Valency Frames Research Articles

Positioning Strategies in B2B Marketing: The Regulatory Focus Orientation

ABSTRACT Purpose Relying on regulatory focus theory (RFT), this study examines the mechanisms that guide managers’ positioning-related decisions in business-to-business contexts. Specifically, this research answers two main questions: what motivates managers to recommend specific positioning strategies and what motivates related decisions regarding contextual and market conditions? Design/methodology/approach Two studies are undertaken in this research. Using the Delphi method, Study 1 adopted an online scenario-based experimental design related to the positioning decisions of three companies. A panel of expert informants assisted in the design process. Study 2 tested the stability of the results from Study 1 and then extended the analysis through the introduction of an additional dependent variable and market feedback. The results of the scenario-based online surveys are subjected to partial least squares structural equation analyses. Findings The findings are in line with regulatory focus theory and show that RFT can provide motivationally derived answers to questions regarding inter-manager differences in positioning decision-making under similar market and company conditions. The results further show that decisions made by marketing managers in B2B contexts are guided by a desire to achieve congruity (fit) between their regulatory focus and their positioning strategy. Moreover, there is a differential impact of the regulatory foci on the likelihood of changing a recommended strategy. Originality/value This paper investigates the moderating effects of involvement, valence framing, and market feedback. The study finds that the valence of the recommendation of a positioning strategy moderates the relationship between regulatory focus and the type of positioning strategy.

Disappearing Negative Valence: A Content Analysis of HPV Vaccine Newspaper Coverage in China (2000–2018)

ABSTRACT News coverage of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine grew rapidly in China in 2016 when the vaccine was approved. Drawing upon framing theory, the present study analyzed the content of 491 Chinese newspaper reports on the HPV vaccine published between June 2000 and December 2018 to investigate what and how information and valence about the vaccine was relayed to the public. The results indicated that, while the Chinese media failed to provide comprehensive and accurate information about HPV and the HPV vaccine, they showed a positive evaluation of the HPV vaccine demand and market. In addition, there was a decline in negative coverage after the vaccine was approved. This study extended the literature on HPV vaccine coverage by combining issue-specific framing and valence framing, considering the Chinese-specific vaccine market for presentation and the value of such products, which is rare in previous studies. Practical implications of the findings for health promotion were also discussed.

Physician beneficence and profit-taking among private for-profit clinics in China: A field study using a mystery shopper audit

This study employs a mystery shopper audit on a random sample of 96 for-profit private clinics in Jinan, China. We investigate two instruments which reflect beneficence among for-profit clinicians in private practice. The first is whether physicians returned a lost wallet “accidentally” left next to the physician’s table; and the second, whether physicians prescribed antibiotics to pseudo-patients who displayed no symptoms of any illness but had complained of fever the night before. These measures quantify beneficence under two different valence framing: returning a wallet represents clinicians who “do good” at personal cost to themselves, while not prescribing antibiotics represents a choice “not to do harm” to patients. We look at the correlation between these beneficence measures and the physicians’ prescription behaviors, and their revenues from the consultation. We find that whether doctors return a lost wallet or not, and prescribe antibiotics or not, such physicians are still as likely to prescribe medications which increase their incomes.

Spanish Synonyms as Part of a Multilingual Event-Type Ontology

Abstract This paper presents an ongoing work on the multilingual event-type ontology SynSemClass, where multilingual verbal synonymy is formalized in terms of syntactic and semantic properties. In the ontology, verbs are grouped into synonym classes, both monolingually and cross-lingually. Specifically, verbs are considered to belong to the same class if they both express the same meaning in a specific context, and their valency frame can be mapped to the set of roles defined for a particular class. SynSemClass is built following a bottom-up approach where translational equivalents are automatically extracted from parallel corpora and annotated by human annotators. The task of the annotators consists in mapping the valency frame of a particular verb with the set of roles defined for the class where the verb is included as a potential class member, establishing links to external resources, and selecting relevant examples. The Spanish part of the ontology currently contains 257 classes enriched with Spanish synonyms. The resulting resource provides finegrained syntactic and semantic information on multilingual verbal synonyms and links to other existing monolingual and multilingual resources.

Valence framing induces cognitive bias

AbstractValence framing effects refer to inconsistent choice preferences in response to positive versus negative formulation of mathematically equivalent outcomes. Here, we manipulate valence framing in a two-alternative forced choice dictator game using gains and losses as frames to investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying valence framing. We applied a Drift-Diffusion Model (DDM) to examine whether gain (i.e., “take” money) and loss (i.e., “give” money) frames evoke a cognitive bias as previous research did not consistently reveal framing effects using reaction times and response frequency as dependent variables. DDMs allow decomposing the decision process into separate cognitive mechanisms, whereby a cognitive bias was repeatedly associated with a shift in the starting point of the model. Conducting both a laboratory (N = 62) and an online study (N = 109), female participants allocated money between themselves and another person in a prosocial or selfish way. In each study, one group was instructed to give money (give frame), the other to take money (take frame). Consistent with previous studies, no differences were found in response times and response frequencies. However, in both studies, substantial bias towards the selfish option was found in the take frame groups, captured by the starting point of the DDM. Thus, our results suggest that valence framing induces a cognitive bias in decision processing in women, even when no behavioral differences are present.

Counterproductive effects of overfamiliar antitobacco messages on smoking cessation intentions via message fatigue and resistance to persuasion.

While smoking may result in various harmful effects, such as mental health issues caused by addiction, antitobacco messages have typically focused on the physical health consequences of smoking for decades. Prolonged exposures to these conventional messages may have not only increased awareness about the harmful health effects of smoking but may have also caused message fatigue and resultant resistance to persuasion. The latter effects, however, remain largely unexamined. Addressing this gap, this study examined the effects of overfamiliar antitobacco messages focusing on the health consequences of smoking on message fatigue and resistance to persuasion. In an online experiment, current smokers (N = 296) in the U.S. were randomly assigned to one of the four message conditions that manipulated a degree of familiarity in a 2 (thematic frame: physical vs. mental health) × 2 (valence frame: loss vs. gain) factorial design. The results show that a message portraying physical health consequences of smoking in a loss frame (i.e., overfamiliar frame) induced greater message fatigue than that in a gain frame. Message fatigue, in turn, was associated with higher levels of active (i.e., reactance) and passive resistance (i.e., disengagement) toward antitobacco messages. Reactance induced by message fatigue predicted less favorable attitude and lower intentions to quit smoking. Overall, message fatigue showed both direct and indirect effects on intentions, with the latter being mediated by reactance. Overfamiliar antitobacco message frames may activate greater message fatigue and resistance to persuasion, which may dampen campaign effects. The findings caution against the habitual use of conventional antitobacco messages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Interplay between benefit appeal and valence framing in reducing smoking behavior: Evidence from a field experience

AbstractSmoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death globally, yet it remains a common behavior. Interventions that increase the concreteness of future smoking outcomes have been suggested to be effective, but little research has examined what type of future outcomes should be highlighted, and in what way. The present study therefore explores the efficacy of two types of framings of smoking cessation consequences: Benefit appeal (time vs. money) and valence (gain vs. loss). A randomized controlled field experiment with 2935 participants conducted via a digital therapeutics app found an interplay between appeal type and valence such that messages focusing on money were most likely to lead to immediate reduced smoking behavior when framed as a gain, rather than loss. Effects on motivation or long‐term smoking cessation were not detected. The results shed light on psychological differences between money and time, between attitudes and behaviors, and between short‐term and long‐term behavior change. This study highlights the importance of considering both benefit appeal and valence framing when designing smoking cessation messages.

PFN-PT

This article presents PFN-PT, a robust system for the automatic semantic annotation of Portuguese, consisting of a new, parsing-oriented framenet and a rule-based frame- and role-tagger. The framenet provides almost 13,000 valency frames covering 7,300 verb lemmas with 10,700 senses. Frame and role tagging is achieved by iterated matching of syntactic structures and semantic noun types with slot-filler conditions in the framenet. We discuss design principles and present frame and role statistics. In an evaluation run on news data, the system achieved an overall F-score of 92.2% for frame senses.

Message framing effects on sustainable consumer behaviour: a systematic review and future research directions for social marketing

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to provide a systematic review of the literature relating to message framing and its effectiveness in persuading consumers to adopt environmentally sustainable behaviour, which is a form of pro-social behaviour. Specifically, this paper focuses on three types of message framing: positive–negative, self–other and abstract–concrete.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reports on a systematic review guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses framework identifying 108 articles published relating to message framing and environmental sustainability between 2005 and 2020. Descriptive analysis of the data was undertaken in combination with a thematic approach.FindingsThe results demonstrate that single frames do not reliably increase sustainable consumer behaviour. Instead, the use of two message frames is more consistently effective. However, there is some disparity in relation to the combined effects of two message frames. The research also identifies that the use of three combined message frames is underexplored in the existing literature.Research limitations/implicationsSocial marketing and consumer psychology researchers have explored many types of message framing. This study focuses on three common types. Also, the review is limited to valence framing. The authors recognise that visual aspects of message frames also determine the effectiveness of messaging. Another limitation is that only empirical studies published between 2005 and 2020 were reviewed.Originality/valuePast review papers related to the impact of messaging on sustainable consumer behaviour either focus on one type of message framing, such as the positive–negative frame, or did not categorise message framing into different types. The current review focuses on three types of message framing that have been examined separately and in combination in the literature. Based on the findings, this study proposes a synthesised theoretical framework for future research.

Picture this! The effects of positivity bias, situation saliency, and verbal politeness in valence framing research

This study tests the link between frame processing and production by having the same participants (N = 50) perform a priming and a production task. During the priming task, they responded to positive (‘winning’) and negative (‘losing’) picture descriptions. The results show a positivity bias: participants were generally faster to react to positive descriptions than to negative ones. The results of the production task, in which participants provided picture descriptions under different politeness instructions (neutral, polite, impolite), show a large effect of verbal politeness, with participants choosing positive frames to be polite and negative frames to be impolite. Additionally, the set-up made it possible to directly assess the link between processing and production: we tested whether participants' frame choice was directly influenced by the frame that they found easiest to process in that situation (as an indication of frame saliency), as evidenced by faster reaction time for that frame in the priming task. Our results suggest that there might indeed be such a link between frame processing and production, but that this link is overshadowed by the large effect of politeness. Overall, these results show the importance of including contextual factors such as verbal politeness in the study of frame production.

ПАНДЕМИЯТА ОТ COVID-19 ВЪВ ВАЛЕНТНОСТТА НА СВОИТЕ ПРЕДИКАТИ: НАБЛЮДЕНИЯ ВЪРХУ СЪВРЕМЕНЕН КОРПУС ОТ ПАРЛАМЕНТАРНА РЕЧ

This corpus-based survey presents the grammatical roles that the names for COVID-19 occupy in the valence frames of the respective predicates. A contemporary corpus of Bulgarian parliamentary speech was used from which the contexts of these names were extracted with the help of a concordancer. Only metaphorical usages are considered in the paper. Two profiles of valence frames are presented: a syntactic one, which takes into account the classification of arguments according to Pustejovsky (1995), and a lexical-semantic one, which considers the classification of predicates ac-cording to the lexicographic classes adopted in the lexical network Wordnet. Keywords: names for COVID-19, grammatical roles, valence, predicates, Bulgarian language, parliamentary corpus

Health appeal appraisal and memory in older adults: the effects of goal and valence framing

ABSTRACT Relative to younger adults, older adults have a preference and memory advantage for appeals framed to focus on emotion goals (e.g., loving or caring) or positive outcomes (e.g., benefits of health behaviors). Here we examined whether combining goal (emotion vs. future) and valence framing (positive vs. negative) could optimize older adults’ appraisal and memory for health appeals. Sixty younger (ages 18–29) and 60 older (ages 64–87) adults viewed, rated and recalled one of the four versions of a health pamphlet, each with a unique combination of goal and valence framing. The results showed a memory advantage for pamphlets focusing on emotion over future goals in both age groups. Older adults also showed a more favorable appraisal and a weak memory advantage for the positively- and emotion-framed pamphlet, relative to younger adults. Thus combining goal and valence framing could optimize the effectiveness of older adults’ health appeal communication..

Modelling dynamic behaviour of agents in a multiagent world: Logical analysis of Wh-questions and answers

Abstract In a multiagent and multi-cultural world, the fine-grained analysis of agents’ dynamic behaviour, i.e. of their activities, is essential. Dynamic activities are actions that are characterized by an agent who executes the action and by other participants of the action. Wh-questions on the participants of the actions pose a difficult particular challenge because the variability of the types of possible answers to such questions is huge. To deal with the problem, we propose the analysis and classification of Wh-questions apt for agents’ communication in a multiagent system (MAS). Our proposal of such a system consists of agents who communicate with their fellow agents by messaging so that each autonomous agent, though resource-bounded, can make less or more rational decisions to meet its own and collective goals. In addition, by communicating with other fellow agents and their environment, agents can learn new concepts and enrich their ontology so that their behaviour is dynamic. We aim to make a general proposal of the system so that the ‘envelope’ of agents’ messages can be formalized in any MAS standard, be it The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents - Agent Communication Language (FIPA-ACL) or Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML). Yet, the content of messages is encoded in a formalized natural language. To this end, we apply Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL) with its procedural semantics which is particularly apt for a fine-grained analysis in which all the semantically salient features of natural language can be plausibly formalized. In this paper, we concentrate on analysing the content of query messages, particularly the content of those that encode Wh-questions and the answers to them. We also summarize TIL deduction system that makes it possible to answer such questions in an intelligent way. Linguists distinguish several subtypes of Wh-questions. Though the linguistic classification is helpful, it is not always suitable for agents’ communication and reasoning. We need the classification based on a logical analysis of Wh-questions so that the agents can infer possible answers to such questions rather than only looking for them by keywords. This paper aims to apply an appropriate classification of the logical types of Wh-questions and the analysis of such questions; we concentrate in particular on questions concerning the participants of activities. The application of these results to the analysis of processes and events based on verb valency frames is another novelty of the paper.

Valency-based and non-valency based conjugability of verbs to perform / have performed in musical texts

The article examines the valency of the verbs ‘to perform / have performed’ as the basis of their conjugability with other words in musical texts. The four-component valency frame of these verbs is substantiated, communicative and pragmatic factors affecting the verbalization of various sets of non-predicate nouns are defined. The semantic content and morphological expression of valency-based and non-valency-based components are clarified. A conclusion was made about the mandatory expression of valency-predicted subject and object components in musical texts and about limited conjugability with instrumental and address components. Typical secondary predicate syntaxes used in simple non-elementary sentences with these verbs are established. Keywords: verbs to perform / have performed, valency, conjugability, valency-conditioned com-ponents, valency-free components, non-predicate nouns, secondary predicate syntaxeme

Individuals’ willingness to provide geospatial global positioning system (GPS) data from their smartphone during the COVID-19 pandemic

This study aims to evaluate people’s willingness to provide their geospatial global positioning system (GPS) data from their smartphones during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the self-determination theory, the addition of monetary incentives to encourage data provision may have an adverse effect on spontaneous donation. Therefore, we tested if a crowding-out effect exists between financial and altruistic motivations. Participants were randomized to different frames of motivational messages regarding the provision of their GPS data based on (1) self-interest, (2) pro-social benefit, and (3) monetary compensation. We also sought to examine the use of a negative versus positive valence in the framing of the different armed messages. 1055 participants were recruited from 41 countries with a mean age of 34 years on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online crowdsourcing platform. Participants living in India or in Brazil were more willing to provide their GPS data compared to those living in the United States. No significant differences were seen between positive and negative valence framing messages. Monetary incentives of $5 significantly increased participants’ willingness to provide GPS data. Half of the participants in the self-interest and pro-social arms agreed to provide their GPS data and almost two-thirds of participants were willing to provide their data in exchange for $5. If participants refused the first framing proposal, they were followed up with a “Vickrey auction” (a sealed-bid second-priced auction, SPSBA). An average of $17 bid was accepted in the self-interest condition to provide their GPS data, and the average “bid” of $21 was for the pro-social benefit experimental condition. These results revealed that a crowding-out effect between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations did not take place in our sample of internet users. Framing and incentivization can be used in combination to influence the acquisition of private GPS smartphone data. Financial incentives can increase data provision to a greater degree with no losses on these intrinsic motivations, to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hear No Evil, See No Evil: Motivated Reasoning, Drone Warfare, and the Effects of Message Framing on US Public Opinion

Abstract We conducted a poll with a survey-experimental design to examine whether variations in how the US policy of drone warfare was framed significantly impacted public support. Consistent with scholarship on motivated reasoning and valence framing, we find that respondents could be primed to express significantly greater or lesser support based on questions that either affirmed or challenged: the strategic value, international legality, domestic legality, or technological capability of drone strikes or whether they cause collateral damage. While affirming the policy generally had insignificant effects on opinion reports, compared to the control group, challenges to the policy produced significant decreases in American support for drone warfare. These results illustrate the importance of exposing citizens to contested discourse on controversial public policy.

Systemic and non-systemic valency behavior of Czech deverbal adjectives

Abstract We present results of an automatic comparison of valency frames of interlinked adjectival and verbal lexical units based on the valency lexicons NomVallex and VALLEx. We distinguish nine derivational types of deverbal adjectives and examine whether they tend to display systemic or non-systemic valency behavior. The non-systemic valency behavior includes changes in the number of valency complementations and, more dominantly, non-systemic forms of actants, especially a prepositional group.

Presenting the People's Republic: what drives images of China in the press?

Citizens’ views of the political, social and economic character of foreign countries is largely based on the valence frames – positive, neutral or negative – established in newspaper articles consumed directly from the press or indirectly through republication. Looking at stories on China's one-child policy in the Australian press, the study used a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology to investigate together all extrinsic factors that might drive the tone of articles on foreign countries. An analysis of factors including newspaper ownership, format, audience, market reach and reporter gender or location suggests a primary driver might be the newspaper audience – owners provide stories that retain their audience (and advertisers).

Framing Effects, Social Norm Perception, and Tolerance of Lesbian and Gay Individuals: Experimental Evidence from Slovakia

ABSTRACT Perceptions of social norms can have downstream consequences for attitudes and behaviors, especially when it comes to the acceptance of marginalized groups. While interventions focusing on social norms may boost tolerance, few studies test whether variations in norm communication affect individuals’ perceptions. Thus, in this paper, we test the effectiveness of three communicative aspects—valence framing (Experiments 1–3), point of view (Experiment 1), and group centrism (Experiment 3)—in shifting perceptions of social norms. Specifically, we investigate whether manipulating these aspects affects perceptions of tolerance of lesbian and gay individuals in Slovakia, where LGBTQ+ acceptance is among the lowest in Europe. We found that while positively valenced messages shifted perceptions toward tolerance, manipulating point of view and group-centrism did not. We believe that these findings can inform interventions intended to shift perceptions of social norms in hostile contexts, an important first step in changing prejudiced attitudes and behaviors.

Application of Morphosyntactic Cues in Detection of GOAL Semantic Role

This paper analyzes the semantics of verbs with the prefix “do-” and explains the adlativity feature based on the morpho-syntactically annotated corpus hrWaC and handcrafted verb valency frames. The work aims to automatically add all types of adlativity to Croatian verb valency lexicon. As a result, it was revealed that if a language resource encodes “do-” as the adlative prefix in Croatian as a source language, then the adlative meaning in the target language can be assumed as well. Using the valency frame transition rules for language pairs, it is possible to design matching verb valency frames in other languages and consequently describe each verb and its translation by semantic roles (agent, patient, direction-to, and goal) and by selectional restrictions.