Teachers' brief nonverbal behaviors in defined instructional situations can predict students' evaluations.

Can a few seconds of high school teachers' nonverbal (NV) behavior predict students' ratings of these teachers (SRT)? Yes, but NV-SRT relations varied among various instructional situations. NV behaviors while administering the class and using the board were unrelated to SRT. Positive judgments of NV behavior while disciplining the class and interacting with students were positively related to SRT. NV behaviors in frontal teaching were negatively related to SRT. The most negative NV-SRT relations were found for teachers' differential NV behavior toward high- versus low-achieving students. Teacher differentiality and SRT have rarely been investigated in high school. The structure of SRT seems to differ between high school and college, and students' anger about teachers' differentiality strongly predicted their evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Psychological Price of Media Bias.

Media bias was investigated through the effects of a TV interviewer's preferential behavior on the image of the interviewee in the eyes of the viewers. Judges viewed a political interview with either a friendly or a hostile interviewer then rated their impressions of the interviewed politician, whose behavior was identical in all conditions. The preferential nonverbal behavior of the interviewer (controlling for recognition and comprehension of verbal content) systematically influenced viewers' ratings of the politician. The effect consisted mainly of damage to the politician in the hostile interviewer condition. Describing the interviewee as a professor yielded a similar preferential behavior effect. A strong halo effect was identified, but it was ruled out as the mechanism accounting for the interviewer effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pygmalion, Galatea, and the Golem: Investigations of biased and unbiased teachers.

Examined differential expectancy effects as a function of teachers' susceptibility to biasing information and the distinction between positive ("Galatea") and negative ("Golem") outcomes of teacher expectancies. 26 biased and unbiased student teachers were identified on the basis of their susceptibility to biasing information in scoring drawings allegedly made by high- or low-status students. High-bias teachers treated the students they perceived to be of low potential negatively while at the same time treating randomly selected students in a manipulated high-expectancy group as favorably as they treated the students they themselves nominated as being of high potential. Unbiased teachers treated all 3 groups of students (N?=?202) equitably. The strongest and most consistent Golem effects were observed for behavioral manifestations of dogmatism. These patterns of differential negative expectancy effects were evident not only in teachers' behavior but also in students' actual performance of specially designed tasks. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The teacher's pet phenomenon: Rate of occurrence, correlates, and psychological costs.

The teacher's pet phenomenon was investigated in 80 5th-grade Israeli classrooms. Pets were identified through students' sociometric nominations in 80% of the classrooms: exclusive pets in 26% and unexclusive pets in 54% of the classrooms. Pets tended to be girls rather than boys, of Ashkenazi rather than Sephardi origin, very good (but not necessarily the best) students academically, and perceived as charming, socially skilled, and compliant. Teachers who had pets were found to hold somewhat more authoritarian attitudes than teachers who did not have pets, and the rate of occurrence of the pet phenomenon was higher in religious than in secular schools. Students' affective reactions to their teachers were more positive in classrooms without pets, and most negative in exclusive-pet classrooms. Potential favoritism in assigning teacher grades to exclusive pets was also investigated: No overall favoritism was found, but a trace of favoritism by more authoritarian teachers was discovered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality correlates of susceptibility to biasing information.

Asked 113 undergraduates to score 2 drawings, one allegedly made by a high-status child and the other by a disadvantaged child. The difference between the scores that each S attributed to the 2 drawings (compared to the objective base level) was the S's bias score. High-bias Ss (with bias scores 1 standard deviation or more above the overall mean bias) described themselves as more reasonable than no-bias Ss (bias scores of zero) and as less emotionally extreme in the directions of toughness, tenderness, and level of enthusiasm. This pattern is interpreted as reflecting the need system suggestive of the dogmatic personality. In a 2nd study with 179 undergraduates, no differences were found between the extreme-bias groups in responses to self-report questionnaires and the Embedded Figures Test or in political views. However, high-bias Ss responded more extremely than no-bias Ss to direct questions pertaining to their political ideology, independent of its content and direction, in line with the conception of dogmatism as a style of thinking independent of ideological content. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Switching behavior of mobile users: do users' relational investments and demographics matter?

Mobile user switching has become a critical issue facing mobile service providers. This study examines the switching behavior of mobile users who are not under any contractual obligations to stay with a provider. Drawing upon the literature on relationship marketing and switching costs, we examine if the relational investments made by mobile users in a user-provider relationship and demographics influence their switching behavior. Based on data on over 30,590 mobile users, we examine our research questions. Statistical analysis supports significant associations between mobile users' service usage, service bundling and their switching behavior. Support was also found for the influence of age and gender on mobile user switching.     

Propellanes VIII. Electrocyclic Reactions of Tetraenic Propellanes

The electrocyclic reaction sequence of tetraenic propellanes is analogous to that of their parent, cis-9,10-dihydronaphthalene as a member of the (CH)¹⁰ family. Irradiation of Ia-e afforded IIa-e of which IIb and IIc have been isolated. These are the first stable derivatives of tetracyclo [4.4.0.0^2,10.0^5,7]deca-3,8-diene. Thermal bond-realignment of IIa-e led, due to fluxional isomerism in prebullvalene and its derivatives, to prebullvalenes of the III series. Only in the case of the prebullvalene lactone was it possible to observe IVd alongside of IIId in its room terperature NMR spectrum. Irradiation of the prebullvalene ether IIIe afforded a bullvalene ether which at low temperature shows the presence of XIII (R=R=?CH₂-O-CH₂-) and XV.     

Performance and personality correlates of teachers' susceptibility to biasing information.

Using Draw-A-Person test scores attributed to a "high-status" and "low-status" child, 82 teachers of high and low susceptibility to stereotypically biasing information were identified and studied. In paper-and-pencil tasks, Ss differed from each other in responding to (a) some scales of a self-report personality inventory (Clinical Analysis Questionnaire and Rokeach Dogmatism Scale) and (b) open-ended educational events pertaining to teachers' failure. Ss did not differ in responses to the dogmatism scale and educational events pertaining to problems with individual children and to educational ideology. Classroom observations revealed systematic differences in teacher and student behavior between the high-bias and no-bias groups. These differences, indicative of authoritarianism, were validated by supervisors' evaluations, which correlated strongly with the classroom observations. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The "teacher's pet" phenomenon, students' perceptions of teachers' differential behavior, and students' morale.

The relationships among the teacher's pet phenomenon, students' perceptions of teachers' differential behavior, and students' morale were investigated in 80 upper elementary Israeli classrooms. The intensity of the teacher's pet phenomenon (rate of students' consensus in identifying teachers' pets in each classroom) was related to perceived teachers' differential behavior, particularly to teachers' differential (also preferential) affect. In turn, teachers' perceived differential affect was negatively related to students' morale and satisfaction. In classrooms of teachers who had pets who were not popular, students demonstrated lower morale, whereas students in "popular-pet" classrooms did not demonstrate lower morale. Previous findings on the teacher's pet phenomenon and on students' and teachers' perceptions of teachers' differential behavior were replicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)