Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: A 2 x 2 experiment explored the effects of proximity and sensationalism on cognitive and emotional processing of television news stories about natural disasters and accidents. Psychophysiological and self-report instruments were utilized to measure arousal, negative emotional experience, attention and recognition. The results indicated that viewers were more aroused by watching highly sensational stories than not sensational stories. Highly sensational international stories elicited greater arousal and negative emotional response. Participants paid more attention and better recognized international stories compared to national stories. Highly sensational international messages elicited higher allocation of resources to encoding. Participants indicated conservative criterion bias for highly sensational national stories during the recognition test. Findings of this study suggest that factors of sensationalism and proximity work well together to make news informative and memorable. As predicted, sensational features elicited greater cognitive and emotional responses; proximity factor indicated reversed effects.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: High sensation seekers (HSS) prefer messages that allow them to maintain an optimal level of arousal (i.e., highly arousing messages). Transportation theory suggests that narrative immersion in a story may moderate reader arousal, and thus HSS message selection. To test this idea, a survey was administered to 120 fourth and fifth graders. In addition to measuring sensation seeking and transportation, the survey assessed interest in reading and writing outside of school (i.e., leisure reading and writing). HSS were found to be less likely to engage in leisure reading. A moderated mediation analysis revealed that whether HSS engaged in leisure reading hinged on their level of narrative transportation (moderator) and subsequent reader boredom (mediator). HSS that successfully transported while reading were no different than their low sensation seeking peers. Sensation seeking was unrelated to leisure writing. Strategies for increasing leisure reading as well as constructing narratives that are engaging to HSS children are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study was an effort to understand how the personality trait of sensation seeking, the cultural dimension of individualism and collectivism (I-C), and message stimulus affect the risk perceptions of college students with regards to gonorrhea infection. The above was accomplished using a 2 (HSS vs. LSS) X 2 (physical threat vs. social threat) X 2 (individualism vs. collectivism at the cultural level) X 2 (within-subject pretest vs. post-test) mixed repeated measures design conducted in four countries – Malaysia, Singapore, U.S. and England. Of the 911 college students who participated in the prescreening phase of the study, a total of 700 students completed the experiment. The results showed that the collectivistic participants had greater increase in posttest scores for perceived severity, perceived response efficacy, perceived self-efficacy, and knowledge about gonorrhea than individualistic participants. LSS expressed greater condom self-control than HSS. Participants exposed to the physical appeal message seemed to be able to recall the information better than participants exposed to the social appeal message. Participants from individualistic societies expressed greater perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived response efficacy, perceived self-efficacy, condom interpersonal impact and condom self-control than participants from collectivistic societies. In addition, participants from individualistic societies seemed to be able to recall the information better than participants from collectivistic societies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: What do we think of Korean women’s experiences that fall outside the interests of nationalists? This paper is inspired by the question. The debates on new women I will explore in this paper reside in public narratives on the nature of new women in the Korean women’s magazine Shingajong (New Family) from January 1933-August 1934. Many articles in the popular magazine of the 1930s attempted to adopt a reformist discourse on educated new women but simultaneously condemning new women’s adoption of western ideas of sexual liberation and gender equality. While the modernizing male nationalists acknowledged the need for women’s education and their involvement in the movement, they resisted a radical restructuring of gender relations, especially when what women wanted and acquired from the nationalist movement was not confined to the cause of nationalism.
The terms of new women’s arguments centered on issues of sexual liberation and the adoption of western fashion styles. I argue that new women’s configuration of women’s liberation and power structure within Korean society led them to individualistic modes of negotiating their identity and claiming agency. Much of the public censure and the symbolic social death of new women came from society’s male-centered critique that marginalized the ways that new women actively negotiated and resisted the social and familial constraints upon them.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: There is no abstract for this paper.