Digital Commons Network^™

Adult Age Differences In Response To Sociomoral Violations, Alyssa R. Minton

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Moral judgments and emotional reactions to sociomoral violations are heavily impacted by a perpetrator’s intentions, as malicious intent poses a threat to social harmony. Given that older adults are more motivated to maintain interpersonal harmony relative to younger adults, older adults may be more reactive to malicious intentions. In five studies, I investigated adult age differences in moral judgments and emotional reactions to sociomoral violations. In Studies 1-3, participants read scenarios in which a perpetrator either (a) desired to harm another but nothing happened, or (b) harmed another accidentally without malicious intent. Study 2 incorporated additional scenarios designed to evoke …

The Age Of Connection: Interdependent Self-Construal Links Age And Prosociality, Jason Snyder

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Theories of aging have major implications for age differences in the self-concept across the adult lifespan that remain largely untested. Here, I propose a new perspective that draws from prominent aging theories to argue that people come to adopt a more interdependent self-construal with age as social environments become increasingly interdependent. Accordingly, I explain how ontogenetic development across the adult lifespan may emphasize interdependent social environments and subsequently encourage one to adopt a more interdependent self, explore how this perspective dovetails with prominent aging theories, and apply this perspective within the context of aging and prosocial behavior to support three …

Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Neighborhoods, Stroke Risk, And Cognition In Older Adults: A Focus On Violent Crime, Linda D. Ruiz

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Living in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods, i.e., neighborhoods with lower incomes, lower education/occupational levels, and/or higher crime, increases one’s risk of developing chronic health problems, including cardiovascular disease risk factors and stroke. These health problems are associated with reduced cognition and dementia and may help to explain disparities in brain aging. We investigated the association of neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics on stroke risk and cognitive outcomes hypothesizing that stroke risk mediates the association between the socioeconomic environment and cognitive functioning. Participants were non-demented community-dwelling older adults (N=121), ~67 years of age (50% male, 44% non-Latino Black) who underwent cognitive and medical assessments. …

Incidental Affect, Facial Expressions, And Risk, Michael M. Shuster

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Emotional facial expressions are potent social signals that can change people’s feeling states and shape judgments of targets that are unrelated to the expressions. Whether they originate from other individuals or advertisements in the environment, facial expressions are undoubtedly one of the most prominent emotional stimuli. Thus, there is a great need to examine how facial expressions can influence potentially consequential judgments and decisions that involve uncertain or risky prospects, as such decisions are greatly impacted by emotion.

The domains of finance and health could particularly benefit from such an examination. In the financial domain, expressions of other individuals could …