Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Still Waiting: An Analysis Of The Permeation Of Racial Stereotypes In Top-Grossing Black Romance Films From The 1960s To The 2000s, Jasmine Boyd-Perry Aug 2016

Still Waiting: An Analysis Of The Permeation Of Racial Stereotypes In Top-Grossing Black Romance Films From The 1960s To The 2000s, Jasmine Boyd-Perry

Honors College Theses

In this study, I compare how films portray relationships involving Black people, over the course of 5 decades. I do this by analyzing the characters and relationships in the top-grossing film from each decade (1960’s through 2000’s), that have a focus on Black love. I started this journey curious about how the silver screen portrayed how Black people loved romantically. As a person who regularly frequents my local major movie theatre, I had become tired of only seeing Black actors in comedies, Black men in drag and buddy dramas. I also grew tired of the sappy love stories featuring White …


Ethnic Differences In Depressive Symptoms And Risky Behaviors Among Hispanics And Non-Hispanic Whites, Irma De Santiago May 2016

Ethnic Differences In Depressive Symptoms And Risky Behaviors Among Hispanics And Non-Hispanic Whites, Irma De Santiago

Honors College Theses

There is limited research on Hispanics in regards to experiencing depressive symptoms and the risk factors that accompany it. Understanding how these symptoms manifest in different ethnic groups can lead to the development of appropriate interventions to lower diagnoses. The purpose of this study was to examine ethnic differences in depressive symptoms, ethnic differences in risky behaviors, and to see if the association between depressive symptoms and risky behaviors differs by ethnicity. There were 401 young participants, ages 18 to 25; however, because of the goals of the study we only analyzed the data of 312 participants. Of the participants …


The Benefits Of Shifting From A Punitive Justice System To One That Is Mental Health Aware, Sarah Flatin May 2016

The Benefits Of Shifting From A Punitive Justice System To One That Is Mental Health Aware, Sarah Flatin

Honors College Theses

Since the 1950’s there has been an increasingly large population of individuals suffering from psychological disorders within the United States criminal justice system. Many psychiatrists and psychologists attribute this rising population to deinstitutionalization, a period in which psychiatric hospitals drastically reduced the number of patients they would serve. As a result, a larger amount of persons suffering from psychological disorders were released into society, where their symptoms are sometimes misinterpreted and criminalized, thus involving the criminal justice system. In response to this growing population the criminal justice system has begun to implement several methods for handling individuals suffering from psychological …


Interdependent Mechanisms For Processing Gender And Emotion: The Special Status Of Angry Male Faces, Daniel Harris, Vivian Ciaramitaro May 2016

Interdependent Mechanisms For Processing Gender And Emotion: The Special Status Of Angry Male Faces, Daniel Harris, Vivian Ciaramitaro

Honors College Theses

While some models of how various attributes of a face are processed have posited that face features, invariant physical cues such as gender or ethnicity as well as variant social cues such as emotion, may be processed independently (e.g., Bruce & Young, 1986), other models suggest a more distributed representation and interdependent processing (e.g., Haxby, Hoffman, & Gobbini, 2000). Here we use a contingent adaptation paradigm to investigate if mechanisms for processing the gender and emotion of a face are interdependent and symmetric across the happy-angry emotional continuum and regardless of the gender of the face. We simultaneously adapted participants …


The Effect Of Media On Self-Objectification And Gender-Role Conflict In College Students, Sarah M. Holmes Jan 2016

The Effect Of Media On Self-Objectification And Gender-Role Conflict In College Students, Sarah M. Holmes

Honors College Theses

In today’s society, people are confronted by sexually objectified images of men and women across multiple forms of media. Self-objectification occurs when a person internalizes this objectified perspective of his/her body. Gender role conflict occurs when socialized gender roles have negative consequences for a person’s self or others. The current study sought to analyze the effect that objectified images of women from magazine advertisements can have on women’s self-objectification and men’s levels of gender role conflict. In this fully online study, each participant was shown five images of women with either high or low objectification. Images of highly objectified women …


Schadenfreude, The Dark Triad, And The Effect Of Music On Emotion, Robin Lane Jan 2016

Schadenfreude, The Dark Triad, And The Effect Of Music On Emotion, Robin Lane

Honors College Theses

Schadenfreude is a humorous response at the misfortune of others and has been suggested to be an empathic defense mechanism. Previous research indicates that individuals who tend to exhibit the Dark Triad personality traits narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, experience higher levels of Schadenfreude. Additional studies suggest that music modulates neural activity associated with experiencing humor. In the present study we ask, do music and dark personality traits influence Schadenfreude? Participants viewed a series of brief, randomly intermixed physical misfortune and neutral videos (e.g., a person falling off a treadmill or running on a treadmill, respectively), with either an upbeat or …


The Relationships Between Psychopathy, Empathy, And Everyday Moral Decision Making In An Undergraduate Sample, Justin D. Kemple Jan 2016

The Relationships Between Psychopathy, Empathy, And Everyday Moral Decision Making In An Undergraduate Sample, Justin D. Kemple

Honors College Theses

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by interpersonal manipulation, callous affect, erratic lifestyle, and criminal tendencies. Past research has shown that individuals high in psychopathy feel less empathy than those lower in psychopathy, and that individuals higher in psychopathy sometimes show impaired morality on moral decision making tasks. This study examined the relationships between psychopathy, empathy, and everyday moral decision making; it was hypothesized that individuals higher in total psychopathy, interpersonal manipulation, and callous affect would score lower on empathic concern and feelings of wrongness and guilt when completing a moral dilemma task. To test this hypothesis, 190 undergraduate participants …


The Effects Of Rape Myths And Expert Testimony On Juror Decision Making In A Sexual Assault Case, Kelsey A. Pierson Jan 2016

The Effects Of Rape Myths And Expert Testimony On Juror Decision Making In A Sexual Assault Case, Kelsey A. Pierson

Honors College Theses

When a sexual assault case is tried in court there is often a lack of physical evidence, leading jurors to rely on the general information they know about a topic when determining a verdict. When jurors rely on their general knowledge, preexisting stereotypes and prejudice can influence their decision. One type of stereotype is rape myths- false beliefs about rape victims, the situation surrounding a rape, and rapists. One understudied rape myth is the myth that victims who report their rape immediately are more credible than those who wait to report. Rape myths can be used to shift blame away …


The Effects Of Alcohol-Related Stimuli Priming On The Expression Of Relational Aggression, Connor W. Ondriezek Jan 2016

The Effects Of Alcohol-Related Stimuli Priming On The Expression Of Relational Aggression, Connor W. Ondriezek

Honors College Theses

The semantic network model of memory states that concepts closely related (e.g., pencil-paper) are stored together in memory (Posner & Snyder, 1975). When one concept is activated, other related concepts becoming more accessible, which increases the likelihood that related concepts will influence behavior. Past research has established a link between aggressive behaviors after exposure to alcohol-related words (Bartholow, Grosvenor, Pedersen, Truong, & Vasquez, 2014). Previous research has also shown that alcohol outcome expectancies contribute to problematic drinking behavior (Fromme, Stroot, & Kaplan, 1993). In the present study, alcohol outcome expectancies of each participant were assessed by the CEOA questionnaire. Then, …


Working Memory And Cued Recall, Max V. Fey, Karen Naufel, Lawrence Locker Jan 2016

Working Memory And Cued Recall, Max V. Fey, Karen Naufel, Lawrence Locker

Honors College Theses

Previous research has found that individuals with high working memory have greater recall capabilities than those with low working memory (Unsworth, Spiller, & Brewers, 2012). Research did not test the extent to which cues affect one’s recall ability in relation to working memory. The present study will examine this issue. Participants completed a working memory measure. Then, they were provided with cued recall tasks whereby they recalled Facebook friends. The cues varied to be no cues, ambiguous cues high in imageability, and cues directly related to Facebook. The results showed that there was no difference between individual’s ability to recall …


The Effect Of Peer Presence On Adolescent Risk-Taking Behaviors, Kelly E. Daniel Jan 2016

The Effect Of Peer Presence On Adolescent Risk-Taking Behaviors, Kelly E. Daniel

Honors College Theses

The emergence of risk-taking in adolescence, which can have life altering implications such as teenage pregnancy, car accidents, or drug overdoses, has been attributed to several different aspects of development including increased reward sensitivity and immature cognitive control contingent on motivation. Recent psychological research also indicates that adolescent risk-taking increases in the presence of peers. It remains unclear, however, whether this peer effect on risk-taking is attributable to amplified reward sensitivity or is a more general effect of experimenter expectancy and social desirability. This study builds upon this research using a computerized risk-taking task with stimuli that illustrate the probabilities …