A unified theory of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, self-esteem, and self-concept

This theoretical integration of social psychology’s main cognitive and affective constructs was shaped by 3 influences: (a) recent widespread interest in automatic and implicit cognition, (b) development of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998), and (c) social psychology’s consistency theories of the 1950s, especially F. Heider’s (1958) balance theory. The balanced identity design is introduced as a method to test correlational predictions of the theory. Data obtained with this method revealed that predicted consistency patterns were strongly apparent in the data for implicit (IAT) measures but not in those for parallel explicit (self-report) measures. Two additional not-yet-tested predictions of the theory are described. The Cognitive Consistency Theoretical Tradition Theories of cognitive consistency dominated social psychology in the 1960s. The most influential ones had appeared in the 1950s, including Osgood and Tannenbaum’s (1955) congruity theory, Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory, and Heider’s (1958) balance theory. The high point of consistency theory was the 1968 publication of the six-editor, 920-page handbook, Theorie

Implicit Partisanship: Taking Sides for no Reason

this article arose from the partial failure of an attempt to develop a single-subject procedure for the minimal group effect. The minimal group effect is the finding that, after learning that they belong to the same group as do a set of strangers, subjects discriminate in favor of those groupmates (originally reported by Tajfel, 1970; Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971). The plan of Preliminary Experiment A was to establish membership in a fictitious group and then to observe preference for that group. More specifically, the experiment sought to determine whether the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) could measure the in-group favoritism that was expected to result from this procedur

The Social Life of Small Graphical Chat Spaces

This paper provides a unique quantitative analysis of the social dynamics of three chat rooms in the Microsoft V-Chat graphical chat system. Survey and behavioral data were used to study user experience and activity. 150 V-Chat participants completed a web-based survey, and data logs were collected from three V-Chat rooms over the course of 119 days. This data illustrates the usage patterns of graphical chat systems, and highlights the ways physical proxemics are translated into social interactions in online environments. V-Chat participants actively used gestures, avatars, and movement as part of their social interactions. Analyses of clustering patterns and movement data show that avatars were used to provide nonverbal cues similar to those found in face-to-face interactions. However, use of some graphical features, in particular gestures, declined as users became more experienced with the system. These findings have implications for the design and study of online interactive environments. Keywords Avatars, computer mediated communication, empirica

[THIS SPACE MUST BE [THIS SPACE MUST Modeling Youth Civic Engagement in a New World of Networked Publics

Abstract In an increasingly networked public, the Internet and social media provide rich opportunities for reconnecting youth with their civic life. In a questionnaire study of 578 14-20 year old youth, we explore the relationship between Internet technology experiences, civic efficacy, community identification, and civic engagement in their everyday lives. Contrary to prevailing stereotypes of digital youth, we found that most rely on email and text messaging to communicate with others in their local communities about civic issues. Further, those more experienced with technologies in the public sphere (such as blogs, wikis, and Twitter) had higher levels of civic engagement. Teens who strongly identified with their local community and who had higher levels of civic efficacy were especially likely to be civically engaged. These results highlight the importance of encouraging youth to emotionally connect to their local communities, and to do so online in the public sphere rather than through more personal communication channels

So.cl: An Interest Network for Informal Learning

Abstract Web search engines emerged prior to the dominance of so cial media. What if we imagined search as integrating with social media from the ground up? So.cl is a web application that combines web browsing, search, and social networking for the purposes of sharing and learning around topics of in terest. In this paper, we present the results of a deployment study examining existing learning practices around search and social networking for students, and how these practices shifted when participants adopted So.cl. We found prior to using So.cl that students already heavily employed search tools and social media for learning. With the use of So.cl, we found that users engaged in lightweight, fun social shar ing and learning for informal, personal topics, but not for more heavyweight collaboration around school or work. The public nature of So.cl encouraged users to post search results as much for self expression as for searching, ena bling serendipitous discovery around interests