Informationen verfügbar sind. Es zeigt sich, daß diese dann einen substantiellen Einfluß auf die Persönlichkeitseinschätzung hat. Daraus werden sowohl Schlußfolgerungen über persönliche Qualitäten und die politische Ideologie gezogen. Die weiteren Studien prüften den Zusammenhang von Attraktivität, Parteizugehörigkeit und persönlichen Standpunkten des Kandidaten. Hierbei übt die Attraktivität einen geringeren Einfluß aus. Sollten die Beteiligten nur einen Kandidaten einschätzen, verließen sie sich auf seine politische Vergangenheit und seinen Ruf. Bei der Entscheidung zwischen zwei Kandidaten ist dagegen die Parteizugehörigkeit entscheidender. (psz)'Three experiments investigated the role of stereotypic and nonstereotypic criteria in judgments of political candidates. The effects of physical attractiveness, political party and stands on specific issues on both absolute and comparative judgments of political candidats were examined to evaluate three hypotheses about stereotype and attribute use. In the absence of other information, candidates' physical attractiveness (conveyed through photographs) had a substantial influence on subjects' global evaluations of them and inferences of both their personal qualities and their political ideology. When other information about candidates' party membership and stands on specific issues were available, however, the candidate's attractiveness had no affect on the evaluations of them. When subjects were asked to make comparative judgements of two candidates, however, they based their judgments on each candidate's party membership and not their respective voting records. Implications of these results for the precesses that underlie political judgments and decisions are evaluated.' (authors' abstract

Accounting for quality improvement during the conduct of embedded pragmatic clinical trials within healthcare systems: NIH Collaboratory case studies

Embedded pragmatic clinical trials (ePCTs) and quality improvement (QI) activities often occur simultaneously within healthcare systems (HCSs). Embedded PCTs within HCSs are conducted to test interventions and provide evidence that may impact public health, health system operations, and quality of care. They are larger and more broadly generalizable than QI initiatives, and may generate what is considered high-quality evidence for potential use in care and clinical practice guidelines. QI initiatives often co-occur with ePCTs and address the same high-impact health questions, and this co-occurrence may dilute or confound the ability to detect change as a result of the ePCT intervention. During the design, pilot, and conduct phases of the large-scale NIH Collaboratory Demonstration ePCTs, many QI initiatives occurred at the same time within the HCSs. Although the challenges varied across the projects, some common, generalizable strategies and solutions emerged, and we share these as case studies. KEY LESSONS: Study teams often need to monitor, adapt, and respond to QI during design and the course of the trial. Routine collaboration between ePCT researchers and health systems stakeholders throughout the trial can help ensure research and QI are optimally aligned to support high-quality patient-centered care

Bryozoans are Major Modern Builders of South Atlantic Oddly Shaped Reefs

Supplementary information accompanies this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27961-6.In major modern reef regions, either in the Indo-Pacific or the Caribbean, scleractinian corals are described as the main reef framework builders, often associated with crustose coralline algae. We used underwater cores to investigate Late Holocene reef growth and characterise the main framework builders in the Abrolhos Shelf, the largest and richest modern tropical reef complex in the South Western Atlantic, a scientifically underexplored reef province. Rather than a typical coralgal reef, our results show a complex framework building system dominated by bryozoans. Bryozoans were major components in all cores and age intervals (2,000 yrs BP), accounting for up to 44% of the reef framework, while crustose coralline algae and coral accounted for less than 28 and 23%, respectively. Reef accretion rates varied from 2.7 to 0.9 mm yr−1, which are similar to typical coralgal reefs. Bryozoan functional groups encompassed 20 taxa and Celleporaria atlantica (Busk, 1884) dominated the framework at all cores. While the prevalent mesotrophic conditions may have driven suspensionfeeders’ dominance over photoautotrophs and mixotrophs, we propose that a combination of historical factors with the low storm-disturbance regime of the tropical South Atlantic also contributed to the region’s low diversity, and underlies the unique mushroom shape of the Abrolhos pinnacles.We thank CNPq/FAPES-Sisbiota/PELD, CAPES/IODP, CAPES/Ciências do Mar, and ANP/Brasoil for long term project funding. We also thank ICMBio for research permits and field logistic support, and Conservation International for providing and authorizing the use of the IKONOS image. JMW and JCB are International Visiting Researcher at UFES and JBRJ, supported by the Science Without Borders program. Zá Cajueiro provided invaluable field support and Ronaldo Francini, Carlos Janovitch and Lucio Engler helped in the drilling operations. This is a contribution from the Rede Abrolhos (abrolhos.org)

Cognitive Information Processing

Contains research objectives and summary of research on fourteen research projects and reports on four research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAB07-75-C-1346)National Science Foundation (Grant EPP74-12653)National Science Foundation (Grant ENG74-24344)National Institutes of Health (Grant 2 PO1 GM19428-04)Swiss National Funds for Scientific ResearchM.I.T. Health Sciences Fund (Grant 76-11)National Institutes of Health (Grant F03 GM58698)National Institutes of Health (Biomedical Sciences Support Grant)Associated Press (Grant

The Role of Teachers' Expectations in the Association between Children's SES and Performance in Kindergarten: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

This study examines the role of teachers' expectations in the association between children's socio-economic background and achievement outcomes. Furthermore, the role of children's ethnicity in moderating this mediated relation is investigated. In the present study, 3,948 children from kindergarten are examined. Data are analysed by means of structural equation modeling. First, results show that teachers' expectations mediate the relation between children's SES and their later language and math achievement, after controlling for children's ethnicity, prior achievement and gender. This result indicates that teachers may exacerbate individual differences between children. Second, children's ethnicity moderates the mediation effect of teachers' expectations with respect to math outcomes. The role of teachers' expectations in mediating the relation between SES and math outcomes is stronger for majority children than for minority children

Policy Entrepreneurship by International Bureaucracies: The Evolution of Public Information in UN Peacekeeping

The UN Secretariat’s role in the expansion of peacekeeping after the cold war is debated. Different theoretical accounts offer competing interpretations: principal–agent models and sociological institutionalism tend to emphasize the Secretariat’s risk-averse behaviour; organizational learning scholarship and international political sociology find evidence of the Secretariat’s activism; constructivism analyses instances of both. I argue that the UN Secretariat can be both enthusiastic and cautious about new tasks depending on the circumstances and the issue area. For example, UN officials have been the driving force behind the development of public information campaigns by peacekeeping missions aimed at the local population. During the cold war, it was not regarded as necessary for UN missions to communicate with the public in the area of operation: their interlocutors were parties to the conflict and the diplomatic community. With the deployment of the first multidimensional missions in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, UN staff realized the need to explain the organization’s role to the local population and provide information about UN-supported elections. In promoting this innovation, they played the role of policy entrepreneurs. The institutionalization of this innovation, however, was not an automatic process and required continuous advocacy by UN information staff

Why are “others” so polarized? Perceived political polarization and media use in 10 countries.

This study tests the associations between news media use and perceived political polarization, conceptualized as citizens’ beliefs about partisan divides among major political parties. Relying on representative surveys in Canada, Colombia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Norway, United Kingdom and United States, we test whether perceived polarization is related to the use of television news, newspaper, radio news, and online news media. Data show that online news consumption is systematically and consistently related to perceived polarization, but not to attitude polarization, understood as individual attitude extremity. In contrast, the relationships between traditional media use and perceived and attitude polarization is mostly country dependent. An explanation of these findings based on exemplification is proposed and tested in an experimental design