We argue that language is a shared social resource that people may be tempted to stretch in pursuit of their own persuasive goals (e.g., describing something that is unusual as “unique”). We demonstrate this tendency toward semantic stretch in the laboratory and present four field studies that document the process at the cultural level--involving emotionally laden terms such as synonyms of good...

This paper reports on a multimethod study of 16 hospitals implementing an innovative technology for cardiac surgery. This inductive study led to propositions about new technology adaptation and how group and organizational characteristics influence this process and its outcomes. The findings reveal substantial differences in how an identical technology was integrated into ongoing practice in a ...

Santa Clara University’s Robotic Systems Laboratory has developed a highly successful robotics-based undergraduate education program that provides a wide range of learning experience relating to computer science and engineering fundamentals. A key element of this program is the senior capstone experience, a yearlong project that is typically hands-on, interdisciplinary, and team-based. These pr...

Coronary artery ectasia (CAE) is described in 5% of patients undergoing coronary angiography. Previous studies have shown controversial results regarding the prognostic impact CAE. The prevalence and value CAE with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) remain unknown. In 4788 presenting AMI referred for angiography presence (defined as dilation a segment diameter ?1.5 times adjacent normal segment)...

Individuals vary in the degree to which they are representative, or typical, of their social groups. To investigate the effects of atypicality on intergroup attitudes, elementary-school-age children (N = 97) attending a summer school program were assigned to novel color groups that included typical (blue or green) and atypical (light blue or light green) members. Children’s state self-esteem, i...

This study explores one of the contributors to group composition – the basis on which people choose others with whom they want to work. We use a combined model to explore individual attributes, relational attributes, and previous structural ties as determinants of work partner choice. Four years of data from participants in 33 small project groups were collected, some of which reflects individu...

Diversity in teams, while potentially beneficial, increases the likelihood that individual team members will define the team’s task differently, leading to gaps in their perceptions of what is important for team task execution. These representational gaps are likely to create conflict as teammates try to solve what are essentially incompatible problems. We articulate how these representational ...

Analysis of the historical development of doctrines and theological motifs is a crucial but often neglected element of the interpretive process. Such investigations protect the interpreter from making the common mistake of reading later ideas back into the biblical text. This survey outlines the major views on Creation and the age of the earth advocated by Christians and Jews throughout history...

We investigate how key school and community characteristics interact with the characteristics of individual students and families in determining the enrollment patterns in public and private schools. Using unique, nationallyrepresentative, individual-level data, we find evidence that a number of factors plausibly influenced by public policy (e.g., school-district concentration, student-teacher ...

This article began as an adversarial collaboration between two groups of researchers with competing views on a longstanding question: Does familiarity promote or undermine interpersonal attraction? As we explored our respective positions, it became clear that the limitations of our conceptualizations of the familiarity–attraction link, as well as the limitations of prior research, was masking a...