A new University of British Columbia study has found that people identify the personality traits of people who are physically attractive more accurately than others during short encounters. Read more »
From obscurity to prime time: Viral political videos can spring from non-political sites
What's the mechanism that makes a political video go viral? What causes a video clip to spread from a few people to millions, sometimes in a matter of hours? Is it a top-down process led by elite gatekeepers or bottoms up, driven by people at the grass roots? And how do blogs affect the life cycle of a viral video? Read more »
Fast food and sweets advertised when children watch television
Children in Sweden are exposed to a huge number of TV advertisements. Food adverts – primarily for fast food and sweets – dominate the advertisements shown during children's viewing times. Research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that Sweden is no different from other countries when it comes to the number of adverts that children are exposed to. Read more »
Scientists map what factors influence the news agenda
Computer scientists have analyzed over a million news articles in 22 languages to pinpoint what factors, such as the Eurovision song contest, influence and shape the news agenda in 27 EU countries. This is the first large-scale content-analysis of cross-linguistic text using artificial intelligence techniques. Read more »
Americans Now Spend As Many Hours On the Internet As They Do Watching Television (Internet/TV Stats)
A recent survey released by Forrester found that Americans now spend as much time on the Internet as they do watching television. Forrester surveyed more than 30,000 people and found that the average American spends approximately 13 hours a week on the Internet and watching TV while offline. While the Internet was once thought of as something more popular among youth, the study also found that Gen X (31 to 44) and Younger Baby Boomers (45 to 54) are spending equal amounts of time using both forms of media. In the past five years, while TV use has stayed approximately the same, Internet use has increased by 121%. Read more »
People in Jobs Traditionally Held by the Other Sex Are Judged More Harshly for Mistakes
In these modern times, people can have jobs that weren’t traditionally associated with their genders. Men are nurses; women are CEOs. A new study examines perceptions of people in high-powered jobs and finds that they’re likely to be judged more harshly for mistakes if they’re in a job that’s not normally associated with their gender. Read more »
Teleworkers more satisfied than office-based employees
Employees who telecommute the majority of the work week are more satisfied with their jobs compared to those working mostly in the office because working remotely alleviates more stress than it creates, according to a new study by a communication researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). Read more »
Understanding consumer behavior: Make them think it was their idea or decision?
Consumers value goals they've chosen on their own more than those that are imposed on them, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "When people believe they have autonomously chosen to pursue a goal themselves, they feel the goal is increasingly valuable as they put in more effort, because they experience their own effort as signaling how much they care about it," write authors Ying Zhang (University of Texas at Austin), Jing Xu, Zixi Jiang (both Peking University), and Szu-chi Huang (University of Texas at Austin). Read more »
Self-awareness can help people navigate rocky seas of relationships
A little self-awareness can help people struggling in the world of relationships, says Jeffrey Hall, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas. Hall recently completed a study into styles of flirting among dating adults, surveying more than 5,100 people regarding their methods of communicating romantic interest. Read more »
Training away stereotypes
It may seem difficult to change stereotypical thinking. Perceptions can be very important in forming an individual's attitudes. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that people conditioned to think in opposition to racial stereotypes are more receptive to people from minority groups starring in commercial advertising. Read more »