Xun Zhu
Biographic Data
| ID | 3619441 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Xun Zhu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Xun |
| FAMILY NAME | Zhu |
| SIGNATURE | ZHU X |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kentucky |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1000-8324 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Storytelling as a Bridge
Reading a positive story about an outgroup reduces prejudice, but can writing a story about the outgroup have similar effects? Three experiments examined whether and how writing a fictional story about an outgroup character can improve writers’ perceptions of the outgroup. Study 1 ( N = 727) showed that narrative writing increased warmth and competence perceptions of the character, regardless of whether writers described cooperating directly with…
Differential Effects of Counter-Stereotypical Portrayals of Warmth Across Racial Groups
This research examines how counter-stereotypical portrayals influence prosocial behavior across racial groups within the context of medical crowdfunding. Drawing on the stereotype content model and expectancy violation theory, we investigate how messages that contradict stereotypes of racial groups perceived as having low warmth violate expectations about these groups and influence campaign donations. Across two studies—an analysis of over 17,000…
Institutional fast-food availability and sustainable diet quality among shift workers
Shift workers are disproportionately exposed to institutional food environments shaped by long working hours and irregular schedules. In rapidly industrializing cities, institutional fast-food availability (IFFA) has become a routine component of daily food access for this population. However, existing evidence remains limited regarding how such exposure influences sustainable diet quality (SDQ), particularly through individuals’ capacity to navi…
Mapping the Information Flow Within Deceptive Messages
This paper presents results from the first formal empirical test of Information Manipulation Theory 2 (IMT2). Specifically, two hypotheses were posited based upon three of the information manipulation (IM) propositions of IMT2. First, we predicted that a systematic rank ordering should be observable regarding the frequency of various types of information manipulation within deceptive messages; such that Gricean Quality violations are more frequen…
Knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward osteoporosis
Background Osteoporosis is a prevalent yet often underdiagnosed condition that leads to significant morbidity and healthcare burdens. This study explores the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of the community-dwelling adults concerning osteoporosis and its daily management. Methods The cross-sectional study was conducted from June 1, 2024 to February 1, 2025 at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University and included outpatients …
Mitigating Identity Threat in Health Messaging
Health messages aiming to reduce red meat consumption may threaten multiple social identities because people’s dietary choices are intertwined with personal, social, and cultural aspects of their lives. Leveraging social identity theory and the concept of social identity complexity, this experiment tested how identity-threatening messages affect people’s intention to reduce red meat consumption and how the effect of identity threat may be moderat…
Revisiting Communication Infrastructure Theory
Communication infrastructure theory (CIT) posits that integrated connectedness to a community storytelling network (ICSN), which refers to individuals’ access to community communication resources and opportunities, positively affects civic engagement. We meta-analyzed this relationship with 23 studies ( k = 28, N = 17,792) and found that the overall effect of ICSN on civic engagement was moderate ( r = .38), with slightly different effect sizes f…
Racial Disparities in Medical Crowdfunding
Americans have increasingly turned to online crowdfunding to pay for healthcare costs, but our understanding of the inequalities in medical crowdfunding remains limited. This study investigates racial disparities in medical crowdfunding outcomes and examines the role of communication in amplifying, altering, or even reducing the disparities. Using data from 1,127 medical crowdfunding campaigns on GoFundMe, the study found that beneficiaries of co…
Extending the Theory of Normative Social Behavior
Novel, public behaviors, such as masking, should be susceptible to normative influence. This paper advances the theory of normative social behavior by considering a new set of moderators of normative influence — superdiffuser traits — and by clarifying the antecedents and consequences of exposure to collective norms. We use data from a two-wave survey of a cohort living in one U.S. county during the pandemic (N = 913) to assess normative effects …
Liked and shared tweets during the pandemic
This study examines how intrinsic message characteristics (i.e. call to action, negative emotions, and informality) drive online information engagement (i.e. the numbers of likes and retweets). We also explore how the veracity of information (i.e. misinformation vs. accurate information) is intertwined with negative emotions in promoting online information engagement. Analyses of 472 tweets demonstrate that tweets with higher anger-laden words we…
Safety – Premise for play
Reducing Prejudice Through Narrative Writing
This study investigates how the content and style of narrative writing about an outgroup reduce prejudice. The study compares cooperative contact, where writers describe working with an outgroup character, with parasocial contact, where writers describe the character alone. It further examines whether the contact effects vary with linguistic authenticity. In two experiments, I manipulated the types of contact and measured authenticity through lan…
Sleep – the guarantee of health! Does the environmental perception characteristics of urban residential areas affect residents' sleep quality
A complex urban living environment and residents' sleep quality are intrinsically linked. Nonetheless, there is little evidence that the residential environment affects sleep quality. Based on the results of subjective questionnaires, this study uses the multiple regression combined with mediation analysis to construct a mechanical model of the impact of urban residential environmental perception characteristics on residents' sleep quality. Moreo…
Mapping Linguistic Shifts During Psychological Coping With the Covid-19 Pandemic
How does language change reveal the psychological trajectories of people coping with a COVID-19 infection? This study examined writings on social media over 12 weeks from people who self-reported having tested positive for COVID-19. People used fewer words reflecting anxiety and distancing but more words indicating reinterpretation over time. The language patterns for describing the experience of COVID-19 infections differed from those for descri…
Proximal language predicts crowdfunding success
Longitudinal study of an emerging Covid-19 stigma
A meta-analysis of weight stigma and health behaviors
Do messages spread widely also diffuse fast? Examining the effects of message characteristics on information diffusion
Does the Presence of Birdsongs Improve Perceived Levels of Mental Restoration from Park Use? Experiments on Parkways of Harbin Sun Island in China
Green spaces in cities and urban parks serve as central areas for mental restoration and relieving pressure, and attention to soundscapes for their mental health benefits has become more prevalent. Birdsongs are perceived to enhance the restorative benefits of urban parks. This study examines Harbin Sun Island Park, the main bird habitat in the city of Harbin with numerous types of landscapes. We used space syntax to select the appropriate path s…
Effect of Birdsong Soundscape on Perceived Restorativeness in an Urban Park
Natural soundscapes have beneficial effects on the perceived restorativeness of an environment. This study examines the effect of birdsong, a common natural soundscape, on perceived restorativeness in Harbin Sun Island Park in China. Eight sites were selected and a series of questionnaire surveys on perceived restorativeness soundscape scale (PRSS) of four birdsong types were conducted during summer and winter. Two-hundred and forty respondents p…
Standing out while fitting in
Boundary spanners live a precarious social life. They need to stand out to receive ideas from different groups and fit into some groups enough to influence their peers. We investigated how boundary spanners make linguistic choices to manage the tension of distinctiveness and belonging. We identified boundary spanners based on their betweenness centrality in a large review network (23,851 users and 118,545 reviews). We found that, compared to non-…
Do People Who Identify as Popular Become Popular in a New Network? A 9-Month Longitudinal Network Analysis
Although scholars have argued that people actively shape and reshape their social networks (e.g., Parks, 2016), this aspect of relational development has received little attention. This study sought to determine if people’s self-perceptions of interpersonal communication skills translated into behavior that led to relationship formation in a new network. A 9-month longitudinal social network analysis ( N = 94) of the residents of a first-year uni…
Enterovirus 71 Neutralizing Antibodies Seroepidemiological Research among Children in Guangzhou, China between 2014 and 2015
A hand-foot-mouth disease outbreak occurred in 2014 around Guangdong. The purpose of this study was investigating the status and susceptibility of infectious neutralizing antibodies to enterovirus 71 among children so as to provide scientific evidence for the population immunity level of hand-foot-mouth disease and prepare for enterovirus 71 vaccination implementation. Serum specimens were collected from children in communities from January 2014 …
Investigating married adults’ communal coping with genetic health risk and perceived discrimination
Increased genetic testing in personalized medicine presents unique challenges for couples, including managing disease risk and potential discrimination as a couple. This study investigated couples' conflicts and support gaps as they coped with perceived genetic discrimination. We also explored the degree to which communal coping was beneficial in reducing support gaps, and ultimately stress. Dyadic analysis of married adults ( N = 266, 133 couple…
Fighting Back
This study investigated perceptions of stigma stemming from food insecurity experienced by residents of an inner-city community described as a food desert. Sixty inner-city residents were interviewed about their difficulty in providing healthy food for their families. The study measured four kinds of structural barriers which contributed to the experience of stigma. Participants agreed that welfare created a barrier and reported experiencing heal…
Information Manipulation Theory 2
Information Manipulation Theory 2 (IMT2) is a propositional theory of deceptive discourse production that conceptually frames deception as involving the covert manipulation of information along multiple dimensions and as a contextual problem-solving activity driven by the desire for quick, efficient, and viable communicative solutions. IMT2 is rooted in linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, speech production, and artificial intelligence. Synthesiz…
Do People Who Identify as Popular Become Popular in a New Network? A 9-Month Longitudinal Network Analysis
Although scholars have argued that people actively shape and reshape their social networks (e.g., Parks, 2016), this aspect of relational development has received little attention. This study sought to determine if people’s self-perceptions of interpersonal communication skills translated into behavior that led to relationship formation in a new network. A 9-month longitudinal social network analysis ( N = 94) of the residents of a first-year uni…
Investigating married adults’ communal coping with genetic health risk and perceived discrimination
Increased genetic testing in personalized medicine presents unique challenges for couples, including managing disease risk and potential discrimination as a couple. This study investigated couples' conflicts and support gaps as they coped with perceived genetic discrimination. We also explored the degree to which communal coping was beneficial in reducing support gaps, and ultimately stress. Dyadic analysis of married adults ( N = 266, 133 couple…
Advancing Research on the Spread of Stigmatizing Beliefs With Insights From Rumor Transmission
The essay examined a commonly stated but rarely elaborated assumption in stigma theories: Stigma must be socialized to engender community-level marginalization and discrimination. Existing research has focused on intrapersonal processes and structural factors that promote stigma socialization, but much less is known about how interpersonal sharing messages that induce stigmatization (i.e., stigma appeals) contributes to the diffusion and adoption…
Information Manipulation Theory 2
Information Manipulation Theory 2 (IMT2) is a propositional theory of deceptive discourse production that conceptually frames deception as involving the covert manipulation of information along multiple dimensions and as a contextual problem-solving activity driven by the desire for quick, efficient, and viable communicative solutions. IMT2 is rooted in linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, speech production, and artificial intelligence. Synthesiz…
Why is the vegan line in the dining hall always the shortest? Understanding vegan stigma
Two studies investigated why vegan stigma occurs and why people who eat meat are often unaccepting of vegans. Study 1 measured vegan stigma based on Link and Phelan’s (2001) model and proposed that the communal food hypothesis provides a partial explanation for vegan stigma. Study 1 revealed that la
Fighting Back
This study investigated perceptions of stigma stemming from food insecurity experienced by residents of an inner-city community described as a food desert. Sixty inner-city residents were interviewed about their difficulty in providing healthy food for their families. The study measured four kinds of structural barriers which contributed to the experience of stigma. Participants agreed that welfare created a barrier and reported experiencing heal…
Advancing Research on the Spread of Stigmatizing Beliefs With Insights From Rumor Transmission
The essay examined a commonly stated but rarely elaborated assumption in stigma theories: Stigma must be socialized to engender community-level marginalization and discrimination. Existing research has focused on intrapersonal processes and structural factors that promote stigma socialization, but much less is known about how interpersonal sharing messages that induce stigmatization (i.e., stigma appeals) contributes to the diffusion and adoption…
Enterovirus 71 Neutralizing Antibodies Seroepidemiological Research among Children in Guangzhou, China between 2014 and 2015
A hand-foot-mouth disease outbreak occurred in 2014 around Guangdong. The purpose of this study was investigating the status and susceptibility of infectious neutralizing antibodies to enterovirus 71 among children so as to provide scientific evidence for the population immunity level of hand-foot-mouth disease and prepare for enterovirus 71 vaccination implementation. Serum specimens were collected from children in communities from January 2014 …
Investigating married adults’ communal coping with genetic health risk and perceived discrimination
Increased genetic testing in personalized medicine presents unique challenges for couples, including managing disease risk and potential discrimination as a couple. This study investigated couples' conflicts and support gaps as they coped with perceived genetic discrimination. We also explored the degree to which communal coping was beneficial in reducing support gaps, and ultimately stress. Dyadic analysis of married adults ( N = 266, 133 couple…
Do People Who Identify as Popular Become Popular in a New Network? A 9-Month Longitudinal Network Analysis
Although scholars have argued that people actively shape and reshape their social networks (e.g., Parks, 2016), this aspect of relational development has received little attention. This study sought to determine if people’s self-perceptions of interpersonal communication skills translated into behavior that led to relationship formation in a new network. A 9-month longitudinal social network analysis ( N = 94) of the residents of a first-year uni…
Do messages spread widely also diffuse fast? Examining the effects of message characteristics on information diffusion
Does the Presence of Birdsongs Improve Perceived Levels of Mental Restoration from Park Use? Experiments on Parkways of Harbin Sun Island in China
Green spaces in cities and urban parks serve as central areas for mental restoration and relieving pressure, and attention to soundscapes for their mental health benefits has become more prevalent. Birdsongs are perceived to enhance the restorative benefits of urban parks. This study examines Harbin Sun Island Park, the main bird habitat in the city of Harbin with numerous types of landscapes. We used space syntax to select the appropriate path s…
Effect of Birdsong Soundscape on Perceived Restorativeness in an Urban Park
Natural soundscapes have beneficial effects on the perceived restorativeness of an environment. This study examines the effect of birdsong, a common natural soundscape, on perceived restorativeness in Harbin Sun Island Park in China. Eight sites were selected and a series of questionnaire surveys on perceived restorativeness soundscape scale (PRSS) of four birdsong types were conducted during summer and winter. Two-hundred and forty respondents p…
Standing out while fitting in
Boundary spanners live a precarious social life. They need to stand out to receive ideas from different groups and fit into some groups enough to influence their peers. We investigated how boundary spanners make linguistic choices to manage the tension of distinctiveness and belonging. We identified boundary spanners based on their betweenness centrality in a large review network (23,851 users and 118,545 reviews). We found that, compared to non-…
A meta-analysis of weight stigma and health behaviors
Proximal language predicts crowdfunding success
Longitudinal study of an emerging Covid-19 stigma
Sleep – the guarantee of health! Does the environmental perception characteristics of urban residential areas affect residents' sleep quality
A complex urban living environment and residents' sleep quality are intrinsically linked. Nonetheless, there is little evidence that the residential environment affects sleep quality. Based on the results of subjective questionnaires, this study uses the multiple regression combined with mediation analysis to construct a mechanical model of the impact of urban residential environmental perception characteristics on residents' sleep quality. Moreo…
Mapping Linguistic Shifts During Psychological Coping With the Covid-19 Pandemic
How does language change reveal the psychological trajectories of people coping with a COVID-19 infection? This study examined writings on social media over 12 weeks from people who self-reported having tested positive for COVID-19. People used fewer words reflecting anxiety and distancing but more words indicating reinterpretation over time. The language patterns for describing the experience of COVID-19 infections differed from those for descri…
Racial Disparities in Medical Crowdfunding
Americans have increasingly turned to online crowdfunding to pay for healthcare costs, but our understanding of the inequalities in medical crowdfunding remains limited. This study investigates racial disparities in medical crowdfunding outcomes and examines the role of communication in amplifying, altering, or even reducing the disparities. Using data from 1,127 medical crowdfunding campaigns on GoFundMe, the study found that beneficiaries of co…
Extending the Theory of Normative Social Behavior
Novel, public behaviors, such as masking, should be susceptible to normative influence. This paper advances the theory of normative social behavior by considering a new set of moderators of normative influence — superdiffuser traits — and by clarifying the antecedents and consequences of exposure to collective norms. We use data from a two-wave survey of a cohort living in one U.S. county during the pandemic (N = 913) to assess normative effects …
Liked and shared tweets during the pandemic
This study examines how intrinsic message characteristics (i.e. call to action, negative emotions, and informality) drive online information engagement (i.e. the numbers of likes and retweets). We also explore how the veracity of information (i.e. misinformation vs. accurate information) is intertwined with negative emotions in promoting online information engagement. Analyses of 472 tweets demonstrate that tweets with higher anger-laden words we…
Safety – Premise for play
Reducing Prejudice Through Narrative Writing
This study investigates how the content and style of narrative writing about an outgroup reduce prejudice. The study compares cooperative contact, where writers describe working with an outgroup character, with parasocial contact, where writers describe the character alone. It further examines whether the contact effects vary with linguistic authenticity. In two experiments, I manipulated the types of contact and measured authenticity through lan…
Knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward osteoporosis
Background Osteoporosis is a prevalent yet often underdiagnosed condition that leads to significant morbidity and healthcare burdens. This study explores the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of the community-dwelling adults concerning osteoporosis and its daily management. Methods The cross-sectional study was conducted from June 1, 2024 to February 1, 2025 at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University and included outpatients …
Mitigating Identity Threat in Health Messaging
Health messages aiming to reduce red meat consumption may threaten multiple social identities because people’s dietary choices are intertwined with personal, social, and cultural aspects of their lives. Leveraging social identity theory and the concept of social identity complexity, this experiment tested how identity-threatening messages affect people’s intention to reduce red meat consumption and how the effect of identity threat may be moderat…
Revisiting Communication Infrastructure Theory
Communication infrastructure theory (CIT) posits that integrated connectedness to a community storytelling network (ICSN), which refers to individuals’ access to community communication resources and opportunities, positively affects civic engagement. We meta-analyzed this relationship with 23 studies ( k = 28, N = 17,792) and found that the overall effect of ICSN on civic engagement was moderate ( r = .38), with slightly different effect sizes f…
Storytelling as a Bridge
Reading a positive story about an outgroup reduces prejudice, but can writing a story about the outgroup have similar effects? Three experiments examined whether and how writing a fictional story about an outgroup character can improve writers’ perceptions of the outgroup. Study 1 ( N = 727) showed that narrative writing increased warmth and competence perceptions of the character, regardless of whether writers described cooperating directly with…
Psychology (20 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Psychiatry (7 works) · Environmental health (6 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Business (4 works) · Geography (4 works) · Media Influence and Health (4 works)