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Notes that an Internet newsmagazine was created to ascertain effects of three dimensions of news salience - magnitude, likelihood, and immediacy of events - on selective news exposure. Notes that undergraduate students sampled articles, and their selective exposure was automatically recorded. Finds that independent manipulation of salience dimensions resulted in increased exposure to associated articles for all three dimensions. (SG)

Investigates specific effects of one particularly influential presentation type of journalistic exemplification--the direct quotation. Finds that issue perception by undergraduate student subjects was greatly influenced by citation, with respondents adopting the cited position more than the paraphrased position. Finds this effect most pronounced when the opposing position was paraphrased; however, no presentation bias was detected. (SR)

An analysis of Children's interest in selecting stories shows across the cultures boys prefer aggressive stories where as girls prefer peaceful stories. Children from Germany, China, and the United States of age group 4 to 6 are studied to reach the conclusion.

The relationship between romantic satisfaction versus discontent and a preference for music celebrating versus lamenting love is explored. The satisfaction/ discontent was ascertained in 60 college undergraduate women and men who later freely listened to music from a sampling of selections. The duration of their self-determined exposure to love-celebrating versus love-lamenting music was unobtrusively recorded by computer software. Romantically satisfied women and men showed a preference for love-celebrating music, whereas discontented women and men preferred love-lamenting music. Romantically discontent women and men preferred love-lamenting music presented by performers of their own sex. The findings indicate young adults' inclination to match emotions expressed in music about love with the emotions experienced in their own romantic situation.

An Internet newsmagazine was created, involving all features of online interactivity. The text of all available reports was held constant. The imagery of a subset of articles was manipulated, however. The manipulated articles were presented either without images, with text-related innocuous images, or with text-related threatening images in both their headline displays and their text bodies. During a fixed period of time, readers were free to sample articles and to read as much of them as they pleased. Unbeknownst to them, their selective exposure behavior was automatically recorded. It was observed that the incorporation of threatening images fostered more frequent selection of the associated articles and markedly increased reading times of the corresponding texts. The incorporation of innocuous images had similar but more moderate effects. Retrospective accounts of reading were consistent with the recorded exposure behavior. Keywords: images; photos; selective exposure; online news; Web-based experiment

The authors examine the effect music has on people's moods. Topics include popular music, digital music downloading software, and research methodology.

Scores on five personality characteristics, extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism as well as reactive and proactive rebelliousness, and the appreciation of soft/nonrebellious and hard/rebellious rock-music videotapes were explored. After completing the personality tests, female and male undergraduates were exposed to rock-music videotapes and asked to rate various aspects of their enjoyment of each. Analysis indicated that psychoticism and reactive rebelliousness were associated with enjoyment in a parallel fashion. Specifically, respondents scoring high on psychoticism or high on reactive rebelliousness enjoyed hard/rebellious rock-music videotapes more than did their peers scoring low on psychoticism or low on reactive rebelliousness. The reverse was evident for the enjoyment of soft/nonrebellious rock music video tapes. In contrast, scores on extraversion, neuroticism, and proactive rebelliousness were not associated with enjoyment. Gender differences emerged, however; women (n = 78) enjoyed soft/nonrebellious rock music more than did men (n = 60); and conversely, men enjoyed hard/rebellious rock music more than did women.

Two studies examined the effect of game outcome on sports fans' estimates of the team's as well as their own future performance. Consistent with social identity theory, it was expected that Ss for whom fanship was an important identity would respond to team success and failure as personal success and failure. Ss watched a live basketball game; then, in the context of a second, unrelated experiment, Ss estimated their own performance at several tasks. Results indicated that fans' mood and self-esteem were affected by game outcome. More important, fans' estimates of both the team's and their own future performance were significantly better in the win than in the loss condition. Furthermore, path analyses revealed that changes in self-esteem but not mood played a mediational role in fans' estimates of both team and their own future performance. In addition, comparisons with conditions of personal success and failure indicated that team outcome and personal outcome had similar effects on fans' estimates.

Kindergarteners and first and fourth graders watched an educational television program containing three types of humor. Information acquisition and funniness were assessed. Compared with distortion-free humor, irony resulted in overestimates of properties of novel objects introduced in the program. Age did not diminish perceptual distortion. (Author/BS)