This research investigated how voters select, process, are affected by, and recall political information in a dynamic campaign environment. It was hypothesized that voters' information selection, processing, and recall are subject to a negativity bias (i.e., negative information dominates over positive information), a congruency bias (i.e., positive information about the preferred candidate and negative information about the opponent candidate dominate over negative information about the preferred candidate and positive information about the opponent), and a candidate bias (i.e., information about the preferred candidate dominates over information about the opponent). Motivated by an initial candidate preference, participants were also expected to develop more polarized candidate evaluations over time. Participants were exposed to quickly changing information in the form of newspaper-style headlines on a dynamic, computer-based information board. The results generally supported negativity bias and candidate bias, whereas congruency bias was only found during information recall. At the information selection and processing stages, participants with a strong initial candidate preference showed a disproportionate preference for negative information about the preferred candidate. However, they developed more positive attitudes at the evaluation and recall stage. This finding suggests that participants were engaged in motivated information processing by counterarguing negative information about their preferred candidate.

No abstract

No abstract

Our study focused on Chinese children’s play patterns in two different Chinese capitals: Chengdu—the capital of Sichuan in southwest China and Hohhot—the capital of the autonomous Inner Mongolia region in northern China. Unlike child psychologists working in China, who prefer survey instruments organized around parent and teacher interviews, the authors relied primarily upon behavioral observations. Their study is based on naturalistic observations of children in different age cohorts interacting in a variety of social contexts. It draws on a social ecology approach to examine the role of social setting, social class, and regional variation on children’s interaction style. The authors wanted to link their findings to both Four Cultures and Six Cultures studies. To that end they adopted a behaviorist approach that used similar methodology to code children’s interactions. They sought to identify the frequency of particular types of children’s interactions that ranged from types of aggressive and dominance displays, cooperative and altruistic acts, to the frequency of acts of retaliation to aggressive act(s). In Chengdu they coded 342 acts; while 120 Hohhotian acts were coded for a total of 462 interaction episodes. Their study is designed to incorporate both analytical perspectives—observation and interviews—to provide a more nuanced commentary on the potential significance of Chinese children’s playful interactions.

No abstract