Sample Searchworks Subject Terms:

• Ambivalence
• Persuasion (Psychology)
• Persuasion (Rhetoric)
• Rhetoric
• Rhetoric and Debate
• Crowds
• Collective Behavior
• Decision Making
• Leadership
• Uncertainty

Suggested Databases:

• Academic Search Premier - add ("choose databases"): America: History and Life, Communication and Mass Media Complete, Film and TV Literature Index, MLA (Literature)
• Proquest Social Sciences Databases: you can search all at once, or select one or more of these:
• IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences)
• PsycINFO
• Sociological Abstracts
• Ethnic NewsWatch
• Alt-Press Watch
• GenderWatch
• Polling Databases
  • Polling the Nations
  • iPoll databank @ the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

Marketing and Advertising Resources

Interesting Websites from Internet Public Library

• Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II- A collection of propaganda posters used by the U.S. government to explain and promote the war effort in Europe and the Pacific.
• Wall Street Journal Opinion Pieces
• Pew Global Attitudes Project

Question:
I am looking for a test that might be used by a psychologist, educator, psychiatrist, or other social scientist, to measure some aspect of personality, behavior, cognition, perception, and other "mental measurements." (like Intelligence, Personality, Neuropsychological Functioning, Behavior, Speech, etc). How do I find descriptions and reviews?

There's a great article in the New York Times about what some scholars are calling the Next Big Thing in humanities research: a cognitive approach to literature.

The article first provides an example of theory of mind ("one person’s ability to interpret another person’s mental state and to pinpoint the source of a particular piece of information in order to assess its validity") from the television program Friends: Phoebe says to Rachel about a prank they want to pull on two other characters: "They don't know that we know they know we know."

As the article states, the "layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking — of mind reading — is both a common literary device and an essential survival skill. Why human beings are equipped with this capacity and what particular brain functions enable them to do it are questions that have occupied primarily cognitive psychologists."

Literary scholars are now getting into the game as well, asking "fundamental questions about literature’s very existence: Why do we read fiction? Why do we care so passionately about nonexistent characters? What underlying mental processes are activated when we read?"

Jane Austen's novels are cited in the piece as being "frequently constructed around mistaken interpretations," and those of Virginia Woolf as "especially challenging" because they demand that readers juggle up to six different mental states at the same time.

Research by Stanford Associate Professor of English Blakey Vermeule is also addressed in the article. She is "examining theory of mind...[with] the assumption that evolution had a hand in our love of fiction," and also examining "the narrative technique known as 'free indirect style,' which mingles the character’s voice with the narrator’s. Indirect style enables readers to inhabit two or even three mind-sets at a time."

We know that you know you can take a look at SearchWorks for titles by Blakey Vermeule and materials on theory of mind here in Green Library.

Selected Reference Resources

• Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia (Green Library Information Center & HASRC HQ75.H63 1998)
• Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (Green Library Information Center & Stacks HQ76.25.E53 1990)
• The queer encyclopedia of music, dance & musical theater
• Contemporary youth culture : an international encyclopedia
• Men and masculinities : a social, cultural, and historical encyclopedia

Searchworks Tips
Suggested keyword and subject terms in Searchworks

• self (see this book!:Concepts of the Self)
• Human body social aspects
• Role Playing
• sex role note you can limit by topics on the left, such as gender identity
• group identity
• Body marking
• gender performance
• sexuality performance
• gender theater

Additional Databases

• LGBT life with full text
• Anthropology Plus (try a sample search: gender and performance)

Selected Website(s)

• OH WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DIFFERENCE MAKES:
  GENDER IN THE VISUAL ARTS
• Gender and Sexuality Studies: weblinks from UCSB