Research on social influences often distinguishes between social and quality incentives to ascribe meaning to the value that popularity conveys. This study examines the neural correlates of those incentives through which popularity influences preferences. This research reports an functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment and a behavioral task in which respondents evaluated popular products with three focus perspectives; unspecified focus, focus on social aspects, and focus on quality. The results show that value derived with a social focus reflects inferences (...) of approval and reward value, and positively affects preferences. Value derived with a quality focus reflects inferences of quality and negatively affects preferences. This study provides evidence of two distinct inferential routes on both a neurological level, represented by different regions in the brain, and a behavioral level. These results provide the first evidence that a single popularity cue can in different ways influence the value derived from product popularity. (shrink)

The present study explored motivations for lying self-presentation on Instagram as well as the mental and behavioral outcomes of this presentation. We also examined the differential mediational roles of perceived popularity in accounting for the association between lying self-presentation and depression. Our results showed that individuals with a strong need for approval reported higher levels of lying self-presentation. The results also revealed that lying self-presentation positively influenced depression, perceived popularity and deleting behaviors. Furthermore, we found that even if (...) lying self-presentation increased depression, perceived popularity served as a psychological buffer against depression. (shrink)

Inappropriate social interactions of entrepreneurs can generate negative effects in the peer-to-peer lending market. To address this problem and assist peer-to-peer entrepreneurs in customizing their online interaction strategies, we used the cutting-edge cognitive-experiential self-system conceptual model and studied the relationship between peer-to-peer entrepreneurs’ interactions and financing levels. Online interactive information was categorized as emotional or cognitive, adding the moderator of entrepreneur popularity, and the effect of these interactions on individual investors was analyzed. We found that the entrepreneurs’ online interactive (...) information affected psychological perception of entrepreneurs and their corresponding brand image. The interaction between popularity and interactive information types was significant. The findings imply that less popular entrepreneurs should engage in emotional interactions, while more popular entrepreneurs should choose cognitive interactions. Online interaction created comparative advantages in the financing activities of peer-to-peer companies. These results expand understanding of the psychological facets of the consumer–brand relationship in the digital world, and extend the current literature. This study also highlights key areas of learning and application for both practitioners and scholars of organizational psychology. (shrink)

Like other cultural variants, tastes in companion animals can shift rapidly. An analysis of American Kennel Club puppy registrations from 1946 through 2003 identified rapid but transient large-scale increases in the popularity of specific dog breeds. Nine breeds of dogs showed particularly pronounced booms and busts in popularity. On average, the increase phase in these breeds lasted 14 years, during which time annual new registrations increased 3,200%. Equally steep decreases in registrations for the breeds immediately followed these jumps (...) in popularity. The existence of extreme fluctuations in preferences for dog breeds has implications for understanding changes in attitudes toward companion animals, veterinary epidemiology, and canine evolution. (shrink)

Children’s understanding of status and group norms influence their expectations about social encounters. However, status is multidimensional and children may perceive status stratification differently across multiple status dimensions. The current study investigated the effect of status level and norms on children’s expectations about intergroup affiliation in wealth and popularity contexts. Participants were randomly assigned to hear two scenarios where a high- or low-status target affiliated with opposite-status groups based on either wealth or popularity. In one scenario, the group (...) expressed an inclusive norm. In the other scenario, the group expressed an exclusive norm. For each scenario, children made predictions about children’s expectations for a target to acquire social resources. Novel findings indicated that children associated wealth status to some extent, but they drew stronger inferences from the wealth dimension than from the popularity dimension. In contrast to previous evidence that children distinguish between high- and low-status groups, we did not find evidence to support this in the context of the current study. In addition, norms of exclusion diminished children’s expectations for acquiring social resources from wealth and popularity groups but this effect was more pronounced between wealth groups. We found age differences in children’s expectations in regards to norms, but not in regards to status. The implications of how these effects, in addition to lack of effects, bear on children’s expectations about acquiring resources are discussed. (shrink)

Is blue food desirable or disgusting? The answer, it would seem, is both, but it really depends on the food in which the color happens to be present. It turns out that the oft-cited aversive response to blue meat may not even have been scientifically validated, despite the fact that blue food coloring is often added to discombobulate diners. In the case of drinks, however, there has been a recent growth of successful new blue product launches in everything from beer (...) to tea, and from wine to gin, arguing that coloring food products blue is more than simply a contemporary fad. In fact, the current interest in blue food coloring builds on the color's earlier appearance in everything from blue curacao to blue-raspberry candyfloss, and thereafter a number of soft drinks. Over the years, the combination of blue coloring with raspberry flavoring has also appeared in everything from bubble-gum to patriotic pop rocks. Ultimately, it is the rarity of naturally-blue foods that is likely what makes this color so special. As such, blue food coloring can both work effectively to attract the visual attention of the shopper while, at the same time, being linked to a range of different flavors depending on the food format in which it happens to appear. Note also that the basic descriptor “blue” covers a wide range of hues having a range of different associations, hence eliciting different reactions. While blue was once associated with artificiality, a growing number of natural blue food colorings have come onto the market in recent years thus perhaps changing the dominant associations that many consumers may have with this most unusual of food colors. (shrink)

Popular sovereignty is one of the most widespread but poorly understood notions in modern politics. Exalted as the highest principle of democratic legitimacy, the idea of popular sovereignty has been given various but broadly similar formulations. . . .

In this article, it is argued that existing democracies might establish popular rule even if Joseph Schumpeter’s notoriously unflattering picture of ordinary citizens is accurate. Some degree of popular rule is in principle compatible with apathetic, ignorant and suggestible citizens, contrary to what Schumpeter and others have maintained. The people may have control over policy, and their control may constitute popular rule, even if citizens lack definite policy opinions and even if their opinions result in part from elites’ efforts to (...) manipulate these opinions. Thus, even a purely descriptive, ‘realist’ account of democracy of the kind that Schumpeter professed to offer may need to concede that there is no democracy without some degree of popular rule. (shrink)

O presente artigo apresenta uma pesquisa sobre o que a instituição católica entende por piedade popular, tendo como base o Diretório de Piedade Popular e Liturgia, para em seguida, abordar o tema piedade popular mariana, com suas características próprias, como sentimento via cordis, exuberância, expressividade, vitalidade e caráter maravilhoso, e analisar a postura do catolicismo oficial, diante dessa maneira de vivenciar a fé. Posto isso, pesquisou-se o culto mariano, tendo como horizonte a exortação apostólica Marialis Cultus, de Paulo VI, que (...) contém orientações, como bíblica, litúrgica, sensibilidade ecumênica e antropológica, para promover uma genuína reforma da veneração a Maria. (shrink)

Building relationships is crucial for satisfaction and success, especially when entering new social contexts. In the present paper, we investigate whether attempting to improve others’ feelings helps people to make connections in new networks. In Study 1, a social network study following new networks of people for a twelve-week period indicated that use of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) strategies predicted growth in popularity, as indicated by other network members’ reports of spending time with the person, in work and non-work (...) interactions. In Study 2, linguistic analysis of the tweets from over 8000 Twitter users from formation of their accounts revealed that use of IER predicted greater popularity in terms of the number of followers gained. However, not all types of IER had positive effects. Behavioral IER strategies (which use behavior to reassure or comfort in order to regulate affect) were associated with greater popularity, while cognitive strategies (which change a person’s thoughts about his or her situation or feelings in order to regulate affect) were negatively associated with popularity. Our findings have implications for our understanding of how new relationships are formed, highlighting the important the role played by intentional emotion regulatory processes. (shrink)

Digital data inundation has far-reaching implications for: disciplinary jurisdiction; the relationship between the academy, commerce and the state; and the very nature of the sociological imagination. Hitherto much of the discussion about these matters has tended to focus on ‘transactional’ data held within large and complex commercial and government databases. This emphasis has been quite understandable – such transactional data does indeed form a crucial part of the informational infrastructures that are now emerging. However, in recent years new sources of (...) data have become available that possess a rather different character. This is data generated in the cultural sphere, not only as a result of routine transactions with various digital media but also as a result of what some would want to view as a shift towards popular cultural forms dominated by processes of what has been termed prosumption. Our analytic focus here is on contemporary prosumption practices, digital technologies, the public life of data and the playful vitality of many of the ‘glossy topics’ that constitute contemporary popular culture. (shrink)

Efforts to diffuse useful knowledge on the part of dedicated social reformers, enterprising publishers, and vigorous voluntary associations created new forms of popular literature in the urban centres of Paris and London during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Popular science periodicals, especially, embodied the aims of the advocates of cheap literature, by providing ‘improving’ information at prices low enough to reach readers who might otherwise purchase potentially dangerous political tracts. Besides promoting social stability, popular science periodicals served to (...) answer the needs of diverse increasingly literate, leisured, and well paid social groups.From their inception, through their evolution over half a century, periodicals in London and Paris mirrored these similar commitments and concerns of their creators. Continuous imitation back and forth across the Channel indicated just how closely English and French editors shared common programmes. Yet despite the similar aspirations of their promoters, popular science periodicals in England and France revealed the outlines of two very different low scientific cultures, shaped by the dissimilar characteristics of their audiences, editors, and high scientific communities. (shrink)

Popular sovereignty - the doctrine that the public powers of state originate in a concessive grant of power from 'the people' - is perhaps the cardinal doctrine of modern constitutional theory, placing full constitutional authority in the people at large, rather than in the hands of judges, kings, or a political elite. Although its classic formulation is to be found in the major theoretical treatments of the modern state, such as in the treatises of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, this book (...) explores the intellectual origins of this doctrine and investigates its chief source in late medieval and early modern thought. Long regarded the principal source for modern legal reasoning, Roman law had a profound impact on the major architects of popular sovereignty such as François Hotman, Jean Bodin, and Hugo Grotius. Adopting the juridical language of obligations, property, and personality as well as the model of the Roman constitution, these jurists crafted a uniform theory that located the right of sovereignty in the people at large as the legal owners of state authority. In recovering the origins of popular sovereignty, the book demonstrates the importance of the Roman law as a chief source of modern constitutional thought. (shrink)

Popular science in Nuremberg at the end of the 18th century exemplifies a little known German scientific culture: as in English und French towns, public lectures in natural philosophy and experimental demonstrations were offered to an interested bourgeois audience; the production of scientific toys flourished. The career of Johann Konrad Gütle, private teacher, itinerant lecturer and instrument maker, illustrates the popular scientific scene in Enlightenment Nuremberg.

The exploration of popular culture topics by academic philosophers for non-academic audiences has given rise to a distinctive genre of philosophical writing. Edited volumes with titles such as Black Sabbath and Philosophy or Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy contain chapters by multiple philosophical authors that attempt to bring philosophy to popular audiences. Two dominant models have emerged in the genre. On the pedagogical model, authors use popular culture examples to teach the reader philosophy. The end is to promote philosophical (...) literacy, defined as acquaintance with the key problems, ideas, and figures in the history of philosophy. In contrast, on the applied philosophy model, authors use philosophy to open up new dimensions of the popular culture topic for fans. The end is to illustrate the value of philosophy in understanding the popular culture topic, and ultimately, to demonstrate the value of philosophy in general. Taking stock of the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two models provides an opportunity to reflect more broadly on whether, why, and how philosophers should engage the public. (shrink)

This work is an attempt to explore both the increase in and the breadth of popular collecting in Britain. It does this by examining the contexts of social change over the past 20 years. This change, it is argued, has led to a culture of social and material insecurity, in which collecting is used for the creating and defence of identity. The social theory of Guy Debord is employed as an underlying philosophy in which contemporary popular collecting is interpreted as (...) an expression of a moral value system in a society driven by market forces. The social world and values of collectors are explored through their clubs. These, it is asserted, comprise an alternative society, one in which a legitimization of the collector's activities and preferences can be made and in which they develop a complementary reality. (shrink)

Building on Philip Tagg’s timely intervention (2011), I investigate four things in relation to three dominant Anglophone popular music studies journals (Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies): 1) what interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity means within popular music studies, with a particular focus on the sites of research and the place of ethnographic and/or anthropological approaches; 2) the extent to which popular music studies has developed canonic scholarship, and the citation tendencies present within scholarship on (...) both Western and non-Western popular musics; 3) the motivations for two scholarly groups, Dancecult and ASARP, to breakaway from popular music studies; 4) the forms of music analysis and the kinds of musical material commonly employed within popular music studies. I suggest that the field would greatly benefit from a true engagement with anthropological theories and methods, and that the “chaotic conceptualization” of musical structuration and the critical discourse would likewise benefit from an attention to recorded sound and production aesthetics. (shrink)

Library POPULAR ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE Lionel Pearson STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD. ...

Republicans hold that people are dominated merely in virtue of others' having unconstrained abilities to frustrate their choices. They argue further that public officials may dominate citizens unless subject to popular control. Critics identify a dilemma. To maintain the possibility of popular control, republicans must attribute to the people an ability to control public officials merely in virtue of the possibility that they might coordinate their actions. But if the possibility of coordination suffices for attributing abilities to groups, then, even (...) in the best case, countless groups will be dominating because it will be possible for their members to coordinate their actions with the aim of frustrating others' choices. We argue the dilemma is apparent only. To make our argument, we present a novel interpretation of the republican concept of domination with the help of a game-theoretic model that clarifies the significance of collective action problems for republican theory. (shrink)

English popular science was more than a mid-nineteenth century phenomenon, whether defined as practical, utilitarian and comprehensible knowledge, or as a nexus of ¡deas, rhetoric and practice. All these criteria were fulfilled in four Stationers’ Company almanacs for forty years by Henry Andrews, an astronomer, mathematician, astrologer and meteorologist. Andrews employed these as instruments for an extensive campaign in the history of science education devised to acquaint working class readers with the key figures, ideas and methodologies of science.

This article investigates the relationship between popular sovereignty, populism, and deliberative democracy. My main thesis is that populisms resurrect the polemical dimension of popular sovereignty by turning “the people” against the “powerbloc” or the “elite”, and that it is crucial thatthis terrain not be ceded to authoritarian distortions of this basic contestatory grammar. Furthermore, I contend that populist forms of politics are compatible with a procedural and deliberative conception of democracy. Ifirst engage with the assumption that populism and a procedural (...) model of democracy are incompatible, demonstrating that this assumption relies on a conservative bias which tiesthe exercising of communicative power to a “duty of civility”. I then engage with radical-democratic reconstructions of the procedural notion of popular sovereignty which emphasize the unleashing and diversification of peoplehood in communication circuits and the mutual permeability of constitutional politics, parliamentary legislation, and the public sphere. Thirdly, I conclude that populisms are an essential part of communicative power in modern democracies and part of its dialectical structure. (shrink)

In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way ‘conversation’ in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how each one (...) understands the current mediated feminist landscape. (shrink)

The common assumption is that works of popular are less serious, less artistically valuable. Popular art is driven by a profit motive; real art, high art, is produced for loftier goals, such as aesthetic appreciation. Further, popular art is formulaic and gravitates toward the lowest common denominator. High art is innovative. It enriches, elevates, and inspires; popular art just entertains. Worse, popular art inculcates cultural biases. It is a corporate tool of ideological indoctrination, making contingent social and economic arrangements seem (...) necessary. Or so the common view holds. In light of these common assumptions, we must ask just what marks the distinction between high art and popular art? Is there really any important difference at all? Is there reason to think that popular is by its very nature aesthetically inferior to high art? In this article, I consider some of the prominent answers to these questions. The discussion is organized around questions concerning two general topics: (1) the nature of popular art, and (2) the putative aesthetic deficiencies of popular art. (shrink)

The eighteenth century was an era in which science came to play a major role in the cultural ideal of the city elite. The phenomenon of the ‘gentleman-scientist’ arose: a layman without a scientific education who for a variety of often socially desirable reasons devoted himself to scientific endeavours. Scientific instruments were the tools for this interest. This article describes the introduction, diffusion, and construction in the Netherlands of one of the most prominent eighteenth-century instruments: the reflecting telescope. The reception (...) of this instrument casts new light on the usually almost invisible network of gentleman-scientists and instrument-makers in this region. The specific economic and political factors of the Netherlands led to a totally different development of this instrument compared with the ‘motherland’ England. Whereas in Great Britain the reflecting telescope was a great success well into the nineteenth century, in the Netherlands it became a symbol of technical inability and stagnation. (shrink)

The studies of urban popular culture in modern China in recent years have attracted wide attention from scholars in China and abroad. The symposium, which is composed by Ma Min’s “Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural history,” Jiang Jin’s “Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in modern China,” Wang Di’s “The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective and methodology of studying urban popular culture from the case of teahouses in Chengdu,” Joseph W. Esherick’s “Remaking the Chinese (...) city: Urban space and urban culture” and Lu Hanchao’s “From elites to common people: The downward trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in the United States,” provide valuable insights on the perspective, trend, and methodology of the studies. (shrink)

What is popular defense? From whom do we have to defend ourselves?Originally civilian populations were capable of defending themselves both in times of peace and war. A military racket was subsequently imposed upon them in the name of protection and popular defense lost its capacity to resist external attack. In case of total war, between the native populations which form the constitutional basis of all great modern states and the military now in charge of defending them there was no more (...) "common culture." Industrial wars subsequently managed to replace the thousand-year-old pact of semi-colonization with total colonization. First experimented with in South America, this kind of "endo-colonization" was gradually extended to all the post-industrial countries through the exponential development of the techno-military complex. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la relación entre el proceso de laicización o secularización de lo religioso y el crecimiento de los rituales de religiosidad popular en el contexto de las sociedades modernas contemporáneas a partir de un análisis etnográfico del ritual de la Semana Santa de la ciudad de Huelva. Haciendo uso de una metodología etnográfica de corte cualitativo, imbricada con técnicas de investigación cuantitativas de carácter sociológico, ponemos sobre análisis las significaciones religiosas e ideológico políticas de actores que (...) participan y producen este ritual religioso popular, en atención a la diversidad y el pluralismo de ideas que se ponen en juego en torno a la Semana Santa y a la relativización de valores, creencias y prácticas que la hace posible. Asimismo, se analizan las características antropocéntricas y antropomórficas que permean el ritual y la relación colectiva con los iconos religiosos. (shrink)

In democracies citizens are supposed to have some control over the general direction of policy. According to a pretheoretical interpretation of this idea, the people have control if elections and other democratic institutions compel officials to do what the people want, or what the majority want. This interpretation of popular control fits uncomfortably with insights from social choice theory; some commentators—Riker, most famously—have argued that these insights should make us abandon the idea of popular rule as traditionally understood. This article (...) presents a formal theory of popular control that responds to the challenge from social choice theory. It makes precise a sense in which majorities may be said to have control even if the majority preference relation has an empty core. And it presents a simple game-theoretic model to illustrate how majorities can exercise control in this specified sense, even when incumbents are engaged in purely re-distributive policymaking and the majority rule core is empty. (shrink)

Morality is one of the fundamental structures of any society, enabling complex groups to form, negotiate their internal differences and persist through time. In the first book-length study of Roman popular morality, Dr Morgan argues that we can recover much of the moral thinking of people across the Empire. Her study draws on proverbs, fables, exemplary stories and gnomic quotations, to explore how morality worked as a system for Roman society as a whole and in individual lives. She examines the (...) range of ideas and practices and their relative importance, as well as questions of authority and the relationship with high philosophy and the ethical vocabulary of documents and inscriptions. The Roman Empire incorporated numerous overlapping groups, whose ideas varied according to social status, geography, gender and many other factors. Nevertheless it could and did hold together as an ethical community, which was a significant factor in its socio-political success. (shrink)

Examines opinions of ordinary people in regard to political obligations through small focus groups. Under certain circumstances, the views of ordinary people can lend support to the particular theories to which they subscribe and increase burdens of justification for proponents of alternative theories. Responses of participants in ten focus groups indicate strong consensus on basic points. Participants strongly believe they have political obligations, although they make exceptions for particular laws, which seem to them to serve no real social purpose. They (...) ground their obligations on benefits provided by the state, and strongly connect up their own requirements to obey the law with requirements that all other people behave similarly. The moral principle that appears to coincide most closely with their views is a variant of the principle of fairness. (shrink)

Popular sovereignty requires that citizens perceive themselves as being able to act and implement decisions, and that they are de facto causally connected to mechanisms of decision making. I argue that the two most common understandings of the exercise of popular sovereignty—which center on direct decision making by the people as a whole and the indirect exercise of democratic agency by elected representatives, respectively—are inadequate in this respect, and go on to suggest a complementary account that stresses the central role (...) of internally democratic and participatory political parties in actualising popular sovereignty, drawing on the democratic theory of Hans Kelsen. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the Business Ethics literature by unpacking the multimodal construction of moral narratives in popular culture and its portrayals of organizations and organizational roles. Understanding such portrayals and their construction is crucial to Business Ethics scholarship because they shape organizational imaginaries, influencing understandings and expectations of the ethical/moral responsibilities of organizations and the actors within them. In particular, we study the construction of moral narratives within a reality TV show that focuses on immigration and border control at (...) an airport. We find that the immigration officers are depicted as rational and heroic figures whilst the travellers are presented as emotional and potentially dangerous characters. Our analysis highlights how this is achieved via five multimodal editing dimensions—the structure of interactional scenes, the ability to address the camera, the narrator’s comments, the visual and music effects—that are key in constructing clearly defined personae. We show how, through the intersubjective construction of clear-cut characters, the show downplays the moral complexity of its content. Portraying immigration officers as heroic, while presenting travellers as potentially dangerous, allows for a silencing of any ethical questioning of immigration officers’ organizational practices. (shrink)

This paper examines the nexus between popular culture and the problem of corruption in Nigeria within the theoretical framework of the Socratic dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. The paper argues that corruption is a social behavior that is propelled by popular culture and sustained by skewed application of logical thinking in critical decision making. Hence, the paper posits that formal education remains the bedrock upon which corruption can be curtailed and also equips people with logical tools (...) to examine their actions as individuals and its consequences on the larger society. (shrink)

El artículo se estructura en torno de tres tópicos que se proponen como aportes a la agenda y los debates sobre extensión crítica. Por una parte, los movimientos populares, su papel en las nuevas realidades latinoamericanas, sus formas de construcción y su carácter de sujetos centrales para la extensión. En segundo lugar, se analizan las funciones sustantivas, a partir de lo que llamamos la densidad epistémica o los desafíos de conocimiento de los movimientos y se analiza la propuesta de diálogo (...) de saberes en relación con esa densidad epistémica. Por último, compartimos algunas reflexiones acerca del diálogo de saberes desde la perspectiva metodológica, retomando los aportes del Educación Popular. (shrink)

Historically, American political science has rarely engaged popular culture as a central topic of study, despite the domain’s outsized influence in American community life. This article argues that this marginalization is, in part, the by-product of long-standing disciplinary debates over the inadequate political development of the American public. To develop this argument, the article first surveys the work of early political scientists, such as John Burgess and Woodrow Wilson, to show that their reformist ambitions largely precluded discussion of mundane activities (...) of social life such as popular culture. It then turns to Harold Lasswell, who produced some of the first investigations of popular culture in American political science. Ironically, however, his work – and the work of those who adapted similar ways of speaking about popular culture after him – only reinforced skepticisms concerning the American public. It has thus helped keep the topic on the margins of disciplinary discourse. (shrink)