Psychology Commons^™

Racial Experiences And Racial Identity Experiences Of “New” African Americans In The United States, Sosna Marshet, Kenna Yadeta

Undergraduate Research Posters

The challenges faced by Black immigrants in the United States are significant, beginning with isolation and loneliness and intensified by pervasive discrimination. This study examines the impact of racism on the racial identity of Black immigrants in the United States. Using the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI), various dimensions of Black identity were measured among 119 Black first and second-generation immigrants aged 18 to 51. The results showed a positive correlation between experiences of racism and the centrality dimension of Black identity, a negative correlation with the humanist, and a positive correlation with Nationalist dimensions of Black identity. These …

The Relationship Between Social Media Use And Depression And Anxiety Symptoms During Covid-19, Tene'sha L. Crews, Christina Sheerin

Undergraduate Research Posters

The rise of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global surge in exposure to disaster and crisis-related media. Increases in poor mental health outcomes such as anxiety and depression, are associated with increased exposure to such media content (Abbas et al., 2021; Riehm et al., 2020; Zhao & Zhou, 2020). In recent years, social media has become one of the most widely used sources for news; approximately 48% of adult Americans receive their news from social media (Pew Research Center, 2021). During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in social media use due to social distancing and …

Spanish Translation And Psychometric Validation Of A Measure Of Acculturative Stress Among Latinx Immigrants In The Usa, Ria Grover, Kritzia Merced, Chimdindu Ohayagha, Isis Garcia-Rodriguez,, Oswaldo Moreno, Paul B. Perrin

Undergraduate Research Posters

BACKGROUND: In the U.S., the Latinx community is growing at a faster rate than any other racial and ethnic minority group. Members of this community have been found to experience a number of acculturative stressors after immigrating including xenophobia, racism, and discrimination. Although several scales have been created in recent years to measure acculturative stress in Spanish-speaking immigrants, they are long, do not have nuanced subscales, or have not been validated in an extremely diverse sample of Latinx immigrants.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the current study was to translate and psychometrically validate the Riverside Acculturative Stress Inventory (RASI) in a …

The Effects Of Ingroup Threat On The Anchoring And Adjustment Heuristic, Mattie V. Hedgebeth

Theses and Dissertations

Since its introduction in 1974, the anchoring and adjustment heuristic has been a topic of interest within the field of decision making. Although much work has examined factors that affect the process of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic, very little has been studied about the self-processes that may influence how individuals anchor. More specifically, self and ingroup motivations have yet to be explored. This research sought to identify whether an individual’s magnitude of adjustment from an anchor can be affected by either an enhancement or threat of the individual’s ingroup. I hypothesized that ingroup enhancing information would induce a smaller …

How Personal Names Shape The Way Society Sees People As Individuals In The United States., Rand Gabriel M. Buenaventura

Undergraduate Research Posters

In a world where people are disadvantaged by first impressions and implicit bias, names factor a lot into a person’s successes in life. Whether it be first names, last names, the number of middle initials, the gender and racial implications of a person’s name, and societal standards surrounding names and naming systems, there are multiple ways names shape a person’s identity. Thus, it is important to ask how personal names shape the way people are seen as individuals in the United States and contribute to their identity. Names are a trait that people are born with, usually determined before anything …

Effects Of Nostalgia On Responses To Negative Feedback, Michaela K. Avino, Thomas Cotter, Simron Richard, Athena Cairo, Jeffrey Green

Undergraduate Research Posters

Nostalgia is a bittersweet emotion evoked by memories of cherished personal experiences. Though nostalgia is a self-focused emotion, it has many interpersonal effects as well. Feeling nostalgia increases feelings of social connectedness and self esteem, and may protect against negative effects of existential threat (Wildschut et al., 2006). However, less is known about the extent to which nostalgia relates to anger and aggression. We hypothesized that nostalgia would buffer against the effect of negative feedback on feelings of anger and motivation to aggress. Undergraduate students wrote about a nostalgic or objective memory, and then received negative feedback about another personal …

Abating Prejudice With Presence: Dispositional Mindfulness Increases Interracial Helping Behavior, Justin Tubbs, Daniel R. Berry, Kirk Warren Brown

Undergraduate Research Posters

Helping behavior is less frequently shown toward members of social out-groups (Cikra, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2011). Race defines a common source of social division in America and other countries, and although most condemn racial discrimination, helping is undermined in interracial interactions (Saucier, Miller, & Doucet, 2005). Recent theory suggests that mindfulness, a receptive attention to one’s present experience, can attenuate the conceptual boundaries that typically separate and distance oneself from others (Trautwein, Schmidt, & Naranjo, 2014). We designed an experiment to examine whether dispositional mindfulness would be associated with increased helping behavior in interracial contexts. Self-identifying White participants ( …

The Effects Of Pet Ownership On Anxiety And Depression Among Trauma-Exposed College Students, Dung N. Nguyentran, Marlene A. Michniak, James J. Jung, Christine Q. Do

Undergraduate Research Posters

Rates of anxiety and depression are prevalent in college students and can be attributed in part to stress and trauma-related events. However, studies suggest that pet ownership has the possibility of alleviating symptoms of anxiety, depression, negative emotions, and suicide. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between pet ownership and levels of anxiety and depression among those who have experienced a traumatic event. The sample was comprised of five hundred and forty-seven VCU students who completed an online survey from Spit for Science during their junior year. Linear regressions were performed to determine the nature and …

Promoting Prosocial Responsiveness Across Racial Divides Through Mindfulness, Chris J. Wall, Paul E. Plonski, Daniel R. Berry, Kirk W. Brown

Undergraduate Research Posters

In interracial and other intergroup interactions, prosocial emotions and actions are often undermined (Cikara & van Bavel, 2014). Perceiving psychological separateness between “us” and “them” – which is often an automatic, unintentional process – is psychological kindling for lower prosocial responsiveness that leads to prejudice, discrimination, aggressive conflict (Cikara, 2015). Recent research has shown that mindfulness, an open and unconditional attention to one’s present experiences, is associated with decreased automaticity and racial bias (Kang, Gruber, & Gray, 2013; Lueke & Gibson, 2014), barriers that hinder prosocial responsiveness (Trautwien, Schmidt, & Naranjo, 2014). Two experiments investigated whether brief mindfulness training promoted …

The Transition To Parenthood: The Role Of Humility, Gratitude And Forgiveness, Charlene M. Gaw, Elisabeth Alison, Azza Hussein

Undergraduate Research Posters

The transition to parenthood, while an exciting time to celebrate the life of their child, causes parents to face new challenges such as physical exhaustion (Petch & Halford, 2008), role overload (Perry-Jenkins, Goldberg, Pierce, & Sayer, 2007), and less time for themselves and their partners (Feeney, Hohaus, Noller, & Alexander, 2001). Today in the United States, 85% of women and 76% of men will have parented a child by the time they are forty (Roy, Schumm, & Britt, 2014), making this an important developmental transition to examine. Humility has been found to have numerous social benefits, among them the initiation …

Can You Please Put Your Phone Away? Examining How The Fomo Phenomenon And Mobile Phone Addiction Affect Human Relationships, Laila A. Chaudhry

Undergraduate Research Posters

This study attempts to identify how attachment to social media as well as attachment to other forms of communication technology can lead to addiction to mobile devices and affect non-virtual interpersonal communication. I examined the phenomenon known as the fear of missing out, or FOMO, which can be defined as apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. Experiencing FOMO can lead to overuse of and even addiction to social media, another category I examined, because addicted individuals want to stay more up-to-date with social networks and social media is the most efficient way to …

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. …