Psychology Commons^™

The Impact Of Premeeting Talk On Group Performance, Michael Yoerger, Joseph A. Allen, John Crowe

Psychology Faculty Publications

Interactions that occur prior to a meeting constitute premeeting talk (PMT). Of the different PMT types, research suggests that small talk PMT is especially meaningful. In this study, meeting participants’ interactions both prior to and during the meeting were video recorded, coded into sense units, and classified by coding schemes. This study investigated the influence of small talk PMT on both perceived and objective group performances, as well as the potential for positive socioemotional and problem-focused statements to serve as mediators. The results supported the mediating influence of both types of statements for only perceived performance. Our results suggest that …

The Role Of Problem Construction In Creative Production, Roni Reiter-Palmon

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper provides an overview of theory and research regarding problem construction and identification. Specifically, the paper reviews a theoretical model of processes associated with problem construction and empirical evidence in relation to the model. Finally, the paper reviews the literature on team problem construction.

Creative Self-Efficacy As Mediator Between Creative Mindsets And Creative Problem-Solving, Ryan Royston, Roni Reiter-Palmon

Psychology Faculty Publications

An emerging area of research is how one's mindset regarding the fixedness and malleability of creative ability relates to creative performance. Malleable creative mindsets tend to be positively related to creativity while fixed mindsets often show a negative association. Similarly, creative self-efficacy, or one's beliefs that they have the capacity to be creative, is also related to creative performance and creative mindsets. While previous studies tested the direct relationship between mindsets and creativity, this study tested creative self-efficacy in this relationship. A total of 152 students from a Midwestern university participated in the study. They were provided with measures of …

The Curvilinear Relationship Between Daily Time Pressure And Work Engagement: The Role Of Psychological Capital And Sleep, Xiaotian Sheng, Yuqing Wang, Wei Hong, Ze Zhu, Xichao Zhang

Psychology Faculty Publications

The present study focuses on the fluctuation in work engagement by examining the relationship between daily time pressure and daily work engagement. Based on the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, this study also tests whether psychological capital and sleep moderate the influence of time pressure on work engagement. We conducted a diary study to gather 67 participants’ data over 10 consecutive work days (502 daily measurement points), including their daily time pressure, work engagement, and sleep quality. Our results indicate that there is a curvilinear relationship between daily time pressure and work engagement in the form of an inverted U-shape. If …

Research Based Interventions For Students Struggling With Oral Reading Fluency And Accuracy, Jamie Wredt

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Being able to read proficiently is a key skill that students must learn to be successful in school as well as being able to function in society. Three of the main interventions to help students reach proficiency in reading are repeated reading, listening passage preview, and error correction. Each intervention has been shown to provide some benefit to students who struggle with reading when done independently or combined with repeated reading. However, the current literature on repeated reading, listening passage preview, and error correction is sparse when comparing the three against each other. The current study examined repeated reading, listening …

Collective Impact Strategies: Introduction To The Special Issue, Joseph A. Allen, Kelly Prange, Sheridan Trent

Psychology Faculty Publications

The societal and cultural issues facing humanity are far greater than any nonprofit, for-profit, university, or government agency to address adequately alone. Whether poverty, water shortages, socio-economic inequality, natural disasters with lasting effects, or any number of other challenges facing our communities, organizations must band together to secure the impact needed to truly create change. Increasingly, communities are turning to collective impact as an approach that brings together the collective resources of multiple institutions to address a community-identified problem or need. While a somewhat new approach, there is a growing body of evidence of supporting the effectiveness of using the …

Moving Toward A Collective Impact Effort: The Volunteer Program Assessment, Sheridan Trent, Kelly Prange, Joseph A. Allen

Psychology Faculty Publications

Volunteers are essential to the operation of many nonprofits, but some experience challenges in retaining their volunteer workforce. The Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA) seeks to address this issue by helping organizations to identify strengths, growth areas, and recommendations for improving volunteer experiences. To maximize the effectiveness of VPA’s mission, the organization is moving toward a collective impact (CI) approach. Although not developed as a CI effort, the program currently exemplifies many of its characteristics, which have been instrumental in expanding reach to more organizations. We examine VPA’s alignment with collective impact and outline how VPA will continue to improve efforts.

Dreams, Doubt, And Dread: The Spiritual In Film, Joel Mayward

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Zachary Settle and Taylor Worley, eds. Dreams, Doubt, and Dread: The Spiritual in Film. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016.

Theories And Models Of Teams And Groups, Roni Reiter-Palmon, Tanmay Sinha, Josette Gevers, Jean-Marc Odobez, Gualtiero Volpe

Psychology Faculty Publications

This article describes some of the theoretical approaches used by social scientists as well as those used by computer scientists to study the team and group phenomena. The purpose of this article is to identify ways in which these different fields can share and develop theoretical models and theoretical approaches, in an effort to gain a better understanding and further develop team and group research.

Modeling Temporal Interaction Dynamics In Organizational Settings, Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, Joseph A. Allen

Psychology Faculty Publications

Most workplace phenomena take place in dynamic social settings and emerge over time, and scholars have repeatedly called for more research into the temporal dynamics of organizational behavior. One reason for this persistent research gap could be that organizational scholars are not aware of the methodological advances that are available today for modeling temporal interactions and detecting behavioral patterns that emerge over time. To facilitate such awareness, this Methods Corner contribution provides a hands-on tutorial for capturing and quantifying temporal behavioral patterns and for leveraging rich interaction data in organizational settings. We provide an overview of different approaches and methodologies …

The Critical Importance Of Meetings To Leader And Organizational Success: Evidence-Based Insights And Implications For Key Stakeholders, Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, Steven G. Rogelberg, Joseph A. Allen, John E. Kello

Psychology Faculty Publications

Consider the following estimates about the current state of workplace meetings in the United States. There are as many as 55 million meetings every single work day. Employees spend on average six hours per week sitting in meetings. Their managers spend even more time in meetings, with averages around 23 hours per week, and with some spending up to 80% of their work time in meetings. Overall, a large amount of organizational resources (i.e., employee time and salaries) go into meetings. Estimates suggest that most organizations devote between 7 and 15 percent of their personnel budgets to meetings At the …

Workers In Poverty: An Insight Into Informal Workers Around The World, Mahima Saxena

Psychology Faculty Publications

Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) present compelling arguments on a moral/humanistic need for I-O psychologists to consider workers that are living and working in deep poverty. Their case nicely shifts focus to large percentages of global workers who heretofore have only been represented minimally in the scholarly discourse in our field. I would like to accomplish two goals in this commentary. First, I would like to present a brief historical perspective on why industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology’s focus has been on POSH workers. Second, I will provide conceptual extensions to Gloss et al.’s (2017) focal article by …

Comparing Social Science And Computer Science Workflow Processes For Studying Group Interactions, Joseph A. Allen, Colin Fisher, Mohamed Chetouani, Ming Ming Chiu, Hatice Gunes, Marc Mehu, Hayley Hung

Psychology Faculty Publications

In this article, a team of authors from the Geeks and Groupies workshop, in Leiden, the Netherlands, compare prototypical approaches to studying group interaction in social science and computer science disciplines, which we call workflows. To help social and computer science scholars understand and manage these differences, we organize workflow into three major stages: research design, data collection, and analysis. For each stage, we offer a brief overview on how scholars from each discipline work. We then compare those approaches and identify potential synergies and challenges. We conclude our article by discussing potential directions for more integrated and mutually beneficial …

Vasopressin And Oxytocin Reduce Food Sharing Behavior In Male, But Not Female Marmosets In Family Groups, Jack H. Taylor, Allison A. Intorre, Jeffrey A. French

Psychology Faculty Publications

Oxytocin (OT) is critical for lactation and maternal care, but OT and the related nonapeptide vasopressin are important for caregiving behaviors in fathers and alloparents as well. This experiment tested the effects of vasopressin and OT on food sharing in marmoset families. We treated caregivers (parents, siblings) with intranasal vasopressin, OT, or saline, and then paired them with the youngest marmoset in the family. Caregivers were given preferred food, and then observed for food sharing and aggressive behavior with young marmosets. OT reduced food sharing from male alloparents to youngest siblings, and fathers that received vasopressin refused to share food …

An Experimental Investigation Of The Interpersonal Ramifications Of Lateness To Workplace Meetings, Joseph E. Mroz, Joseph A. Allen

Psychology Faculty Publications

Individuals often attend meetings at work to which at least one person arrives late. Building from attributional theories of interpersonal behaviour, we conducted an experiment to determine the cognitive, affective, and behavioural components of people's reactions to meeting lateness. Participants read one of eight experimental vignettes that described someone arriving 5 or 15 min late to an important or unimportant meeting, after which the person who arrived late offered either a controllable or an uncontrollable reason for being late. Participants reported greater anger and a willingness to punish the late arrival who gave a controllable excuse, whereas sympathy and prosocial …

Regulating Emotions In Response To Power Distance In Meetings, Rebekka Erks, Erin Nyquist, Joseph A. Allen

Psychology Faculty Publications

Purpose – Meetings are a necessary part of work. This research focuses on how power distance in meetings affects emotional labour, including whether leader-member exchange (LMX) serves as a moderator for this relationship. It is hypothesized that power distance in meetings would lead to higher levels of emotional labour in meeting attendees, and that higher levels of LMX would make this relationship even stronger.

Design/methodology/approach - The authors used a panel sample of full-time working adults from a variety of industries who regularly attend meetings. Participants completed a survey with items related to power distance, emotional labour, and LMX. Hypotheses …

Microglia Density Decreases In The Rat Rostral Nucleus Of The Solitary Tract Across Development And Increases In An Age-Dependent Manner Following Denervation, Andrew J. Riquier, Suzanne I. Sollars

Psychology Faculty Publications

immune response to injury, and are implicated in facilitating neural plasticity. The rodent gustatory system is highly plastic, particularly during development, and outcomes following nerve injury are more severe in developing animals. The mechanisms underlying developmental plasticity in the taste system are largely unknown, making microglia an attractive candidate. To better elucidate microglia’s role in the taste system, we examined these cells in the rostral nucleus of the solitary tract (rNTS) during normal development and following transection of the chorda tympani taste nerve (CTX). Rats aged 5, 10, 25, or 50 days received unilateral CTX or no surgery and were …

After-Action Reviews: The Good Behavior, The Bad Behavior, And Why We Should Care, John Crowe, Joseph A. Allen, Cliff Scott, Mackenzie Harms, Michael Yoerger

Psychology Faculty Publications

After action reviews have been a common learning and reliability intervention in organizations for decades, and though they have attracted the interest of scholars in recent years, researchers have yet to consider practitioner views of what makes these meetings more or less effective and to check their association with desired outcomes. The current multi-study begins by investigating what makes for good and bad after-action reviews (AARs) using an inductive approach and analyzing responses to open-ended questions about AAR attendee behaviors perceived as more or less effective by participants. Building upon Study 1, Study 2 focuses on the effects of good …

Using Multiple-Stimulus Without Replacement Preference Assessments To Increase Student Engagement And Performance, Adam D. Weaver, Brian Mckevitt, Allie M. Farris

Psychology Faculty Publications

Multiple-stimulus without replacement preference assessment is a research-based method for identifying appropriate rewards for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. This article presents a brief history of how this technology evolved and describes a step-by-step approach for conducting the procedure. A discussion of necessary materials and data sheets is included. Finally, a case study is presented to illustrate how the procedure can be used to improve behavioral and academic outcomes.

Volunteer Engagement And Retention: Their Relationship To Community Service Self-Efficacy, Elizabeth Harp, Lisa L. Scherer, Joseph A. Allen

Psychology Faculty Publications

The declining number of U.S. volunteers is troubling, necessitating improved understanding of drivers of volunteer retention such as volunteer engagement. We utilized the job demands-resources model to investigate the moderating role of community service self-efficacy (CSSE) on the relationships between two demands (organizational constraints and role ambiguity) and volunteer engagement. Volunteers (N = 235) from three U.S. nonprofit organizations participated in a survey as part of a volunteer program assessment. Volunteers who encountered greater organizational constraints and role ambiguity were less engaged. In addition, CSSE attenuated the negative relationship between organizational constraints and engagement, but not the negative association …

Distributive Justice For Volunteers: Extrinsic Outcome Distribution Matters, Christine Hurst, Lisa L. Scherer, Joseph A. Allen

Psychology Faculty Publications

Volunteer organizations continue to suffer from turnover; the current volunteer rate is the lowest since 2002. Distributive justice, satisfaction, and extrinsic outcome importance were examined as influences of volunteer intention to quit. Survey results from 294 volunteers revealed that those who perceived less than fair distribution of extrinsic outcomes experienced heightened intention to quit compared to those who perceived fair distribution. Overall satisfaction partially mediated this relationship. We explored the potential moderating role of volunteers’ assessment of the importance of extrinsic outcomes on the overall mediated relationship.

An Exploration Of Employment Factors That Facilitate Or Hinder Working College Students’ Academic Success, Gabrielle M. Gergen, Lisa L. Scherer

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study was part of a larger study which investigated college student experiences, and how students negotiate multiple roles. This study specifically examined college students’ perceptions of how their employment facilitates versus hinders their abilities to meet the demands of other roles in life such as student, family member, significant other, volunteer, and extracurricular participant. We also assessed students’ suggestions for improving employment conditions to succeed in college. One-on-one interviews with 31 college students were conducted face-to-face, or via Facetime, or Skype. All interviews were taped and transcribed verbatim. Consistent with job facilitation theory, the results showed that students identified …

Childhood Victimization Pathways And Violent Extremism, Michael K. Logan

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The current study elaborates on childhood victimization as a nonideological risk-factor for participation in violent extremism. In particular, we focus on contextualizing the early lives of a sample of former members of violent White supremacist groups (n = 44). Data were collected through life-history interviews and analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach. The findings indicate that there are three distinct victimization pathways characterize the early lives of our sample: (a) living in a dangerous family, (b) residing in a dangerous community, and (c) living in an unstable, chaotic family environment. These victimization pathways provide further insight into the …

An Analysis Of Teacher Perceptions Of Student Behavior And Discipline In Schools Implementing Pbis, Lauren Drelicharz

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The purpose of the current study is to examine the relationship between staff perceptions of behavior and discipline and the implementation of positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS). Despite studies that have found PBIS to be effective, research is needed to understand teachers’ perceptions of behavior and discipline in order to identify the needs and concerns of school staff. Identifying such needs and concerns may lead to improved implementation of PBIS. For this study, 292 teachers and other certified staff from a public school district were asked to complete a survey that addresses the perceptions, beliefs, and needs of school …

Who's Tweeting Whom: The Influence Of Rearing Condition On Social Integration In Zebra Finches, Zachary L. Darwish

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) are a gregarious species of finch. Previous work with zebra finches has demonstrated the long-lasting impacts of ear social environment on social behavior in adulthood. Zebra finch chicks were raised by either both parents (biparental) or their mother only (uniparental) and their behavior in an aviary was recorded using passive integrative transponders. Zebra finch ID numbers were recorded every time they entered a feeding station for 31 days. There was a trend for uniparental birds to engage in more visits to a feeding station per event than biparental birds, however, there was no difference …

Courting Behavior Among Biparentally And Uniparentally Raised Zebra Finches, Angela K. Adams

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Zebra Finch are a monogamous pair bonded species, and a commonly studied animal due to their complex social behavior. Chicks were raised in a biparental (raised by two parents) or uniparental (raised by the female alone) rearing condition. This study was done to test our hypothesis of differences in parental care and how rearing conditions may affect mate choice for the male finch. Through this study we have found that time spent in proximity to the female differed between a uniparentally raised and biparentally raised male finch.

Assessment Of Olfactory-Based Social Recognition: Designing A Paradigm For Marmosets, Stephanie Womack

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Navigation of the social world depends largely on one’s responsiveness to social stimuli and information from a wide range of senses can be used to discriminate between individuals. Mammals use several sensory modes to communicate and respond to their surroundings, but olfaction is the dominant sense across most species. Chemosignals provide a wealth of information including sex, age, reproductive status, and individual identity. Currently, assessment of olfaction is largely limited to the habituation-dishabituation paradigm or the two-choice discrimination task used primarily in rodents. These paradigms are limited by their reliance on inherent reward of interaction with stimuli without providing additional …

Neuroendocrine And Psychological Factors Associated With Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, And Reduced Compassion Satisfaction In Mental Health Professionals, Michelle Huffman

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Mental health professionals are at increased risk for burnout, compassion fatigue, and reduced compassion satisfaction. Burnout is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and loss of personal accomplishment. Compassion fatigue is a more progressed disruption relative to burnout marked by insomnia/nightmares, arousal, loss of objectivity, isolation, and intrusive thoughts. Compassion satisfaction buffers against burnout and compassion fatigue. Although links between demographic, psychological, and biological factors have been documented, interactions between these factors have not been explored. Mental health professionals completed psychological inventories measuring depression, anxiety, burnout, compassion fatigue, and compassion satisfaction. Saliva samples were collected during the Trier Social Stress Test …

A Wellness Approach To Investigating Student Veterans' Academic And Career Goals, Thomas Seguin

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The purpose of this study is to understand what wellness factors motivate veterans to separate from the military, and how these factors are addressed by the selection of the veteran’s academic major. This project is exploratory in nature, and mixed-methods methodology is being utilized to reach a deep understanding of the wellness and career transition experiences of student veterans. A brief questionnaire has been developed to gather demographic data, and has been distributed among the student veteran population at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (41 respondents at the time of this writing). Interview participants will be selected from the …

The Influence Of Humorous Priming And Situation Type On Generation Of Malevolently Creative Ideas, Reo W. Newring

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Creativity is usually considered a positive attribute, but what happens when creativity is used to generate a harmful product? Malevolent creativity (Cropley, Kaufman, & Cropley, 2008) refers to a clever, original product with negative valence, or intention to harm. The purpose of the current study was to examine predictors of malevolent creativity, expanding on existing knowledge and exploring a new area, specifically humor. Humorous primes were used to evoke malevolence, in the form of dialogues between two cartoon characters engaged in highly aggressive, moderately aggressive, self-defeating, or neutral exchanges. Subjects were then provided with a hypothetical situation (problem) and asked …