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The research examines how the attractiveness of children in need affects the empathy they evoke and the subsequent help they receive from unrelated adults. The authors find that attractive children are attributed desirable characteristics related to social competence, which is consistent with the "beautiful is good" stereotype. Ironically, the authors find that these attributions reduce the empathy evoked by attractive children and the help they receive from unrelated adults as long as their need is not severe. These effects are demonstrated in four experiments. The research identifies a significant cost of being beautiful and an important exception to the beautiful is good stereotype. The results also have practical implications for how children are portrayed in promotional materials for disaster relief agencies, children's hospitals, and other charities.

The research examines viewers' actual responses to four televised fund-raising drives by a public television station over a 2-year period. The 584 pledge breaks we studied contain 4,868 individual appeals that were decomposed into two underlying dimensions based on the empathy-helping hypothesis: the appeal beneficiary (self versus other) and emotional valence (positive versus negative). We find that the most effective fund-raising appeals communicate the benefits to others rather than to the self and evoke negative rather than positive emotions. Appeals that emphasize benefits to the self significantly reduce the number of calls to the station, particularly when they have a positive emotional valence.

Individual protein binding sites on DNA can be measured in bits of information. This information is related to the free energy of binding by the second law of thermodynamics, but binding kinetics appear to be inaccessible from sequence information since the relative contributions of the on- and off-rates to the binding constant, and hence the free energy, are unknown. However, the on-rate could be independent of the sequence since a protein is likely to bind once it is near a site. To test this, we used surface plasmon resonance and electromobility shift assays to determine the kinetics for binding of the Fis protein to a range of naturally occurring binding sites. We observed that the logarithm of the off-rate is indeed proportional to the individual information of the binding sites, as predicted. However, the on-rate is also related to the information, but to a lesser degree. We suggest that the on-rate is mostly determined by DNA bending, which in turn is determined by the sequence information. Finally, we observed a break in the binding curve around zero bits of information. The break is expected from information theory because it represents the coding demarcation between specific and nonspecific binding.

Two studies examine gender differences in responses to advertising with emotional content that varies on agency—a fundamental component of the male, but not female, stereotype. As hypothesized, males reported a less pleasant viewing experience and a less favorable attitude toward the advertisement (Aad) when a low‐agency emotion (i.e., stereotype‐incongruent) ad was viewed with another male, while their responses were not affected by the presence of another person when they were exposed to a high‐agency emotion (i.e., stereotype‐congruent) ad. Males’ and females’ private responses were not significantly different, and females’ responses were invariant across social contexts and type of ad.

The significance of volunteering for both individuals and society has lead to numerous studies on this behavior across the social sciences. However, virtually no prior research has evaluated how and to what extent organizations can effectively encourage individuals to contribute time to a worthy cause. The present research uses a social norm perspective to examine the conditions under which promotional appeals based on group need and promises of recognition affect volunteerism. The perspective suggests that norm compliance can be expected only when the prescribed behavior is both important to the group's welfare and subject to group-mediated rewards. Consequently, we hypothesize that promotional appeals based on group need and promised recognition are effective only when they are used in combination. Results of a laboratory and a field experiment are consistent with this hypothesis and provide insights into the process by which the appeals affect individuals' decisions to help. The results also have implications for understanding and promoting other socially desirable behaviors such as recycling, energy conservation, litter reduction, and the purchase of "green" products. Copyright 1998 by the University of Chicago.

The HIV-1 nucleocapsid (NC) protein is a small, basic protein containing two retroviral zinc fingers. It is a highly active nucleic acid chaperone; because of this activity, it plays a crucial role in virus replication as a cofactor during reverse transcription, and is probably important in other steps of the replication cycle as well. We previously reported that NC binds with high-affinity to the repeating sequence d(TG)n. We have now analyzed the interaction between NC and d(TG)4 in considerable detail, using surface plasmon resonance (SPR), tryptophan fluorescence quenching (TFQ), fluorescence anisotropy (FA), isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) and electrospray ionization Fourier transform mass spectrometry (ESI-FTMS). Our results show that the interactions between these two molecules are surprisngly complex: while the K(d) for binding of a single d(TG)4 molecule to NC is only approximately 5 nM in 150 mM NaCl, a single NC molecule is capable of interacting with more than one d(TG)4 molecule, and conversely, more than one NC molecule can bind to a single d(TG)4 molecule. The strengths of these additional binding reactions are quantitated. The implications of this multivalency for the functions of NC in virus replication are discussed.

Although consumer researchers have investigated impulse buying for nearly 50 years, almost no research has empirically examined its normative aspects. This article presents conceptual and empirical evidence that consumers' normative evaluations (i.e., judgments about the appropriateness of engaging in impulse buying behavior) moderate the relationship between the impulse buying trait and consumers' buying behaviors. Specifically, the relationship between the buying impulsiveness trait and realted buying behaviors is significant only when consumers believe that acting on impulse is appropriate. The findings from two studies across student and retail customer samples converge and support the hypothesized moderating role of consumers' normative evaluations. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago.