Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Analysis of Trump's tweets reveals systematic diversion of the media

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

President Donald Trump's controversial use of social media is widely known and theories abound about its ulterior motives. New research published today in Nature Communications claims to provide the first evidence-based analysis demonstrating the US President's Twitter account has been routinely deployed to divert attention away from a topic potentially harmful to his reputation, in turn suppressing negative related media coverage.

The international study, led by the University of Bristol in the UK, tested two hypotheses: whether an increase in harmful media coverage was followed by increased diversionary Twitter activity, and if such diversion successfully reduced subsequent media coverage of the harmful topic.

Lead author Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol, said: "Our analysis presents empirical evidence consistent with the theory that whenever the media report something threatening or politically uncomfortable for President Trump, his account increasingly tweets about unrelated topics representing his political strengths. This systematic diversion of attention away from a topic potentially damaging to him was shown to significantly reduce negative media coverage the next day."

Social media gives political leaders direct and immediate access to their constituents, offering an opportunity to explain their actions and policy proposals at an unprecedented scale. President Trump is one of the most prolific users among world leaders. Since the beginning of his candidacy in 2015, approximately 30,000 tweets have been sent from Trump's account. While anecdotal reports suggest the tweets have served to divert media attention away from news that can be assumed to be politically harmful to him, evidence for such diversion has remained unsubstantiated - until now.

The study focused on Trump's first two years in office, scrutinising the Robert Mueller investigation into potential collusion with Russia in the 2016 Presidential Election, as this was politically harmful to the President. The team analysed content relating to Russia and the Mueller investigation in two of the country's most politically neutral media outlets, New York Times (NYT) and ABC World News Tonight (ABC). The team also selected a set of keywords judged to play to Trump's preferred topics at the time, which were hypothesized to be likely to appear in diversionary tweets. The keywords related to "jobs", "China", and "immigration"; topics representing the president's supposed political strengths.

The researchers hypothesized that the more ABC and NYT reported on the Mueller investigation, the more Trump's tweets would mention jobs, China, and immigration, which in turn would result in less coverage of the Mueller investigation by ABC and NYT.

In support of their hypotheses, the team found that every five additional ABC headlines relating to the Mueller investigation was associated with one more mention of a keyword in Trump's tweets. In turn, two additional mentions of one of the keywords in a Trump tweet was associated with roughly one less mention of the Mueller investigation in the following day's NYT.

Such a pattern did not emerge with placebo topics that presented no threat to the President, for instance Brexit or other non-political issues such as football or gardening.

The research also conducted an expanded analysis considering the President's entire Twitter vocabulary as a potential source of diversion, which confirmed the generality of the researchers' conclusions. Specifically, the analysis identified nearly 90 pairs of words that were more likely to appear in tweets when Russia-Mueller coverage increased, and that suppressed media coverage the next day. Those word pairs largely represented the President's political strengths, focusing again in particular on the economy.

Both analyses accounted for a number of potentially confounding factors and robustness checks, such as randomisation, sensitivity analyses, and the use of placebo keywords, to rule out artifactual explanations and strengthen claims of possible causal relationships.

Professor Lewandowsky said: "It's unclear whether President Trump, or whoever is at the helm of his Twitter account, engages in such tactics intentionally or if it's mere intuition. Either way, we hope these results serve as a helpful reminder to the media that they have the power to set the news agenda, focusing on the topics they deem most important, while perhaps not paying so much attention to the Twitter-sphere."

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Paper:

Using the president's tweets to understand political diversion in the age of social media by Stephan Lewandowsky, Michael Jetter, & Ullrich Ecker in Nature Communications

New research identifies 'triple trouble' for mangrove coasts

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Research News

IMAGE: MANGROVES WITH DENSE ROOTS TRAP MUD MORE EFFECTIVELY. view more
CREDIT: BAREND VAN MAANEN

Some of the world's most valuable ecosystems are facing a "triple threat" to their long-term durability and survival, new research shows.

The study found that mangrove forests, their large biodiversity and the coastal protection they provide are under pressure from three distinct threats - sea-level rise, lack of mud and squeezed habitats.

The research, conducted by an international team of experts including Dr Barend van Maanen from the University of Exeter, identifies not only how these coastal forests get pushed against their shores, but also what causes the loss of their diversity.

It shows the negative effects of river dams that decrease the supply of mud that could otherwise raise mangrove soils, while buildings and seawalls largely occupy the space that mangroves require for survival.

The study is published in Environmental Research Letters.

Coastal mangrove forests are valuable, highly biodiverse ecosystems that protect coastal communities against storms.

Mangroves withstand flooding by tides and capture mud to raise their soils. But as the mangrove trees cannot survive if they are under water for too long, the combination of sea-level rise and decreasing mud supply from rivers poses a serious threat.

New computer simulations show how coastal forests retreat landward under sea-level rise, especially in coastal areas where mud in the water is declining. The simulations include interactions among tides, mud transport and, for the first time, multiple mangrove species.

Dr van Maanen, senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and supervisor of the project, said: "Both mangrove coverage loss and diversity loss go hand in hand when that landward retreat is limited by expanding cities, agriculture or flood protection works."

The model also shows that mangrove trees with dense roots trap mud more effectively and can stop it from reaching forest areas further inland.

Danghan Xie, PhD researcher at Utrecht University and lead author of the study said: "This makes the more landward-located trees flood for longer periods of time, an effect that is intensified by sea-level rise.

"Increasing landward flooding then seriously reduces biodiversity.

"Human land use prevents the mangroves 'escaping' flooding by migrating inland, narrowing the mangrove zone and further endangering biodiversity."

A narrow mangrove zone is much less effective in protecting the coast against storms, or in the worst case loses its protective properties altogether.

Co-author Dr Christian Schwarz, environmental scientist at the University of Delaware, added: "The loss of mangrove species will have dramatic ecological and economic implications, but fortunately there are ways to help safeguarding these ecosystems.

"It is essential to secure or restore mud delivery to coasts to counter negative effects of sea-level rise.

"For coasts where mud supply remains limited, removal of barriers that obstruct inland migration is of utmost importance to avoid loss of mangrove forests and biodiversity."

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The publication Mangrove diversity loss under sea-level rise triggered by bio-morphodynamic feedbacks and anthropogenic pressures is published in Environmental Research Letters.

Co-authors are from Utrecht University, the Netherlands; University of Delaware, USA; University of Exeter, UK and Hohai University, China.

Getting single-crystal diamond ready for electronics

Researchers from Osaka University polished the hardest known material without damaging it, which will help accelerate its use in advanced electronics

OSAKA UNIVERSITY

Research News

Osaka, Japan - Silicon has been the workhorse of electronics for decades because it is a common element, is easy to process, and has useful electronic properties. A limitation of silicon is that high temperatures damage it, which limits the operating speed of silicon-based electronics. Single-crystal diamond is a possible alternative to silicon. Researchers recently fabricated a single-crystal diamond wafer, but common methods of polishing the surface--a requirement for use in electronics--are a combination of slow and damaging.

In a study recently published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Osaka University and collaborating partners polished a single-crystal diamond wafer to be nearly atomically smooth. This procedure will be useful for helping diamond replace at least some of the silicon components of electronic devices.

Diamond is the hardest known substance and essentially does not react with chemicals. Polishing it with a similarly hard tool damages the surface and conventional polishing chemistry is slow. In this study, the researchers in essence first modified the quartz glass surface and then polished diamond with modified quartz glass tools.

"Plasma-assisted polishing is an ideal technique for single-crystal diamond," explains lead author Nian Liu. "The plasma activates the carbon atoms on the diamond surface without destroying the crystal structure, which lets a quartz glass plate gently smooth away surface irregularities."

The single-crystal diamond, before polishing, had many step-like features and was wavy overall, with an average root mean square roughness of 0.66 micrometers. After polishing, the topographical defects were gone, and the surface roughness was far less: 0.4 nanometers.

"Polishing decreased the surface roughness to near-atomic smoothness," says senior author Kazuya Yamamura. "There were no scratches on the surface, as seen in scaife mechanical smoothing approaches."

Furthermore, the researchers confirmed that the polished surface was unaltered chemically. For example, they detected no graphite--therefore, no damaged carbon. The only detected impurity was a very small amount of nitrogen from the original wafer preparation.

"Using Raman spectroscopy, the full width at half maximum of the diamond lines in the wafer were the same, and the peak positions were almost identical," says Liu. "Other polishing techniques show clear deviations from pure diamond."

With this research development, high-performance power devices and heat sinks based on single-crystal diamond are now attainable. Such technologies will dramatically lower the power use and carbon input, and improve the performance, of future electronic devices.

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The article, "Damage-free highly efficient plasma-assisted polishing of a 20-mm square large mosaic single-crystal diamond substrate," was published in Scientific Reports at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-76430-6

About Osaka University

Osaka University was founded in 1931 as one of the seven imperial universities of Japan and is now one of Japan's leading comprehensive universities with a broad disciplinary spectrum. This strength is coupled with a singular drive for innovation that extends throughout the scientific process, from fundamental research to the creation of applied technology with positive economic impacts. Its commitment to innovation has been recognized in Japan and around the world, being named Japan's most innovative university in 2015 (Reuters 2015 Top 100) and one of the most innovative institutions in the world in 2017 (Innovative Universities and the Nature Index Innovation 2017). Now, Osaka University is leveraging its role as a Designated National University Corporation selected by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to contribute to innovation for human welfare, sustainable development of society, and social transformation.

Website: https://resou.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/top

Do consumers enjoy events more when commenting on them?

News from the Journal of Marketing

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Research News

Researchers from Rutgers University and New York University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that explores the phenomenon of user-generated content during experiences.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Generating Content Increases Enjoyment by Immersing Consumers and Accelerating Perceived Time" and is authored by Gabriela Tonietto and Alixandra Barasch.

"Enjoy the moment. Put down your phone." The media is full of headlines telling consumers that to truly enjoy themselves and their experiences, the first step is to ditch their cellphones. Yet this advice often appears to fall on deaf ears. Major events routinely coincide with huge surges in social media posts as millions tweet during experiences like the Super Bowl and World Cup. This poses something of a conundrum. People clearly generate large amounts of content--remarking on what they are currently doing, hearing, and seeing--as experiences unfold, but is this behavior helpful or harmful?

The research team systematically examined the effect of generating content on people's feelings of immersion in their experiences and discovered that this common behavior can actually improve experiences. Across a series of nine studies, results indicate that when people create content about unfolding experiences, they ultimately enjoy the experience more, because creating content increases engagement and makes time feel like it is "flying." Tonietto explains that, "In contrast to popular press advice, this research uncovers an important benefit of technology's role in our daily lives ... by generating content relevant to ongoing experiences, people can use technology in a way that complements, rather than interferes with, their experiences."

The researchers tested the potential benefits of generating content across a variety of experiences including the Super Bowl halftime show, holiday celebrations, a dance performance, virtual safaris and bus tours, and a horror film. During all these experiences, which differed in their pleasantness and duration (from a few minutes to multiple hours), they consistently found that generating content led people to feel more immersed in their experiences and to feel as though time was passing more quickly. Interestingly, this occurred whether people tended to say positive or negative things about the experience. Moreover, generating content generating content increased people's enjoyment of positive experiences, though this effect did not occur for negative experiences.

Importantly, just because a consumer is on her phone does not mean that she's distracted or unable to become absorbed in her experience. Barasch says "We found that when people choose to generate content, they tend to do so in a constructive way. On average, people create content that is directly relevant to their current experience, with positive effects on their evaluations of the experience. However, when people use their technology to generate irrelevant content, this behavior is no longer beneficial. That is, only when people communicate about the unfolding experience itself does content creation increase immersion and enjoyment."

Interestingly, marketers often encourage consumers to communicate about their events and experiences. For example, companies may use branded hashtags, offer discounts and rewards tied to posting on social media, or use sharing platforms customized for individual events. The study tested two potential strategies for firms to encourage content creation: 1) an incentive (i.e., reward) for generating content; and 2) a norm nudge, where consumers are informed of how common this behavior is among other consumers. As expected, both strategies effectively increased content creation. Even more importantly, consumers who were incentivized or motivated by social norms to generate content reaped the same experiential benefits as those who created content organically. That is, content generation in response to a firm's encouragement can still lead consumers to feel more immersed in the experience and to enjoy it more. These findings illustrate how leveraging consumer content creation can mutually benefit marketers and consumers alike by improving experiences.

So, the next time you're advised to put down your phone in order to truly live "in the moment," remember that this depends on how you're using your phone. If you're posting about the last movie you saw while ignoring the person across the dinner table from you, then this could potentially detract from your current experience. But if you're using your device to comment, joke, or even complain about your current experience, then this research indicates you may be more engaged and enjoy that experience more than if you kept your phone in your pocket.

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Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022242920944388

About the Journal of Marketing

The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Christine Moorman (T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University) serves as the current Editor in Chief.

https://www.ama.org/jm

About the American Marketing Association (AMA)

As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what's coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences.

https://www.ama.org

Researchers identify new Rickettsia species in dogs

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

Researchers at North Carolina State University have identified a new species of Rickettsia bacteria that may cause significant disease in dogs and humans. This new yet unnamed species, initially identified in three dogs, is part of the spotted-fever group Rickettsia which includes Rickettsia rickettsii, the bacteria that cause Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF).

Rickettsia pathogens are categorized into four groups; of those, spotted-fever group Rickettsia (which are transmitted by ticks) is the most commonly known and contains the most identified species. There are more than 25 species of tick-borne, spotted-fever group Rickettsia species worldwide, with R. rickettsii being one of the most virulent and dangerous.

For dogs, R. rickettsii is the only known spotted fever group Rickettsia that causes clinical disease in North America. Symptoms of RMSF in dogs and people are similar, including fever, lethargy, weight loss and symptoms related to vascular inflammation, like swelling, rash and pain.

In 2018 and 2019, three dogs from three different states (Tennessee, Illinois and Oklahoma) with exposure to ticks and RMSF-associated symptoms had blood samples taken, to test them for R. rickettsii. While the samples reacted positively to antibody tests for R. rickettsii, when researchers at NC State utilized polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the pathogen's DNA from the samples, the DNA they retrieved was only 95% similar to R. rickettsii.

"Often, antibodies from other spotted fever group Rickettsia will cross-react in antibody tests for RMSF," says Barbara Qurollo, associate research professor at NC State and corresponding author of a paper describing the work. "So to be sure what we're dealing with, we also look at the genetic information via PCR and that's how we found that this is a new organism."

The initial PCR work led Qurollo and James Wilson, a PCR technician at NC State and first author of the study, to pursue the new bacteria further. They performed additional PCRs to amplify different genes and examined five different regions of the bacteria's DNA, comparing it to the sequenced DNA from other spotted fever group Rickettsia. They also performed a phylogenetic tree analysis, which allowed them to place the new Rickettsia firmly within the spotted fever group.

Before naming this new Rickettsia species, Qurollo and colleagues want to culture the organism, which would allow for better characterization of the new species. Culturing Rickettsia species from small amounts of a clinical sample has been difficult to do thus far.

"We're going to continue looking for this Rickettsia species, determine its geographical range and try to better characterize it - it's a slow process, but high on our radar," Qurollo says. "So far in 2020 we've detected this new Rickettsia species in four more dogs residing in the southeastern and midwestern U.S. We're also asking veterinarians to collect the ticks associated with dogs who show symptoms when possible, and we're collaborating with researchers in Oklahoma to collect ticks in the environment for testing. This will help us determine what tick species may be transmitting this particular bacteria.

"Another question we would like to answer is whether this new Rickettsia species also infects people. Dogs are great sentinels for tick-borne diseases - they have high rates of exposure to ticks and the ability to become infected with many of the same tick-borne pathogens that infect people. We hope to take a 'One Health' approach to this new pathogen and collaborate with scientists in human medicine as well."

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The work appears in Emerging Infectious Diseases. The PCR work was performed at NC State's Vector Borne Disease Diagnostics Lab, in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Note to editors:
An abstract follows.

"A Novel Rickettsia species Infecting Dogs in the United States"

DOI: 10.3201/eid2612.200272

Authors: James M. Wilson, Edward B. Breitschwerdt, Nicholas B. Juhasz, Henry S. Marr, Barbara Qurollo, North Carolina State University; Joao Felipe de Brito Galvao, VCA Arboretum View Animal Hospital, Downers Grove, IL; Carmela L. Pratt, Oklahoma Veterinary Specialists, Tulsa, OK
Published: Online in Emerging Infectious Diseases

Abstract:
In 2018 and 2019, three dogs with febrile illness and hematological abnormalities were infected with a novel Rickettsia sp. All dogs were R. rickettsii seroreactive and identical Rickettsia DNA sequences were amplified from blood samples. By multi-locus phylogenetic analysis the Rickettsia sp. was related to human Rickettsia pathogens.

Why do bats fly into walls?

Tel Aviv University research finds that the combination of a large object and a weak echo disrupts the animals' sensory perception

AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY

Research News

Bats excel in acoustic perception and detect objects as tiny as mosquitoes using sound waves. Echolocation permits them to calculate the three-dimensional location of both small and large objects, perceiving their shape, size and texture. To this end, a bat's brain processes various acoustic dimensions from the echoes returning from the object such as frequency, spectrum and intensity.

But sometimes bats collide with large walls even though they detect these walls with their sonar system. Researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) have concluded that these collisions do not result from a sensory limitation but rather from an error in acoustic perception.

The study was led by Dr. Sasha Danilovich, a former PhD student in the lab of Prof. Yossi Yovel, Head of the Sagol School for Neuroscience and faculty member at the School of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences. Other participants included Dr. Arian Bonman and students Gal Shalev and Aya Goldstein of the Sensory Perception and Cognition Laboratory at the School of Zoology and the Sagol School of Neuroscience. The paper was published on October 26, 2020, in PNAS.

The TAU researchers released dozens of bats in a corridor blocked by objects of different sizes and made of different materials. To their surprise, the researchers discovered that the bats collided with large sponge walls that produce a weak echo as if they did not exist. The bats' behavior suggested that they did this even though they had detected the wall with their sonar system, indicating that the collision did not result from a sensory limitation, but rather from an acoustic misperception.

The researchers hypothesize that the unnatural combination of a large object and a weak echo disrupts the bats' sensory perception and causes them to ignore the obstacle, much like people who bump into transparent walls.

The researchers then methodically changed the features of the objects along the corridor, varying their size, texture and echo intensity. They concluded that the bats' acoustic perception depends on a coherent, typical correlation of the dimensions with objects in nature -- that a large object should produce a strong echo and a small object a weak echo.

"By presenting the bats with objects whose acoustic dimensions are not coherent, we were able to mislead them, creating a misconception that caused them to repeatedly try to fly into a wall even though they had identified it with their sonar," Danilovich explains. "The experiment gives us a peek into how the world is perceived by these creatures, whose senses are so unique and different from ours."

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Tel Aviv University (TAU) exemplifies the qualities of the city it inhabits -- innovative, fast-paced, exciting, and creative. A globally top-ranked university, a leading research institution, a center of discovery -- TAU embraces a culture and student body that is inquisitive and responsive to pressing issues and world-wide problems. As Israel's largest public institution of higher learning, TAU is home to 30,000 students, including 2,100 international students from over 100 countries. The University encompasses nine faculties, 35 schools, 400 labs, and has 17 affiliated hospitals in its network.

Don't be fooled by pretty food, USC research warns

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Research News

IMAGE: USC RESEARCHER LINDA HAGEN FOUND THAT FOOD THAT IS PRESENTED AND STYLED EXPERTLY WAS OFTEN PERCEIVED AS BETTER OR MORE NATURAL. view more
CREDIT: (PHOTO/ISTOCK)

As the holiday season nears, thoughts of pumpkin pies, roasted chestnuts and turkey dinners fill our dreams and our grocery shopping lists. While visions of holiday food may be pleasing to the eyes and tantalizing to the palate, it would be a mistake to conclude that pretty food is healthier than other food.

Yet consumers often fail to make the distinction, a mistake that the food industry, advertisers and restaurants count on to promote products.

So says USC research recently published in the Journal of Marketing. The study employed social science and psychology to unravel the complexity of how perceptions of beauty drive our appetite and spending decisions. And the researcher suggested measures that industry and policymakers can take to protect public health.

"Marketers frequently style food to look pretty," said Linda Hagen, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business. "In our minds, people associate aesthetic beauty with nature and natural things, which transfers to perceptions that pretty food is healthy food, but people are often misled by the prettiness of food that's not very good for you."

Consumers see almost 7,000 food and restaurant ads annually -- about 19 per day -- and nearly three-quarters of the messages promote fast food. Advertisers employ teams of food stylists and digital tools to render food irresistible. The images include the artful architecture of a hamburger, a perfect circumference of cheesy pizza or cascading colorful nachos or French fries.

Hagen examined how classical aesthetics used in food presentation skews perception. Features such as symmetry, patterns, order and balance are hallmarks of classical beauty because they mimic nature. Think spider webs or honeycombs, a starfish or sunsets, butterfly wings or fish scales. Food looks pretty when it copies naturelike features. Moreover, previous neuroscience research suggests viewing delectable food images activates the brain's gustatory cortex, essentially simulating the food's pleasurable taste.

USC research shows a perceived link between pretty and healthy food

This study goes a step further to determine if pretty aesthetics have other, less obvious effects on food choices, assessing if attractive food appears healthier to consumers and thus influences their decisions.

In a series of experiments involving 4,300 subjects, the researcher asked people to examine photos of food as well as actual samples of food, then evaluate the displays as healthy or unhealthy and processed or unprocessed.

In the first study, 800 people were asked to search the internet and pick out samples of pretty or ugly food. The subjects returned with images of ice cream, lasagna, omelets and sandwiches, among other items. Next, subjects were asked to determine if the food was nutritious and healthy or not. Overwhelmingly, both men and women reported that pretty food was healthier.

In another experiment, 400 subjects evaluated two renderings of avocado toast: one image that showed neatly sliced crescents of delicate avocado arrayed on the toast and the other that depicted the fruit as a chunky green glop smeared on the bread. The participants were asked to rate the images by healthiness, naturalness and tastiness.

For each criterion, the subjects reported the pretty version of avocado toast as healthier and more natural, but the foods were viewed as equally expensive and tasty, the study shows.

The same outcome occurred with another group of 800 study participants who viewed pictures of foods such as cupcakes, almond bread with bananas and a plate of spaghetti marinara -- but with a caveat. Before they saw the images, the researcher had advised the subjects that the image they were about to see was aesthetically either flawed or beautiful, even though the image was the exact same photo. Biased by their expectation, the subjects considered the "ugly" food less natural and nutritious than the "pretty" food, though there was no real difference.

And the pattern continued in another experiment at a curbside produce stand that Hagen set up during move-in day at USC several years ago. She gave students $1, led them to a booth and showed them one of two green bell peppers: either a cosmetically perfect one or a somewhat odd-shaped one. When asked how much money they would maximally pay to purchase the bell pepper, the subjects were willing to spend roughly 56% more for the flawless fruit, a boost that was explained by a simultaneous increase in perceived healthiness.

"Time and again, in each of these experiments, people perceived the same food as more natural when it looks prettier and believe that this naturalness implies healthiness," Hagen said. "Consumers expect food to be more nutritious, less fatty and contain fewer calories when it looks pretty based on classical aesthetic principles, and that bias can affect consumer choices and willingness to pay for food."

Advertisements for pleasing-looking food may have more influence than you realize

In daily life, the effect holds true at the grocery store, where people consider natural things -- organic food, natural remedies or garden crops -- to be healthier than unnatural things such as processed food or synthetic chemicals.

Given that stylized food advertisements can mislead consumers into making unhealthy choices, the study suggests that companies or regulators consider measures such as disclaimers on food images in ads to disclose that the product has been modified to enhance its healthy appearance.

"Many food advertisements and restaurant menus may be suggesting greater levels of healthiness in food than is true," Hagen said. "The use of aesthetics that misleads people warrants close consideration by policymakers. A statement that explicitly reminds people that pretty food was modified for depiction helped mitigate the effect in the lab, so disclaimers may be an effective way to protect consumers."

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Hagen is an expert in eating behavior, food consumption and guilt. She received no financial support for the research.

You drive like a girl: Study shows gender bias in perceptions of ride-sharing performance

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Research News

Gender discrimination continues to plague organizations, and "gig economy" businesses, which have thrived over the last decade, are not immune, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.

Gig economy businesses, including Uber and Airbnb, offer temporary positions to independent workers while relying on consumer ratings and reviews as part of their advertising and marketing strategies.

But the system has its flaws. While digital brokerages provide a more efficient method for the exchange of goods and services and an improved way for consumers to voice their opinions about the quality of work they receive, bias and discrimination can emerge as part of the review process, according to "How unbecoming of you: Online experiments uncovering gender biases in perceptions of ridesharing performance," forthcoming in the Journal of Business Ethics from Nathan Meikle, postdoctoral research and teaching associate, and Corey Angst, professor of information technology, analytics and operations at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.

For the study, the team created an ostensibly new ride-sharing service called Agile Rides with a publicly available mock website to reinforce its legitimacy. The team asked 919 participants from the crowdsourcing website Amazon MTurk to help them understand what makes a good rider experience and to imagine going through a detailed experience based on a recent customer experience with a driver. The vignette varied by gender and whether the rider had a good or bad experience. Participants then rated driver performance.

"In the online experiment, we examined participants' perceptions of the drivers," said Meikle, who specializes in social perception and its implications for organizations. "When driver performance was high-quality, participants rated female and male drivers equally. However, when driver performance was low-quality, participants rated female drivers significantly lower than male drivers."

In the gig economy, the traditional manager-subordinate relationship is absent and drivers receive their "performance evaluations" from customers.

The team points out that because digital platforms represent new, rapidly growing work environments capable of subjecting workers to bias and discrimination from a wide number of evaluators, companies should -- for moral, strategic and legal reasons -- consider algorithmic weightings based on gender to combat discrimination.

"If customers discriminate against female drivers, the female drivers may be dismissed from the platform, or at least punished financially, for performing equal quality work as men," Meikle said. "When employees' compensation and job security depend on the ratings of customers rather than on the ratings of managers, companies should examine whether customers are rating employees fairly and adjust the ratings accordingly."

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Co-authors of the study include Brad Greenwood from George Mason University and Idris Adjerid from Virginia Tech.

Study finds surprising diversity in early child care

Seven pathways to kindergarten identified in one state

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study of kindergarteners in one Midwestern state identified seven different pathways the children took in their early education and care before arriving at school.

The researchers were surprised by the diverse experiences that kids brought with them to kindergarten: While some received care only in their home or mainly in a child care center, others switched back and forth between different types of care, or had other arrangements.

This study is one of the few that has looked at kids' child care experiences all the way from birth to kindergarten, which allowed the researchers to capture the broad range of pathways, said Nathan Helsabeck, lead author of the study and a graduate research associate in educational studies at The Ohio State University.

"There are more nuanced differences in children's experiences before kindergarten than we originally thought," said Helsabeck, who is also an associate of Ohio State's Crane Center for Early Childhood Education and Policy.

"Looking at how children get to kindergarten could help us better consider what they need when they are entering school."

The study was published online in the journal Early Education and Development.

The study is part of a larger federally funded project designed to improve understanding of what happens in classrooms from pre-school to third grade. Data was collected from two large, suburban school districts including 25 schools, 152 classrooms and 3,472 students. A subsample of 568 students was used in this study.

One part of the study involved having parents complete questionnaires about their children's education and care from birth to 5 years old.

The researchers found that the largest group of children - 44% - received care only in the home over the first five years of life.

About 10% spent their first two years at home and in the third year became increasingly likely to be in center-based care. Another 7% spent these early years mostly in center-based care.

Those were the three pathways that the researchers had hypothesized would occur before they conducted the study, said Kelly Purtell, co-author of the study and associate professor of human sciences at Ohio State and faculty associate at the Crane Center.

But they found four other pathways as well: The second-largest group, 21%, were at home most of the early years, but were enrolled in a preschool or pre-kindergarten program in the last year before kindergarten. Other groups included children mostly cared for in informal settings (5%); those who went between home and informal care (8%); and those had both home and center care through the whole 5 years (5%).

Why were there so many different pathways?

"It reflects the patchwork availability of child care in this country," Purtell said.

"Child care for infants and young kids is expensive, so there are not a lot of affordable options for parents. Parents have to find different ways to take care of their kids while they work."

Helsabeck said he was particularly struck by the children whose care shifted from year to year, often from home to informal care, as their parents' situations changed.

"There was more than I expected in this category," he said.

"We need to realize that some kids face a lot of instability and their child care situations may change a lot. That may affect how they do in school."

The study also looked at how children who took different pathways did in kindergarten.

Findings did not show differences in test scores between children from different pathways. That was surprising, because most studies show an advantage to kids who spent more time in center-based care, Helsabeck said.

But he cautioned against making too much of that finding. It could be that there were not enough children in each of the seven groups to reveal differences in this study.

Results confirmed other studies that found children who spent most of their time in center-based care during their first five years had more teacher-reported social and behavioral problems in kindergarten.

That may be because these kids are already comfortable in school-like settings and are not as shy about acting out, Purtell said. They may also be more easily bored because for them, the experience is not novel.

"This is a real challenge for kindergarten teachers to navigate children who are brand new to this setting with those kids who are already familiar with the classroom setting," she said.

The researchers said that the seven pathways to kindergarten found in this study may not be the same everywhere.

"We looked at only two school districts in one state. That's not going to represent the whole country," Helsabeck said.

"But what we can take away from this is the wide range of experiences kids bring to kindergarten. It is going to affect how they do in school."

###

The research was supported by funding from the federal Institute of Education Sciences.

Other co-authors on the study, all from Ohio State, were Jessica Logan, assistant professor of educational studies; Laura Justice, professor of educational psychology and executive director of The Crane Center; and Tzu-Jung Ling, associate professor of educational studies and The Crane Center.

Contact:
Nathan Helsabeck,
Helsabeck.1@osu.edu

Kelly Purtell,
Purtell.15@osu.edu

Written by Jeff Grabmeier,
614-292-8457;
Grabmeier.1@osu.edu

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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