Materialism represents a pervasive value in contemporary society and one that is associated with multiple negative consequences. Although a considerable amount of research has documented these consequences, little research has examined how materialism levels might be reduced. This article presents a research agenda for reducing materialism. The authors begin with an overview of the motivation theory of materialism, a humanistic perspective that holds that materialism is often an outward manifestation of deeper unmet psychological needs and insecurities. Thus, research that contributes to reducing materialism should do so by addressing these more fundamental inadequacies. To this end, the authors outline three emergent research areas that have potential to reduce materialism by enhancing self-esteem—namely, experiential consumption, prosocial giving, and healthy social development in children. The authors review research in each area, consider its relevance to the materialism question, and propose future research directions. They also present the public policy implications of these discussions.

Theories of attitude change have failed to identify the architecture of interattitudinal structures and relate it to attitude change. This article examines two models (a hierarchical and a spatial-linkage model) of interattitudinal structure that explicitly posit consequences for attitude change. An experiment (N = 391) was conducted that manipulated type of hierarchy (explicit versus implicit), whether the hierarchy was primed or not, and the location in the hierarchy to which a message was directed. Whereas the hierarchical model predicts only topdown influence of attitudes on each other, a spatial-linkage model predicts that linked attitudes may influence each other regardless of hierarchical position. The results support the spatial-linkage model in that interattitudinal change is constrained less by a concept's relative position in a hierarchical structure than by the concept's association with other concepts in that structure. Furthermore, within these interattitudinal structures, concepts directly targeted by a persuasive message often exhibit less attitude change than related concepts to which the focal concept appears to be linked. Finally, an explicit hierarchy of concepts appears to facilitate interattitudinal influence much more than an implicit hierarchy of concepts does; the key to this facilitation seems to be the mental accessibility of the organizational structure.A ttitudes have been conceptualized as simple evaluations of an object, associations of objects in memory, arguments for or against a given proposition, or knowledge about a conceptual domain, and beliefs (e.g., Eagly & Chaiken, 1993;Fazio, 1989;Kerlinger, 1984). The many conceptualizations of attitude extant in the literature raise questions regarding the organization, or structure, of related attitudes. If there were absolutely no attitude structure, then people might possess random

Women in academia generally publish fewer articles than do men; also, many women traditionally have not been attracted to quantitative methodologies. Therefore, this study investigated whether female authors have been underrepresented in Human Communication Research (HCR) as compared to their representation in the communicationfieldand as compared to a more qualitative communication journal that publishes articles employingdifferent methods. The results indicated that the difference between the percentage offemaleauthors in HCR and the percentage of women in thefield was not significant for 4 of 6 sample years. The diference between the percentages offemale authors in HCRand Quarterly Journal of Speech was not significant for any of the 6 years; however, there was a significant difference in the number offemale sole or lead (first) authors in 3 of the 6 sample years. Institutional afiliation was also examined because, in mostfields, a small percentage ofscholars produce a majority of research. The 10 highest ranking programs in Communication Theoyand Research (asdetermined by a survey conducted by the National Communication Association) contributed more than one third of all HCRarticles. Overall, the journal seems to have represented the workof a relatively diverse group of scholars during the past 25 years.o review of the history of Human Communication Research (HCR) would be complete without a discussion of its contributors. The N scholars whose works have appeared in the pages of HCR during the past 25 years constitute a major voice of communication research. These authors shape the communication discipline, providing a significant source of information from which subsequent scholars may draw. HCR's 3rd-place finish in a field of 27 communication journals rated by citation analysis for their impact on the communication discipline (Funkhouser, 1996) is evidence of the journal's substantial presence. Leslie D. Dinauer (M.A., The American University, 1991) and Kristen E. Ondeck (M.A., University of Virginia,

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