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Understanding The Motivational Consequences Of Extreme School Violence Through The Lens Of Mortality Salience: The Case Of Academic Self-Stereotyping In Math, Aaron Wichman

Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

We conducted an investigation into a determinant of academic motivation that has implications for how we respond to school violence and tragedy. We conducted two studies to examine whether exposure to messages related to the salience of one’s own mortality cause people to align their own academic beliefs more closely with stereotypical beliefs about their social groups. When exposed to graffiti images that contained messages such as R.I.P. (i.e., rest in peace), males and females in Study 1 expressed math attitudes that resembled the American stereotype of male superiority and female inferiority in this domain. In Study 2, writing about …

Uncertainty And Religious Reactivity: Uncertainty Compensation, Repair, And Inoculation, Aaron Wichman

Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Recent research conducted in Western, democratic societies indicates that temporary uncertainty inductions lead to intolerance of religious dissent, increased conviction in religious attitudes, and even increased support for holy war. Past and current conflicts based on religious ideology underscore the danger such responses to uncertainty can pose. This paper responds to the need to learn how to control responses to uncertainty. After having confirmed through pilot testing that uncertainty increases self-report religious faith, two subsequent studies investigate different techniques to control compensatory responses to uncertainty. Study 1 demonstrates that uncertainty-induced increases in religiosity can be eliminated by a post-uncertainty directed …

A Multilevel Analysis Of The Relationship Between Birth-Order And Intelligence, Aaron Wichman

Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Many previous studies have found relationships between birth order and intelligence, but use cross-sectional designs or manifest other threats to internal validity. Using the National

Longitudinal Survey of Youth Children (NLSY) data and multilevel analyses with control variables, we show that when these threats are removed, two major results emerge : (a) Birth order has no measurable influence on children’s intelligence; and (b) Control variables provide strong evidence that earlier-reported birth order effects on intelligence are attributable to environmental and genetic factors that vary between, not within families. Identical sets of analyses on 7-8 and 13-14 year-old children from the …