Acculturation strategies as predictors of fandom identification in the fanfiction, Star Wars fan, and furry communities.

Research suggests that people at the interface of two different cultures may face a dilemma regarding how or whether to adopt aspects of the new culture in light of their existing cultural identity. A growing body of research in fan communities suggests that similar group processes may operate in recreational, volitional identities. We tested this by examining the associations between acculturation attitudes and identification with fan communities across three studies. Fanfiction fans, Star Wars fans, and furries completed measures of four different acculturation strategies with respect to managing their fan and non-fan communities as well as a measure of their identification with the fan community. Results across the three studies consistently found that integration and assimilation strategies positively predicted fan community identification, while separation and marginalization strategies negatively predicted fan community identification. Together, the results conceptually replicate and find evidence for the acculturation model.

"Chasing Tail": Testing the Relative Strength of Sexual Interest and Social Interaction as Predictors of Furry Identity.

Furries can be described as a mediacentric fandom, similar to other fandoms, which organizes around an interest in anthropomorphic art. Past research has also aimed to highlight and understand the sexual motivations of furries, leading to questions regarding the relative strength of fandom and sexual motivations for joining and maintaining membership within the group. The goal of the present study was to test the relative contributions sex- and fandom-related motivations (e.g., social belonging) have in determining furry identity to provide better conceptualizations of this unique community for future research and education. In a sample of furries (n = 1,113), participants reported sexual attraction to facets of their interest and were found to be sexually motivated to engage in specific fan behaviors. However, a series of follow-up analyses revealed that non-sexual motivations were not only stronger in magnitude than sexual motivation was, but were also much more strongly correlated with furry identification.

Belongingness as a mediator of the relationship between felt stigma and identification in fans.

In the present study we examined the relationship between felt stigma and fan group identification as well as potential mediators of this relationship. Fans of various interests (e.g., sport, music) completed measures regarding felt stigma toward the fan group, psychological needs obtained through group membership (e.g., self-esteem, belonging), and identification with the fan community. The results showed that felt stigma predicted fan group identification, and the relationship was mediated by a psychological need for belonging. The results support prior research regarding the association between stigma and identification. However, the results add to the literature by showing belongingness as a mediator of this association.

The role of social identity motivation in dietary attitudes and behaviors among vegetarians.

People go vegetarian for a variety of reasons-most commonly motivated by concerns about animals, health, ecology, religion, or some combination of these motivations. Largely missing from existing perspectives on vegetarian motivation, however, is consideration of how construing vegetarianism as a social identity may motivate vegetarian-relevant behavior. We advance that the desire to adopt and affirm a vegetarian identity and to see this identity in a positive light may represent an overlooked, but meaningful, source of motivation for vegetarianism. In the current study (N = 380), we tested the predictive values of animal, health, ecological, religious, and social identity motivations among vegetarians for a variety of attitudes and behaviors. Over and above other motivational factors and the centrality and salience of being a vegetarian, social identity motivation uniquely predicted several relevant outcomes, including the tendency to violate one's vegetarian diet. These findings suggest that the desire to adopt and affirm a vegetarian identity may be a unique and meaningful motivation underlying one's choice to forgo meat.

The MTurkification of Social and Personality Psychology.

The potential role of brief online studies in changing the types of research and theories likely to evolve is examined in the context of earlier changes in theory and methods in social and personality psychology, changes that favored low-difficulty, high-volume studies. An evolutionary metaphor suggests that the current publication environment of social and personality psychology is a highly competitive one, and that academic survival and reproduction processes (getting a job, tenure/promotion, grants, awards, good graduate students) can result in the extinction of important research domains. Tracking the prevalence of brief online studies, exemplified by studies using Amazon Mechanical Turk, in three top journals ( Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) reveals a dramatic increase in their frequency and proportion. Implications, suggestions, and questions concerning this trend for the field and questions for its practitioners are discussed.

The effects of violent media content on aggression.

Decades of research have shown that violent media exposure is one risk factor for aggression. This review presents findings from recent cross-sectional, experimental, and longitudinal studies, demonstrating the triangulation of evidence within the field. Importantly, this review also illustrates how media violence research has started to move away from merely establishing the existence of media effects and instead has begun to investigate the mechanisms underlying these effects and their limitations. Such studies range from investigations into cross-cultural differences to neurophysiological effects, and the interplay between media, individual, and contextual factors. Although violent media effects have been well-established for some time, they are not monolithic, and recent findings continue to shed light on the nuances and complexities of such effects.

'More than skin-deep': biological essentialism in response to a distinctiveness threat in a stigmatized fan community.

We investigated how group distinctiveness threats affect essentialist beliefs about group membership in a stigmatized fan community. An experiment conducted on 817 members of the fan community revealed that highly identified fans who perceived significant stigmatization were the most likely to endorse essentialist beliefs about group membership when exposed to a distinctiveness threat via comparison to a highly similar (vs. dissimilar) outgroup. These results bridge essentialism research and research on distinctiveness threat by demonstrating the mutability of group essentialism beliefs as a defensive response to distinctiveness threats. Implications for future research are discussed.

Modulation of viewpoint effects in object recognition by shape and motion cues.

In three experiments, we examined the role of structural similarity and different types of motion on the efficiency of performing same--different shape judgments across changes in viewpoints. In all experiments, participants judged whether two novel, multi-part objects were structurally identical, and they were to ignore any viewpoint or motion differences between the objects. In experiment 1, participants were affected by viewpoint differences more for structurally similar than structurally distinct objects, but this interaction was mitigated by rigid motion. In experiments 2 and 3, we used only structurally similar objects that moved only some of their parts, either in a similar way between objects within a pair or in distinctive ways. Participants' recognition performance was facilitated by this articulated motion relative to both static and scrambled controls. We conclude that coherent motion facilitates generalisation across different views of dynamic objects under some conditions.