In societies with a tradition of partisan news media, whether news organizations have a political bias in their reporting is less of a concern. In other environments where mainstream news media purport to be fair and objective, and journalists are expected to be neutral gatekeepers instead of partisan advocates, whether or not the news media
A commentary is a genre of journalism that provides interpretations and opinions on current events, rather than factual reporting. Interpretations may include evaluating the motives behind actors’ behaviors, interpreting the wider scope and meaning of events, and assessing the ramifications and significance of facts. It also includes speculation, such as forecasting future events and foreseeing
Sociology is the systematic study of human behavior occurring in a social context. It seeks to understand how and why people act the way they do across an enormous variety of settings. Two major influences are acknowledged to affect human social behavior: (1) cultural factors such as values and norms and (2) structural factors such
The word sorcery usually means some sort of individual manipulation of supernatural forces to harm another person or to enrich the self at the expense of another, and in this sense belief in it seems to be absolutely universal. The English word derives from the Latin sort-, sors (“lots”), as in sortilege, to decide by
The designation folk speech is one of various terms that have been used to describe the language of ordinary people as used for routine purposes on the everyday level of face-to-face oral communication. Such variation refers to the pragmatic rather than to the grammatical aspect of language, that is, to the way language is used
Herbert Spencer, a British social philosopher and sociologist, was a widely recognized visionary and the founder of the theory of sociocultural evolution, and he had a major influence on Charles Darwin and his theory of biological evolution. Born in Derby, England in 1820, Spencer trained as a civil engineer and then became interested in social
Oswald Spengler was born in Blankenburg (Harz) in central Germany in 1880, the eldest of four children. As a young man, his family moved to the university city of Halle, where he studied Greek and Latin, mathematics, and the natural sciences. It was during this time, he also began to study the writings of Goethe
Spider monkeys are members of the order Primates, formerly included in the family Cebidae but now placed in the family Atelidae. They belong to the genus Ateles, which includes four species. These New World monkeys are found throughout the tropical rain forest regions of southern Mexico and Central and South America. Spider monkeys range between
Stereotypes are rigid clusters of overly simplified social and cultural characteristics conjoined into a single, imagined identity or schematic theory used to label a social group and assess members’ character, attitudes, and behaviors. They offer comfortable, convenient filters to make sense of complexity and are inherent in the act of social categorization and perception. Based
Julian Haynes Steward is best known for his seminal contributions to cultural ecology, multilinear evolutionism, archaeology, and ethnography of the Great Basin and Plateau region, ethnology of South America, the settlement pattern and salvage approaches in archaeology, irrigation agriculture and early civilization, hunter-gatherers, peasants, and area studies. Steward became the single most important individual in
Stonehenge is one of the most recognized formations of megalithic architecture and has a long history of speculation as to its builders, age, function, and changes over time. Located on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, it is one of over nine hundred such circles of standing stones in Great Britain alone. Thousands more are
Stratigraphy is the science of rock layering, with particular concern for composition, geographic distribution, and geological and chronological importance. This discipline also involves the interpretation of rock strata in terms of mode of origin and geologic history. As a main branch of sedimentology, stratigraphy generally relates the large-scale vertical and lateral similarities between units of
A traditional radio network consists of a series of radio broadcasting stations connected in some way (typically by broadcast, landline, microwave, or satellite) so that each of the stations can carry the same programs or advertisements. Often, the stations will carry the programs simultaneously, but under some circumstances (e.g., stations in differing time zones), a
The introduction of radio broadcasting during the 1920s released a tide of social changes, which have profoundly affected every society in the world, changes that have subsequently been amplified by television and information and communication technology. By the end of the twentieth century these electronic media had become so embedded in social, political, and economic
The history of radio technology can be divided chronologically into four main eras: experimentation with basic equipment between the 1890s and 1920s; broadcasting to mass audiences using established processes between the 1930s and 1950s; adjustment to the arrival of television from the 1950s; and, finally, the emergence of digital radio technology from the late 1980s.
There are many different uses for satellite technology, and television broadcasting is only one of them. In fact, communications satellites are also used for maritime applications, intercontinental telephony, business systems, and broadcasting television programming. In television, satellite is the easiest way to transmit a large number of services and thus a wide range of choices
Sports and the media, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, are so deeply interconnected as to give the impression of a smooth integration between two powerful socio-cultural institutions. Many – perhaps most – people across the world have a daily encounter with the sports media in some form, including print, electronic, online, and
The term “telegraph” was used from the late eighteenth century to describe line-of-sight distance communication systems, most notably Claude Chappé’s semaphore network. By 1810, this network linked 29 of France’s largest cities to Paris. Experimental telegraphs utilizing electricity passing over wire for signaling purposes were developed in the early 1800s, though it was the inventions
Television networks are organizations that produce or acquire the rights to TV programs, which are centrally distributed to affiliated stations where they are scheduled at uniform time slots. The distribution of content to geographically dispersed stations can occur using a variety of technical systems, involving traditional over-the-air electromagnetic broadcasting, cable, satellite, and now digital transmission.
Television history has developed relatively recently. After pioneering work in the UK (Briggs 1961–1995) and the US (Barnouw 1976), national histories of television (and broadcasting) have been written, mostly in Europe and sometimes beyond (bibliographies can be found at André Lange’s history of television website). Historians have focused mostly on political and institutional history. Television
Technological developments have played a major part in shaping the production, broadcasting, and reception of television. Histories of television tend to highlight a sequence of technologies (e.g., the cathode ray tube, fiber optic cable, and remote control) and their inventors (e.g., Nipkow, Baird, and Zworykin). This approach allows us to trace the development of the
The “underground press” typically refers to those newspapers and magazines produced by the counterculture that emerged in the mid-1960s and continued until the early 1970s. The counterculture was concerned with establishing an alternative society in direct opposition to mainstream society. The underground press became a vehicle for the elaboration of this ideal, along with social
Wireless service technicians are responsible for maintaining a specified group of cell sites, including the radio towers, cell site equipment, and often the building and grounds for the sites. Technicians routinely visit and monitor the functioning of the on-site equipment, performing preventive testing and maintenance. They are also responsible for troubleshooting and remedying problems that
Welders operate a variety of special equipment to join metal parts together permanently, usually using heat and sometimes pressure. They work on constructing and repairing automobiles, aircraft, ships, buildings, bridges, highways, appliances, and many other metal structures and manufactured products. Welding technicians are the link between the welder and the engineer and work to improve
From directing the bride to the best dress shops and cake decorators to pinning on the corsages the day of the wedding, wedding and party consultants, sometimes called event professionals, assist in the planning of weddings, receptions, and other large celebrations and events. By and large, most consultants deal in weddings. These consultants generally have
Webmasters design, implement, and maintain Internet Web sites for corporations, educational institutions, not-for-profit organizations, government agencies, or other institutions. Webmasters should have working knowledge of network configurations, interface, graphic design, software development, business, writing, marketing, and project management. Because the function of a webmaster encompasses so many different responsibilities, the position is often held by
Sports equipment managers are responsible for maintaining, ordering, and inventorying athletic equipment and apparel. They deal with everything from fitting football shoulder pads to sharpening hockey skates to doing the team’s laundry. There are more than 800 equipment managers employed in the United States, with the majority working for collegiate and high school teams. Sports
Zoologists are biologists who study animals. They often select a particular type of animal to study, and they may study an entire animal, one part or aspect of an animal, or a whole animal society or ecosystem. There are many areas of specialization from which a zoologist can choose, such as origins, genetics, characteristics, classifications
The Unisex Edition of the ACT Interest Inventory (UNIACT) is an assessment designed to identify personally relevant career (educational and occupational) options. Results are intended to help people see the connection between the work world and the activities they like to do. UNIACT is a component of several programs and services offered by ACT, such
Finance Career Cluster Overview Finance professionals such as bank employees, commodities brokers, and insurance claims representatives have very different day-to-day job responsibilities, but they all deal with the management and movement of money in one form or another. Although people still use banks primarily as places to safely keep and manage their money, today most automobiles, home
Human relations may be considered as patterned interactions over time. Thus, temporal change and continuity are constant and fundamental features of the human condition. In this perspective, the typical usage of the social change concept—as only applying when a “normal” state of affairs is radically and rapidly altered—involves several flawed assumptions, including the idea that
Social structure has been used in anthropology as the descriptor for a variety of conceptualizations of human organization. The term, wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss, “has nothing to do with empirical reality but with models which are built up after it.” The building up of such models was a central preoccupation in anthropology in the mid-20th century.
Socialization as a concept originated in sociology and refers most simply to the process of learning to pattern behavior and adapt to society’s norms, rules, and strictures for playing specific social roles. Although it has not been central to British social anthropology, the discipline’s focus on society has contributed to a heavier emphasis on socialization
The word class comes to us from the Latin classis, which referred to the division of Romans according to property. It takes on its modern sense in English from the late 18th century, when the profound sociopolitical upheavals associated with the French and Industrial Revolutions redrew the social map of Europe. Prior to this time
Complex society refers to societies with states and social classes. Three kinds of complexity are involved: there are socially and culturally differentiated and unequal groups; social segments have specialized activities and roles; and these societies are geographically complex, with unequal exchange between specialized regions. The term “complex society” is typical social scientific jargon, being both
All human societies have mechanisms that maintain social order so that decisions can be made, disputes resolved, and behavior regulated. In large states this is clearly apparent in the political and judicial structures developed for such purposes. However, in many societies these formal mechanisms seem nonexistent. In classic anthropological discourse, these egalitarian societies are “tribes
How people are socially situated in any given society vis-à-vis others is more than simply a political question, it is an issue of people’s relative “value” as this is determined by the members of a community. In anthropology, issues of rank are often found in chapters concerning political processes. While the consequences of rank invariably
Identifying the boundaries that circumscribe social groupings can present challenges, not only for anthropologists but also for those people living within the social groupings. There was a time in anthropological investigations where this did not seem to be a significant issue, when groups on the ground and living in relative communication with each other could
Sociobiology is the systematic study of animal and human social behavior from the perspective of biological evolution, especially from the gene’s point of view. An evolutionary approach to social behavior means to focus not on the proximate mechanisms (e.g., biochemical or humoral) that cause a particular behavior, but mostly (even exclusively, if possible) on so-called
Of the many fields of language study, sociolinguistics is one that provides understanding regarding the choices that people make to communicate with one another, to form communities, and to establish their personal identities in society. Sociolinguistics is a field in which communication, especially oral communication, is observed and documented in order to discover not only
Historians tend to agree that the Acta Diurna in ancient Rome, a daily gazette of official news, was one of the most important precursors of the newspaper as a public disseminator of topical information in the western world. (Newspapers, in their modern sense, would not emerge in countries such as China, Japan, and Korea until
There have been several “paperback revolutions” in fiction publishing, the first of which unfolded during the first half of the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. Cheap bulk postal costs encouraged American publishers to print royalty-free foreign novels (those of Charles Dickens, for example) in lightweight large quarto or newspaper
In the early to mid-nineteenth century, in most western countries but especially those with press freedom, a cheap popular press appeared. The term “penny press” is associated with a famous generation of US newspapers that appeared in the 1830s, but the notion of penny publications has a longer lineage. The penny papers of the 1830s
The use of couriers to bear written messages is presumably as old as the art of writing itself. The entrusting of messages to those traveling on other business (trade, pilgrimage, etc.) is attested from ancient times. States in many parts of the world and in many periods have instituted some sort of cadre of official
In the broadest sense, printing is any means by which a pattern, text, or image is impressed on another surface. The creation of an impression in clay or wax with a seal, or in metal with a punch, and the printing of patterns on textiles are all ancient arts that bear some similarity to printing
A newsreel was a single film reel of topical news items, shown in cinemas across the world for much of the twentieth century. The term “newsreel” is too often loosely applied to mean any kind of cinema film depicting a news story, so that the topical films of the 1890s made by the Lumière brothers
The annaliste historian Fernand Braudel asserts that dealing with the concept of liberty, “in all its connotations including ‘taking liberties,’ ” is the distinguishing mark of western civilization, the socio-political problem that most persistently occurs from the fifth century to the present. The liberty to communicate, to impart and receive information of all kinds, is
World War II witnessed the greatest propaganda campaigns in history. Often referred to as the “Fourth Arm” after the army, navy, and air force, propaganda was conducted by all belligerents and was essentially designed to sustain domestic civilian morale during a long war at home while undermining enemy civilian and military confidence in the ability
Public broadcasting is notoriously difficult to define, and yet it has been at the center of debates in media policy for decades in those countries where it exists. Proponents of public broadcasting argue that at its heart is the notion of providing the “best” in programming for all, while detractors would argue that it is
“Radical media” is a term used by communication scholars to refer to information and communication technologies used by radical media activists to bring about social change. In this sense, the word “radical” means the expression of ideas, opinions, and options to reorganize society that are not sanctioned by the established social order. British communication scholar
Career counselors working in private practice typically provide services to individual and organizational clients. The services most often rendered to individuals include assistance with career decision making and planning, coaching, and securing employment. Organizations most often retain private practitioners to assist with staffing decisions, developing succession plans and programs, and outplacement. Many career counselors’ private
Working at a time when few women were active as researchers, Anne Roe provided a different perspective on career choice and adjustment and is now credited as being the forerunner of a psychodynamic perspective. Roe was particularly interested in individual psychological differences between people and utilized research and statistical methods. From the 1930s, she engaged
Anne Roe (1904—1991) was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. Upon graduating from the University of Denver, she attended Columbia University, following the recommendation of Thomas Garth. At Columbia, Roe worked in the office of Edward Lee Thorndike, graduating with her Ph.D. in experimental psychology under the supervision of Robert S. Woodworth. The publication of
History of Toll Collector Career Toll collectors receive payments from private motorists and commercial drivers for the use of highways, tunnels, bridges, or ferries. Throughout history, the upkeep and maintenance of roads around the world usually fell to the reigning powers. However, in 1663, three counties in England obtained authority to levy tolls on users
A mortuary cosmetologist is a licensed cosmetologist who performs a variety of cosmetic services to prepare a deceased person for funeral services. Sometimes called desairologists, mortuary cosmetologists are trained to use products to style or alter the hair, face, and nails to prepare a deceased person for viewing and/or burial. In doing so, mortuary cosmetologists
Zookeepers provide the day-to-day care for animals in zoological parks. They prepare the diets, clean and maintain the exhibits and holding areas, and monitor the behavior of animals that range from the exotic and endangered to the more common and domesticated. Zookeepers interact with visitors and conduct formal and informal educational presentations, they sometimes assist
Yoga and Pilates instructors lead specialized exercise, stretching, and meditation classes for people of all ages. They demonstrate techniques in front of the class and then watch members perform the movements, making suggestions and form adjustments as needed. Classes range from introductory to intermediate to advanced, and they may be aimed at specific groups, such
Zoos are wild kingdoms, and aquariums are underwater worlds. The word zoo comes from the Greek for living being and is a shortened term for zoological garden or zoological park. Although this may imply that zoos are created just for beauty and recreation, the main functions of modern zoos are education, conservation, and the study
Writers express, edit, promote, and interpret ideas and facts in written form for books, magazines, trade journals, newspapers, technical studies and reports, company newsletters, radio and television broadcasts, and advertisements. Writers develop fiction and nonfiction ideas for plays, novels, poems, and other related works; report, analyze, and interpret facts, events, and personalities; review art, music, film
Wood scientists and technologists experiment to find the most efficient ways of converting forest resources into useful products for consumers. Toward this end, they explore the physical, biological, and chemical properties of wood and the methods used in growing, processing, and using it. Wood science is conducted for both academic and industrial research and is
Siamangs are members of the order Primates belonging to the “lesser ape” family or Hylobatidae. Their scientific name is Hylobates syndactylus, although up until 1972 it was Symphylangus syndactylus. Siamangs are the largest species in the gibbon family, with a height of 30-35 inches and a weight of around 18-35 pounds. Siamangs have long black
Siberia is the continental region of north Asia; located in the Russian Federation, it extends from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Noted for its unforgiving climate and expansive boreal forests, or taiga, Siberia has contributed much to ethnological research, including studies of its indigenous peoples and languages, shamanism, and processes surrounding Russian colonization.
Sickle-cell anemia (Hb S) is an inherited autosomal (“non-sex” chromosomes) recessive blood disease that affects millions of people throughout the world. It is caused by a mutation in the gene for beta hemoglobin (an oxygen-carrying molecule), producing a change in the shape of the red blood cell into a sickle shape. The distorted shape of
Contemporary images and theories of slavery have become deeply entwined with the constructions of modern slavery in the New World. This entwinement is due to the reality that the institution of slavery was the primary mold of the conquered New World. From its overall scale, its rationalization of labor, and its integration within a capitalist
Simulacra (sing. simulacrum) refers in contemporary social science discourse to multiple copies that have no original or, in Baudrillard’s words, “models of a real without origin or reality.” The concept has emerged in postmodern social theory as a key term for talking about commodification, intellectual property, popular culture, and multinational cultural flows. It is usually
Born in Chicago, George Gaylord Simpson, probably the most influential paleontological thinker of the mid-20th century, was trained at Yale in vertebrate paleontology. In 1927 he took up a curatorial position in fossil mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, where he spent most of his career before proceeding to Harvard and then to
Siwalik Hills is a range of foothills of the Himalayas extending from northeast Pakistan through northern India to southwest Nepal, famous for its rich fossil beds containing extinct apes and other primates. The region has a long history of paleontological research and exploration, beginning in the early part of the 19th century. However, the most
The story of Grafton Elliot Smith is the story of the brilliant colonial boy who did well for himself. He was born on August 15,1871 in Grafton, New South Wales, the son of Stephen Sheldrick Smith, a teacher, and his wife, Mary Jane Evens. Smith soon showed his precocious intelligence, developing an interest in anatomy
William Smith was born on March 23, 1769 in Churchill, Oxfordshire, England, the first son of five children of the village blacksmith. He had a meager formal education but had a natural curiosity concerning local rocks, fossils, and geography. When he was eight years old, his father died, leaving the family in dire circumstances and
It is not easy to understand human behavior in terms of social relationships. Many books have been written on the subject and many more will be written in the future. Perhaps this is due to the fact that an interest in social interactions, especially between males and females, will always be a subject of inquiry
The first illustrated magazine to be published in the world, according to Jackson (1885), was the Penny Magazine of Charles Knight, launched in London in 1832. This publication was promoted by the Society for the Development of Useful Knowledge, of which Knight was a founder. Inspired by encyclopedism, its content mainly concerned “useful knowledge,” namely
Literary journalism is a form of writing characterized by a particular aesthetic self-consciousness more usually associated with literary creativity than with fact-driven journalism. While conventional descriptions of journalism stress objectivity and clarity, descriptions of literary journalism often focus on qualities more usually associated with literary texts. Literary journalism aims to combine a desire to present
A “magazine” is a type of periodical characterized by entertaining and miscellaneous matter written by more than one author, often with illustrations. It is usually distinguished from a newspaper by containing less news coverage and by a lower frequency (weekly, monthly, or less). In the nineteenth century magazines were distinguished from reviews or quarterlies by
“Music video” commonly designates a short audiovisual text in which a recorded song is accompanied by moving images. The term “music video” refers, as well, to the broader phenomenon of video clips and the television programs or networks that show them. Research on music video has typically used the video clip as an example with
“The New Journalism,” a phrase made famous by cultural critic Matthew Arnold in 1887, refers to a wide range of changes in British newspaper and magazine content and format, aimed at making print culture more accessible to working class and female readers. The controversial changes, some influenced by American practice, included formatting innovations, such as
News agencies are among the oldest electronic media, having survived as a genus at least since 1835, the year that the French agency Havas was established. Havas was the first of the world’s agencies to engage in significant international activity. It was followed by Associated Press (AP) in the USA in 1846, Wolff in Germany
The concept of news as a component of a magazine’s editorial content is as old as the medium. The Gentleman’s Magazine is regarded by magazine historian Frank Luther Mott (1938) and others as the first to use the word as part of a periodical’s title; it was begun in 1731 by a London printer, Edward
The newscast has anchored broadcast media schedules since their invention and has delivered mundane and momentous news and information daily from near and far, entwining itself with society, culture, and the politics of the day. Synonymous with the great conflicts and crises of mediated history – particularly US-centered history – the televisual nightly newscast has
The rise of 24-hour news programming, associated with the shift from the electronic news gathering (ENG) of the 1970s to the satellite news gathering (SNG) of the 1980s, marks a shift in the temporal and spatial connectivity of the globe. The continuousness and sheer expanse of 24/7 news has driven an appetite for immediacy, proximity
The first newspapers appeared in western Europe in the seventeenth century, in forms that laid the basis for, and anticipated the form and content of, the contemporary newspaper. While they developed out of sixteenth-century print and manuscript news media, their advent constituted an early modern media revolution that was central to state formation, reading, and
Lloyd Henry Lofquist was more than the prototypical University of Minnesota-trained psychologist—he devoted the greater part of his life to the university and to the field of counseling psychology. Born in Minneapolis in 1917 into a tradesman’s family, Lofquist spent his entire life in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, area, except for the period 1942-1946 when
Narrative career counseling represents a shift from the 20th-century focus on objective interventions for career decision making toward a 21st-century concern for interpretive approaches. It is sited in postmodern developments where previous grand theories overemphasize either social structures (e.g., Marxism) or individual psychology (e.g., psychoanalysis). Narrative career counseling moves away from a scientific approach that
The goal of occupational health psychology (OHP) is to improve the quality of work life, and to protect and promote the health of workers and of their families. OHP is interdisciplinary, involving most areas of psychology and drawing upon fields such as public health, sociology, medicine, and industrial engineering. OHP is typically characterized as having
Occupational information is one of the major components needed to make effective career decisions. Occupational information refers to the collection of details about occupational and educational opportunities. Gathering and using occupational information is essential if an individual is to select options that fit his or her interests, values, aptitudes, and skills. Occupational information can include
Samuel H. Osipow is one the pioneers of vocational psychology in the United States. Graduating with a Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 1959, Osipow worked for 6 years as a counseling psychologist at Pennsylvania State University before taking a faculty position in the Psychology Department at Ohio State University. He spent the bulk of his
School leavers in the late 19th century in the United States faced a multitude of unfamiliar job opportunities in the developing industrial economy of the Gilded Age. Although a few schools attempted to provide occupational guidance, only one individual, Frank Parsons, established the first vocational guidance clinic and articulated the basic principles of vocational guidance
Part-time work refers to work performed by laborers who work less than the standard number of hours and who are often ineligible to participate in an organization’s benefit plans. Many organizations need part-time workers to be successful. Organizations use part-time workers for several reasons: to meet the demands of the labor-intensive economy and cyclical economic
Pay equity is based on the principle that the payment an employee receives from the employer should be proportional to his or her contributions to the organization. Otherwise, inequity results. Historically, pay equity has been approached by two somewhat separate perspectives: (1) the individual or psychological perspective, which focuses on how individuals form pay equity
Personal counseling and career counseling share a significant history. Vocational or career counseling started with the work of Frank Parsons and his staff at the Vocation Bureau of Boston in 1908. Parsons would die shortly after the bureau began operations, but not before the term counseling emerged to describe the services provided to clients of
Counseling interventions are considered a resource to support full functioning and participation of persons with disabilities in their communities or specified environments of choice. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) considers disability to result from a person with a health condition’s interaction with his or her environment where
In Charles Darwin’s theory of natural history, selection is the principal mechanism that is responsible for the evolution of life on Earth. Three conditions must be met if natural selection shall occur in an ecological system. First, organisms living in the system must show phenotypic variations that bear upon their survival. Second, those variations must
Elman R. Service, a prominent cultural anthropologist of the 20th century, was born May 18, 1915 in Tecumseh, Michigan. His theory of cultural evolution that occurs as organic and superorganic factors influence different types of social organization in small-scale society is prominent among anthropologists, ethnologists, and social anthropologists. Service completed his undergraduate degree in anthropology
Sex identity refers to the social criteria by which men and women are defined within society. Although physical sex is biologically determined, sex identity, or gender, is defined culturally. There is thus variation in how women and men worldwide identify themselves with respect to each other. The way in which a society defines sex identity
The term “sex roles” broadly refers to the various social functions that are ascribed to individuals based on their physical sex. Sex roles are one category of roles among other social roles that are developed in societies to regulate human behavior and relationships. One major aspect of human existence that contributes to the formation of
Ethnographic semantics, also called “ethnoscience” or “the new ethnography,” is a methodology for formally uncovering how certain parts of culture are talked about—and presumably thought about—by native participants. It developed in the 1960s—mostly in the United States—as a branch of the newly named subdiscipline of cognitive anthropology (itself part of the general reaction to behaviorist
Sexual harassment is the act of using some element of power to solicit a sexual favor from a person who does not want to participate in a particular activity. It is unwelcome activity in the form of speech, print, gesture, or some other form of sexual communication. Such activity is harmful and illegal and may
Sexual selection operates under the same process of differential reproductive success described by Darwin in The Origin of Species. This success, or fitness, is determined by the amount of genes contributed by an individual to the next generation. Sexual reproduction adds genetic variation and allows for distinct sets of characteristics, some of which are advantageous
Human sexuality holds a great interest for anthropologists. As a biological reality and a reproductive force, sexuality affects all humans. However, there is much diversity in the experience, expression, and interpretation of sexuality throughout the world. Using a holistic perspective, meaning that various aspects of the human experience are considered to be interrelated and interdependent
The shaman is a ritual specialist who is a healer and spiritual mediator. He or she entertains a close relationship with the larger spiritual universe, endowing him or her with powers to divine or to heal and act as a psychopomp—a guide of the souls of the deceased to their afterlife. The word shaman is
Shanidar cave is located in northern Iraq at an altitude of 745 m. Nearby is the village of Zawi Chemi Shanidar, with archaeological remains dating back to ca. 10,000 BC). However, Shanidar is known for its middle-Paleolithic remains, which include several Neandertal skeletons between 60,000 and 46,000 years old. The cave was first discovered by
Memory, according to the Greeks, is the precondition of human thought (Samuel 1994). For psychologists, memory is also seen as a fundamental condition of consciousness. Not surprisingly, psychologists have constructed a variety of complex models of individual memory. However, memories also require distinct social and communicative frameworks, patterned ways of framing the flow of remembered
Digital media, also known as “new media,” comprise content created, disseminated, and/ or stored using digital computers or mobile devices (video games, blogs, etc.), as well as their physical embodiment (DVDs, flash memory sticks, etc.). Digital media are often defined in contrast to “analog media,” new media in contrast to “mass media.” The history of
While scholars of early film have been much preoccupied with the emergence of storytelling and narrative, the dominant mode of early cinema, beginning with the first films of the Lumières in 1895, was the actuality, or what might be called “documentary before documentary”. An instinct for what Siegfried Kracauer (1960) called “the seizure of physical
In mass democracies, where it is impossible for candidates to meet most voters in person, political campaigning has always relied centrally on mass media. Since the beginnings of democracy, vast resources have been committed to campaign communications, motivated by the “widespread belief that media coverage matters to the outcome of elections” (Franklin 2004, 8). Friedenberg
Since the 1970s, electronic mail (email) has changed from being a rudimentary method of text-based communication between a very few computer users in military research establishments, universities, and commercial telecommunications labs, to become a highly sophisticated and widespread media form. The growth of email has helped underpin not only the rise of the Internet as
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the regulatory agency in the United States charged with oversight of electronic communications. Since the 1980s, it has taken much of the blame for the lack of diversity and the concentration of ownership in US broadcasting, and the rise of media conglomerates. The FCC has a larger range of
Running between the Strand and Ludgate Circus in London, Fleet Street is synonymous with the national newspaper industry of the United Kingdom. Though from the mid-1980s all the major newspaper offices were relocated, the name was still used to denote this type of newspaper and journalism. The most common explanation for this synergy was that
The term “fourth estate” has been used to refer to the press since at least the early 1800s. It has become shorth and to denote the role of the public media as a pillar on which the smooth functioning of a democratic society rests, together with the other three estates – legislative, executive, and judiciary.
Broadly speaking, graffiti denotes the array of words, figures, and symbols illicitly inscribed in public space. Over the past three decades this phenomenon has taken on special salience as the graffiti of youth sub-cultures has emerged as a pervasive form of public communication. Because of this, graffiti has become perhaps the most potent and visible
Historic key events are genuine events with historical importance. Four factors are important to consider in this regard. (1) Historic key events have a short and distinct duration. The event happens within a short time and it is clearly separated from later and earlier events. It is arguable whether wars and revolutions should be considered
According to the publisher, Psychological Assessment Resources, the Self-Directed Search (SDS) developed by Dr. John L. Holland is the mostly widely used career interest inventory in the world. It has been translated into over 25 different languages. The SDS is based on Dr. Holland’s RIASEC theory that both people and work and study environments can
In the early 1970s, the field of vocational psychology began to focus on diverse factors related to career development. Recent trends indicate a sustained increase in the vocational psychology and career development literature pertaining to diversity issues since the early 1990s. These shifts have been fueled in part by the changing demographic patterns in society
John Holland is primarily identified as a counseling psychologist whose main theoretical and practical contributions have been focused in the field of career choice and adjustment. He has been concerned with the choice and processes involved in selecting, adapting to, and changing occupations. His theory and practical contributions apply most directly to people throughout their
The origin of John L. Holland’s theory of vocational personalities can be traced back to his 1966 publication Psychology of Vocational Choice, which was followed by four subsequent editions of Making Vocational Choices. With each edition, Holland built a more comprehensive theory of career counseling and tackled new issues arising from the complex relationship between
The concept for the Journal of Career Assessment (JCA) was developed in 1989 by W. Bruce Walsh of Ohio State University. On June 7, 1991, Robert Smith of Psychological Assessment Resources accepted the proposal to become the publisher of JCA. In January 1993, the first issue was published. Walsh was the first editor of the
The first issue of the Journal of Career Development (vol. 1, no. 1) was published in the fall of 1972 under the title Journal of Career Education. The following statement of purpose appeared in the first issue: This publication will endeavor to support and summarize the thrust of current trends in career education, with a
The Journal of Vocational Behavior (JVB) publishes empirical, methodological, and theoretical articles that expand knowledge about vocational choice and work adjustment across the life span. Studies of vocational choice typically examine topics such as career choice; occupational interests; the relation of abilities, needs, values, interests, and personality to occupational aspirations and the career decision-making process;
John D. Krumboltz, Ph.D., has demonstrated throughout his life and work that counselors can help clients with career, academic, and personal problems to explore and expand their learning experiences; challenge unhelpful beliefs; embrace unanticipated opportunities; and take positive actions to create more satisfying lives for themselves. He received from the American Psychological Association the Award
Frederic (Fritz) Kuder is best known as the author of the Kuder Preference Records, four distinctly different forms of an interest inventory that since their introduction in 1938 have been taken by millions of people worldwide. As a transfer student at the University of Arizona, Kuder came late to a required orientation meeting for new
Life-role balance refers to the construction of a desired life structure that reflects a person’s own definition of a balanced life. Work occurs within a person’s overall life structure, and addressing this basic fact in career theory and practice fosters life-role integration or balance. Helping clients clarify their desired life structure and empowering clients to
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure was the founder of structural linguistics, which broke with philological and historical approaches to language to establish a new approach to language based on the understanding that “language is a form, not an essence.” In defining language as a system of signs, he also became the father of modern semiotics.
Sahelanthropus tchadensis is an extinct hominin discovered in Chad in 2001-2002. The fossils were discovered by Michel Brunet and colleagues, who are part of the Mission Paléoanthropologique Franco-Tchadienne (MPFT). The species name literally means Sahel-man from Chad; Sahel is the name of the region where the fossils were found. Brunet and colleagues have nicknamed the
The next time you have the good fortune to see an endangered species, you might be the beneficiary of George Schaller, a naturalist who has become well-known for his efforts to describe and preserve animals who are in danger of extinction. George Schaller was born in Berlin, Germany, but found himself in Missouri as a
Heinrich Schliemann was born January 6,1822 in the vicarage of Neubukow, Germany, and died December 26, 1890 in Naples, Italy. Most of his ancestors were vicars, traders, and farmers. His father was a poor and violent vicar, and his mother, who died when he was nine, took care of their nine children. According to Schliemann’s
Although he was born into humble circumstances in Horde, a small town in Westphalia (western Germany), Father Wilhelm Schmidt became a lifelong student of the world as a leading authority in his day on linguistics, ethnology, and comparative religion. At the age of 15, he entered the mission school of the Society of the Divine
David Murray Schneider was among the leading contributors to symbolic anthropology and the study of kinship. He defined culture as a system of meanings and symbols and emphatically distinguished culture from the social system. Schneider also made important contributions to Micronesian ethnography. From the 1960s through the mid-seventies, he was a powerful force in the
As an iconoclast and innovative thinker, Jeffrey Schwartz has broad interests in archaeology, anthropology, evolutionary theory, systematics, and philosophy. His undergraduate work involved anthropology and premedical biology, and this was followed by a graduate program in archaeology at Columbia University, where he studied human and animal osteology at archaeological sites in the circum-Mediterranean region. While
The philosophy of science is a subdiscipline of philosophy that utilizes the fields of epistemology (how we know what we know) and metaphysics (the fundamental nature of reality, often outside human observational experience) to study the principles and methods of science and the natural world. It seeks to understand the meaning, method, logical structure, and
The expression “scientific method” is problematic for several reasons. First, it suggests that there is a single and uniform method employed in all scientific disciplines. However, even a cursory examination of various scientific fields reveals that this is not the case. Secondly, it ignores the historical fact that the general conception of science, including its
John Scopes was the defendant in the 1925 case State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, a landmark in the contentious history of evolution education in the United States. Scopes was born on August 3, 1900, in Paducah, Kentucky. Following a brief stint at the University of Illinois at Urbana, he enrolled at the University
Advertising is a tenacious form. Originating in the commercial impulse to promote sales, versions of what might loosely be termed “advertising” can no doubt be traced to wherever and whenever surplus product has needed to be disposed of. The proverb “good wine needs no bush,” for instance, is at least 2,000 years old. It refers
The BBC started life not as a public corporation but as a private company. Formed in 1922, the early BBC operated as a cartel, consisting of several wireless manufacturers, including the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, one of the main pioneers of wireless telephony. Though it was to all intents and purposes a private enterprise, its
The term “cable television” typically refers to a form of subscription-based multichannel program delivery that relies on cables or wires. At first, cable television existed almost exclusively to extend the reach of broadcast signals, but more recently it has also delivered an array of additional program services – primarily satellite networks such as MTV (Music
The English word “censorship” is derived from the root cense from the Latin censure: to estimate, rate, assess, judge. Censor was a title given to two magistrates in ancient Rome who were responsible for administering the census, and supervising public morals. When the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire, the church assumed primary responsibility
Cinematography is the art of photographing motion pictures. All photographing of motion pictures is, in its broadest sense, cinematography, but it is the special combination of aesthetics and technology that distinguishes the term. It is the art of the cinematographer that makes cinema compelling, the skillful blending of photography, lighting, composition, and the capture of
The history of the term citizen journalism is closely associated with the rise of the Internet as a medium of news and public information. Citizens have certainly participated in news-making from the start of modern news, but journalism’s industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century and later its professionalization marginalized that involvement. It was with the rapid
Racism was an enduring part of American life before the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This was especially true for the southern United States, where racism was rooted in all aspects of society. Southern blacks were severely exploited economically, where they were forced to toil at the bottom of the occupational
The notion of a “public sphere” is useful when thinking about the spaces available for public discussion and debate – and thus the formation of public opinion – in different societies). The writings of Jürgen Habermas (1989; 1992) have proven to be especially valuable in this regard. It is Habermas’ contention that under ideal conditions
Discussion of the harmful effects of media violence is as old as the media themselves. There is no medium that has not been suspected of stimulating real-world aggression. Spectacular violent acts such as those in Littleton, Colorado (where in 1999 two teenagers murdered 13 people before committing suicide), or Erfurt, Germany (where in 2002 a
Over 1 billion people in more than 200 territories watched the Academy Awards telecast in 2006. The Oscars are the most influential entertainment awards in the world, an enduring phenomenon affecting not only the film industry, but also radio, television, and advertising, with an increasingly global impact. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Computer-assisted career counseling is the use of computers in educational and career guidance. When faced with the prospect of having to make an important educational or career decision, many individuals look for career or educational information and professional guidance. Individuals making educational decisions might access college brochures and catalogs or might request application and financial
The theory of constructivism has roots in philosophy, science, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The core of the theory involves the idea that reality is relative rather than absolute and that people actively create reality by the way in which they experience and interpret events. As an example, take the idea of stealing another person’s money.
Rather than continuing as a salaried employee at a college or agency position, some counselors choose to establish a private career counseling practice and engage in contract or consulting work. Contract work can be very fulfilling, financially rewarding, and provide tremendous freedom to develop and experiment with numerous interventions while focusing on preferred niches that
John O. Crites completed the A.B. degree in history from Princeton University in 1950 (magna cum laude) and the Ph.D. degree in Counseling Psychology from Columbia University in 1957. He made a number of significant professional contributions at the University of Iowa where he started the Counseling Psychology Program in 1958. He was the Head
Career decision making is generally regarded as a process that entails identifying alternatives, gathering information, weighing the options, selecting one choice, and implementing the chosen alternative. While this basic process seems fairly straightforward, it has been noted that individuals differ considerably in how they negotiate the decisional process. Career decision-making styles thus have been advanced
Decision making refers to the process by which an individual comes to choose between two (or more) alternative courses of action. For career decisions, this process might lead to the choice of a major, a more general occupational direction, or a particular job. Decision making might also lead individuals to explore some career directions and
The Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) was originally developed in 1939 by the U.S. Employment Service (USES) as a means to organize occupational information into one volume using a standardized format. It was produced to assist with job placement, employment counseling, and labor market estimations; the latest edition was published in 1991. With each revision
Donald E. Super’s career development theory is perhaps the most widely known life-span view of career development. Developmental theories recognize the changes that people go through as they mature, and they emphasize a life-span approach to career choice and adaptation. These theories usually partition working life into stages, and they try to specify the typical
The theory of vocational choice developed by John L. Holland is one of the most widely researched and applied theories of career development. Based on the premise that personality factors underlie career choices, his theory postulates that people project self-and world-of-work views onto occupational titles and make career decisions that satisfy their preferred personal orientations.
Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) is a relatively new theory that is aimed at explaining three interrelated aspects of career development: (1) how basic academic and career interests develop, (2) how educational and career choices are made, and (3) how academic and career success is obtained. The theory incorporates a variety of concepts (e.g., interests
Marshall D. Sahlins, a prominent and highly esteemed anthropologist and ethnographer, is recognized inter-nationally for his theory of the historicity and pervasiveness of culture in everyday life and the process of cultural change. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Sahlins completed his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan and his graduate work at the
Sambungmachan is an archaeological site in Central Java, Indonesia, from which three crania have been recovered. The earliest finds consist of a nearly complete Homo erectus (Sm 1) cranium missing the face and part of the base, the central portion of a Homo erectus tibia, and numerous remains of Late Pleistocene mammals. The date of
The Samburu are, traditionally, a pastoral society found in central northern Kenya. They probably number between 100,000 and 200,000. The Samburu are closely related to the Maasai, they speak a dialect of Maa, and they share a common history with the Maasai and have a similar social organization. Both are polygamous and have age-sets; Spencer
Samoa is a chain of nine islands in the South Pacific located about 14 degrees south of the equator and divided into two political entities—the U.S. Territory of American Samoa and the neighboring independent country of Samoa (formerly Western Samoa until 1997). The Samoan archipelago is primarily volcanic and comprises of three major islands, Savai’i
Of the four major geographical areas where fossil hominids are found, Southeast Asia is the least understood. Except for some isolated teeth, the only fossil hominid remains in Southeast Asia are from sites near the Ngandong (Solo) River of central Java, Indonesia. Of fossils sites in central Java, Sangiran is the most important. The villages
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist and professionally trained linguist. He was one of the founders of the science of linguistic anthropology. He made significant contributions to general linguistic theory, Amerindian linguistics, and Indo-European linguistics. Sapir also made substantial contributions to cultural psychology, culture theory, and ethnology. Sapir’s scholarly development in linguistic anthropology began in
Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) developed the idea known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Sapir and Whorf posited that the particular language we speak influences the way we see reality because categories and distinctions encoded in one language are not always available in another language (linguistic relativity). Scholars also interpret the hypothesis as
Sardinia is a large island in the middle of the western Mediterranean Sea. Close by, to the north, is the smaller island of Corsica; to the southeast is Sicily. Sardinia has been a part of Italy for more than a hundred years, but the Italian peninsula is a fair distance across the sea to the
Sastrohamidjojo Sartono was one of the founders of modern geology and paleoanthropology in Indonesia. He was born in Madiun (East Java) on June 30, 1928, and died suddenly during a research visit to the Netherlands on October 25,1995. In the fall of 1956, Sartono received his BSc in mathematics and natural science from the University
Sasquatch, Bigfoot, and the Yeti are all varieties of bipedal human-like primates whose existence has yet to be proven. Reports of the creature known as Sasquatch date back to the ancient legends of Native Americans living on the west coast of the Americas, from northern California to British Columbia. Photographs, eyewitness accounts, film, footprints, and
Research on sex media has often been divided into two categories, depending on whether the sexual stimuli are embedded within a larger context or not. The first type, illustrated by a TV soap opera in which some of the scenes, although typically not a majority, include references to or actual portrayals of sexual interactions, depicted
“Sleeper effect” describes a phenomenon in which messages from sources with originally low credibility cause opinion change over time. The credibility of a source as perceived by receivers of its message constitutes a central issue in the theory of persuasion, in particular with regard to its impact on attitude change. A highly credible communicator (e.g.
Surveillance, correlation, and transmission functions are basic to the role of mass media in society. Surveillance means locating and disseminating news and information. Correlation deals with interpreting and editorializing about this information. Transmission is the socialization of norms, attitudes, and values between groups and generations (Lasswell 1948). Socialization research, for example, has compared the effectiveness
The term “social capital” has become a popular way for academics, activists, politicians, and the public to describe how an individual’s location in a structure of relationships, and the sense of trust and reciprocity that accompanies this social position, can provide the means for citizens to cooperate on problems requiring collective effort (Coleman 1990). It
Social judgment theory (SJT; Sherif & Hovland 1961; Sherif et al. 1965) is based on the premise that the effect of a persuasive message on a particular issue depends on the way that the receiver evaluates the position that the message puts forth (O’Keefe 1990). Sherif et al. (1965) claimed that an individual’s attitude toward
The “trap effect” of communication is a metaphor for an effect specifically on the uninterested, unmotivated, uninvolved members of the audience (Schoenbach & Weaver 1985). Those people are “trapped” and subsequently influenced by any type of communication that is frequent and striking enough to overcome their weak resistance. They do not care enough to raise
The two-step flow of communication hypothesis was first formulated by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and his colleagues in their classical study on the 1940 American presidential election (1944). It states that there is usually no direct influence of the mass media on the general public. Rather, “ideas often flow from radio and print to the opinion
An aspect of mass media violence largely ignored in mass communication research and criminology is the effect news coverage has on victims of reported crimes. Few studies address the reaction of the social environment to the victims after a crime. “Secondary victimization” is defined as the victimization of the crime victim due to media coverage.
Discussion of the harmful effects of media violence is as old as the media themselves. There is no medium that has not been suspected of stimulating real-world aggression. Spectacular violent acts such as those in Littleton, Colorado (where in 1999 two teenagers murdered 13 people before committing suicide), or Erfurt, Germany (where in 2002 a
Over 1 billion people in more than 200 territories watched the Academy Awards telecast in 2006. The Oscars are the most influential entertainment awards in the world, an enduring phenomenon affecting not only the film industry, but also radio, television, and advertising, with an increasingly global impact. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The process of acquiring knowledge is the essence of higher education. Career decision making is a tangible expression of this process, and since almost half of all college students change majors and even more change career goals while in college, career services for higher education students are crucial to the mission of the institution. Characteristics
Career counseling in today’s work organizations reflects career development’s dynamic history in North American business and industry during the 20th century. A 21st-century prospective on this counseling specialty encompasses the practitioners, the places, and the procedures of career counseling in organizations. 20th-century Foundation Industrial Era The dawn of 20th-century North America witnessed a continued decline
Career counseling in schools exists at the intersection of the career education program and the provision of personal counseling. It potentially draws from and contributes to both individual pupils’ career development and individual counseling. Career counseling has been a core activity of the school counseling movement from the time of Frank Parsons, and although its
Career counseling process has been defined as an ongoing, face-to-face interaction between counselor and client with career- or work-related issues as the primary focus. The goal of career counseling is typically to assist individuals in developing self-understanding, articulating direction in their careers, and achieving their potential and discovering their purpose in daily activities. There are
This article provides a brief overview of the research related to career intervention outcomes or effectiveness. Traditionally, career interventions have been defined as any treatment or effort intended to enhance an individual’s career development or to enable the person to make better career-related decisions. This is a broad definition that encompasses a wide range of interventions
Career Development Quarterly (CDQ) is the premier English-language journal in career counseling and development and is the official journal of the National Career Development Association (NCDA). It was first published in 1911. CDQ publishes articles on career counseling, individual and organizational career development, work and leisure, career education, career coaching, and career management. Each article
Career interventions are activities designed to explore and enhance a person’s career development by helping the person make, implement, and benefit from a variety of career decisions. As such, career interventions take several forms. The most common include career counseling, assessment interpretation, group counseling, group assessment interpretation, career workshops, career classes, computer-assisted career guidance systems
The traditional view of career, what one does on the job at work and the sequence of work-related positions throughout a person’s work history, has given rise to a holistic paradigm called career/life that includes the time and energy put into multiple roles simultaneously played throughout one’s life. Each role has the potential of positive
Career planning refers to the process of making educational and career choices based on knowledge of self and of the environment. The purpose of career planning is to encourage individuals to explore and gather information about various educational and career opportunities thus enabling them to develop realistic career goals. Career planning is an ongoing activity
A career resource center (CRC) refers to a physical facility and to the location of materials, resources, and personnel delivering career services to individuals and groups. A CRC is typically located in the career center, counseling center, human resources office, library, or training and development unit of an organization. In contrast, a career center is
Richard Robbins is currently the SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at State University of New York, Plattsburgh. Robbins earned his BA in psychology at Rutgers University in 1961, an MA in anthropology at New York University, New York in 1964, and a PhD in anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1970. Professor
Rock art is painted, engraved, or scratched elements (signs, figures, writings) on rocky surfaces such as open-air rocks, caves, decorated menhir, boulders, and slabs. It may also include portable art and other forms of artistic representations of prehistoric populations. Often it is identified with cave art. The scientific study of rock art using archaeological methods
The script that an actor followed was once written on a roll of paper, and the part played became known as a “role.” As Shakespeare famously wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Sociologists define “role” as a combination of expected behaviors in a socially understood situation. Closely
Rome and its vast literature and civilization formed the point of departure for scholarly investigation during the 19th century beginnings of anthropology, archaeology, and sociology. At the time, university admission required the knowledge of both Latin and Greek. This educational practice had begun during the Renaissance and was only dropped during the mid-1960s in Europe.
John Howland Rowe was a highly recognized scholar of Andean studies with significant contributions in the areas of history, ethnohistory, archaeology, linguistics, and ethnology. Born in Maine, he was educated at Brown University in classics and went on to receive his PhD from Harvard in 1947. He taught and worked to found anthropology programs at
Duane Rumbaugh was born in Iowa in 1929. He earned an MA from Kent State University and a PhD at the University of Colorado where he studied experimental psychology. He has been a leading researcher in the field of comparative psychology and the relationship between intelligence and language since his career began in 1958 at
Dale A. Russell is a vertebrate paleontologist whose contribution to anthropology is limited to a 1981 paper published with model-maker Ron Séguin proposing a hypothetical hominid-like “dinosauroid” evolutionary endpoint for troodontid dinosaurs. Russell and Séguin postulated that if non-avian dinosaurs had not become extinct, they could have evolved, as did primates, toward a hominid form
Russia produced a number of notable evolutionists who contributed to research and theory in natural history, biology, and anthropology. Russian intellectuals widely accepted Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (published in Russian translation in 1860) and the evolutionary force of natural selection, but reaction to it was shaped by various political leanings and ideological
Jewish-American astronomer and physicist Carl Sagan was known for both his popularizing of science and addressing social issues with an evolutionary awareness. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Carl Sagan was one of two children born to Sam Sagan and Rachel (Gruber) Sagan. Considered to be an intelligent and inquisitive child, his interest in science began
Late Stone Age North and West Africa have been stereotyped as a monolithic culture in two hypotheses: the African Aqualithic and the Neolithique de Tradition Soudanis. Lithic diversity was ignored in favor of a broad-based cultural tradition defined by remains from aquatic activities and by the supposed observance of wavy-line and dotted wavy-line pottery. However
Human communication is a multichannel reality comprising verbal, paraverbal, and nonverbal signals. Although some authors subsume paraverbal aspects, like pitch, tone of voice, etc., under the heading of nonverbal behavior, it is most common to preserve the term “nonverbal” for those aspects of communicative behavior that are transmitted visually, such as gestures, body posture and
Observational learning is concerned with the acquisition of attitudes, values, and styles of thinking and behaving through observation of the examples provided by others. Psychological theories have traditionally emphasized learning from direct experience. Natural endowment provides humans with enabling biological systems but few inborn skills. These must be developed over long periods and altered to
Decades of social science research have demonstrated that there is a group of people in any community to whom others look to help them to form opinions on various issues and matters. Whether called “opinion leaders” or “influentials,” these people literally lead the formation of attitudes, public knowledge, and opinions. In the classic book Personal
The effectiveness of a communication depends on a variety of factors. Among those concerning organization and procedure, order of presentation forms one of the major factors that influence the impact of communication on an audience. It is to Carl I. Hovland and team’s credit that appropriate research questions and experimental designs have been developed to
Persuasion is a communicative function that can be pursued in many different settings, ranging from face-to-face interaction to mass communication. Mass media persuasion takes three primary overt forms: commercial advertising (of consumer products and services), pro-social advertising, and political advertising. On each of these subjects, there is extensive empirical research and theorizing. Studies of consumer
The physical effects of media content are understood as the direct influence of the media on the organism. This includes mainly processes of physiological arousal as well as emotional effects evoking joy or fear, a pleasant mood or stress. Early one-dimensional arousal theories (Lindsley 1951; Duffy 1962) stated that physiological arousal comprises unspecific activation on
The priming effect refers to media-induced changes in voters’ reliance on particular issues as criteria for evaluating government officials. The more prominent any given issue in the news, the greater the impact of voters’ opinions about that issue on their evaluations of government. The priming effect creates volatility in public opinion, especially during election campaigns.
Because there are various concepts of public opinion there are no general statements about the effects of mass media on it. Instead, the effects of mass media have to be related to specific concepts. Moreover, different study designs and methods have to be taken into consideration. According to the quantitative concept, public opinion is regarded
Originally, the term “reciprocal effects” was used by Kurt Lang and Gladys Engel Lang (1953) to describe the behavior of people in front of TV cameras. Here it is used in a broader sense. It denotes all the effects of the mass media on actual and potential subjects of media coverage. Included are the effects
According to schema theory, the encoding and processing of information depends on learned, relatively stable cognitive structures in long-term memory, so called schemas (Information Processing). These cognitive structures include knowledge about concepts, persons, events, and the self. When individuals encounter a stimulus, they search their minds for the appropriate schema to match the stimulus. The
Brown’s values-based career theory emphasizes the central importance of values in career counseling and occupational choice. Values are defined as cognitive structures that are the basis for self-evaluation and one’s evaluation of others. Values also have an affective dimension, are the primary basis of goal-directed behavior, and are the stimulus for the development of behavior
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is an agency with the Department of Labor, whose task it is to gather, analyze, and provide information on all aspects of labor, economics, and the workforce in the United States. The bureau was established by President Chester A. Arthur in 1884 as part of the Department of the Interior.
Career advancement has been for decades a topic of many books found in the self-help, career, and especially the business sections of bookstores. It is not a topic commonly found in career counseling or vocational psychology textbooks or journal articles. There are several assumptions and key concepts and characteristics commonly found in books about career
Early in the 21st century there continues to be economic disparities between racial ethnic groups. The latest census indicated that Asian American couples had the highest average annual earnings at about $57,500 per year, followed by Caucasian Americans at roughly $49,000, then Hispanics with $39,241, and finally African Americans at about $30,000 per year. There
It has been repeatedly observed that the current literature has limited information on the development and career behaviors of Asian Americans. For example, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are more likely to request information about career issues and are also more likely than other ethnic groups to use college career information centers. Since Asian Americans
Gay and lesbian persons refers to men and women, respectively, whose primary sexual attraction is toward people of the same sex. Nonetheless, the word gay is sometimes used as a collective term to include both gay men and lesbian women. Due to negative stereotypes, societal stigma, oppression, and discrimination related to homosexuality and nonconformity to
Career counseling, or vocational guidance as it was originally known, has a long history within the counseling professions. Career counseling was born in the United States in the latter 19th century out of societal upheaval, transition, and change. This new profession was described by historians as a progressive social reform movement aimed at eradicating poverty
For counselors working with immigrants, it is essential to first understand how and why people immigrate to the United States, and what challenges they face once they are here. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that as of March 2005 there were 32.5 million immigrants in the United States, accounting for about 12% of the
Latinos are a diverse group of individuals with ancestry in Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America as well in the Caribbean. Currently Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States; government projections estimate that in 2050 almost 25% of the total U.S. population will be Latinos. Career counseling with Latinos requires
The need for effective career counseling and related research among Native Americans is striking. Census data show that Native Americans have the highest unemployment rates of any minority group with the exception of African American males. Unemployment approaches 50%, and the number of children living below the poverty level exceeds 50% on many reservations. Likewise
In the late 19th century, anthropology emerged as an academic discipline against a background of intellectual foment and rapid advances in the sciences. During this formative time, religion was the subject of many travelogues, popular books, and scholarly studies. Nineteenth-century European colonial expansion, and the scholarship it engendered, exposed the Western world to a large
Spiritual ecology may be defined as a complex and diverse arena of religious, spiritual, intellectual, and practical activities at the interface of religions and spiritualities on the one hand, and on the other of ecologies, environments, and environmentalisms. The term is applied as a parallel to other primary components of contemporary ecological anthropology like primate
Liberal religion is distinct from the liberal wings of particular religions such as liberal Catholics, liberal Baptists, liberal Hindus, and the like who seek a liberal way through their own particular religious traditions. Depending on the relative strength of the anti-liberal wing of those same religions, liberal wings of the various religions will come and
A religious ritual is a prescribed, routinized, and ceremonial action or set of actions, the function of which is symbolic and has specific significance to the performer and the performer’s community. On a very basic level, rituals are an inherent part of living. They can be seen in many forms of animal life, from ants
Reproduction in anthropology refers to the processes by which new social members are produced— specifically, the physiological processes of conception, pregnancy, birth, and child raising. In its larger sense, “reproduction” is used to encompass the processes by which societies are reproduced for the future. The term is thus fraught with biological, cultural, and political meanings;
Social science involves the study of people. Social research methods are based on a systematic approach to studying social phenomena. Social sciences include anthropology, sociology, economics, psychology, political science, communications, and history. Researchers in each of these disciplines are interested in pursuing explanations for human social behavior. Sociologists and anthropologists, in particular, are interested in
Anthropologists such as Anthony F. C. Wallace first employed the term revitalization movement in 1956. The term was created to explain how a society functions under severe stress. A movement would arise because of the complete disorganization and conflict within a society and the need for reform and transformation. Wallace explained that when members of
Variously known as “life crisis” ceremonies, rites of passage, or by the French term rites de passage, this complex of practices includes birthing, coming of age, commencement exercises, marriage, ordination, recruitment into secret societies or military formations, accession to high office, and mortuary processes. In all known human societies, rituals of status transition are highly
William Halse Rivers Rivers was an unusual talent who made significant contributions both to psychology and anthropology, although his reputation has survived best in anthropology, particularly in the field of social organization. Rivers was the eldest of four children born to Henry, an Anglican churchman and speech therapist, and Elizabeth Rivers. His education was interrupted
RNA (ribonucleic acid) is a single-stranded nucleic acid. This molecule is involved in protein synthesis. There are several types of RNA: mRNA: This is messenger RNA, which serves as a code for proteins. It does this by carrying information in what are called “codons” or a “triplet code” that is specific for a particular amino
The term “indirect effects” denotes the consequences of direct effects on individuals who are not exposed to media content. According to Seymour-Ure (1974, 22), “a primary [=direct] effect takes place when the person affected has himself been involved directly in the communication process. A secondary [= indirect] effect takes place when individuals or groups not
In view of the preponderance of published research on the effects of the communication media, it is astounding, if not disconcerting, how little attention has been given to the systematic examination of the duration of these effects, and, as a result, how little is known about their duration. Such apparent neglect does not necessarily reflect
The established history of media effects research is characterized by a series of phases marked by fundamental paradigm shifts (see McQuail 1977, 72 –74; 2005, 457– 462; Lowery & DeFleur 1983, 22 –29; Severin & Tankard 2001, 262 –268; Baran & Davis 2006, 8 –17). Each of these phases is associated with particular concepts, researchers
The study of media effects has driven mass communication research for most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Scholars have developed, tested, and supported various theories of media effects. The key to this research is uncovering the explanation for the way mass media exposure translates into effects. Over the history of our field, the study
Twenty-first-century mass communication scholars rarely question the existence of media effects. Research has presented significant and consistent evidence that the mass media have noticeable and meaningful effects. Evidence comes not only from the accumulation of the body of different studies, but from the various meta-analyses that organize various research studies and combine their findings to
As early as 1974, Ball-Rokeach presented the first in a series of papers that would unfold the concepts and assumptions of media system dependency (MSD) theory (Ball-Rokeach 1974). The paper was titled “The information perspective.” Its basic premise was that media effects flow from the information resources of the media system that are implicated in
Mediating factors are the psychological and social conditions in the communication process that moderate the effects of persuasive mass communication. The concept was first introduced by Joseph T. Klapper in his influential book The effects of mass communication (1960). Sifting through empirical studies available in the late 1950s, Klapper identified five mediating factors that explain
From a very general point of view, “mediatization of society” is a concept that indicates the extension of the influence of the media (considered both as a cultural technology and as an organization) into all spheres of society and social life. In this broad sense, the way the media influence social life is linked to
Message effects fall into at least three categories: behavioral (actions caused by a message), cognitive (thoughts caused by a message), and emotional (feelings caused by a message). By message, we mean any kind of symbol perceived by an individual to have some sort of meaning, be it through the printed, spoken, or felt word via
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann stands for a paradigm shift in the field of media effects research. In 1972 she presented her spiral of silence theory in Tokyo in a lecture entitled “Return to the concept of powerful mass media.” This paper can be seen as a break with the “minimal effects” hypothesis. Noelle-Neumann argued that research confined
Proactivity refers to the idea that individuals initiate action and make constructive changes in their environment. As careers have become more fluid and self-structured, the concept of proactivity has become increasingly relevant to career development. In the past several years, researchers have defined the concept in terms of dispositional tendencies to act proactively, cognitive processes
Tolerance for ambiguity can be defined as the degree to which an individual is comfortable with uncertainty, unpredictability, conflicting directions, and multiple demands. In essence, tolerance for ambiguity is manifest in a person’s ability to operate effectively in an uncertain environment. The extent of ambiguity may vary greatly and is generally linked to the underlying
The Type A behavior pattern (TABP) was introduced almost 40 years ago by Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman as a risk factor in explaining coronary heart disease (CHD). TABP is a stable individual difference characteristic that has captured considerable attention in medical and psychological research circles. An important series of studies has strongly implicated TABP
Values constitute a pervasive and comprehensive concept, variously defined and elusive to comprehend. Philosophers and social and behavioral scientists have long considered values across the broad spectrum of human experience as overarching life goals and guiding principles for determining what constitutes desirable outcomes and modes of behavior. Together with attitudes, needs, norms, interests, and traits
Although a center is typically a place where something occurs, an assessment center is not so much a place as it is a method. A key principle of this method is multiple-attribute assessment. That is, assessment focuses on multiple attributes or dimensions relevant to an individual’s overall performance. Another key principle is that assessment is
The Career Occupational Preference System (COPSystem) is a coordinated career guidance program consisting of three assessment instruments all keyed to eight major career clusters. The three assessment components are the COPSystem Interest Inventory (COPS), the Career Ability Placement Survey (CAPS), and the Career Orientation Placement and Evaluation Survey (COPES) and their accompanying interpretive materials. Interpretation
The System of Interactive Guidance Information (SIGI) is a computer-assisted career guidance system (CACGS) for university students and adults. It is a computer program designed to help people make informed career decisions via self-assessments and in-depth, current educational and job information. The program also has an educational aspect that teaches users about the career decision-making
Adults experience a wide variety of transitions including shifting from school to work, marriage, divorce, birth of a child, death of a loved one, adjustments to serious injuries, relocations, and, particularly, career transitions. Since the latter part of the 20th century, a rapidly changing global economy and technological advances have demanded that people adjust to
Action theory is based on a school of thought in philosophy, social and cognitive psychology, neurology, and organizational behavior as well as in counseling and career development. This school of thought addresses the intentional, goal-directed nature of human behavior. It has historical roots in the works of George Herbert Mead, Talcott Parsons, and Lev Vygotsky
Attachment theory provides a useful theoretical framework for understanding how relationships function to facilitate or hinder developmental progress, such as progress in career development. A central tenet of this theory concerns the central role of attachments as enduring emotional bonds of substantial intensity that influence healthy development and participation in satisfying relationships. Regularities in interactions
Paul Radin worked as an anthropologist in North America and specialized in Native American groups. His field was the ethnology of religion and mythology, as well as the ethnography of Native Americans. Radin spent his early childhood in New York City, but was born in Poland on April 2, 1883. In 1902, he graduated from
Ramses II, also called Ramses the Great, was the third king of the 19th Dynasty of Egypt. He reigned for 67 years, from approximately 1290 BCE to 1223 BCE. Ramses II brought Egypt to its height of prosperity and power. He was the son of Seti I (Sethos I) and Queen Tuya. Ramses acted as
The most common use of the term “rank” in anthropology is to designate one type of society among three (the others being egalitarian and class) regarding the people’s access to economic resources, sociocultural power, and status. As stated in Cultural Anthropology (2004), “Rank societies do not have very unequal access to economic resources or to
Rapa Nui is a small (160 km) remote subtropical island in the South Pacific Ocean, 3600 km west of Chile, the nation of which it forms a part, and 1900 km east-southeast of Pitcairn Island, the nearest inhabited island. It is known to outsiders as Easter Island (Isla de Pascua in Spanish), so named by
Roy Rappaport, one of the leading ecological anthropologists of the 20th century, was born in New York City. He earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell University. In 1959 (at the age of 33), Rappaport enrolled at Columbia University where he studied anthropology under Marvin Harris, Harold Conklin, Margaret Mead, Conrad Arensberg, and Andrew P. Vayda.
Polynesia is a geographical triangle in the Pacific Ocean with Hawaii, New Zealand, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) as its three points. Starting about 65 million years ago, ongoing volcanic activity began forming the Cook Islands of Polynesia between Fiji and Tahiti. The resultant archipelago consists of 15 major islands, six of which are the
Reciprocity is the state of mutually addressing the same attitudes or feelings as another. It indicates an equal exchange. This implies intersubjectivity and interaction not only between individuals, but also between groups. It may, therefore, be applied to many fields of social activity and has acquired special importance in psychology, education, ethics, politics, and law.
Robert Redfield, prominent anthropologist and Dean of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago from 1934 to 1936, applied a functionalist anthropological perspective to his comparative studies of Mexican communities at different stages of modernization. Born in Chicago, Illinois on December 4, 1897, Redfield was the son of a prominent corporate lawyer, and his
Gladys Reichard was born in Bangor, Pennsylvania on July 17, 1893. Her family was of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage and she was raised in a Quaker household. After graduating from high school, she taught in the public schools for six years. In 1915 she enrolled in Swarthmore College where, in 1919, she received her AB in
Hardly any term of the intellectual life seems to have such multifarious meanings as religion. Religion is of great importance for the development of mankind and its history, as it represents the human reaction to an extrahuman holy, transcendent, and divine object. The term religion has its etymologic and historical roots in the Roman world
There is no single commonly accepted definition of framing in the field of communication. In fact, political communication scholars have offered a variety of conceptual and operational approaches to framing that all differ with respect to their underlying assumptions, the way they define frames and framing, their operational definitions, and very often also the criterion
Frustration is defined as a state that sets in if a goal-oriented act is delayed or thwarted. The instigation remains even though the chances of realization are constrained by interfering influences. Under these frustrating conditions aggressive behavior is stimulated to an extent that corresponds with the intensity of the instigation and the degree of blockage
George Gerbner (1920 –2006) was one of the most perspicacious students and critics of the social and political effects of television. Of half-Jewish descent, he grew up in Budapest as a recognized poet and lover of folklore. Forced to flee fascist Hungary to the US in 1939, he studied journalism at the University of California
One of the founding figures of communication science, Yale psychologist Carl Iver Hovland (1912 –1961) was born in Chicago to Scandinavian parents. His mother, Augusta Anderson Hovland, had emigrated from Sweden, while his father, Ole C. Hovland, a child of immigrants from Norway who had settled in Minnesota, had left the family farm to become
In the 1940s, Paul F. Lazarsfeld defined international communication as a study of the “processes by which various cultures influence each other” (Lazarsfeld 1976, 485). The term culture has been defined in a variety of ways over the years. An all-encompassing definition of culture was given by Kroeber: culture “is a way of habitual acting
Over the past five decades, Elihu Katz (born in New York in 1926) has made a major contribution to the analysis of mass communication. Best known for the concept of the “two-step flow of mass communication” and for the theory of “uses and gratifications” obtained by media audiences, Katz’s work examines the relation between the
Building upon early research from rural sociology, diffusion of innovations, public opinion poll data, and information campaigns, Tichenor et al. (1970, 159–160) posed the hypothesis: “As the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status (SES) tend to acquire this information at a faster rate
Social-judgment theorists (Sherif & Hovland 1961) assume that attitudes concerning important topics are bipolar. People have an internal reference scale. The initial attitude on an issue with high ego-involvement influences the reaction to a communication representing a different view. The discrepancy of a communication from one’s own position is decisive for the amount of change
Communication researchers often gather quantitative data – for example from surveys, content analyses, or experiments – and then generate mathematical models to represent or summarize those data. These models are used in two basic ways: first, to generate predictions about certain variables; and second, to study relationships among some number of variables (Allison 1999). In
A corollary of cultivation theory, the concept of “mainstreaming” implies that heavy television viewing contributes to an erosion of differences in people’s perspectives that stem from other factors and influences. It is based on the argument that television serves as the primary common storyteller for an otherwise heterogeneous population. As the source of the most
Throughout history, people’s positions in society, status, work, and worldview were dictated virtually from birth by the social class/socioeconomic status and other characteristics of their families of origin. Furthermore, men and women were ascribed different roles in society and in the family. Sex differences in lifestyle and careers were profound and largely immutable in any
The term locus of control originated in the social learning approach to behavior change in the early 1960s, and the first publication that explicitly examined this topic appeared in 1962. As originally proposed by Julian Rotter, a clinical and social psychologist, locus of control (LOC) refers to a dispositional tendency to perceive events and outcomes
The notion of Machiavellianism is based on the writings of the sixteenth-century writer Niccolo Machiavelli. In his most famous work, The Prince, Machiavelli describes an Italian prince who is willing to do anything, no matter how unscrupulous, to gain and maintain political power. Furthermore, in his writings, Machiavelli argued that successful leaders need to be
What does it mean to be an intelligent person? Philosophers, psychologists, educators, and everyday people have answered this question using a wide variety of definitions for intelligence. This question has particular significance for someone seeking a career path in which the chance for success and satisfaction will be maximized. Naturally, everyone wants to make a “smart”
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was created by Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Briggs to make Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types practical for everyday use. One of Myers’s primary motivations in developing the MBTI was her desire to help people find work that was congruent with their individual preferences. The most fundamental use of the
The term needs describes a recurrent concern for a certain type of outcomes resulting from individuals’ interactions with their environments. Examples of biological needs are hunger, thirst, sex, or avoidance of bodily harm; examples of psychological needs include social contact, dominance, and curiosity. The common denominator of most biological and psychological needs is that the
One of the first and even now most-used tools of career counselors is the interest inventory. Inventories currently in use may be described as taking either of two approaches. One tells a person the relative strengths of his or her interests; the other tells the person what occupations have similar interests as his or hers.
Personality refers to characteristics that make individuals unique, including their prototypical thoughts, emotions, interests, habits, and behaviors. Psychological in nature, personality is relatively stable over time. Personality plays a significant role in determining how a person behaves in various situations. Many dimensions of personality have been linked to career development. Almost every element of a
The term personality typically refers to one’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving. In addition to the stable, trait-like features often evoked by this construct (e.g., sociability, dominance, modesty), many theories also emphasize the roles of culture, family, and other environmental factors involved in personality expression and development. This predominant individual differences variable has
The person-environment interactional and transactional models assume that human behavior tends to be influenced by many determinants both in the person and in the situation. The models emphasize the effects of person-situation interactions on personality, satisfaction, and well-being and suggest that behavior involves a continuous interaction between individuals and situations. As noted by Walter Mischel
Primatology is the study of nonhuman primates (NHP) or, as sometimes identified, the alloprimates, meaning primates other than us. The order Primates includes the prosimians, Old and New World monkeys, apes, and humans. The study of humans is relegated to the social sciences (that is, anthropology, geography, psychology, and sociology) and, although humans are primates
Often used as models for early primate anatomy and behavior, prosimians include a rich diversity of species exhibiting a complex range of social behavior, dietary specializations, and locomotor habits. Although more geographically widespread in the past, today these generally small primates are restricted to the Old World. Five of the eight major prosimian groups are
Protolanguage is a term from historical linguistics that refers to the hypothetical, reconstructed ancestor from which a set of known languages is descended. The proto-ancestor is reconstructed using the comparative method, by which existing and/or historically attested forms are compared, and ancestral forms are reconstructed, which can yield the attested forms via regular sound and
Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that is concerned with the study, prevention, and treatment of mental disorder (aka mental illness and psychopathology). Transcultural psychiatry is an increasingly important specialty of psychiatry that focuses on cultural aspects of mental disorder and psychiatric practice. It has also been referred to as comparative psychiatry, cross-cultural psychiatry and
Psychology and socialization research examine the workings of the human mind and human behavior; genetics, as a branch of biology, examines the way in which traits and predispositions are transmitted from parents to their children as a result of genetic recombination. The relationship between psychology, in contrast, and biology and genetics, has never been easy.
Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park is a culturally and historically significant site located on the West Coast of the Island of Hawai’i. The 182-acre preserve contains a pu’uhonua (place of refuge) that, until the early 19th century, served as a safe haven for defeated warriors, noncombatants, and individuals accused of breaking a kapu (taboo).
Pyramids can be found in many parts of the world in a wide variety of contexts and functions (for example, tombs, temples), from remains in Egypt and Central America to modern reconstructions. When we think of pyramids, however, no better examples exist than those from ancient Egypt, especially the pyramids at Giza. The term pyramid
The Jurchens (“Nuzhen” in Chinese pinyin romanization) were a Tungusic people who inhabited parts of northeast China and North Korea. Around the 11th century, part of the Jurchens migrated to the Yellow River basin. Those who remained were made up of three divisions: Haixi, Jianzhou, and Yeren. In the early 17th century, the remaining Jurchen
The Quechua are the most widespread indigenous group of the Americas, with some ten million spread across Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador (there known as Quichua), and smaller numbers in Argentina, Chile, and Colombia (there known as Ingano). Quechua speakers outnumber speakers of all other indigenous languages in South America combined, due in part to Quechua’s
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown was a British social anthropologist who was responsible for developing the school of thought known as structural-functionalism. Born near Birmingham in England on January 17, 1881, Radcliffe-Brown’s childhood was marred by a long battle with tuberculosis. Radcliffe-Brown enrolled in Trinity College in 1901 where he met and studied under anthropologists W. H.
Steven H. Chaffee (1935 –2001) was an internationally recognized mass communication scholar who had a crucial role in developing and shaping the field of communication during the last third of the twentieth century. He was born in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935. He received a BA in history (with distinction) from the University of
The importance of credibility in human communication had already been recognized long before modern communication research emerged as a scientific discipline. For ancient rhetoricians like Aristotle or Cicero it was self-evident that the credibility of a communicator had an important impact on the persuasiveness of his performance. At the beginning of the twentieth century credibility
The mass media can be the major influence on the adoption of an idea after the general public begins to become aware. Initially, an idea spreads through limited social networks, with members exchanging information in formats ranging from face-to-face discussions to blogs on the Internet. Such interactivity means that participants are actively engaged in the
Media desensitization is a reduction in emotional, physiological, cognitive, and/or behavioral reactivity resulting from extensive media exposure. Communication researchers have primarily used the term “desensitization” to label the effects of repeated media violence exposure on violence tolerance, meaning both a decrease in empathy and concern and also an increase in callousness toward victims of violence.
The Diffusion Paradigm Diffusion is a multifaceted perspective about social change in which people, innovations, and the media environment affect how rapidly change occurs. Scholars dating back at least to the German social philosopher Georg Simmel and the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde theorized about imitative behavior at the level of small groups and within communities
Arousal is commonly construed as the experience of restlessness, excitation, and agitation. It manifests itself in heightened overt and covert bodily activities that create a readiness for action. Acute states of such arousal characterize all vital emotions, and the subjective experience of these acute states is part and parcel of all strong feelings. Emotional arousal
Emotions are commonly understood as a complex of interactive entities encompassing subjective and objective factors and consisting of affective, cognitive, conative, and physiological components. The affective component includes the subjective experience of situations, which is connected to feelings of arousal, pleasure, or dissatisfaction. The cognitive component refers to how situations relevant to emotions are perceived
One of the dominant functions of modern media is entertainment (Zillmann & Vorderer 2000). Moreover, entertainment offerings presented by virtually all mass media seem designed to provide immediate gratification of the diverse hedonic needs of modern media consumers. If entertainment is the primary goal of modern media, why are so many critics concerned that those
The capacity for media messages to induce fear has been the object of scholarly inquiry since at least the 1930s when the Payne Fund Studies launched the first systematic effort to study the impact of media on children and adolescents. As part of that effort, Herbert Blumer (1933) found that 93 percent of the children
Leon Festinger was one of the most important figures in modern psychology and contributed several theories that are still important today for our understanding of the communication process, particularly the individual’s exposure to communication and processes of opinion formation and judgment. Born in 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of Russian immigrants, Festinger
Abilities represent an individual’s capacity to perform a wide range of tasks. They are believed to be somewhat stable traits or attributes but can be developed or refined over time. There are numerous types of abilities, which can be classified into four categories. Reasoning, judging, reading, writing, mathematical reasoning, and related capabilities reflect mental capacity
Academic achievement is axiomatic to career development processes. In people’s lives, academic choices, barriers, or opportunities occur early and frequently, and they have a pervasive and lasting influence on career development. For example, a middle school student’s choice of or opportunity for educational curricula limits or broadens the student’s subsequent opportunity for learning experiences; a
People differ in many respects, some important, some trivial. Personality traits are among the individual-difference characteristics that are important and powerful in explaining human behavior in the world of work. Myriad psychological characteristics can be used to describe people and distinguish them from one another. For example, in the English language, in excess of 12,000
Biodata, or biographical data, are paper and pencil measures that ask respondents to reflect or report on their life experiences. Scores from biodata are typically used in conjunction with other employment measures for predicting individual performance in a given job. Biodata have been used across a wide range of occupations as an indicator of the
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a concept that has caught the attention of researchers, practitioners, and the general public over the last decade. The idea that career development involves not only a cognitive but also an affective component has been promoted in recent years. Popular books discuss the importance of EI for success in academic and
No universally accepted conceptual definition of interests has emerged in vocational psychology. As a result, interests often are defined as what an assessment measures. At the most basic level, operational definitions of interests commonly focus on an individual’s constellation or pattern of likes and dislikes for vocational, academic, and leisure activities, as well as for
Research relating educational attainment to earnings has consistently found dramatic benefits for employees with increased schooling. Over their lifetimes, high school graduates will earn $212,000 more than nongraduates, and each additional year of school attainment beyond high school is associated with increasing income. For example, college graduates will, over their lifetimes, earn $812,000 more than
The term interests refers to what an individual likes and dislikes, as associated with specific tasks, activities, or objects. Interests are a function of factors such as values, family background and experiences, social class, culture, and environment. For 80 years, interests have been one of the most useful and most enduring constructs in career development.
The term learning styles refers to the preferences that an individual has regarding the organization of information. How people actually learn is a question that is best answered by considering a particular person’s preferred learning style. There are many instruments available that can guide individuals in identifying their preferred learning styles. Furthermore, research with those
Generally, the study of leisure interests, unlike the decades of work with vocational interests, has been confounded by the way in which such interests are measured. Instruments designed to assess vocational interests (e.g., Strong Interest Inventory, Self-Directed Search, Campbell Interest and Skill Survey) ask respondents to indicate the extent to which they like or do