Psychology Commons^™

Characteristics Of Foster Parents Willing To Care For Sexual Minority Youth, Justin Douglas Bucchio

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

Sexual minority foster youth living in out-of-home care are in need of enhanced services to promote successful development. Scholars have focused on providing insight into the lives of these youth as well as effective treatment approaches. None have focused on the willingness of the providers of their care. This nationwide non-probability cross-sectional study assessed foster mothers’ (N = 304) willingness to care for sexual minority youth, using secondary data analysis.

Willingness was assessed using the Willingness to Foster Scale (WFS), which identifies four levels of willingness ranging from not willing at all to willing without any extra help …

Unit Cohesion, Attachment, Personality Factors, And Mental Health In Veterans Of Iraq And Afghanistan, Allison Adrienne Whitesell

Doctoral Dissertations

One hundred forty seven veterans of Operations Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) and/or Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) completed an internet survey with questions related to unit cohesion, romantic attachment style, personality factors, and mental health symptoms. Participants completed five self-report measures: the PTSD Checklist-Military, the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-21, Deployment Social Support scale from the Deployment Risk and Resiliency Inventory, the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale-Short Form, and the International Personality Item Pool Big Five Short Form Questionnaire. Most participants were male and Caucasian. Hierarchical linear regression analysis results indicated that emotional stability predicted both general distress and PTSD symptom severity, while avoidant attachment …

An Examination Of Shame And Traditional Gender Roles On Behavioral Response In Non-Stranger Sexual Assault With College Females, Alison Megan Nathanson

Doctoral Dissertations

Non-stranger sexual assault commonly occurs on college campuses across the country, placing college females at risk for the negative consequences, including increased psychopathology, social difficulties, and academic failure. Research suggests that college women with a history of sexual abuse are often revictimized by acquaintances during their college experience. The mechanisms underlying the connection between sexual abuse and adult sexual assault remain unclear. The present study examines the indirect effect of shame and traditional gender role beliefs on heterosexual females’ behavioral response based on history of sexual trauma. Results indicate that neither shame nor benevolent sexist ideals mediate the relationship between …

Multicultural Personality, Hardiness, Morale, Distress And Cultural Stress In U.S. Service Members, Catherine Joan Herrera

Doctoral Dissertations

Modern military missions place numerous demands on service members, pushing them to negotiate technical, tactical, personal as well as cultural challenges. Although research in other fields has explored the issue of intercultural stress and resilience, to the author’s knowledge, none of these efforts have empirically examined these concepts in U.S. military samples, despite the frequent expatriation associated with a military career. The purpose of this study was to explore how factors of multicultural personality (Cultural Empathy, Open-Mindedness, Social Initiative, Emotional Stability, and Flexibility) as measured by the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, relate to hardiness, morale, cultural stress as well as PTSD …

The Impact Of Relational Aggression And Friendship Quality On The Pathway From Parental Psychological Control To Child Internalizing Symptomology, Alden Elizabeth Gaertner

Doctoral Dissertations

The current project examined two competing models investigating the role of child relational aggression and friendship quality in the association between parental psychological control and child internalizing symptomology. An at-risk sample of predominantly minority children (n = 132, 55% male, 86% minority) ranging from 5 to 14 years of age (M = 8.83, SD = 2.43), recruited from a Knoxville, Tennessee area Boys and Girls Club was used to examine the proposed construct relations. Interaction terms between study variables and gender and age were also examined. All structural equation models yielded a poor fit to the data. Multiple regression …

The Relationship Between Self-Directed Learning And Information Literacy Among Adult Learners In Higher Education, Tiffani Reneau Conner

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-directed learning and information literacy. Participants completed the Personal Orientation in Self-Directed Learning Scale ([PRO-SDLS], Stockdale, 2003) and the Information Literacy Test ([ILT], James Madison University, 2003). The PRO-SDLS is a self-report scale consisting of 25 statements about self-directed learning preferences in college classrooms. The ILT is a 60-item multiple-choice test that assesses the information literacy skills of college students. Correlation, ANOVA, and multiple regressions were used to test relationships and differences between self-directed learning and information literacy. Despite claims that teaching information literacy creates self-directed learners, composite scores …

A Hybrid Brain-Computer Interface Based On Motor Intention And Visual Working Memory, Ching-Chang Kuo

Doctoral Dissertations

Non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) based brain-computer interface (BCI) is able to provide alternative means for people with disabilities to communicate with and control over external assistive devices. A hybrid BCI is designed and developed for following two types of system (control and monitor).

Our first goal is to create a signal decoding strategy that allows people with limited motor control to have more command over potential prosthetic devices. Eight healthy subjects were recruited to perform visual cues directed reaching tasks. Eye and motion artifacts were identified and removed to ensure that the subjects' visual fixation to the target locations would have …

Emotional Labor And Authentic Leadership, John E. Buckner V

Doctoral Dissertations

Organizational research has begun to once again focus on the importance of emotions in the workplace. In particular, the concept of emotional labor, the management of emotions at work to influence clients and customers, has recently received much attention. While research has addressed the impact of emotional labor on both employees and clients or customers, research has not examined emotional labor within the context of leadership.

Authentic leadership, an emerging construct in the study of leadership, is proposed to relate to emotional labor. Leaders' authentic behavior has been shown to positively impact followers, such as increasing trust in their leader …

Predicting Substance Abuse Treatment Participation With The Personality Assessment Inventory: An Investigation Of How Personality And Interpersonal Factors Affect Treatment, Annese Baum Hutchins

Doctoral Dissertations

The prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse or dependence among Americans ages 12 and over is thought to be about 9.4% of the total population, or 22 million Americans (Karpiak & Norcross, 2005; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association [SAMHSA], 2003). According to Vuchinich (2002), substance use disorders (SUD) are the most common mental health problem in our society today. Additionally, estimates are that anywhere from half to 84% of all substance use disorder patients also experience a co-occurring disorder (Johnson, Brems, & Burke, 2002).

Traditional treatment facilities usually are focused primarily on either substance abuse treatment or psychiatric …

Openness To The Unconscious: Clinical Validity, Scott Andrew Swan

Doctoral Dissertations

Theory provides a background for the underlying construct of Openness to the Unconscious and in turn for the Openness to the Unconscious scale (OU), which was designed to predict personal fit for different kinds of psychotherapy. Two studies test the clinical validity of the scale using records review from a training clinic. Cross-sectional analysis with MMPI-2 data failed to support hypotheses regarding OU's relationship to personality psychopathology. More importantly, the scale failed to predict attrition from psychotherapy, which had been expected. Results also fail to support the hypotheses that OU interacts with treatment type to predict attrition. These findings are …

The Intersection Between Home And School: Developing A Scale To Measure Parental Perceptions Of Childhood School Stress, Teresa Marie Henke

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

Parents in the home and educators in the schools are key adults in the most important contexts in the daily lives of school-age children. In the demanding, achievement, and accountability oriented culture of today, it is expected that children experience normal everyday stressors as they move between these two environments. The impact of stress related to daily hassles has been reported to have both cognitive and physical effects on the present and future well-being of children. This study represented an attempt to advance the understanding of childhood stress in the intersection between school and home by investigating the perceptions …

Health Care Disparities: The Impact Of Benevolent Sexism, Dawn Marie Howerton

Doctoral Dissertations

The present research investigated potential disparities in recommendations for coronary artery disease (CAD) as a function of physician benevolent sexism, patient sex, and surgical risk. In particular, the present study examined (a) whether physicians holding beliefs consistent with benevolent sexism would be more reluctant to recommend invasive treatment options to women, (b) whether physicians would be more hesitant to recommend invasive treatment options to patients of high surgical risk, and (c) the three-way interaction of physician benevolent sexism, patient sex, and surgical risk. Using analog methodology, 108 internal medicine residents and 33 cardiovascular disease fellows recruited from 339 teaching hospitals …

Mindfulness And Self-Compassion: Exploring Pathways To Adolescent Emotional Well-Being, Karen Leslie Bluth

Doctoral Dissertations

Adolescents today are confronted with the compounded stressors of life in our high-pressured society and the cognitive, physiological, and emotional changes that are characteristic of this stage of development. As a result, they often struggle with self-doubt, leading to depression, anxiety, and maladaptive trajectories. Mindfulness, or paying attention in the moment in an intentional and purposeful way, has been reported to have positive effects on emotional well-being in adults, and shows promise for similar results in recent research with children and adolescents.

Moreover, the mechanisms through which being mindful achieves positive outcomes has only recently been explored, and has not …

Using Cooperative Learning Groups To Enhance Classroom Participation In A Large Undergraduate Course, Cora Marie Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations

This research study focused on the use of cooperative-learning groups to facilitate classroom participation in a large undergraduate course. Data were collected in three sections of an Educational Psychology course (n ≈ 56 per section). At the conclusion of the first class unit (in which no credit for participation was available), students were assigned to cooperative groups based on their participation. Each group consisted of five to six students whose participation in the first unit ranged from low to high. At the conclusion of each remaining unit (total of four units), two days were randomly selected for individual participation …

Proposed Dsm-5 Personality Traits And Substance Use: A Multi-Faceted Study, W. Reese Mayer

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, the Brief Assessment of Traits – 37 (BAT37) was developed to measure the presence of the personality traits initially proposed for inclusion in the personality disorders section of the DSM-5. The structure of the measure was supported by the results of a pilot study and its construct validity was supported by correlations with theoretically-related scales from the PAI, DAPP-BQ, and HEXACO-PI-R. The BAT37 was administered to a sample of undergraduate college students and clients at a residential substance use disorder (SUD) treatment facility.

Several of this study's findings are relevant to the proposed changes to the personality …

Deception Detection: Using Eye-Tracking Technology To Measure Faking In A Simulated Applicant Setting, Luke Simmering

Doctoral Dissertations

The impact of faking on selection assessments and the need for methods to detect such behavior has drawn increased attention of researchers in the selection field over the last quarter century. The overarching purpose of this study was to assess the validity of utilizing eye-tracking technology in the detection of applicant faking on personality measures. Specifically, this study examined the physiological cues of response latency, eye fixation, and pupil dilation and their association with deception in the context of personality assessment in a job seeking scenario. The results indicated that individuals engaged in faking behavior had significantly more eye fixations …

The Impact Of Psychological Reactance And Approach/Avoidance Motivation On The Effectiveness Of Sleep Interventions, Barbara Calvert

Doctoral Dissertations

Research has shown that college students experience sleep difficulties at a higher rate than the general population. Many factors contribute to the sleep difficulties of college students including lifestyle, stimulant use, alcohol use, physiological arousal, and cognitive factors. Sleep difficulties have been shown to have a significant negative impact on numerous aspects of an individual's life including cognitive/academic performance, physical health, and psychological functioning. College administrators and counselors need effective interventions for students experiencing sleep difficulties. It is also essential that individuals working with college students be aware of personal factors that may impact how an individual responds to a …

The Effects Of Training In Self-Regulated Learning And Achievement Orientations In Lower Socioeconomic Elementary Students, Ashley N. Carroll

Doctoral Dissertations

Previous research has explored the development of the self-regulated learner. The majority of these studies have focused on high school and college students (Hofer & Yu, 2003). This study explored this concept at the elementary school level with lower socioeconomic students. This study was designed to determine the effectiveness of a short intervention teaching self-regulatory and metacognitive learning strategies to these elementary students. The researcher designed a learning intervention for fifth-grade students that included various cognitive strategies and study skills. The intervention group was compared to a control group of fifth-graders. The students' self-efficacy, self-regulation, and achievement orientation were assessed …

Effects Of Gender Composition Of Target And Sender Dyads On The Tendency To Infer Lies, Byron J. Simoneaux

Doctoral Dissertations

Lying is so common in human behavior that some have labeled it a social skill. Despite the ubiquity of lies, humans have consistently been found to be poor lie detectors. Attempts have been made to improve the accuracy of human lie detection. Unfortunately, the most successful training only improves accuracy slightly above the level of chance. Because of its importance to society, considerable effort has been aimed at developing methods to help determine when people are lying. Researching how and why humans infer that another person is lying has the potential to advance the understanding of lie detection. Researchers have …

Psychological Effects Of Intensive And Comprehensive Training Centers On Blind And Visually Impaired Adults, Caitlin Singletary

Doctoral Dissertations

Omvig (2002) stated that adjustment to blindness means that a blind individual views his or her blindness as a characteristic that may be inconvenient at times, but "does not define the entire person" (p. 31). This belief provides the philosophical foundation for and supports the training model in intensive and comprehensive training centers for blind individuals. The training curriculum is believed to foster adjustment to blindness and acceptance of self by creating an environment in which essential lifestyle skills improve, independence is achieved, and positive changes occur in psychological factors such as depression, self-esteem, and self-efficacy.

In the current study, …

When Comments About Looking Good Lead To Feeling Good: The Interactive Effects Of Valuing Women For Their Sexual And Non-Sexual Attributes, Andrea L Meltzer

Doctoral Dissertations

Previous objectification research investigates the negative intrapersonal implications of societal female sexual objectification. However, little research has examined the interpersonal implications of female sexual objectification. Given that female sexual objectification occurs in interpersonal encounters (Fredrickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn & Twenge, 1998), and given that psychological phenomenon can vary across relational contexts (Reis, 2008), it is important to consider relevant factors of the intimate relationship context. The two studies reported here explored the proposition that women’s esteem and affect might benefit from men’s sexual valuation to the extent that women perceive those men as psychologically close. In the first study, a …

Evidence Based Practice Implementation: Perceptions And Expectations Of Master Of Social Work Students, Mholi Kent Vimba

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

Efforts to develop sustainable Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) implementation strategies in work settings have been generally unsuccessful. Scholars have focused on perceptions of workers already in work settings to identify implementation barriers and facilitators. None have focused on perceptions of social workers in training. This nationwide non-probability correlational study assessed Master of Social Work (MSW) students’ perceptions of EBP using a self-administered online survey. A total of 212 (57%) completed this survey with 164 (43%) timed out.

Perceptions were assessed using three sets of questions corresponding to the independent variables: EBP knowledge, attitude toward EBP and EBP self-efficacy. A …

Personality, Organizational Commitment, And Job Search Behavior: A Field Study, Cynthia Ward Hackney

Doctoral Dissertations

This field study examined the relationships among the personality traits conscientiousness and openness to experience; organizational commitment; and job search behaviors in a work environment, to test hypotheses about the relationships of three types of commitment – affective, normative and continuance – with the personality traits and search behaviors, using established measures. Participants were 282 employees of cell phone sales organization located in the Southeastern United States, who completed on-line surveys. As hypothesized, individual conscientiousness showed a strong positive relationship with affective, normative and continuance commitment and a strong negative relationship with job search behaviors. Openness to experience showed the …

Career Development And Employment Concerns Of Employment-Seeking Students With Psychiatric Disabilities, Sarah Charlotte Helm

Doctoral Dissertations

Although some literature chronicles the career development of college students with other types of disabilities, students with psychiatric disabilities have been practically invisible in research focused on this topic. Yet evidence suggests that the number of students with documented psychiatric disabilities attending institutions of higher education is on the rise. Thus, the purpose of the study was to describe the career development and employment concerns of employment-seeking students with psychiatric disabilities.

A qualitative research design was used to gain in-depth information from the perspective of students with psychiatric disabilities, specifically case study. The participants were seven undergraduate students from three …

The Role Of Psychological Distancing In Prejudice And Prejudice Reduction, Joy Elise Phillips

Doctoral Dissertations

Two studies explored the relationship between psychological distancing and prejudice. Results of Study 1 indicated that social identity threat differentially impacted implicitly measured prejudice and explicit distancing such that highly threatened individuals showed less automatic prejudice but increased explicit distancing from Blacks. Additionally, motivational processes relevant to psychological distancing and prejudice were explored. Study 2 examined psychological distancing as a mediator of the relationship between initial automatic prejudice and the efficacy of a common ingroup identity (CII) prejudice reduction technique. While this mediation was only tentatively supported, relationships between motivational processes, nonverbal behavior in interracial interactions, and post-interaction attitudes and …

Disengaging From Moral Disengagement: Scant Experimental Evidence For A Popular Theory, Lydia Elisabeth Eckstein Jackson

Doctoral Dissertations

Moral disengagement theory (Bandura, 1999) is a popular theory widely used to explain how people are able to commit atrocities without incurring self-condemnation. Assuming the internalization of moral standards in socialization, the theory suggests that a sufficient enticement may motivate people to disengage their moral standards so as to violate them without negative consequences for self-perception. Thereby moral disengagement theory is proposed to be distinct from cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1954) in that disengagement is assumed to happen as an antecedent to injurious behavior. This temporal assumption has been all but ignored by extant research and presents a gap in …

Integrity, Self-Control, And The Impact Of Ego Depletion On Counterproductive Behavior, Joshua D. Bazzy

Doctoral Dissertations

Although integrity has been found to significantly predict job performance and counterproductive behaviors, the constructs that underlie it have remained unclear. Personality, specifically conscientiousness, has been linked to integrity most consistently, but only accounts for a small amount of integrity’s variance. Research points to a relationship between integrity and self-control, but this has not been investigated.

The present investigation examined the nature and implications of this relationship. Results found that self-control contributed significantly to the variance in integrity beyond conscientiousness and the other dimensions of personality. Indeed, the addition of self-control to the model, essentially eliminated conscientiousness as a significant …

"When Are You Going To Get A Real Job?": An Experiential Sport Ethnography Of Players' Experiences On The Men's Pro Tennis Futures Tour, Jacob Cannon Jensen

Doctoral Dissertations

In this experiential sport ethnography, I examined the experience of former NCAA college tennis players competing on the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Men’s Pro Futures Tour, the entry level of professional tennis. Limited research has focused on players competing on this tour, especially former top-level NCAA players transitioning from collegiate to professional tennis. The contributions of ethnographic studies are gaining greater recognition in sport psychology literature, and I conducted a year-long experiential ethnography in which I entered the field as a participant and researcher. I gained access to Futures tournaments and players by participating in the qualifying rounds and collecting …

“It Was Fight Or Flight...And Flight Was Not An Option”: An Existential Phenomenological Investigation Of Military Service Members’ Experience Of Hand-To-Hand Combat, Peter Richard Jensen

Doctoral Dissertations

Hand-to-hand combat is one of the more psychologically challenging performance environments for those in the military (Grossman, 1995). Even with the technological advances of modern warfare military leaders still believe hand-to-hand combat is an important and relevant challenge for service members (Blanton, 2007; Clark, 2009; Collins, 2007; Wojdakowski, 2007; Wood & Micaelson, 2000). Despite its importance, the hand-to-hand combat experience has, to date, attracted very little research attention. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore military service members’ experiences of hand-to-hand combat. To accomplish this objective, phenomenological interviews were conducted with 17 male military service members. Each participant …

Examining The Interplay Of Rejection Sensitivity, Self-Compassion, And Communication In Romantic Relationships, Jennifer Anne Christman

Doctoral Dissertations

This cross-sectional study examined the potential associations between rejection sensitivity, self-compassion, self-silencing, and couple communication patterns in a college undergraduate population. Participants (n=205) attended group data collection sessions in campus computer labs where they completed an online survey. Multivariate path analyses did not support the hypothesis that self-silencing mediates the relationship between rejection sensitivity and couple communication patterns. Self-compassion also did not moderate the relationship between rejection sensitivity and self-silencing. However, post-hoc analyses revealed that self-compassion moderated the previously established relationships between rejection sensitivity and depression, and rejection sensitivity and relationship satisfaction. These findings indicate that self-compassion may serve as …