In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators.

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The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations.

Communities have the potential to function effectively and adapt successfully in the aftermath of disasters. Drawing upon literatures in several disciplines, we present a theory of resilience that encompasses contemporary understandings of stress, adaptation, wellness, and resource dynamics. Community resilience is a process linking a network of adaptive capacities (resources with dynamic attributes) to adaptation after a disturbance or adversity. Community adaptation is manifest in population wellness, defined as high and non-disparate levels of mental and behavioral health, functioning, and quality of life. Community resilience emerges from four primary sets of adaptive capacities—Economic Development, Social Capital, Information and Communication, and Community Competence—that together provide a strategy for disaster readiness. To build collective resilience, communities must reduce risk and resource inequities, engage local people in mitigation, create organizational linkages, boost and protect social supports, and plan for not having a plan, which requires flexibility, decision-making skills, and trusted sources of information that function in the face of unknowns.

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Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness

Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.

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E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty‐first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides access to information on a variety of topics related to the environment and strives to inform citizens of health risks. The EPA also has an extensive library network that consists of 26 libraries throughout the United States, which provide access to a plethora of information to EPA employees, scientists, and researchers. The EPA implemented a reorganization project to digitize their materials so they would be more accessible to a wider range of users, but this plan was drastically accelerated when the EPA was threatened with a budget cut. It chose to close and reduce the hours and services of some of their libraries. As a result, the agency was accused of denying users the “right to know” by making information unavailable, not providing an adequate strategic plan, and discarding vital materials. This case study explores the background of the digitization project, the practices implemented, and the critiques of the project.

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The Environmental Protection Agency

We propose that aesthetic pleasure is a function of the perceiver’s processing dynamics: The more fluently perceivers can process an object, the more positive their aesthetic response. We review variables known to influence aesthetic judgments, such as figural goodness, figure–ground contrast, stimulus repetition, symmetry, and prototypicality, and trace their effects to changes in processing fluency. Other variables that influence processing fluency, like visual or semantic priming, similarly increase judgments of aesthetic pleasure. Our proposal provides an integrative framework for the study of aesthetic pleasure and sheds light on the interplay between early preferences versus cultural influences on taste, preferences for both prototypical and abstracted forms, and the relation between beauty and truth. In contrast to theories that trace aesthetic pleasure to objective stimulus features per se, we propose that beauty is grounded in the processing experiences of the perceiver, which are in part a function of stimulus properties.

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Processing Fluency and Aesthetic Pleasure: Is Beauty in the Perceiver's Processing Experience?

Social Capital and Poor Communities

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The Role of Social Capital in Combating Poverty

Crowding and cognitive control.

Two experiments were performed to determine the effects of mere exposure and positive and negative contexts on interpersonal attraction. In both experiments, exposure was manipulated by varying the number of encounters among female subjects; context was varied by having subjects taste either pleasant or noxious solutions during the encounters. In both experiments, attraction varied as a direct function of number of encounters, in negative as well as positive contexts. The implications of these findings for the "mere exposure" hypothesis and for the "context," or association, hypothesis are discussed. A number of recent studies investigated the hypothesis that the mere repeated exposure of a stimulus object is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of an individual's attraction to that object (Harrison, 1968, 1969; Matlin, 1970; Saegert & Jellison, 1970; Swap, 1970; Zajonc, 1968; Zajonc & Rajecki, 1969; Zajonc, Swap, Harrison, & Roberts, 1971). The basic experimental paradigm in these studies consisted of two phases—an exposure phase during which a number of stimuli, usually 12, are shown varying numbers of times in a random sequence and a subsequent test phase during which the subject makes evaluative ratings of the stimuli previously seen. While these studies have generally found an increase in attractiveness of the object with increasing frequency of exposure, two possible sources of error could cast doubt on their results. One source of error derives from the context within which the experiment takes place. Usually, it is carried out in agreeable surroundings, in a relaxed atmosphere designed to make the subject comfortable, not concealing the fact that the experimenter appreciates the subject's participation. These pleasant surroundings and atmosphere are present throughout every presentation of each stimulus, and it is conceivable that those stimuli that are exposed more frequently may

Exposure, context, and interpersonal attraction.

We sought to characterize and to evaluate the success of current public health interventions related to housing. Two reviewers content-analyzed 72 articles selected from 12 electronic databases of US interventions from 1990 to 2001. Ninety-two percent of the interventions addressed a single condition, most often lead poisoning, injury, or asthma. Fifty-seven percent targeted children, and 13% targeted seniors. The most common intervention strategies employed a one-time treatment to improve the environment; to change behavior, attitudes, or knowledge; or both. Most studies reported statistically significant improvements, but few (14%) were judged extremely successful. Current interventions are limited by narrow definitions of housing and health, by brief time spans, and by limited geographic and social scales. An ecological paradigm is recommended as a guide to more effective approaches.

Healthy Housing: A Structured Review of Published Evaluations of US Interventions to Improve Health by Modifying Housing in the United States, 1990–2001

Susan Saegert

Papers

Social Capital and Poor Communities

The Role of Social Capital in Combating Poverty

Crowding and cognitive control.

Exposure, context, and interpersonal attraction.

Healthy Housing: A Structured Review of Published Evaluations of US Interventions to Improve Health by Modifying Housing in the United States, 1990–2001