Psychology Commons^™

Perceiving The Poster: How Suspicion Of Motives May Impact Perceptions Of Potential Allies Engaging In Online Activism, Kathrina Z. Durante

Honors Theses

Social media posts signaling support for various social and racial justice movements have emerged as an important aspect of social media use. However, little research has investigated how these posts and the social media users behind them are perceived by members of disadvantaged groups﹘those the messages are presumably intended to “help.” Though the post’s content and poster’s identity are likely important, the primary aim of this study is to investigate an individual difference variable in the perceiver, specifically disadvantaged group members’ Suspicion of Motives Index (SOMI) scores, which measure a general tendency to perceive White individuals’ attempts at non-prejudice to …

Individual Differences In Processing Of Garden-Path Sentences: The Role Of Obsessive- Compulsive Personality Traits, Antonio Cardoso

Honors Theses

A great deal of previous research has investigated the real-time processing and offline interpretation of garden path (GP) sentences. This work has shown that GP sentences cause substantial processing disruptions, as revealed by regressive eye movements during reading, as well as incorrect answers to comprehension questions. The current study was designed to investigate whether variability in the processing of GP sentences could be explained by individual differences in personality traits, specifically obsessive-compulsive personality traits. In an eyetracking while reading experiment, participants read GP sentences with both a comma manipulation and a verb type manipulation. Results replicated previous findings in that …

When Does The Positivity Effect Emerge? : Age-Related Emotional Biases At Encoding And Retrieval, Hannah Wolfe

Honors Theses

The Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) posits that as their future time perspective shrinks, older adults tend to be more motivated by emotionally meaningful goals and therefore experience what is called the “positivity effect” with age (Carstensen, 2006). The positivity effect had been studied in both attention biases (Isaacowitz et al., 2006a) and memory biases (Kensinger, 2008), with older adults dwelling longer on and better remembering the positive stimuli over the negative. Yet, few studies have measured emotional biases at both the encoding and retrieval phases, which is why this study uses eye-tracking to determine whether any biases in gaze patterns …

The Future Of Elderly Women : Psychosocial Factors Influencing The Aging Transition, Michelle Dever

Honors Theses

In the U.S. today there is an increasing number of elderly in the population. There are over twenty million persons who are 65 years of age and older. It is predicted that there will be over 32 million older Americans by the year 2000. There has been a greater increase in the number of older women compared to men with women having a greater life expectancy also. The effects of aging on individuals and their ability to adapt to society needs to examined in our society today. There is a special need to study elderly women and the difficulties they …

The Biological, Psychodynamic, Humanistic, And Social Psychological Perspectives Of Athletic Participation, Katharine R. Johnson

Honors Theses

Why become an athlete? Why all the long hours of continuous dedication? Would male and female athletes answer these questions differently?

The following essay is a review of the potential reasons why individuals strive to become athletes as perceived by the biological, psycho-dynamic, humanistic, and social psychological perspectives. Emphasis is placed on differences between the sexes when the perspective under discussion considers these differences to be relevant.

Concept Formation And Development In The Congenitally Blind Child, Kimberly J. Franco

Honors Theses

T.D. Cutsforth once stated that "no single mental activity of the congenitally blind child is not distorted by the absence of sight." Blindness permeates the intellectual functioning of language, thought, comprehension and conceptualization. Ultimately, the child lacking vision will both understand and respond to the world in a manner unlike that of a sighted child. This incongruous interaction breeds frustration since the blind are a minority in a world which concentrates on the characteristics, needs, behaviors, and accomplishments of sighted individuals. Lacking the visual modality, the blind rely on the information about the objective world which they receive from people …

Male/Female Conceptualization Differences In Children Of Single Fathers And Dual Parent Families, Patricia A. Riley

Honors Theses

Fifteen single fathers and their children and fifteen presently married fathers and their children were Ss in this study to investigate differences in male/female conceptualizations between the children of the two different family structures as well as the influence of the fathers' self-reported sex-role on the children. The BEM Sex-Role Inventory was administered to the fathers and the Kagen Symbolic Conceptualization Test was given to the children. Analysis results indicate no sex-role differences among both groups of fathers. Children's responses were significant when 1) scores of children of married fathers and children of single fathers were compared on the feminine …