Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Directives intuitively follow the medical script “take 2 of (x) and call me in the morning” and, at their best, provide clear, explicit commands of what someone must do. By their nature, directives may elicit 2 plausible yet opposite responses; some may obey the directive, while others may defy it by engaging in the (implicitly or explicitly) limited behavior. Prior studies explain these reactions, in part, to traits like psychological reactance. Using two studies, we investigate (1) the relationship between participants’ psychological reactance and their reactions to a health directive, and (2) the consistency of participants’ obedience or reactance to directives which implicitly, and then, explicitly limited actions. Our findings indicate that most participants intend to obey medical directives, and psychological reactance predicts differences in intentions to obey. In addition, participants who do not show psychological reactance (or its opposite, trait obedience) shift their intentions between scenarios. With care, public health officials may script messages that encourage people without trait reactance to obey quarantine directives.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Under the heavy burden of the early days of Jim Crow, organized protest was understandably a rarity. Nonetheless, African-Americans often found more subtle ways to resist the racism that dominated Southern society. In this paper, I argue that legalized racial segregation in South Carolina arose during a period of urbanization that saw the growth of consumerism, and that in this setting individual African Americans found innovative ways to resist the dominant culture. As consumers, black South Carolinians could take advantage of newly-created spaces like streetcars and movie theaters to demonstrate the absurdity of racism. This paper also investigates the politics of respectability. Black South Carolinians adopted the manners and the trappings of respectability for many of the same reasons that white middle-class southerners did. For African Americans, however, dressing tastefully and taking part in “respectable” culture could have a political edge, a double meaning that challenged the racist stereotypes whites sought to perpetuate. Although they are more difficult to document, the actions of working-class African Americans are also important to this paper. The study of “infrapolitics,” as suggested by scholars like Robin Kelley, affirms the agency of oppressed peoples in shaping culture. By analyzing police reports, newspaper accounts, oral histories, and memoirs, this paper demonstrates that Black South Carolinians found opportunities for resistance, even at the outset of Jim Crow segregation, especially in consumer spaces. These were newly opened spaces that offered a gray area, as yet unregulated, that whites rushed to assert control over. Yet, even as white domination became ascendant in the South, Blacks established footholds of resistance that in many ways presaged the more well-known civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The present study examined the relationship between students’ perceptions of distributive and procedural justice in a college course and student aggression and hostility toward their instructors and resistance of their instructors’ requests. Although perceptions of both distributive and procedural justice were negatively correlated with student aggression and hostility, hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that only perceptions of procedural justice predicted these two criterion variables at a statistically significant level. The relationships between perceptions of justice and students’ use of resistance strategies were less consistent. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that perceptions of procedural justice negatively predicted student revenge and deception, while perceptions of distributive justice positively predicted revenge. Perceptions of procedural and distributive justice also interacted to affect student aggression and deception.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Fear appeal has been applied across a variety of health Public Service Announcements (PSAs). Perceived source credibility variables might affect the outcome of these appeals. The present work extends Witte’s Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) (1992) by addressing how source credibility interacts with strength of fear to influence reactions to fear appeals. Specially, this research explores the influence of source credibility on the impact of persuasive fear appeal promoting traveling warning and taking vaccine to prevent severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Previous research has studied the influence of different types of organizational information on stakeholders’ reactions toward a company. However, it did not explicitly identify whether organizational information (as opposed to only product information, recruitment information or financial information) matters to stakeholders in the first place.
To fill this void, this study examines whether the addition of organizational information to recruitment or financial information enhances potential applicants’ or investors’ evaluation of a company and their intentions toward the company.
An experiment was conducted in which respondents were exposed to one of four types of corporate brochures of a fictitious company. The four types of brochures consisted of two variants of recruitment brochures (both variants including recruitment-related information such as the description of a management trainee program, salary, working conditions etc.) and two variants of financial brochures (both variants including information on financial results, share performance, dividend policy etc.). For both type of brochures, one variant included additional organizational information (such as the firm’s history, mission, market opportunities, social responsibility etc.) and one did not include additional organizational information.
The results demonstrate that 1) additional organizational information in a recruitment brochure positively influences potential applicants’ overall evaluation of a firm and, 2) this positive evaluation in turn influences their intention to apply for a job at the firm. Moreover, 3) additional organizational information in a financial brochure positively influences potential investors’ overall evaluation of a firm; and 4) this positive evaluation in turn influences their intention to buy shares from the firm.