Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Intercultural Competence And Personality In Study Abroad Students, Wilkes W. Jones

Honors College Theses

This study aimed to replicate and extend on previous research demonstrating that international study-abroad experiences can alter a plethora of culturally related views and attitudes associated with intercultural competence. Moreover, studying abroad has been shown to make students more knowledgeable of, compassionate toward. and skilled when working with people from other cultures. Additionally, previous research has provided evidence that some Big Five personality traits can predict scores on intercultural competence measures, suggesting that some individuals may be more open to the potential benefits of studying abroad more than others. For this study, I hypothesized that from before to after studying …

Masculine Vs. Feminine Women: Verdict, Blame, And Punishment Outcomes In The Legal System, Alaina Helmerichs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is commonly recognized that sentencing disparities exist between men and women who are accused of the same crime—with men often receiving harsher judgements than women. However, research explaining why this disparity exists is incomplete. Research suggests that higher levels of facial masculinity in men is tied to higher levels of criminality (Estrada-Reynolds et al., 2017); however, little research looks at this pattern amongst female defendants. The current study investigated whether the gendered appearance (masculine vs. feminine) of female defendants in different types of cases (child negligence vs. medical malpractice) affects mock jurors’ judgments about verdict, punishment, and internal blame …

Exploring Collegiate Athletes' Experiences With Cliques, Cora G. Dodson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A significant body of literature examines team processes as they relate to the team as a collective unit (Eys et al., 2019). However, smaller units present within a team, such as cliques or subgroups, warrant further scientific exploration and dissemination (Wagstaff & Martin, 2018). Existent literature on cliques in an athletic setting established that intra-team groups are inevitable, while also highlighting their emergence and formation, and their relative consequences at the team level (Martin, 2020; Wagstaff & Martin, 2018). Despite the scientific advancement at the group level, research concerning cliques is scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative study was …

What Is It Really: The Role Of Intergroup Threat In Educational Decision-Making, Kyle A. Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Perceptions of intergroup threat correlate with prejudice against Black Americans (Iyer, 2022). For example, White Americans tend to move out of communities they dominate when the population of Black Americans increases in those communities beyond a “tolerable” rate due to a perceived threat to the neighborhood's safety and resources; this phenomenon is known as White Flight (Grodzins, 1958; Zou & Cheryan, 2022). This exodus of White Americans predicts urban decay, which affects the public school systems in those areas, leading to poorer public services and higher dropout rates among those in the now racially segregated neighborhoods (Mayer & Jencks, 1989; …

What Does It Mean To Be The Goat: A Narrative Study On Retired White Male Elite Individual Sport Athletes?, Tyler Behrmann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The greatest of all time (GOAT) is a topic commonly discussed in sports today (Lundberg & Rosenberg, 2020). Despite this increased use of the term, there is a lack of research on the topic of the GOAT which could serve to benefit individuals in performance domains. The purpose of this qualitative exploratory study was to investigate characteristics that describe a GOAT and the impact these characteristics of the GOAT have on individuals. Two participants were included in this study. The participants were white male, retired, and individual sport athletes who competed in multiple World Championships. Participants were interviewed using semi-structured …

The Metanarratives Of The Fourth Industrial Revolution And The Collective Cognitive Dissonance Of Metamodernist Discursive Formation, John R. Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My artworks explore the impacts of the technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which began in the early 21^st Century, upon global society and the human psyche. My works are instantiated by multi-year research in the areas of social psychology, cognitive dissonance, computer evolution and artificial intelligence. My body of work portrays a cautionary sensibility regards new technologies such as robotics, quantum supercomputing, Artificial Intelligence, commercial space travel and nanotechnology. In addition, my artwork attempts to increase awareness of the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.

The perceptions and cognitions of artistic viewers relate directly to the psychological phenomenon of cognitive …

Views Of Asexuality And Transgender Individuals: The Role Of Religious Beliefs, Allison Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Asexuality is a lifelong, continuous lack of sexual attraction or the inability to feel sexual attraction. Asexuality is a naturally occurring sexual orientation thought to be present in 0.4-1.1% of the American population. However, asexuality is still relatively unknown by the general population and understudied by scientific researchers. Even less known is how religious individuals view asexuality. According to the 2020 US census, around 70% of American adults identify as Christian. The current study examined how degree of religiousness related to feelings toward sexuality and asexual individuals. Main hypotheses included: religious fundamentalism would predict negative attitudes toward asexual and transgender …

Effects Of Imagined Financial Difficulties On State Adult Attachment Systems, Loren Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to Bowlby’s definition of attachment theory, insecure attachment systems negatively regulate individuals' behaviors, thoughts, and feelings (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). As individuals age, negative views of others and the self can grow, inevitably hindering relationships with others and self-esteem. Empirical research suggests a strong positive relationship between low socioeconomic status (SES) and developing an insecure attachment style among children (Sherry et al., 2013; van IJzendoorn & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2010). With many similarities between child and adult attachment models, there is a gap in the literature examining the impact of lower SES on adult attachments. Although socioeconomic status's effects on general …

It's Not A Phobia: Reducing Transnegativity Using Imagined Intergroup Contact, Rachel Cook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a novel imagined intergroup contact procedure in reducing feelings of transnegativity held by cisgender individuals. The intervention, based on the Fast Friends Procedure (Aron et al., 1997), has participants interact with a fictional transgender person who answers questions about himself; participants then write a free-response answer to the question for themselves. The current hypotheses were that the imagined intergroup contact procedure would (1) reduce feelings of transnegativity, (2) reduce feelings of contact apprehension toward transgender people, and (3) increase feelings of self-other overlap between cisgender people and a transgender target. In Study 1, …

The Correlation Between The Covid-19 Pandemic And Nursing Students’ Academic And Professional Engagement And Performance., Jolie Mathilde Komlan

Honors College Theses

Even without the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, nursing schools are recognized as a stressful environment "that often exert a negative effect on the academic performances and psychological well-being of the students" (Gomathi et al., 2017). Exploring the changes this ongoing pandemic has on nursing students' views and perspectives, along with their perceived threats, failures, and successes brought on by this pandemic will provide good insight into further changes that need to be implemented to better prepare nursing students through their programs. To accomplish this, participants within the nursing program were surveyed via a 21-question survey on Qualtrics. A retrospective analysis …

Student Perceptions Of Gendered Racial Microagressions, Ayanna Brewton

Honors College Theses

The impact of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination is a widespread issue in society that has become more visible to people with privilege and has been more widely studied by social scientists and mental health professionals. More recently, the impact of gendered racial microaggressions has been investigated. Gendered racial microaggressions are defined as indirect and everyday slights and insults based on the intersection of racism and sexism (Gadson & Lewis, 2021). Research shows that gendered racial microaggressions toward multiple minority status individuals has a negative impact on their mental wellbeing (Mekawi & Todd, 2018). However, there is a gap in the …

Impostorism On Campus: The Effects Of Stereotype Threat On State Inauthenticity And State Anxiety In Two Samples Of African American College Women, Gabrielle Y. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite the growing education levels of Black women, negative stereotypes of Black women persist and undermine the confidence of African American/Black college women in the classroom. Experimental evidence supports that stereotype threat, the fear of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group when being evaluated by others, undermines the performance of high achieving Black students (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Research has found the impostor phenomenon to be experienced as thoughts of inauthenticity, in conjunction with fear of failure and being exposed as a fraud (Ibrahim et al., 2020). Therefore, being continuously exposed to situations that create feelings of state inauthenticity, …

Exploring Sport, Exercise, And Performance Psychology Practitioners’ Attitudes On Attire, Claire Harding

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has revealed that attire has an influence on one’s self-perceptions, self and socially prescribed adjective traits and behavior (Adam & Galinsky, 2012; Lubker et. al, 2008; Peluchette & Karl, 2007). The present study aims to explore the influence of attire on perceptions, attitudes, and experiences of SEPP (Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology) practitioners during their applied work. Specifically, these factors were investigated through various demographic lenses such as gender, experience level, and age in order to describe the population. SEPP graduate students (n = 49) and early career professionals (n = 82) were asked to participate in a questionnaire, …

Development Of A New Measure To Assess For Poverty-Based Stress: The Poverty-Based Stressor Scale (Pbss), Brianna N. Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Poverty, typically measured by economic well-being or depravation, is the result of systemic flaws built into the structure of society that adversely impact multiple dimensions of health and well-being. The specific stressors that disproportionately impact low-income individuals are called poverty-based stressors, and they encompass multiple categories of risk including physical, psychosocial, and financial risks. Currently, there is not an adequate measure of poverty-based stressors for low-income adults in the United States (U.S.), which restricts our ability to accurately determine the effects of poverty on important health-related outcomes. The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a psychometrically sound measure of …

The Effects Of Racial Discrimination On Black, Indigenous, And People Of Color (Bipoc) Students’ Mental Health, Alana M. Hall Ms.

Honors College Theses

Racial discrimination and its relationship with mental health outcomes in BIPOC students, specifically psychological distress, the focus of this study. This was deemed important because these students may have responded by using certain coping strategies that could be harmful to their mental health and overall health, in the long term. It is already known that racism has been a problem in the world, but has morphed over the years to that of subtle, and often more harmful, forms of racism (e.g. microaggressions). The goal of this study was to examine the discriminatory experiences of BIPOC students at a predominantly white …

Media Representations Of Lgbt People, Christian Marrero

Honors College Theses

LGBT people of color (POC) and White LGBT people have different experiences when it comes to accepting their sexuality and coming out experience, thus affecting their mental health and interactions with the community. The coming out process is a step towards a healthier and happier life, revealing an internal acceptance of oneself while expressing the desire to be open to others. However, LGBT people consider coming out a stressful and emotionally daunting process due to the uncertainty of responses from family, friends, and classmates (Charbonnier & Graziani, 2016). Media representations of LGBT interactions may also influence feelings about the coming …

Influence Of Political Affiliation On Perceived Media Bias And Trustworthiness In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Tabitha Lamberth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Partisanship and news source attribution may influence perceived media bias and trust in COVID-19 information. This study aimed to explore how the similarity liking effect relates to political identity and perceived credibility. Our main hypothesis was that individuals would find news sources that shared their political affiliation as more trustworthy than other news sources. To test our hypothesis, 216 undergraduate students participated in a study that measured participants’ trustworthiness of a news article with randomized source attribution from a liberal, conservative, and neutral source. A 2X3 ANOVA tested the relationship between our participants’ political affiliation, measured by the 12-item Social …

Evaluating The Effects Of Self-Control Depletion On Task Persistence: A Focus On The Moderating Effects Of Performance Monitoring, Hayley Houseman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Self-control is essential in day-to-day life and has important implications for goal attainment, successful living, and psychological well-being. However, self-control is known to fail when resources are depleted physically, cognitively, or emotionally, which can lead to difficulties completing important tasks. Performance monitoring, which makes a standard salient so that people can sustain their performance while attending to their goals, might buffer the loss of self-control on task performance. Overall, the purpose of this study was to experimentally examine the effects of self-control depletion and performance monitoring on task persistence. Eighty undergraduate students were recruited to participate in the study. Participants …

Which Toys Are Right For Boys? How Threat And Confirmation Of The Gender Hierarchy Impact Purchase Intentions For Stereotypical And Counter Stereotypical Products, Connor Samuelson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social movements with potential to change the traditional gender hierarchy may be met with approval or disapproval, depending upon levels of status-legitimizing beliefs (SLBs). Under conditions of gender hierarchy change, one mechanism in which people may choose to fight or support such change is through their purchase of gender stereotypical or counter-stereotypical products. Community members completed a measure of System Legitimizing Beliefs (Levin et al., 1998) and then read one of two news articles about women in the workplace that suggested trends that either threatened or did not threaten the current gender hierarchy. Participants then imagined needing to purchase a …

Applicant Religion And Work Qualifications Impacting Hiring Decisions, William T. Cagle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The underlying effect of religious bias towards Muslims has negatively impacted their chances of receiving equal employment opportunities. The current study attempts to observe this effect by having Christian participants pretend to be a boss of a company and asking them to evaluate a fictitious resume and rate the applicant on their suitability for the managerial job at hand. The applicants were either Christian or Muslim. Based on the justification-suppression model, we also attempted to observe the effect having different hiring qualifications had on the applicant ratings. To do this, applicants either had a high or low GPA, and they …

Do The Age And Drama Type Of Individuals Affect Their Perceived Social Status?, Bradly A. Mcginnis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drama is a type of performative, interpersonal conflict where traditional victim/aggressor dynamics seen in most types of bullying does not always appear. Different personalities display different types of drama, which may have different levels of usefulness across development. I am interested in discovering whether the level of target social status changes for different drama types across the lifespan. This interaction between target social status and drama type was analyzed by a 2 x 3 design with an expected 2 x 2 interaction. Overall, there were non-significant main effects and a non-significant interaction in the 2 x 3 between subjects ANOVA. …

The #Metoo Movement And Social Dominance Orientation, Elaine N. Forbes

Honors College Theses

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is a measurement of an individual's desire for the current social hierarchy to be maintained (Sidanius & Pratto, 1994). SDO has long been considered relatively stable, and men have been shown to exhibit higher SDO than women on average. However, recent research suggests that men's SDO scores may increase in response to an outgroup threat (Sugiura et al., 2017). The current study aimed to use the #MeToo Movement as an outgroup threat to investigate the effect of a modern real-world event on SDO scores in men compared to women. Modified news articles covering the #MeToo Movement …

Attitude Formation And Malleability In Response To Visual Cues And Counterattitudinal Information, Tyler W. Mueller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this research is to investigate how individuals form attitudes based on the appearance of another person and how malleable those attitudes are when the individual is presented with new information about the other person. The predicted effect from this study was that participants would form attitudes about another person's agreeableness based on visual information and that when presented counterattitudinal information would be more likely to change attitudes than information that matches their initial attitude. It was also expected that negative first impressions would be harder to change. METHOD: Participants (N = 109) were presented one …

Who Deserves To Be In Stem? How Threat And Confirmation Of The Gender Hierarchy Impact Helping Behavior Towards Prospective Stem Majors, Samantha A. Gnall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current events that either threaten or confirm the current gender hierarchy may impact people differently. This can depend upon one’s group membership and their attitudes towards a fair and just society. When people are asked to help others while facing uncertainty of the hierarchy, they may choose to help or lash out in an effort to re-establish the hierarchy or dismantle the hierarchy. STEM faculty were presented with information that either did not threaten the gender hierarchy (i.e., maintaining gender inequality) or that threatened the current gender hierarchy (i.e., reaching gender equality). Participants were then given an opportunity to offer …

Does Maga Affect Legal Decision Making In A Criminal Case?, Jaelyn M. Nixon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) slogan was embedded with underlying ideologies that are perceived by some individuals as promoting strict laws, policies, and punishments (Goldstein & Hall, 2017). Specifically, he is notorious for his support of capital punishment on more than one occasion (Richard, 2018). Punishment decision making can be influenced by an individual’s belonging to social categories that may have been formed based on political beliefs, gender, and other social criteria (Kahan et al., 2009). Additionally, racial disparities within the legal system persist and are known to be maintained through racially biased punishment decision making. Our research …

The Relationship Between Religious Background Of Those Who Disaffiliate From Religion And Presence Of Anxiety, Timothy B. Sellers

Honors College Theses

Religion plays a significant role in the personality and worldview of a many individuals. It can provide one with personal benefits such as coping mechanisms, a framework for meaning-making, and a source of motivation, while also providing social support through connections with others having the same religious beliefs. The removal of said benefits through disaffiliation from a religious identity may lead to distress or anxiety. While much research has been done sociologically regarding the increasing number of people who do not affiliate with a religious group, much less has been done to analyze the individual experience of religious disaffiliation and …

Ambivalent Prejudice In News Media: Does Social Hierarchy Threat Change How We View Reporters?, Rebecca E. Burchette

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite research demonstrating the importance of news media, there remains a gap in the literature on how the reporter influences the perception of the information. This current experiment aims to fill that gap by evaluating how reporter race and social hierarchy threat alters perceptions of both the reporter and the information. White participants read an article with content that indicated that the current racial hierarchy is either under threat or likely to continue; the article was written by either a Black or White reporter. Participants then completed measures of perceptions of warmth and competence of the reporter, acceptance levels towards …

Does Sharing Information With Friends And Family Cause Men To Adhere More Strongly To Masculine Norms?, Clint E. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is clear that social influence can elicit conformity to norms (e.g., Asch, 1956). It remains unclear, however, how various relationships elicit differential conformity to masculine norms in particular. In this pre-registered experiment, I tested the hypothesis that when men are asked to reveal their responses on the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI; Mahalik et al., 2003), men conform more when sharing that identifiable information with others who know them (i.e., “public” conformity), namely friends and family, as compared to sharing that information anonymously with a random stranger (i.e., the anonymous “private” condition). My convenience sample consisted of participants …

Does Emotion-Regulation Moderate Ostracism And Risk-Taking?, Serena K. Murphy Ms.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ostracism, feeling excluded or ignored, has been associated with increased risk-taking behavior on a number of self-report and lab-based measures (Buelow & Wirth, 2017; Duclos, Wan, & Jiang, 2012; Falk et al., 2014; Svetieva et al. 2016). Anger mediates the relationship between ostracism and risk-taking (Svetieva et al., 2016), and it is possible that emotion-regulation strategies to reduce anger may minimize this relationship. However, research has yet to test if emotion-regulation strategies can reduce affective responses following ostracism. The purpose of the current study is to examine the effects of ostracism via Cyberball and emotion-regulation strategies on risk-taking behavior using …

Does Enhancing Mind Perception Affect Conspiracy Belief?, Jorge R. Noguera - Sepulveda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a novel mind perception manipulation. Mind perception is currently theorized to be an essential aspect of a number of human social psychological processes. Thus, a successful manipulation would allow for the causal study of those processes. This manipulation was created in an attempt to explore the downstream impact of mind perception on the endorsement of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are steadily becoming more and more prominent in social discourse. Endorsement of conspiracy theories are beginning to show real world ramifications such as a danger to human health (e.g., in the anti-vaccination …