Psychology Commons^™

Using Motivation To Assess Affective States Of Captive Red Kangaroos (Macropus Rufus) In Response To Visitor Presence And Crowd Size In A Walk-Through Zoo Exhibit, Julia King

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates how visitor presence influences affective states of captive red kangaroos housed in a walk-through zoo exhibit by using motivation to consume a food reward in desired vs undesired locations and with/without an additional challenge feeder as a proxy for affective state, while considering individual variation and personality.

The Effects Of False Heartbeat Feedback On Moral Judgment, Scott Koenig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research on human morality is at a crossroads, with one side claiming that moral judgment is the result of rational inference and the other side claiming that it is the result of emotion-laden intuition. This study investigated whether emotion drives moral judgment by manipulating a core component of the experience of emotion: physiological arousal. The sample consisted of 77 undergraduate students at Brooklyn College (57% women, 43% men; mean age = 20.1). One group of participants was led to believe their heart was beating quickly, and another group slowly, while they read and evaluated a series of text vignettes depicting …

Psychosocial Factors Associated With Mask-Wearing Behavior During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Cliff (Yung-Chi) Chen, Mengjia Lei

Publications and Research

Although increasing evidence has supported the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), inconsistent and noncompliant mask-wearing behavior has been observed among members of the society. Because mask-wearing is often considered a social contract, it is important to understand the psychosocial factors that influence people’s mask-wearing behavior in order to implement the necessary steps to respond to the pandemic. Based on the protection motivation theory (PMT), this study examined the cognitive factors (threat and coping appraisals) that contribute to mask-wearing behavior and the intention to engage in health protective behavior until the end of the pandemic. …

Semantic Network Activation Contributes To The Relationship Between Mood And Inhibition, James S. Maniscalco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prior research has identified several relationships between mood and executive functions. Very broadly, these findings generally suggest that positive moods are associated with enhanced cognitive performance, particularly in working memory and learning. However, recent studies note that there are some instances in which negative moods may benefit select executive skills, such as those involved in divided attention and inhibition. In sum, these findings indicate that positive moods favor top-down, heuristic, or relational processing, whereas negative trait moods favor bottom-up, detail-oriented processing. However, a clear mechanism by which these effects occur has yet to be identified.

The most compelling theories that …

Editorial: Everyday Beliefs About Emotion: Their Role In Subjective Experience, Emotion As An Interpersonal Process, And Emotion Theory, Manuel F. Gonzalez, Eric A. Walle, Yochi Cohen-Charash, Stephanie A. Shields

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Oil? On The Interpersonal Effects Of Boredom Expression, Manuel F. Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I explored how people react to employees who express boredom at work. I consider boredom expression as a social signal that the current situation does not adequately stimulate the expresser. The expression may then propel others to help stimulate the expresser, depending partly on others’ initial appraisals and reactions to the expression, and on the surrounding context. In Study 1, using qualitative surveys, I uncovered various affective, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to employees who expressed boredom. In Study 2, using experimental vignettes, I manipulated the emotion expressed by a “subordinate” (boredom, enthusiasm, or no emotion) and the manager’s beliefs about …

Memory Bias Toward Emotional Information In Burnout And Depression, Renzo Bianchi, Eric Laurent, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Lucas M. Bietti, Eric Mayor

Publications and Research

A sample of 1015 educational staff members, exhibiting various levels of burnout and depressive symptoms, underwent a memory test involving incident encoding of positive and negative words and a free recall task. Burnout and depression were each found to be associated with increased recall of negative items and decreased recall of positive items. Results remained statistically significant when controlling for history of depressive disorders. Burnout and depression were not related to mistakes in the reported words, or to the overall number of recalled words. This study suggests that burnout and depression overlap in terms of memory biases toward emotional information.

We All Feel Feelings, Ben Ohene

Theses and Dissertations

Consisting of three illustrated books, We All Feel Feelings is designed as a vehicle for the discussion of emotional and mental health with young boys. These books will help foster a mindset of openness and acceptance through different methods of displaying and understanding emotions.

Event-Related Potential Studies Of Error Monitoring To Affective And Non-Affective Stimuli In Adolescents And Emerging Adults, Rebecca K. Reed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is hypothesized that prefrontal cortex (PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) function may be still under development in adolescents. As the generator of the error-related negativity (ERN) and the N2, the ACC is expected to be sensitive to the degree of development with age. In adults, these top-down control areas ideally serve to direct attention to goal-relevant information, which can increase the likelihood of making a correct choice, even in fast-response laboratory based tasks. However, adolescents may show increased susceptibility in these top-down control areas when the stimulus is social and emotional. In the first study, event-related potentials were …

Interpretation Bias Toward Ambiguous Information In Burnout And Depression, Renzo Bianchi, Eric Laurent, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Jay Verkuilen, Chantal Berna

Publications and Research

Burnout has been defined as a job-related syndrome combining pervasive fatigue and loss of motivation. In recent years, evidence has mounted that burnout may reflect a depressive condition. In this study, we expanded on past investigations of burnout-depression overlap by focusing on interpretation biases toward ambiguous information among the two entities. We conducted a web-based study involving 1056 participants (83% female; mean age: 42.87). Burnout symptoms were assessed with the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure and depressive symptoms with the PHQ-9. The Ambiguous Scenarios Test (AST), a measure of interpretation bias validated among dysphoric individuals, was the outcome of interest. The AST …

Activation And Habituation Of The Cingulate Cortex During Emotion Processing In Healthy Controls, Borderline, And Schizotypal Personality Disorder, Emily Balevich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Disturbances in emotional functioning are central features of the clinical profiles of both borderline and schizotypal personality disorder (BPD and SPD, respectively). BPD is characterized by a high sensitivity to emotional stimuli and unusually strong and long-lasting reactions, indicative of impaired habituation to emotional stimuli (Linehan, 1993). Previous research suggests that SPD patients demonstrate limbic hyper-reactivity to unpleasant stimuli, at least initially, but intact habituation to repeated presentation of unpleasant stimuli (Hazlett et al., 2012). The cingulate cortex supports various aspects of emotion processing and regulation, and abnormalities of this region have been related to emotion dysfunction in SPD and …

Understanding The Role Of The Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex In Emotional Memory Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation And Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, R. Rachel Weintraub-Brevda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emotional stimuli can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on memory, such that emotional stimuli can be distracting from current neutral working memory goals, while also leading to enhanced episodic memory for the distracting emotional stimuli. Recent evidence suggests that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) has multiple roles in the enhancing effects of emotion on memory through top-down/controlled processes, including 1) coping with negative distraction and 2) elaborative encoding of negative information. Additionally, previous research has alluded to hemispheric differences in the VLPFC (Chapter 1). However, previous research has been correlational, with no strong laterality tests of the VLPFC. Two …

Rumination And Rebound From Failure As A Function Of Gender And Time On Task, Ronald C. Whiteman, Jennifer A. Mangels

Publications and Research

Rumination is a trait response to blocked goals that can have positive or negative outcomes for goal resolution depending on where attention is focused. Whereas “moody brooding” on affective states may be maladaptive, especially for females, “reflective pondering” on concrete strategies for problem solving may be more adaptive. In the context of a challenging general knowledge test, we examined how Brooding and Reflection rumination styles predicted students’ subjective and event-related responses (ERPs) to negative feedback, as well as use of this feedback to rebound from failure on a later surprise retest. For females only, Brooding predicted unpleasant feelings after failure …

The Theoretical And Psychological Foundations Of Care In Environmental Ethics, Rachel Fedock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I investigate the phenomenon of care, provide some of the theoretical and psychological framework for the ethics of care, and apply this framework to environmental issues. The neglected dimensions of care I explore are: the emotions of care, care as a virtue, and the caring person, respectively, while constructing possible conceptions of in what each dimension consists. I argue for the necessity of sympathy and concern within the ethics of care, while arguing against the necessity of empathy. Next, I explore the virtue of care as an ideal, where emotions, desires, reasoning, motive, duty and action all play an important …

Physiological And Subjective Aspects Of Positive Mood In Relation To Executive Functioning: The Potential Moderating Role Of Personality, Luz Helena Ospina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Positive affect has been demonstrated to improve aspects of cognition. However, recent studies reveal that positive affect may hinder the same cognitive processes, such as executive functioning, memory and creativity. These discrepant findings may be due to differing levels of physiological arousal, a component of the circumplex model of affect, which has been largely ignored in affective research. For example, one recent study suggests that positive valence coupled with varying levels of physiological arousal (i.e., low, moderate, and high) may differentially affect performance on tasks of verbal fluency and memory. Furthermore, one other explanation for these inconsistent findings may relate …

Cognitive And Emotional Abnormalities In People With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Philip Watson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multi-system autoimmune disorder characterized by the production of autoantibodies (ABs). Approximately 30-50% of patients produce ABs directed against N-Methyl-D-aspartic acid receptors (NMDARs). Previous research with animals has identified these ABs as being associated with amygdala damage and a deficit in fear conditioning. People with SLE can have damage to the amygdala. This study aimed to determine if emotional processing deficits occur in people with SLE and to associate such deficits, if they exist, with anti-NMDAR AB presence, length of disease, cognition, and mood. Fifty-eight (11 AB+, 24 AB-, 23 healthy) women participated in tasks …

Modified Impact Of Emotion On Temporal Discrimination In A Transgenic Rat Model Of Huntington Disease, Alexis Faure, Mouna Es-Sesddiqi, Bruce L. Brown, Hoa P. Nguyen, Olaf Riess, Stephan Von Hörsten, Pascale Le Blanc, Nathalie Desvignes, Bruno Bozon, Nicole El Massioui, Valérie Doyère

Publications and Research

Huntington's disease (HD) is characterized by triad of motor, cognitive, and emotional symptoms along with neuropathology in fronto-striatal circuit and limbic system including amygdala. Emotional alterations, which have a negative impact on patient well-being, represent some of the earliest symptoms of HD and might be related to the onset of the neurodegenerative process. In the transgenic rat model (tgHD rats), evidence suggest emotional alterations at the symptomatic stage along with neuropathology of the central nucleus of amygdala (CE). Studies in humans and animals demonstrate that emotion can modulate time perception. The impact of emotion on time perception has never been …