Presidential television advertisements from 1980 through 2012 were examined to test empirically George Lakoff's descriptions of American moral ideology. Advertisements were coded for instantiations of the moral themes that Lakoff asserts underlie liberal and conservative ideology (Strict Father versus Nurturant Parent). Candidates' political‐party affiliation, election year, and policy issue(s) addressed in the television advertisement were assessed for their covariance with the use of these moral‐metaphorical instantiations. Findings support many of Lakoff's arguments. Republicans and Democrats generally differed in their use of these moral themes, both Strict Father and Nurturant Parent. There were no significant associations between election years (1980–2012) and instantiations of moral metaphors, with the exception of 2008, an anomalous year. Of particular import, we found that although Republicans rely on Strict Father dimensions, and Democrats rely more on Nurturant Parent, the most pronounced difference between parties was on the Nurturant Parent dimension. Implications for Lakoff's work and current moral psychology are discussed.
Previous research has demonstrated that one person's expectations can influence the behavior of another person, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. This study examined the effects of ability-based expectations in an experiment in which some participants ("coaches") were assigned false expectations of the basketball free-throw shooting ability of other participants ("players"). Coaches allocated more opportunities to players for whom the false expectation was positive, and fewer shots to players for whom the false expectation was negative. In turn, players who were allocated more shots made a higher percentage of them, thereby confirming their coaches' expectations about their shooting ability, and were more confident in their shooting ability following the task, than players who were allocated fewer shots.
Administrators of online communities face the crucial issue of understanding and developing their user communities. Will new users become committed members? What types of roles are particular individuals most likely to take on? We report on a study that investigates these questions. We administered a survey (based on standard psychological instruments) to nearly 4000 new users of the MovieLens film recommendation community from October 2009 to March 2010 and logged their usage history on MovieLens. We found that general volunteer motivations, pro-social behavioral history, and community-specific motivations predicted both the amount of use and specific types of activities users engaged in after joining the community. These findings have implications for the design and management of online communities.
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