Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: Chinese language is difficult largely because of its writing system. How to make this learning process less painful is the focus of the three empirical studies of this panel. How language acquisition being affected by utilizing typing, pinyin, voice synthesis software and reinforced classroom instruction is examined.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Previous research has found that fictional characters who have both good and bad characteristics are the most fascinating (Konijn & Hoorn, 2005). In actuality, many fictional characters with whom viewers have a strong connection possess bad and good characteristics and exhibit both kinds of behaviors. The present investigation extends Affective Disposition Theory beyond the "good guys-bad guys" dichotomy. Moreover, it explains affective involvement with characters based on discrete emotions such as admiration, hostility, envy, and sympathy that are evoked based on viewers' perceptions of character traits. A within-participants experiment (N=95) was conducted to test the effects of character morality, appearance, and competence on viewers’ anticipated enjoyment, affective involvement, and emotional responses toward video game characters. Results show that participants express mixed emotions such as envy and pity toward competent villains, incompetent good guys, good-looking bad guys, and ugly-looking good-natured characters. Implications for Affective Disposition Theory are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The use of personal character as a criteria for admission to selective colleges dates back to their founding, often in Colonial America. The meaning of character, however, has changed over time. From religious piety, to a set of ascribed characteristics, to morality and beyond, character remains important to admissions officers today. This paper develops four models through which selective college admissions officers evaluate application materials to arrive at an understanding of the presence or absence of personal character in the students they choose to admit.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: One of democracy's greatest justifications, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, lies in its encouragement of individuality. Yet, as Whitman well knew, the functioning of democratic politics may neither enlist nor require the individual's highest energies, but threaten to crush individuality through the force of the "en masse" instead. This underscores a fundamental tension between the pursuit of justice and the development of individual character inherent in the idea of democratic self-realization: if democratic politics does not require fully developed selves, does a fully realized existence require participation in public life? In this paper I consider the way out of this democratic problematic offered by the pragmatist liberalism of Richard Rorty. Maximal self-development can be combined with an acute concern for social justice, he argues, if individuals divide themselves into "private self-creators" and "public liberals," being in alternate moments "Nietzsche and J.S. Mill." Taking cues from Mill, Rorty claims that the highest goal of liberal societies should be to "optimize the balance between leaving people's private lives alone and preventing suffering." Instituting a public-private divide along these lines will not only enrich liberal individuality, he argues, creating the space necessary for Nietzschean projects of becoming what one is, but at the same time galvanize the public's resolve to diminish suffering by insulating the quest for social justice from the self-regarding pursuit of developing one‚s character. Yet rather than suggesting we "leave people's private lives alone," Mill viewed inner self-reform as crucial to the reform of society and institutions. While Mill offers a public defense of the private, where self-cultivation is understood as a means of strengthening the democratic public, Rorty defends his sharply delineated realms as a way of isolating individual creative energies from public life and the quest for justice. Freely-chosen individual ends are predicated upon seeing the world in one's own way; if these ends are absent from public life, for Mill there is no justice to be pursued. What Mill accomplishes is to bridge public and private by connecting ethics, or the development of one's character, with the public pursuit of justice. Or, to put it another way, he allies what might be called the "ethics of the self" with the "politics of the other." Drawing on a line of argument intimated by Mill and given full expression in the thought of John Dewey, I argue that the quest for social justice requires more than self-interest or an altruistic concern for others if it is to remain more than a hollow invocation of ideals. I defend a conception of perfectionist liberalism, understood as a demand to reform our society and institutions spurred by individual self-realization, that connects rather than divorces the ethics of the self from the politics of the other.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: (to be uploaded)