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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

Intercultural Competence And Personality In Study Abroad Students, Wilkes W. Jones Jan 2024

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 …


Machiavellianism And Conscientiousness Of Self And Of Others, Anna Z. Jones Jan 2023

Machiavellianism And Conscientiousness Of Self And Of Others, Anna Z. Jones

Honors College Theses

As a dark personality, Machiavellianism (MACH) includes callousness and deceit; however, individuals higher in MACH differ from other dark personalities in their strategic long-term orientation to manipulate others to achieve personal success, and their cynical world views towards others. To measure different aspects of personality, research has developed an assessment called the Big Five Inventory. One factor included in the five attributes is (high) conscientiousness: the tendency to be careful towards others, organized, and not impulsive. Such traits seem to support the strategic aspect of the MACH personality but do not support the lack of care that individuals higher in …


Personality Traits In The Workplace: Examining The Light Triad And Its Relationship With Job Satisfaction, Sarah Catherine Overton Nov 2022

Personality Traits In The Workplace: Examining The Light Triad And Its Relationship With Job Satisfaction, Sarah Catherine Overton

Honors College Theses

The expanding psychological research into several “dark traits” of one’s personality (Moshagen et al., 2018) has presented a void in examining more positive characteristics. In recent years, Kaufman and colleagues (2019) developed the “Light Triad” to provide a more holistic perspective on humankind. The Light Triad is a construct encompassing benevolent personality traits, including humanism, faith in humanity, and Kantianism. Most relevant to the current study, Kaufman and colleagues (2019) found a significant relationship between the Light Triad and life satisfaction. Furthermore, life satisfaction is also positively correlated with job satisfaction (Rice et al., 1980). Given these relationships, it was …


The Impact Of Academic Development Structures On Self-Perception: Honors Vs Non-Honors University Students, Beatrice M. Bean Nov 2022

The Impact Of Academic Development Structures On Self-Perception: Honors Vs Non-Honors University Students, Beatrice M. Bean

Honors College Theses

The purpose of the current study was to determine if there were variations in the self-perceptions of honors and non-honors collegiate students in areas of academic and non-academic self-concept. This research was important as it provides emphasis on an understudied population as well as gathers a deeper understanding of intricacies related to self-concept by incorporating comprehensive investigative measures. A sample of 236 students (72.6% female, 65.7% White, ages 18-51) took an online survey consisting of questions related to self-concept. By utilizing a series of two-tailed, independent samples t-tests we examined the differences between student self-perceptions of self-concept. Results indicated that …


Childhood Abuse, Invalidation, And Personality In A College Population, Kayleigh M. Heard Mar 2021

Childhood Abuse, Invalidation, And Personality In A College Population, Kayleigh M. Heard

Honors College Theses

Studies show the detrimental effects of childhood maltreatment (i.e., childhood physical abuse, childhood sexual abuse, invalidation, and multiple forms of maltreatment; Afifi et al., 2016). Research demonstrates individuals with a history of childhood maltreatment have distinct patterns of personality characteristics (Allen & Lauterbach, 2007). Specifically, individuals with history of childhood maltreatment typically report high neuroticism, high openness, and low agreeableness compared to those with no history of maltreatment (Distel et al., 2009; Huang et al., 2012). Less is known about personality differences among individuals with different forms of childhood maltreatment (e.g., physical abuse vs. sexual abuse vs. invalidation vs. multiple …


The #Metoo Movement And Social Dominance Orientation, Elaine N. Forbes Nov 2020

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 …


Vulnerable Narcissism And First-Person Singular Pronoun Use, Hannah L. Dorough Nov 2018

Vulnerable Narcissism And First-Person Singular Pronoun Use, Hannah L. Dorough

Honors College Theses

Who talks about themselves most frequently? Recent research has explored the top correlates of self-focused language use. Depression and negative emotionality tend to appear as key positive correlates. Surprisingly, narcissism—which is largely known for its trait of self-centeredness—is not a major correlate of self-focused language use. Studies demonstrating this null effect have only measured grandiose narcissism, while entirely neglecting vulnerable narcissism. By using a survey methodology with carefully-selected trait inventories and a language task, the purpose of this study is to fill the gap in the literature—to see whether vulnerable narcissism accounts for talking about oneself, above and beyond the …


The Tragedy Zone: Ableism In Entertainment, Linnea Sumner Jul 2018

The Tragedy Zone: Ableism In Entertainment, Linnea Sumner

Honors College Theses

Ableism, or discrimination towards individuals with disabilities, is pervasive in our society. The entertainment world and the media are largely responsible for shaping the way the general public views minority groups. The topic of disability is incredibly popular on screen and stage, but very few actors and writers with disabilities are being hired in comparison to the amount of work that is being produced on the topic. A startling percentage of best actor/actress Oscar winners have won for portraying a character with a disability of some kind, but only two actors with the same disabilities as their characters have been …


An Examination Of Goal Orientation Between Genders – An Exploratory Study, Amanda M. Boyd May 2017

An Examination Of Goal Orientation Between Genders – An Exploratory Study, Amanda M. Boyd

Honors College Theses

Goal orientation is defined as the perceptual-cognitive frameworks that determine how an individual approaches, interprets, and responds to achievement situations (Janssen & Van Yperen, 2004). Goal orientation refers to the reasons an individual engages in an activity and the goals he or she sets to define success (D’Lima et al., 2014). Research has shown that there are gender differences when examining goal orientation. However, little research has been found that has examined this within the millennial generation. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the differences between male and female millennial college students on goal orientation. The …


Narcissism And Short-Term Mating Attempts, Rebecca E. Burchette May 2017

Narcissism And Short-Term Mating Attempts, Rebecca E. Burchette

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this research is to measure the behavioral choice of narcissists when presented with an opportunity for short-term or long-term mating in an online simulation. Participants were randomly assigned to either a short-term mating (STM) or long-term mating (LTM) condition in which they saw women that were interested in “casual” or “lasting, loving” relationships. Participants had the option of emailing as many women as they liked. However, there was no significant moderation found.


Effects Of Mortality Salience On Anti- Atheist Prejudice: A Terror Management Perspective, Cassidy J. Keim Jan 2017

Effects Of Mortality Salience On Anti- Atheist Prejudice: A Terror Management Perspective, Cassidy J. Keim

Honors College Theses

Terror Management Theory argues that mortality salience is an important motivator in how people behave throughout their lives, and can influence how prejudiced individuals become. In this study we triggered participants’ mortality salience to test this claim, as well as measured the attitudes of prejudice have for atheists compared to homosexuals to see if they differ. Mortality salience did not have an effect on prejudice in this experiment, but anti-atheist prejudice was significantly higher than anti-homosexual prejudice. Although these findings are small, they confirm a need for continued research on prejudice against religious minorities, such as atheists, and how to …


From Dreamers To Dangerous Women: A Shift From Abstinence And Hypersexuality To Sexuality With Shame In Pop Music Listened To By Tween Girls In 2006 And 2016, Jaclyn Griffith Jan 2017

From Dreamers To Dangerous Women: A Shift From Abstinence And Hypersexuality To Sexuality With Shame In Pop Music Listened To By Tween Girls In 2006 And 2016, Jaclyn Griffith

Honors College Theses

This thesis contains a comparative study of the most popular female artists or femalefronted groups among tween girls in the years 2006 and 2016. During the tween years girls construct their identities, develop sexual beliefs, and interact with potentially influential media texts.1, 2, 3 Based on survey data of fifty-seven female students ages twenty to twenty-four in a mid-Atlantic university, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, Hilary Duff, and The Black Eyed Peas were remembered as the musical artists they most often listened to in and around the year 2006. An analysis of the music videos, lyrics, and public personas of these artists …


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 …


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 …


Color Me, Please: How Color-Emotion Pairs Affect Our Perceptions, Russell T. Rogers Dec 2015

Color Me, Please: How Color-Emotion Pairs Affect Our Perceptions, Russell T. Rogers

Honors College Theses

Color-emotion pairings are part of everyday experience, and they develop in early childhood. Emotional experiences are typically much stronger when emotional stimuli (e.g., pictures or videos) are paired with sensory stimuli (e.g., sights or sounds). Since the presence of these sensory stimuli seems to heighten the emotional experience of emotion-evoking visual stimuli, it should be the case that such pairings will allow the manipulation of color-emotion pairings through the presence of a color (a visual stimulus) during an emotional situation (such as watching a video). In this study (N = 44), we paired both a positive and negative video …


Do Narcissists Tend To Create A Physically Attractive Veneer?, Julie Odom-Dixon Apr 2015

Do Narcissists Tend To Create A Physically Attractive Veneer?, Julie Odom-Dixon

Honors College Theses

Are people high in the Dark Triad are inherently attractive or are they simply more likely to dress up in ways that make themselves more attractive? This study is a partial replication of Holtzman and Strube (2013). We photographed participants (valid N = 65) in the state in which they entered the lab (Adorned Condition). The participants changed into standard gray attire provided for them (Unadorned Condition). Females removed their make-up and jewelry as well as pulled their hair back. Males shaved their beards. After being photographed, participants were asked to complete several Dark Triad surveys. Consistent with Holtzman and …


College Students’ Attitudes Towards Adults With Developmental Disabilities: Does Direct Contact Make A Difference?, Caroline E. Greene May 2014

College Students’ Attitudes Towards Adults With Developmental Disabilities: Does Direct Contact Make A Difference?, Caroline E. Greene

Honors College Theses

Data were collected from thirty college students who participated in an alternative break trip and approximately seventy college students who did not attend the trip. Study subjects served as counselors at a camp for adults with developmental disabilities. Data were collected using five measures: a) before the week started, students filled out a survey which questioned their comfort level and attitude when interacting with this population; b) this same survey was administered to a random sample of college students who did not attend the break trip c) at camp, students kept a journal throughout the week documenting their experiences; d) …