Digital Commons Network^™

Religion, Environmental Guilt, And Pro-Environmental Support: The Opposing Pathways Of Stewardship Belief And Belief In A Controlling God, Kimin Eom, Tricia Qian Hui Tok, Carmel S. Saad, Heejung S. Kim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Religion exerts significant influence on how individuals respond to social issues. The present research investigates the implications of religious beliefs on emotions and behaviors regarding environmental issues. In three studies conducted with Christians in the U.S. (N = 1970), we test the model in which stewardship belief and belief in a controlling god are oppositely (i.e., positively for stewardship belief and negatively for belief in a controlling god) associated with environmental guilt, which in turn leads to greater pro-environmental support. We do so by employing both correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental data (Study 3) with diverse measures of …

Psychosocial Factors Associated With Mask-Wearing Behavior During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Cliff (Yung-Chi) Chen, Mengjia Lei

Publications and Research

Although increasing evidence has supported the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), inconsistent and noncompliant mask-wearing behavior has been observed among members of the society. Because mask-wearing is often considered a social contract, it is important to understand the psychosocial factors that influence people’s mask-wearing behavior in order to implement the necessary steps to respond to the pandemic. Based on the protection motivation theory (PMT), this study examined the cognitive factors (threat and coping appraisals) that contribute to mask-wearing behavior and the intention to engage in health protective behavior until the end of the pandemic. …

Working Through Lingering Anger Following Interpersonal Grievances: Examining Mechanisms Of Change In Rumination, Reappraisal, And Identification Of Unmet Needs, Michael Arend Strating

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many clients present to psychotherapy with lingering feelings of anger, bitterness, or resentment in response to interpersonal grievances. The current project sought to compare the effects of cognitive reappraisal and needs identification interventions on lingering anger while determining whether intervention effects occur through shared or distinct mechanisms of change. Using an experimental, therapy-analogue design, 197 undergraduate participants (Study 1) completed a brief, self-guided online intervention involving either anger rumination (comparison condition), cognitive reappraisal, or needs identification. This design was replicated in a clinical sample of 31 participants (Study 2) who were recruited from local mental health clinics using the same …

Semantic Network Activation Contributes To The Relationship Between Mood And Inhibition, James S. Maniscalco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prior research has identified several relationships between mood and executive functions. Very broadly, these findings generally suggest that positive moods are associated with enhanced cognitive performance, particularly in working memory and learning. However, recent studies note that there are some instances in which negative moods may benefit select executive skills, such as those involved in divided attention and inhibition. In sum, these findings indicate that positive moods favor top-down, heuristic, or relational processing, whereas negative trait moods favor bottom-up, detail-oriented processing. However, a clear mechanism by which these effects occur has yet to be identified.

The most compelling theories that …

Individual Differences And Ecological Validity Of Emotion Regulation In Response To Sadness, Colin M. Bosma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The majority of research on emotion regulation processes has been restricted to controlled laboratory settingsthat use experimental paradigms to investigate short-term outcomes (Berking & Wupperman, 2012). A true understanding of emotion regulation requires an unobtrusive, ecologically valid assessment of the construct as it naturally unfolds in the environment. Digital phenotyping, or moment-by-moment quantification of individual-level human behavior using data from smartphone sensors (Torous & Onnela, 2016), is a novel method for evaluating human behavior in naturalistic settings. The present project is the first to implement digital phenotyping in the investigation of emotion regulation.

The central aim of the study was …

Determining The Effects Of Emotion On Prospective Memory Performance, Danielle Gershman

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Prospective memory is the ability to remember to complete future intentions. Throughout the study of prospective memory, the use of emotional stimuli tends to lead to contradictory effects. Some studies suggest that emotional stimuli, particularly positive stimuli, lead to better prospective memory performance. However, emotional stimuli have also been associated with detrimental effects or even no effect on prospective memory. This study aimed to further investigate the potential influence of both positive and negative emotions on prospective memory. College students completed three blocks of an n-back task with positive and negative emotionally valenced images in the prospective memory blocks for …

Dispositional Optimism As A Buffer Against Emotional Reactivity To Daily Stressors: A Daily Diary Approach, Nadyanna Majeed, Jacinth J. X. Tan, William Tov, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The current research examined if dispositional optimism buffers against the negative influences of daily stressors on affective experiences, using a daily diary study of two large and nationally-drawn samples of American adults (N = 2,349). Optimism, exposure to daily stressors, and daily positive and negative affect were assessed over eight days. Multilevel modelling revealed that optimism significantly attenuated the associations between daily stressor exposure and negative affect reactivity even after controlling for demographic factors, subjective physical health, and socioeconomic status. However, in a similar analysis, the inclusion of socioeconomic variables fully accounted for the moderating effect of optimism on stress …

Eco-Justice Poetry: An Emotive Transgression, Nicola H. Follis

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Dualistic value-hierarchies that are deeply embedded within Western culture assign certain identities, traits and ways of knowing as superior to others. According to eco-justice frameworks, these hierarchies allow some humans to be valued over others and all humans to be valued over the Earth. I specifically talk about the mind/body and human/nature split as two dualities present in Western discourse. Emotions are deemed inferior to the mind’s rational and objective ways of knowing while humans are considered separate and superior to nature. I argue that eco-justice poetry acts as a small transgression against a value- hierarchized culture that devalues emotional …

Emotion Label Priming: Does The Placement Of An Emotion Perception Question Matter?, Miranda Roseman

Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)

This study investigates personality trait inferences through priming emotion recognition in facial expressions. The emotion on a face must be recognized before appraisal can be attained, and cognitive primes (categorization and perceptual prompts) produce significant changes in judgement (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993). This study closely replicates the study published by Radeke & Stahelski (2020) that used different age and gender models to measure social perception and personality trait formations from smiling, scowling, and neutral facial expressions. Results indicated that across all gender and age conditions, smiling expressions elicited positive personality inferences while scowling expressions elicited negative personality inferences. The presence …

The Feeling Mind, Maria Doulatova

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to standard conceptions of agency, our reasons and intentions guide our actions. That is, goal-directed intentions play a key role in practical deliberation, planning, and execution of action. Furthermore, purposeful, goal-directed behavior warrants attributions of responsibility or “reactive attitudes” like resentment, anger, gratitude and forgiveness. However, recent developments of the dual-process theory of mind cast doubt on the empirical adequacy of this picture. While people take themselves to be responding to relevant reasons, they are often bypassed by irrelevant affective or automatic reactions. In this work I go beyond the dual-process theory of mind to offer a mechanistic account …

Fearful Versus Dismissive Beliefs About Emotion: Divergent Pathways To Non-Acceptance Of Emotion, Natasha Haradhvala Bailen

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High non-acceptance of emotion, or the rejection of one’s own emotional experience as bad or unacceptable, is consistently associated with depressive pathology, including elevated depressive symptoms and past and current major depressive (MDD) diagnoses. To progress toward a fuller understanding of non-acceptance and depressive pathology, it is important to identify other associated constructs that could theoretically contribute to this association. Indirect evidence suggests that negative beliefs about emotion—that is, stable underlying negative beliefs about the meaning, value, or consequences of one’s emotions—could be one such factor, as could negative emotion intensity and emotional clarity (or the degree to which one …

Mental Imagery In The Regulation Of Differential Fear Conditioning: A Multimodal Investigation Involving Self-Report, Psychophysiology, And Brain Imaging, Tyler Daniel Robinson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Mental imagery is a common component in a range of emotion regulation techniques. However, the effectiveness and neural mechanisms of regulation via mental imagery are underexplored due to a lack of studies targeting mental imagery specifically. This discrepancy results in uncertainty regarding the mechanism of regulation in existing paradigms. Biased competition for attentional resources presents a plausible model by which a mental imagery-based distracter can downregulate response to an emotional stimulus. If visualizing an imagined distracter effectively regulates emotional response, the inclusion of mental imagery components in other techniques represents a potential confound. To address this discrepancy, this dissertation investigates …

The Elements Of Onstage Lighting And How It Could Impact The Emotion Of An Audience, Kailee Morehart

Honors Theses

Lighting, combined with other aspects of performance, can either make an experience extremely impactful for an audience or it can be completely unnoticed. Lighting is versatile in its ability to be manipulated in different ways to get the desired effect. In addition to having color, lights also have direction, shape, intensity, distribution, quality, movement, and may be changed over time. The combination of these elements can evoke certain emotions in an audience. Opportunities for creativity in this outlet should be explored in order to discover to what extent lighting can impact the emotions of an audience, if at all. In …

Intense News : The Role Of Emotion In The Perception Of (Fake) News, Allison Marie Wilck

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Today’s widespread access to the internet and social media platforms has vastly enhanced our ability to communicate stories and ideas. This includes the dissemination of both accurate and false information. Since 2016, the popularity of the term ‘fake news’ has skyrocketed, referring to the circulation of claims that were created with the intention to spread inaccurate information. Because of its inherent falseness yet widespread presence, fake news provides a rich outlet for exploring the variables that cause a claim to appear believable. Recent empirical explorations have well-established the presence of emotional information as a hindrance to overcoming susceptibility to misinformation …

The Benefit Of Gratitude: Trait Gratitude Is Associated With Effective Economic Decision-Making In The Ultimatum Game, Gewnhi Park, Charlotte Vanoyen-Witvliet, Jorge A. Barraza, Benjamin U. Marsh

Faculty Publications

The current research investigated the role of gratitude in economic decisions about offers that vary in fairness yet benefit both parties if accepted. Participants completed a trait/dispositional gratitude measure and then were randomly assigned to recall either an event that made them feel grateful (i.e., induced gratitude condition) or the events of a typical day (i.e., neutral condition). After the gratitude induction task, participants played the ultimatum game (UG), deciding whether to accept or reject fair offers (i.e., proposer: responder ratio $5:5) and unfair offers (i.e., proposer: responder ratios of $9:1, $8:2, or $7:3) from different proposers. Results showed that …

Out With The Humans, In With The Machines?: Investigating The Behavioral And Psychological Effects Of Replacing Human Advisors With A Machine, Andrew Prahl, Lyn Van Swol

Human-Machine Communication

This study investigates the effects of task demonstrability and replacing a human advisor with a machine advisor. Outcome measures include advice-utilization (trust), the perception of advisors, and decision-maker emotions. Participants were randomly assigned to make a series of forecasts dealing with either humanitarian planning (low demonstrability) or management (high demonstrability). Participants received advice from either a machine advisor only, a human advisor only, or their advisor was replaced with the other type of advisor (human/machine) midway through the experiment. Decision-makers rated human advisors as more expert, more useful, and more similar. Perception effects were strongest when a human advisor was …

Gender Differences In The Association Between Emotion Dysregulation And Suicidal Behavior, Eliza Hope Laves

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 years old (Drapeau & McIntosh, 2020). Being younger and female is significantly associated with suicidal behaviors (e.g., suicidal ideation, plan, and attempts), and girls report higher scores on suicidal ideation, plan, and attempts that result in a hospital visit compared to boys (Kann et al., 2018; Nook et al., 2008). Additionally, adolescents (e.g., 17.2%) reported the highest levels of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) engagement compared to young adults (e.g., 13.4%) and adults (e.g., 5.5%), and girls reported more NSSI engagement than boys among adolescents …

Alcohol Use And Emotion Dysregulation In Adolescence, Shelby King

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Underage drinking is a serious public health concern with magnified physical and psychological risks for adolescents. Consequences can include impaired judgement, increased risk for alcohol problems later in life, increased risk of physical and sexual assault, interference with brain development, injuries, and death (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2021). In a 2019 survey, 29% of high school students reported drinking alcohol in the past 30 days (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Given the high rates of use and adverse effects associated with adolescent substance use, research on risk factors related to alcohol use among this age …

Unpacking Professional Shame: Patterns Of White Male Engineering Students Living In And Out Of Threats To Their Identities, James L. Huff Ph.D., Benjamin Okai, Kanembe Shanachilubwa, Nicola W. Sochacka, Joachim Walther

Engineering and Physics Faculty Research and Publications

Background

Although prior research has provided robust descriptions of engineering students' identity development, a gap in the literature exists related to students' emotional experiences of shame, which undergird the socially constructed expectations of their professional formation.

Purpose

We examined the lived experiences of professional shame among White male engineering students in the United States. We conceptualize professional shame to be a painful emotional state that occurs when one perceives they have failed to meet socially constructed expectations or standards that are relevant to their identity in a professional domain.

Method

We conducted unstructured interviews with nine White male engineering students …

Cognitive-Emotional Processing In Alexithymia: An Integrative Review, Olivier Luminet, Kristy A. Nielson, Nathan Ridout

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality construct characterised by difficulties identifying one’s feelings and distinguishing them from bodily sensations, difficulties describing one’s feelings to others, and an externally oriented cognitive style. Over the past 25 years, a burgeoning body of research has examined how alexithymia moderates processing at the cognition–emotion interface. We review the findings in five domains: attention, appraisals, memory, language, and behaviours. The preponderance of studies linked alexithymia with deficits in emotion processing, which was apparent across all domains, except behaviours. All studies on behaviours and a proportion of studies in other domains demonstrated emotional over-responding. Analysis at the …

Neural Responses To Happy, Fearful And Angry Faces Of Varying Identities In 5-And 7-Month-Old Infants, Laurie Bayet, Katherine L. Perdue, Hannah F. Behrendt, John E. Richards, Alissa Westerlund, Julia K. Cataldo, Charles A. Nelson Iii

Faculty Publications

The processing of facial emotion is an important social skill that develops throughout infancy and early childhood. Here we investigate the neural underpinnings of the ability to process facial emotion across changes in facial identity in cross-sectional groups of 5- and 7-month-old infants. We simultaneously measured neural metabolic, behavioral, and autonomic responses to happy, fearful, and angry faces of different female models using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), eye-tracking, and heart rate measures. We observed significant neural activation to these facial emotions in a distributed set of frontal and temporal brain regions, and longer looking to the mouth region of angry …

Music And Its Effects On The Brain, Caitlyn Herron

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper will discuss, in short, how music influences our brain, as well as some behavioral and physiological effects as a result. The brain consists of many regions responsible for different cognitive processes, such as learning, memory, recall, speech, and our emotions. It has been found that music helps to facilitate all of these cognitive processes, regardless of its emotional valence or whether the music is active or passive, such as singing or listening to it, respectively. It was discovered that music influences our ability to learn novel concepts related to mathematics, reading, and even language acquisition. It was also …

The Psychology Of Dance

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

Transmission Of Emotion Regulation From Parent To Child: Indirect Effect Of Maternal Emotion Regulation Through Parenting Behaviors, Sabrina D. Ung

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Emotion regulation (ER), the regulatory component of temperament, has important implications for emotional, behavioral, and physical health throughout the lifespan. Researchers have examined various factors, such as maternal ER functioning and parenting behaviors, that influence the development of ER abilities in early childhood. Greater maternal ER functioning, including the use of cognitive reappraisal, is linked to better child ER. Additionally, positive parenting, characterized by warm, responsive, sensitive, and supportive interactions, has been found to predict better child ER functioning. Negative parenting (i.e., harsh, intrusive, and insensitive interactions) predicts poor child ER. Maternal ER has also been found to predict parenting, …

Database Of Picture-Based Cognitive Reappraisal Experiments: Analyses Of Trial-Level Factors, Damon Abraham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive reappraisal is widely recognized as an effective emotion regulation strategy for managing negative emotions. In laboratory research, reappraisal has been shown to attenuate self-reported negative affect as well as physiological and neurological markers of emotion and arousal. In these experiments, emotionally evocative images are frequently used to induce negative affect in participants. Depending on the trial condition, participants are instructed to either look and react naturally or to change their experience using reappraisal. Data are typically aggregated within trial condition, and the average difference in reported negative affect between conditions serves as the behavioral measure of reappraisal success. While …

Emotion Disclosure In Spanish And English Bilinguals, Maya Cohrssen-Hernandez

Scripps Senior Theses

Previous literature has identified a difference in emotion comprehension and production of bilinguals. This study aimed to explore differences in emotion expression in the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) among Spanish and English bilinguals. The bilingual participants were interviewed and asked to recount two frustrating events, one in their L1 and one in their L2. These interviews were analyzed for the occurrence of four semantic categories: emotion words (with a subcategory of negative emotion words), emotion-laden words, expressive interjections, and intensifiers that strengthen content words. The data indicated that Spanish and English bilinguals both used more emotion …

Perceiving Organization As An Entity : The Relationship Of Entitativity And Organizational Justice Perception, Wei Zhuang

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Entitativity is an important group construct that has received little attention in the organizational psychology literature. The current study based on 343 employed individuals explores the potential role of entitativity perceptions of organizations on the relationship between justice perceptions and employees’ emotional and behavioral reactions. Results of a three-wave survey study suggest that entitativity perceptions are positively associated with employees’ experienced gratitude toward organizations but have no relationship with employees experienced anger toward organizations. In addition, this study provides evidence that positive emotions can mediate the effect of justice perceptions on positive behavioral outcomes, and negative emotions can mediate the …