Psychology Commons^™

The Personality Profile Of China’S Empress Wu Zetian, Ruoyue Wang, Yunyiye Chen, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of Empress Wu Zetian, de facto ruler of China from 665 to 705, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Psychodiagnostically relevant data about Empress Wu were collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-5.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed in accordance with interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of …

Who Fears Strangers And Spiders: Political Ideology And Feeling Threatened, Thomas Lukaszewicz

Honors Theses

In this study, I evaluated the correlations between threat sensitivities and political ideology. Two hypotheses were tested. First, I hypothesized that conservatives would have higher social threat sensitivity than liberals, with social threat defined as a threat dependent on outgroup or social actions (Barclay & Benard, 2020). Second, I hypothesized that conservatives would have higher disgust sensitivity than liberals. To test these and related hypotheses I used a 2018 Qualtrics national demographically representative sample that included 1031 participants. To operationalize threat sensitivity, I used items asking participants to rate how threatened they felt by various fears. These individual items were …

Moral Values, Social Ideologies, And Threat-Based Cognition: Implications For Intergroup Relations., Brandon D. Stewart Phd, David S. M. Morris

Faculty Publications

Moral foundations theory (MFT) has provided an account of the moral values that underscore different cultural and political ideologies, and these moral values of harm, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity can help to explain differences in political and cultural ideologies; however, the extent to which moral foundations relate to strong social ideologies, intergroup processes and threat perceptions is still underdeveloped. To explore this relationship, we conducted two studies. In Study 1 (N = 157), we considered how the moral foundations predicted strong social ideologies such as authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) as well as attitudes toward immigrants. …

The Politics Of The Self: Psychedelic Assemblages, Psilocybin, And Subjectivity In The Anthropocene, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how psychedelic substances become drawn into particular sociohistorical and political arrangements, and how psychedelic experiences with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms’ are used as tools of subjectivation. Guided by literatures in philosophy, critical theory, and the social sciences that focus on subjectivity, assemblage theory, and critical posthumanism, I argue that psychedelics are drawn into variegated assemblages, each of which conceptualizes the nature of psychedelics in highly specific ways that reflect implicit conceptions of the world and the self. In developing the concept of psychedelic assemblages, this research provides a window onto the politics of the self in the Anthropocene. …

The Value Of Education: School Policy Decisions During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Elika W. Somani

Individually Designed Interdepartmental Major Honors Project

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lacking national U.S. policies, wide variation and conflict over chosen public school policy decisions emerged. What factors and guidelines informed the decision-making process in K-12 public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and who were the key stakeholders? This study examines three school district types – a large city, medium city, and small-town – across Minnesota as case studies to unpack how policy decisions were made during the pandemic. Stakeholder interviews uncovered that the school decision-making process was a) connected to a district's political opinions, b) made by the superintendent and school board, c) primarily influenced by …

Volume 13, Payton Davenport, Audrey Lemons, Jacob Shope, Haley Smith, Cassandra Poole, Rachel Cannon, Rachel Boch, Suzanne Stetson

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction Dr. Roger A. Byrne, Dean

From the Editor Dr. Larissa “Kat” Tracy

From the Designers Rachel English, Rachel Hanson

The Effect of Compliment Type on the Estimated Value of the Compliment by Payton Davenport, Audrey Lemons, and Jacob Shope

The Imperial Japanese Military: A New Identity in the Twentieth Century, 1853–1922 by Haley Smith

Longwood University’s campus: Human-cultivated Soil has Higher Microbial Diversity than Soil Collected from Wild Sites by Cassandra Poole

Reminiscent Modernism: Poetry Magazine’s Modernist Nostalgia for the Past by Rachel Cannon

Challenges Faced by Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Preliminary Study of Age and …

Examining The Impact Of Political Identification And Morality On Compliance With Covid-19 Public Health Measures, Jessica Stump

Honors Theses

COVID-19 provides a unique opportunity to study the influence of individual and group differences on beliefs and behavior. In the present work, we examine COVID beliefs and behavior as a function of morality, ideology, and emotion. Data were collected in the spring of 2021 and the fall of 2021, allowing for distinct snapshots of an undergraduate sample at two periods of the pandemic. Of primary interest was the relationship between political ideology, moral foundation endorsement, and COVID-19 behaviors and beliefs. The results reveal that ideology drives COVID-19-related beliefs and behaviors. The results from Study 2 suggest that political liberals were …

Dark Faces In White Spaces: The Effects Of Skin Tone, Race, Ethnicity, And Intergroup Preferences On Interpersonal Judgments And Voting Behavior, Patrizia Chirco, Tonya M. Buchanan

Student Published Works

Across three experimental studies, we explored how a political candidate's intersections of skin tone, race, and ethnicity affect voting preferences and interpersonal judgments (e.g., warmth, trustworthiness, expertise). Study 1 assessed whether White participants would favor a light-skinned (vs. dark-skinned) African American candidate. Study 2 investigated participant (White vs. non-White) voting preferences based on the interaction between candidate race/ethnicity and relative skin tone (lighter vs. darker). In Study 3, we examined the influence of candidate race/ethnicity on voters’ preferences as well as the accuracy and impact of memory for candidate skin tone. Supporting our hypotheses, White participants generally held more negative …

People Remember Liked Political Policies As Having Been Attributed To Their Own Party, Dalton Thomas Bailey

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A robust finding in psychology shows that people tend to like information more when it supports their existing beliefs, or comes from their own ingroup, a finding known as motivated reasoning. These findings are especially prominent in a political context. Quite consistently, research suggests people increase their liking of political information like political policies when they are attributed to their own party. What is unknown, however, is if people also tend to attribute personally liked information to their own party. These studies were conducted to investigate this question.

Two, within-subjects studies were conducted. In both, participants (undergraduate students) saw various …

Why Aim Law Toward Human Survival, John William Draper

Librarian Scholarship at Penn Law

Our legal system is contributing to humanity’s demise by failing to take account of our species’ situation. For example, in some cases law works against life and supports interests such as liberty or profit maximization.

If we do not act, science tells us that humanity bears a significant (and growing) risk of catastrophic failure. The significant risk inherent in the status quo is unacceptable and requires a response. We must act. It is getting hotter. When we decide to act, we need to make the right choice.

There is no better choice. You and all your relatives have rights. The …

Juror Perceptions Of Heterosexual And Same-Sex Spousal Rape In The Courtroom, Haley D. Hintz

Lewis Honors College Thesis Collection

Approximately 10-15% of American women will be raped by a spouse in their lifetime (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002). Research suggests that the American public regards spousal rape as wrong but not rape (Lynch et al., 2017). Research on spousal rape has centered on heterosexual couples despite a higher likelihood that LGBTQ+ individuals will experience severe intimate partner violence (IPV) (Rollé et al., 2019). Therefore, the present study investigated mock juror perceptions of spousal rape of heterosexual and same-sex couples in the courtroom. We employed a 2 (victim gender) x 2 (defendant gender) x 2 (participant gender) between-participants design. Participants …

Beliefs, Information, And Institutions: Public Perception Of Climate Change Information Provided By Government Versus The Market, Cherie Metcalf, Jonathan R. Nash

Faculty Articles

Despite scientific consensus over the threat posed by climate change, governmental actions remain modest or stalled, often because of profound societal polarization: more liberal individuals tend to accept climate change as real, anthropogenic, and as posing a substantial (if not existential) threat, while more conservative individuals tend to doubt such assertions. The standard explanation for this phenomenon is that liberals tend to believe government-provided information—as information about climate change tends to be—while conservatives tend to doubt it. Commentators suggest that market-generated climate change information would more likely sway conservatives.

But this assertion lacks any empirical support. This Article explores this …

Backlash Against The #Metoo Movement: How Women’S Voice Causes Men To Feel Victimized, Jaclyn A. Lisnek, Clara L. Wilkins, Megan E. Wilson, Pierce D. Ekstrom

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Three studies examined whether perceived increase in women’s “voice” (i.e., being heard and taken seriously about sexual assault) contributes to perceptions of bias against men. In Study 1, both men and women who perceived women to have a greater voice related to sexual assault, perceived greater victimization of men. This relationship was stronger for relatively conservative participants. In Study 2, relatively conservative (but not relatively liberal) participants who read about #MeToo perceived greater men’s victimization than those in the control condition. Study 3 examined responses to perceiving that men are victimized by #MeToo. For relatively conservative (but not liberal) men, …

The Psychology Of Separation: Border Walls, Soft Power, And International Neighborliness, Diana C. Mutz, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

This study assesses the impact of international border walls on evaluations of countries and on beliefs about bilateral relationships between states. Using a short video, we experimentally manipulate whether a border wall image appears in a broader description of the history and culture of a little-known country. In a third condition, we also indicate which bordering country built the wall. Demographically representative samples from the United States, Ireland, and Turkey responded similarly to these experimental treatments. Compared to a control group, border walls lowered evaluations of the bordering countries. They also signified hostile international relationships to third-party observers. Furthermore, the …