The reification of celebrity: global newspaper coverage of the death of David Bowie*

This paper examines global English-language newspaper coverage of the death of David Bowie. Drawing upon the concept of reification, it is argued that the notion of celebrity is discursively (re)produced and configured through a ‘public face’ that is defined, maintained and shaped via media reports and public responses that aim to know and reflect upon celebrity. The findings highlight how Bowie’s reification was supported by discourses that represented him as an observable, reified form. Here, Bowie’s ‘reality’, that is, his authentic/veridical self, was obscured behind a façade of mediation, interpretation and representation that debated and decided his ‘authenticity’ as a cultural icon. Such debates, however, were engagements with a reified image, enveloped in continual (re)interpretation. As a result, Bowie’s reification was grounded in a polysemous process that allowed numerous versions of ‘himself’ to be aesthetically reimagined, reinvented and repeated.     

For compassion or money? The factors influencing the funding of micro loans

Aided by the Internet, microfinance institutions have found new ways to expand the reach of financing entrepreneurial projects on a small scale. Using a unique data set of individual loans posted to Kiva.org, we explore the determinants of lenders’ nonprofit lending choices in the growing microfinance industry. We find that lenders make choices in purposive ways even in the absence of market interest rates, especially with respect to the demographic characteristics of borrowers and the uses of proposed funds. Hence, the results provide valuable new information about consumer choice in charitable giving and investment.     

SOS—Satisfied or Stuck,Why Older Rural Residents Stay Put: Aging in Place or Stuck in Place in Rural Utah*

As rural communities undergo substantial demographic and economic changes, understanding the migration intentions and their antecedents of rural elderly persons becomes increasingly important. Using data drawn from a survey of adults from 24 rural Utah communities conducted in 2008, we examine whether rural residents 60 years of age or older plan to remain in their present communities (N= 621). We use structural equation models (SEM) to estimate the relationships between a variety of individual and community-level background measures, including perceptions of local service quality, leaving one's community for health care, Internet use, attachment to and satisfaction with community, and plans to age in place. Results suggest that even as the rural context of economic decline, population loss, and distance to medical services may reduce the viability of staying in a community, a desire to remain in the community is primarily a function of perceptions of the quality of local services and community satisfaction. This research highlights the need to better understand the interplay between the availability of medical services and perceptions of distance as well as to understand the complex relationship between individual and community level characteristics for migration intentions.     

Introduction to the Special Section Value Development from Middle Childhood to Early Adulthood—New Insights from Longitudinal and Genetically Informed Research

Research into values at an early age has only started recently, although it has expanded quickly and dynamically in the past years. The purpose of this article is twofold: First, it provides an introduction to a special section that aims to help fill the gap in value development research. The special section brings together four new longitudinal and genetically informed studies of value development from the beginning of middle childhood through early adulthood. Second, this article reviews recent research from this special section and beyond, aiming to provide new directions to the field. With new methods for assessing children's values and an increased awareness of the role of values in children's and adolescents' development, the field now seems ripe for an in‐depth investigation. Our review of empirical evidence shows that, as is the case with adults, children's values are organized based on compatibilities and conflicts in their underlying motivations. Values show some consistency across situations, as well as stability across time. This longitudinal stability tends to increase with age, although mean changes are also observed. These patterns of change seem to be compatible with Schwartz's (1992) theory of values (e.g., if the importance of openness to change values increases, the importance of conservation values decreases). The contributions of culture, family, peers, significant life events, and individual characteristics to values are discussed, as well as the development of values as guides for behavior.     

Does Hearing About Cancer Influence Stimulus Control? An Exploratory Study of Verbal Modulation of Stimulus Generalization

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Participants first became familiar with an image showing moderate symptoms of the skin cancer melanoma. In a generalization test, they indicated whether images...     

The heritability of emergent leadership: Age and gender as moderating factors

In this study, we examined the moderating influences of gender and age with respect to testing the heritability of leadership emergence. A large data base of 12,112 twins from Sweden was used in the current study to decompose the variance of emergent leadership into an unobservable genetic component and environmental components that are either common or unshared among twin pairs. Consistent with prior leadership research on genetics, we found that a genetic factor is able to explain a significant proportion of the variation across individuals in predicting how twins perceive their emergent leadership behavior (about 44% for women and 37% for men). Furthermore, we also found that the magnitude of genetic influence on emergent leadership varied with age, but only for women with the heritability estimate being highest for the mid-age women versus lowest for the older women. Implications for advancing research on the genetic and environmental influences on leadership emergence are discussed.     

Leadership of highly creative people in highly creative fields: A historiometric study of scientific leaders

In recent years there has been a marked increase in the study of the influence of leadership on creativity, and the effects of this relationship on organizational performance. While a number of explanations have been broached with regard to the positive effects of leadership on creativity, many of these studies propose different, and often contradictory, methods for leaders to achieve these positive effects on creativity within their organizations and work groups. Additionally, little work has been done examining the effects of leadership on highly creative people in fields requiring creativity. The purpose of this study is to examine two existing leadership theories with regard to their viability as models to explain creative performance of eminent scientists. Eminent scientists represent a population of leaders of highly creative individuals in a field that values the production of innovative ideas and products as a marker of performance. Ninety-three excerpts from the biographies of scientists were content coded for leader behaviors and performance criteria. The results of this analysis indicate that a model based on strategic planning and product championing may serve to explain the positive effects of leadership on creativity in a highly creative population.     

Do cultural orientations moderate the relation between Chinese adolescents’ shyness and depressive symptoms? It depends on their academic achievement

We examined the moderating roles of individualistic and collectivistic cultural orientations and academic achievement on the relation between Chinese adolescents’ shyness and depressive symptoms. A sample of Chinese adolescents (N = 492) from an urban school participated in the study during seventh (T1) and eighth (T2) grades. Adolescents self‐reported their shyness, cultural orientations, and depressive symptoms. The school provided records of their academic achievement. Concurrently, shyness and individualism were positively whereas collectivism and academic achievement were negatively, associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Longitudinally, T1 shyness (but not individualism, collectivism, or academic achievement) predicted T2 depressive symptoms after controlling for stability in depressive symptoms. Concurrent relations between shyness and depressive symptoms were moderated by adolescents’ cultural orientations. Specifically, collectivism was protective whereas individualism was harmful, for shy adolescents’ adjustment. Furthermore, collectivism and academic achievement jointly moderated the relations between shyness and depressive symptoms concurrently and longitudinally. The results suggest that cultural orientations may influence shy adolescents’ depression symptoms through individual‐level self‐evaluation, and indicate that cultural factors and academic achievement need to be considered comprehensively for understanding and improving shy Chinese adolescents’ psychological adjustment.     

Semiparametric temporal process regression of survival-out-of-hospital

Lifetime Data Analysis - The recurrent/terminal event data structure has undergone considerable methodological development in the last 10–15 years. An example of the data structure that has...