What does the crowd think? How online comments and popularity metrics affect news credibility and issue importance

Online comments hold the potential to promote positive deliberative outcomes, although past work has also shown that comments can have undesired effects when the sentiment of the crowd turns negative. Does the presence of comments possibly bolster or interfere with the reception and traditional functions of news media? Informed by the Modality-Agency-Interactivity-Navigability (MAIN) model, an online experiment tested the effect of reader comments (positive vs negative), number of “re-tweets” and “likes” (low vs high), and coverage frequency (infrequent vs frequent) on news credibility and issue importance. Negative reader comments (relative to positive comments) decreased message credibility and issue importance through the sequential indirect pathway of bandwagon perceptions, attention, and construct accessibility. Study results suggest that the traditional functions of news media may be hindered by audience incivility.

A Live Simulation-Based Investigation: Interactions with Clients and Their Effect on Audit Judgment and Professional Skepticism

SUMMARY Threats to professional skepticism are embedded in the social relationships and interactions between auditors and management. These can affect auditor skepticism and the extent of audit procedures performed. In this study, we conduct an experiment using live simulation to create a realistic audit setting to investigate the effect of these interactions on professional skepticism. Each participant (n = 49) completed a measure of trait skepticism and conducted an audit interview with a professional actor trained to play the role of a client controller. Findings indicate that, in general, participants who interview a friendly controller (rather than an intimidating controller) are less likely to determine questionable cash disbursements to be control exceptions and less likely to recommend more intensive follow-up. However, consistent with social psychology research on construct accessibility, planned contrasts indicate that participants who score low on trait skepticism are least likely to identify control exceptions and recommend more intensive follow-up when interviewing a friendly controller. This study advances research on professional skepticism by examining the impact that type of social interaction (friendly, intimidating) has on professional skepticism using a methodology (live simulation) that allows us to simulate a realistic audit environment. Use of this methodology increases external validity and generalizability of our findings. As a result, this study corroborates concerns that the social relationships/interactions between management and the auditor can be a threat to professional skepticism, and allows us to understand better how, when, and where these threats occur.

Narratives and Goals

Goals are a central feature of narratives, and, thus, narratives may be particularly potent means of goal priming. Two studies examined two features of goal priming (postdelay behavioral assimilation and postfulfillment accessibility) that have been theorized to distinguish goal from semantic construct priming. Across the studies, participants were primed with high achievement, either in a narrative or nonnarrative context and then completed either a behavioral task, followed by a measure of construct accessibility, or a behavioral task after a delay. Indicative of goal priming, narrative-primed participants showed greater postdelay behavioral assimilation and less postfulfillment accessibility than those exposed to the nonnarrative prime. The implications of goal priming from narratives are discussed in relation to both theoretical and methodological issues.

Does Power Magnify the Expression of Dispositions?

Conventional wisdom holds that power holders act more in line with their dispositions than do people who lack power. Drawing on principles of construct accessibility, we propose that this is the case only when no alternative constructs are activated. In three experiments, we assessed participants’ chronic dispositions and subsequently manipulated participants’ degree of power. Participants then either were or were not primed with alternative (i.e., inaccessible or counterdispositional) constructs. When no alternatives were activated, the responses of power holders—perceptions of other people (Experiment 1), preferences for charitable donations (Experiment 2), and strategies in an economic game (Experiment 3)—were more in line with their chronically accessible constructs than were the responses of low-power participants. However, when alternatives had been activated, power holders’ responses were no longer more congruent with their dispositions than were the responses of low-power participants. We propose a single mechanism according to which power increases reliance on accessible constructs—that is, constructs that easily come to mind—regardless of whether these constructs are chronically or temporarily accessible.

Mistaken Identity

Four studies investigated whether activating a social identity can lead group members to choose options that are labeled in words associated with that identity. When political identities were made salient, Republicans (but not Democrats) became more likely to choose the gamble or investment option labeled “conservative.” This shift did not occur in a condition in which the same options were unlabeled. Thus, the mechanism underlying the effect appears to be not activated identity-related values prioritizing low risk, but rather activated identity-related language (the group label “conservative”). Indeed, when political identities were salient, Republicans favored options labeled “conservative” regardless of whether the options were low or high risk. Finally, requiring participants to explain the label “conservative” before making their choice did not diminish the effect, which suggests that it does not merely reflect inattention to content or construct accessibility. We discuss the implications of these results for the literatures on identity, priming, choice, politics, and marketing.

When Temporal Contiguity Matters

Whereas several recent studies have examined the role of various personal and situational variables as moderators of the predictive validity of implicit measures, the role played by methodological factors has attracted relatively less attention. A two-session study (N = 104) investigated the influence of temporal contiguity between measurement and criterion on the validities of two implicit measures, the SC-IAT and the IAT, and an explicit measure, for predicting the results of a rapid picture-choice task. Because temporal contiguity between the independent and dependent variables can be framed in terms of accessibility, it was expected to moderate the predictive validities of the implicit but not of the explicit measures. The hypothesis was confirmed: The contiguity moderated the predictive validities of both implicit measures for the rapid picture-choice task. This moderation effect did not occur for explicit measures. Results also demonstrated that the SC-IAT did not show robust predictive validity whereas the IAT had an incremental validity for self-reported behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of the role played by construct accessibility in the predictive validity of implicit measures.