In order to learn about the world, young children rely on information provided by social partners. Past research has shown children consider a variety of factors when learning from others, including consensus. Corriveau, Fusaro, and Harris (2009) found that in an object labeling task, children trust responses that receive majority support, and they concluded that children prefer members of a ma...

Social life is regulated by norms of fairness that constrain selfish behavior. While a substantial body of scholarship on prosocial behavior has provided evidence of such norms, large inter- and intra-personal variation in prosocial behavior still needs to be explained. The article identifies two social-structural dimensions along which people's generosity varies systematically: group attachmen...

Firefighters are exposed to carcinogens such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) during fires and from their personal protective equipment (PPE). Recent research has shown that decontamination processes can reduce contamination on both gear and skin. While firefighter cultures that honor dirty gear are changing, little is known about current attitude...

A small pilot experiment (N=14) investigated userengagement (i.e. involvement and distance) and appreciation of the Web interface agent Bonzi Buddy, a monkey-like cartoon figure that assists in performing computer tasks and that claims to provide empathic functionality. The study focused on the effects of peer-group norms on individual judgments of anthropomorphic Web applications. The experime...

The purpose of this study is to understand the dynamics of employee identity retention and its impact on organizational change in a Research and Development organization. The role played by social embeddedness in enhancing employees’ retention of self-identities and shaping their attitudes in resisting an orientation shift of organizational values and norms from that of civil services to distor...

conclusions due to the high rate of self-immolations in this area, solutions for improvement of life quality and social norms should be reviewed and implemented. results 350 self-immolations resulting in death were reported in this study; these subjects were 16-25 years old, 67.25% female, 63.55% elementary school education, 74.20% married, 69.10% housewife, 61.05% resident of saravan, 93.35% o...

The likelihood of resisting gender-stereotypic peer group norms, along with expectations about personal resistance, was investigated in 9- to 10-year-olds and 13- to 14-year-olds (N = 292). Participants were told about a stereotype conforming group (boys playing football; girls doing ballet) and a stereotype nonconforming group (boys doing ballet; girls playing football). Contrary to expectatio...

Given the importance of communication skills in the classroom and workplace, it is surprising that no extant research focuses explicitly on senior-level information systems (IS) majors and their levels of communication apprehension (CA). To fill that void, this study examines the levels of CA among seniorlevel IS majors. Participants (n = 51) enrolled in an IS senior capstone course completed t...

Little is known about how girl players navigate through virtual worlds, negotiate their identity, and challenge cultural norms and practices. We investigated over 500 players in a science-themed tween virtual world called Whyville.net with girls being the majority (68%) of its 1.5 million registered players. Using logfile data collected over a six-month long period, we identified three distinct...