Digital Commons Network^™

Emotional Manipulation And Cognitive Distraction As Strategy: The Effects Of Verbal Insults On Motivation And Performance In A Competitive Setting, Karen C. P. Mcdermott

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the effects of verbally aggressive insults on an opponent’s performance in a competitive setting, i.e. ‘trash talk.’ Bringing together literature from a number of fields, a model was tested which hypothesized that the perception of verbal insults would increase cognitive distraction, elevate levels of emotional arousal, and affect motivation to perform, such that competitive performance would decrease. Anger and shame were posited as the primary manifestations of emotional arousal. The study was operationalized through a video game racing competition as a true experiment with control and verbal insult conditions. Both groups received an auditory treatment delivered by …

Using Computational Methods And Experimentation To Understand The Persuasiveness Of Vaccine Messages, Zhan Xu

Doctoral Dissertations

In the digital age, true and false information can influence health-related decisions differently. It is important to monitor the dissemination of misinformation, understand public interests and develop persuasive messages. Two studies were conducted in order to meet these goals. Study 1 used computational methods to explore topic evolution and popularity in vaccine-related online messages. Topic modeling identified 14 topics in pro-vaccine messages (PVMs) and 12 topics in anti-vaccine messages (AVMs). PVMs that used personal stories received the highest number of shares, reactions, and comments. Pure scientific knowledge received the least attention. The most frequently appearing topic in AVMs was about …

Developing A Broader Understanding Of Subjective Age: A Mixed Methods Investigation, Gretchen A. Petery

Doctoral Dissertations

Subjective age (SA), a self-construal of age often measured by asking how old a person feels (e.g., felt age, FA), has been proposed as an alternative to chronological age (CA) in organizational research. Indeed, prior research reveals that SA has predictive abilities above and beyond CA on work relevant outcomes such as stress, retirement intentions, and health. Younger adults tend to report feeling older than their CA; this switches to feeling younger than CA sometime around mid- to late-twenties, although there is considerable variability in the size and direction of FA-CA differences at all ages. Yet, relatively little is known …

Cuteness And Appeals: Unleashing Prosocial Emotions, Katherine (Kivy) Weeks

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the implications of cuteness in marketing communication. It uses babyfacedness research as the basis for evoking a cuteness response, and introduces a nurturance scale to measure the emotional outcome of exposure. In the process, it uncovered problems with existing conceptualizations of attractiveness, and demonstrated how using nurturance, aesthetic judgement and sexual judgement measures better explains aggregate emotional outcome (e.g. positive/negative emotion) from exposure to facial images. In particular, it shows how nurturance and sexual judgements have antagonistic effects on aggregate emotion. Additionally, it details how babyfaced manipulations influence both the perceived age …

How It Feels To Be Coached: Teacher Perception Of Coaching And Emotional Response To The Coach, Margaret Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

Coaching is a strategy employed by districts to improve teacher skill and advance student learning. Despite widespread adoption of coaching, research has not yet explored teachers' emotional responses to coaching, which may impact the success of the coaching practice. This study examines teacher emotions by examining teacher perception of coaching and coinciding emotional response to those perceptions. Using the qualitative case study method, I examined 9 teachers across 3 schools. I found that perception and emotional response were shaped by more than the current coaching practice. Instead, teachers engaged in a mental bookkeeping process, in which perceptions of prior coaching …

Cell Phone Vs. Microphone: Judging Emotion In The Voice, Joshua Green

Master's Theses

Abstract

A remarkable amount of information is conveyed by the human voice. For example, the emotional state of a speaker is conveyed by vocal cues such as pitch and intensity, though as is true for other speech qualities, affect does not map onto auditory signals in a one-to-one fashion. Despite the widespread use of cell phone technology, there is still little information regarding how emotional states are conveyed during cell phone transmissions. In this study, listeners judged speech samples for their affective qualities. Samples were simultaneously recorded on a microphone and a cell phone, and endpoints of two emotional “continua,” …

Multi-Modal Outcomes From Interpersonal Need (Un)Fulfillment: The Emotional, Cognitive And Behavioral Derivatives Of Consecutive Social Contingencies, Kyle Steven Hull

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study assessed the relationship between the core dimensions of interpersonal communication and relationships, power and intimacy, on the activation of individualistic-prosocial affect systems and subsequent interpersonal outcomes. Despite extensive research examining each dimension, mixed findings are prevalent and few have investigated their potential interaction. This study addressed these issues based on current trends in interdisciplinary research. Specifically, manipulated social triumph-defeat was followed by social inclusion-exclusion to examine their combined effect on interpersonal outcomes. Results indicate that the power and intimacy manipulations were successful, however, the relationship between them was not interactive. The current findings contradict the logical expansion …

Kickin' It With God: Clerical Behavior, Denominational Meaning, And The Expression Of Emotion In Ritual, Christopher M. Donnelly

Master's Theses

In the contemporary West, religious worship is very much a collective, guided phenomenon. Based upon interviews and participant observation in Catholic, Congregationalist, and Evangelical services, this paper examines congregant emotional displays influenced via micro behavioral techniques utilized by church officials versus macro denominational meanings during religious ceremony. In particular, the argument is made that while performance acts used by church officials do have some impact upon the emotional expression of the congregation, it is the shared meanings expressed through the denominational tradition that exercise a significant influence upon emotional displays in rituals. Therefore, while ritual is guided, it is more …