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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

Human-Animal Interaction And Human Prosociality: A Meta-Analytic Review Of Experimental And Correlational Studies, Nicole Ruiying Chen, Nadyanna M. Majeed, Gloria J. Lai, Paye Shin Koh, Manmeet Kaur, K. T. A Sandeeshwara Kasturiratna, Zhi Yan Alycia Ho, Jose C. Yong, Andree Hartanto Dec 2023

Human-Animal Interaction And Human Prosociality: A Meta-Analytic Review Of Experimental And Correlational Studies, Nicole Ruiying Chen, Nadyanna M. Majeed, Gloria J. Lai, Paye Shin Koh, Manmeet Kaur, K. T. A Sandeeshwara Kasturiratna, Zhi Yan Alycia Ho, Jose C. Yong, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Pet ownership and interactions with animals confer various physiological and psychological benefits to humans. Although interactions with animals are commonplace, there is no consensus in the literature on the actual impact of animal exposure on prosociality. Hence, this meta-analysis investigated 20 eligible studies (n = 4,116, k = 48) and provided an extensive examination into the different potential moderators of the relationship between human–animal interaction (HAI) and prosociality, such as the distinction between empathy and prosocial behavior, HAI characteristics, and sample characteristics. Overall, a small positive effect size was found (d = 0.22), suggesting that human exposure to animals is …


Lending A Paw: Does The Presence Of A Dog Increase Donations Given To Homeless Individuals?, Katherine Link Jan 2022

Lending A Paw: Does The Presence Of A Dog Increase Donations Given To Homeless Individuals?, Katherine Link

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Prosocial behavior can be defined as any behavior that results in the benefit of another individual (Coyne et al., 2018). This study sought to investigate potential influences on the prosocial behavior of donating to the homeless. With a rise in both homelessness and dog ownership, this project sought to investigate how the presence of a dog may impact both the willingness to donate and monetary amount donated to a homeless individual. Results indicated a significant three-way interaction between the sex of the homeless individual, the sex of the participant, and the presence of a dog. Overall, the presence of a …


Empathic Anger And Personal Anger In Response To Fairness Violations: Relations To Self And Other-Oriented Motivation And Behavior, Athena H. Cairo Jan 2020

Empathic Anger And Personal Anger In Response To Fairness Violations: Relations To Self And Other-Oriented Motivation And Behavior, Athena H. Cairo

Theses and Dissertations

Prosocial behavior research has shown that empathy-elicited compassionate concern often motivates actions performed with an ultimate goal of helping others even at cost to oneself, whereas empathic distress motivates low-cost help with an ultimate goal of helping oneself. Less is known about the motivational outcomes of empathic anger felt when witnessing injustice or harm to others. Though empathic anger predicts third-party compensation and punishment, it is unclear whether this motivation is ultimately self or other-oriented. Three experimental studies examined the empathic anger-altruism hypothesis, that empathic anger evoked when witnessing another being treated unjustly would evoke altruistic motivation to help the …


Physical, Verbal, Relational And Cyber-Bullying And Victimization: Examining The Social And Emotional Adjustment Of Participants, Melanie Mcvean Apr 2017

Physical, Verbal, Relational And Cyber-Bullying And Victimization: Examining The Social And Emotional Adjustment Of Participants, Melanie Mcvean

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cyber-bullying has been gaining in popularity as online technology use has greatly expanded in the past decade. There has been quite a bit of research on traditional forms of bullying, which has demonstrated links to various demographic and psychosocial factors. Participation in cyber-bullying and victimization has been linked to some characteristics that are different from other types of bullying. There has been some discussion in the literature regarding whether cyber-bullying is significantly different from other forms of bullying. The literature has also noted the need for more studies utilizing peer-report data. This study utilized peer-report bullying data to examine self-reported …


The Effect Of Single Mothers’ Marital Status On Sympathy, Character Evaluations, And Maternity Leave Support, Patrick B. Dorsey Ii Apr 2017

The Effect Of Single Mothers’ Marital Status On Sympathy, Character Evaluations, And Maternity Leave Support, Patrick B. Dorsey Ii

Senior Theses and Projects

Social science research has found that single mothers tend to be viewed more negatively than married mothers. However, single mothers are not a monolithic group, they can vary in terms of their marital status. Informed by DiLiapi’s (1989) motherhood hierarchy, we hypothesized that relative to never married single mothers, formerly married single mothers (i.e., widowed and divorced) would garner more sympathy, more favorable character evaluations and people would also be more willing to support maternity leave policies as a result of thinking about formerly married single mothers compared to never married single mothers. To test these predictions participants were randomly …


Curiosity And Compassion: Curiosity And Attachment Security's Relationship With Empathic Responding To Hardship, Athena H. Cairo Jan 2015

Curiosity And Compassion: Curiosity And Attachment Security's Relationship With Empathic Responding To Hardship, Athena H. Cairo

Theses and Dissertations

Compassion requires both attention and motivation to engage with another person’s experience. Two studies examined whether curiosity—the interest and motivation to explore new or complex information—promotes empathic concern and suppresses personal distress. These studies also examined whether attachment insecurity moderates curiosity’s effect on empathy. Study 1 identified correlations among curiosity, attachment security, empathic concern, and personal distress traits. In Study 2, participants were primed with high or low curiosity before watching a video of a peer experiencing hardship, then reported state curiosity, empathic concern, personal distress, and prosocial motivation. Trait and state curiosity predicted greater empathic concern and prosocial motivation. …


Possible Psychosocial Benefits Of Having A Sibling With A Disability, Jenna M. Talbott Apr 2014

Possible Psychosocial Benefits Of Having A Sibling With A Disability, Jenna M. Talbott

Senior Honors Theses

Possible psychosocial benefits resulting from exposure to siblings with disabilities are investigated in the current study. Previous literature has generally overlooked the possibility of psychosocial benefits by exclusively focusing on the negative effects of having a sibling with disabilities. Contact theory suggests that the increased exposure to individuals with disabilities should increase positive attitude toward those who are struggling with disadvantages. This investigation hypothesized that this tendency would be manifested as elevated empathy and compassion in individuals who have siblings with disabilities, and that these traits would be influenced by certain demographic variables. A survey was distributed, and the responses …


Actively Caring About The Actively Caring Survey: Evaluating The Reliability And Validity Of A Measure Of Dispositional Altruism, Philip Randall Dec 2013

Actively Caring About The Actively Caring Survey: Evaluating The Reliability And Validity Of A Measure Of Dispositional Altruism, Philip Randall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Geller’s Actively Caring Survey (ACS) was theorized to measure person states deemed necessary to “Actively Care” or act altruistically toward others. Empirical research of the ACS has been limited, and this researcher sought to evaluate its reliability, validity, and factorial consistency. Undergraduate students (n = 1,095) completed the measure online. Hypotheses were partially supported. Unrotated primary component analysis found the ACS to be a unitary measure with 73.3% of the items loading onto the first factor. The ACS showed excellent internal consistency. Convergent and divergent validity with existing measures (i.e., the Big 5 Personality, Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability, Cognitive Failures …


Virtual Into Verisimilitude: Videogames' Ability To Induce Empathy, Blake T. Bennett Jan 2012

Virtual Into Verisimilitude: Videogames' Ability To Induce Empathy, Blake T. Bennett

CMC Senior Theses

The current study seeks to link traditional forms of empathy induction with new research that suggests videogames can be used as an experiential method of induction. One hundred-nine college students, sixty-four females and forty-six males, were used in a 2x2x2 design, the independent variables being prosocial/neutral videogame, empathic/neutral instructions, and gender. Dependent variables were both questionnaire responses to a fictional story and an opportunity to be realistically altruistic. Participants played either a prosocial or neutral videogame, received either empathic or neutral reading instructions, and then read a vignette depicting a difficult situation faced by the writer. They then rated their …


A Bioecological Approach To Empathy, Altruism, And Intent To Help: Developmental, Dispositional And Contextual Factors Influence Prosocial Motivations And Intentions, Michelle Provenzano Beechler Jan 2011

A Bioecological Approach To Empathy, Altruism, And Intent To Help: Developmental, Dispositional And Contextual Factors Influence Prosocial Motivations And Intentions, Michelle Provenzano Beechler

Wayne State University Dissertations

Whether one helps due to altruistic empathy or egoistic motivators has been debated in the social psychological literature most recently with the Felt-Oneness (Cialdini et al., 1997) and the Empathy-Altruism (Batson 1991) hypotheses. For strangers, it appears that helping intentions are predicted by felt-oneness, except in circumstances in which a bystander feels nurturance toward a target, in which case empathy is found to predict helping. For close relationships, however, empathy predicts helping, particularly in high need situations. Antipathy has been presented as a possible confound as well (Batson et al., 1997), but has not been tested. The present study took …