Psychology Commons^™

Exploring The Spirit In U.S. Audiences: The Role Of The Virtue Of Transcendence In Inspiring Media Consumption, Sophie Janicke-Bowles, Arthur A. Raney, Mary Beth Oliver, Katherine R. Dale, Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Little is yet known about audiences who routinely seek out media content that is inspirational in nature. The current study expands the research on inspirational media by utilizing a nationally representative sample of U.S. audiences (n = 2,016) to explore relationships between inspiring media exposure, trait transcendence, and self-transcendent emotions. Results show that media content is a reliable source for everyday self-transcendent emotional experiences in U.S. audiences. These experiences are most frequently encountered by persons with high levels of trait spirituality and gratitude. The profile of U.S. audiences that seek out inspiring media is discussed.

Pilot Study Of The Contributions Of Achievement-Striving And Dutifulness On Intimate Partner Violence In Intimate Dyads, Ernest M. Oleksy, Liz Goncy

The Downtown Review

The purpose of this pilot study was to further our knowledge about the interaction of trait conscientiousness of one’s self and one’s partner with the occurrence of intimate partner violence (IPV) as we prepare for a larger study that will utilize this pilot study’s protocol. Conscientiousness has been demonstrated to be positively correlated with increased satisfaction in couples (Malouff, Thorsteinsson, Schutte, Bhullar, & Rooke, 2010), while different facets of conscientiousness have been demonstrated to have differential effects on relational behavior, like achievement-striving and duty’s opposing effects on commitment dilemmas (Moon, 2001). Furthermore, the negative correlation between conscientiousness and deviance (Rao, …

Human Adaptability For Deep Space Missions: An Exploratory Study, Paul T. Bartone, Robert R. Roland, Jocelyn V. Bartone, Gerald P. Krueger, Albert A. Sciarretta, Bjorn Helge Johnsen

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

The present qualitative study conducts in-depth interviews with astronauts and other subject matter experts in order to shed light on human adaptability in extreme environments. Deep space travel will entail a range of highly stressful conditions to which astronauts must adapt. Feelings of isolation will be increased, as the space traveler is farther from Earth for longer periods of time. Daily life will take place in small and confined areas, for durations extending into years. The dangers of the extreme environment of space are ever-present, and failure of critical equipment or components can lead to death. Astronauts will need to …

Person-Level Sources Of Continued Influence Effect: The Roles Of Attention Control, Intolerance Of Ambiguity And Conservatism, Jinhao Chi

Dissertations

People continually rely on disinformation to make judgments after it is corrected or discredited. This phenomenon is termed the continued influence effect (CIE). Using a sample of 152 participants, the current study examined whether the CIE can be explained by a person’s political orientation, attention control (AC) levels, intolerance of ambiguity (IA) and need for specific closure (NSC). It was found that when political orientation was based on self-reports, the overall political conservatism did not predict the CIE (r = .13, p = .09) but economic conservatism did (r = .19, p < .05), suggesting that those with higher self-reported fiscally conservative attitudes may show more prolonged influence of disinformation. In addition, the overall AC levels did not predict the CIE (r = .08, p = .30), but the antisaccade scores reflecting the ability to inhibit automatic responses were a significant positive predictor of the CIE (r = .18, p < .05). Lastly, neither IA nor NSC significantly predicted the CIE (ps > .05). These findings were obtained with only one …

Individual Differences In Executive Function And Reappraisal: A Latent-Variable Analysis, Wei Xing Toh

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Cognitive reappraisal is an adaptive emotion regulation strategy that positively impacts various facets of adaptive functioning (e.g., interpersonal relations, subjective well-being). Although reappraisal implicates cognitive processing, a clear consensus concerning the cognitive underpinnings of reappraisal has not yet been reached. Therefore, we examined how executive function (EF)—i.e., three general-purpose control abilities comprising working memory, inhibition, and shifting—are associated with performance-based reappraisal ability and self-reported reappraisal frequency. Using a latent-variable approach, we found that the shared variance among EF tasks (i.e., common EF)—a general goal-management ability that facilitates the active maintenance of task goals—significantly predicted reappraisal ability, but not reappraisal frequency. …

Renaming Me: Assessing The Influence Of Gender Identity On Name Selection, Sharon Obasi, Richard Mocarski, Natalie Holt, Debra Hope, Nathan Woodruff

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Our identity is our name connected with a specific face and body. Yet, our name, a critical aspect of the “names-body-identity” nexus is rarely selfselected. The naming of a newborn is often the purview of family and the name selected is often linked to the sex assigned to the child. Assigned sex, however, may differ from gender identity. Renaming, the process of selecting and using a new name, can be instrumental in expressing an authentic gender identity. Thus, gender identity and renaming were examined among transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) adults using an online survey. Participants indicated that the recognition …

The Political Personality Of Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Note: The paper whose abstract appears below, titled "The Political Personality of Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden" has been replaced on the 'Download' tab with an updated paper containing a more thorough personality assessment and a more detailed leadership style analysis, titled "The Political Personality of 2020 Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden." The earlier paper has been archived and may be uploaded at the bottom of this page from the hyperlink under 'Additional Files.'

This working paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of former U.S. vice president Joe Biden — a contender for …

Keep The Faith Not The Guilt: Demonization Of Sex Workers, Jessica Hodges

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

Previous research shows that religiosity and attitudes about sexual topics are strongly correlated and typically negative. That is, as religiosity increases, views toward sexual topics tend to become more conservative or generally more negative in valence. However, current research also suggests that one’s sexual guilt may be the mediating influence in the relationship between religiosity and negative sexual attitudes. The present study seeks to replicate and extend research that examined the extent to which an individual's religiosity and sexual guilt influence their perspective of pornography and sex workers (Study 1). To replicate this (Study 2), a survey containing relevant measures …

Awareness Of Sex Offender Registration Policies And Self-Reported Sexual Offending In A Community Sample Of Adolescents, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Hayley M. D. Cleary

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Sex offender registration laws are widely implemented, increasingly restrictive, and intended to serve both specific and general deterrent functions. Most states have some form of policy mechanism to place adolescents on sex offender registries, yet it remains unclear whether adolescents possess the requisite policy awareness to be deterred from sexual offending. This study examined awareness of sex offender registration as a potential sanction and its cross-sectional association with engagement in several registrable sexual behaviors (sexting, indecent exposure, sexual solicitation, and forcible touching) in a community sample of 144 adolescents. Results revealed that many adolescents were unaware that these behaviors could …

Improving Relationships, Brittany D. Dioszeghy

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

This project is a proposal for a program that improves individuals' experiences in relationships.

Challenge, Hindrance, And Threat Stressors: A Within- And Between-Persons Examination Of General And Specific Stressor Appraisal Tendencies And A Priori Categorizations, Lisa Brady, Christopher J. L. Cunningham

Industrial and Organizational Psychology Translational Research and Working Papers

Within the occupational stress literature, researchers have often identified stressors as being inherently challenging or hindering, based on previous classifications or on the outcomes usually associated with each. Although the challenge-hindrance model is based on the transactional theory of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), which emphasizes the importance of an individual’s cognitive appraisal of stimuli, much of the research on this framework has failed to measure an individual’s direct appraisal of stimuli in the environment as challenging, hindering, and threatening, which can be problematic when attempting to understand and predict occupational stress. In the present study we identify and share …

Learning Together To Heal: Toward An Integrated Practice Of Transpersonal Psychology, Experiential Learning, And Neuroscience For Collective Healing, Tatsushi Arai, Jean Bosco Niyonzima

Peace and Conflict Studies

This essay brings together complementary insights from transpersonal psychology, experiential learning, and neuroscience to develop an integrated framework of psychosocial healing in societies affected by conflict and trauma. While transpersonal psychology examines the spiritual and transcendental aspects of psychosocial wellbeing, research on experiential learning examines how people learn from direct experience. Recognizing that both are useful for psychosocial healing, the first part of the essay explores how the two sets of activities can complement each other. Of particular interest is the role of transpersonal exercises such as yoga and meditation, as well as the purposeful use of experiential learning techniques …

Personality And Coping, Alyssa Seely

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

No abstract provided.

Relationships Between Personality Type And Cognitive Ability In Marmoset Monkeys (Callithrix Jacchus), Zachary Marciano

Masters Theses

Personality refers to multiple traits that are thought to be stable over time and across situations. It is recognized that personality has a neural basis and is associated with health outcomes. Whether personality is also associated with cognitive ability, however, is still a matter of intense debate. One way to examine these potential relationships is to use a nonhuman primate model for which complexities present in humans can be minimized. Recent research into the varying personality types of marmoset monkeys suggests that there are predominantly three to five core primary domains that most marmosets and other primates can be categorized …

B-3 Psychological Perceptions Of Disaster Misconceptions: Exploring The Acceptance Of Disaster Myths In Relation To Psychological Well-Being, Resilience And Conspiracist Ideation, Harvey Burnett, Karl Bailey, Rachelle E. Pichot

Celebration of Research and Creative Scholarship

This exploratory study examined psychological wellness and resilience as predictors of conspiracist beliefs, disaster response beliefs, and disaster misconceptions beliefs. Data was collected from 300 participants through Amazon’s MTurk. These individuals completed a demographic questionnaire; for Misconception Measures the Myth and Misconception Propositions about Disasters Questionnaire (Alexander, 2007), Beliefs about Disaster Response (Wenger et al., 1975), and Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (Brotherton et al., 2013); for Resilience Measures the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Campbell-Sills & Stein, 2007), Beliefs about Resilient Behaviors subscale from the Behavior in Mass Emergencies Questionnaire (Drury et al., 2013); and for Psychological Wellness the 2-item Perceived …

Self-Concept Clarity And The Bodily Self: Malleability Across Modalities, Sonia A. Krol, Rémi Thériault, Jay A. Olson, Amir Raz, Jennifer A. Bartz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The self has fascinated scholars for centuries. Although theory suggests that the self-concept (cognitive self-understanding) and bodily self (pre-reflective awareness of one’s body) are related, little work has examined this notion. To this end, in Study 1, participants reported on self-concept clarity (SCC) and completed the rubber hand illusion (RHI), a paradigm in which synchronous (vs. asynchronous) stimulation between a prosthetic hand and one’s own hand leads one to “embody” the prosthetic hand. Whereas participants were equally susceptible to the RHI during synchronous stroking, low-SCC individuals were more vulnerable to the illusion during asynchronous stroking, when the effect is unwarranted. …

Social Psychology, Griffin N. Thayer

Open Educational Resources

A syllabus designed with OER concepts in mind to teach social psychology.

Imagined Contact Intervention With An American Muslim Target, Jamie Williams

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Recent studies have shown that imagining contact with a member of a differing social group can reduce prejudice toward said group. This type of prejudice intervention, known as an imagined contact intervention, can be beneficial when direct contact with the outgroup is not feasible. This study adds to existing research on imagined contact interventions by replicating a simple version of the intervention by Husnu and Crisp (2010) and assessing attitudes toward an American Muslim out-group. This study extends the research of Husnu and Crisp (2010) by using American participants as opposed to British participants and also uses an online distribution …

Conceptualizing Discursive Analysis As A Culturally Contextualized Activity, Stephen Baffour Adjei

The Qualitative Report

Discursive psychology recognizes the primacy of the social and relational nature of human life. Research participants whose discourses (empirical data) we analyze do not exist independent of material and social world. In this paper, I attempt to develop an understanding of discursive analysis of social and psychological phenomena as a culturally contextualized activity in which discursive researchers analyze and interpret participants’ discourses in the light of the cultural context in which the discourses are embedded. First, I provide a brief background to discursive psychology. Second, I discuss the cultural embeddedness of discursive analysis. I then conceptualize discursive data analysis as …

Intentions Behind The Use Of Social Network Sites And Its Association With Peronality, Job Performance And Psychological Well-Being Of Employees In China And Pakistan : Qualitative And Quantitative Approaches, Haziq Mehmood

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations

Social networking sites (SNSs) are becoming our focus of attention to fulfill our basic need to associate and communicate with other beings. During the last few years, there has been a drastic increase in SNSs users and statistics represent a huge number of people and even workers who log in to SNSs at least once during their office hours. Many studies have explored the SNSs use in students, but limited literature is available that studied employees’ use of SNSs during their working hours. The present study is divided into three phases: scale development, survey, and a quasi-experiment. The first phase …

Neural Correlates Of Automatic Emotional Processing And Emotion Regulation In Empathy And Psychopathy-Related Coldheartedness, Danielle Difilipo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that is defined, in part, by a lack of empathy. Psychopathy-related empathic deficits have been associated with atypical behavioral and neural responses to emotional facial expressions. Although the mirror neuron system (MNS) has been implicated in empathy, very few studies have examined the role of MNS functioning as it pertains to empathy impairments in psychopathy. Moreover, there is very little empirical research regarding emotion regulation in psychopathy, and specifically whether emotional responses can be intentionally upregulated. The present study sought to clarify whether the MNS is functionally intact in adults with subclinical psychopathic traits, particularly …

Watch Me Give: Narcissism As A Moderator To Donating To A Nonprofit, Austin Prewett, Charles Elliott, Paul A. Story

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

With increased online connectivity in the current generation, more non-for-profit organizations are focusing their efforts on producing online marketing appeals. It has, therefore, become necessary to identify the effect some appeals have on different people. The present study seeks to determine whether an organization offering increased recognition will result in a greater willingness to give by people with narcissistic personalities. Additionally, it will determine if “willingness” to give or “amount” given are different between genders or employment status, as prior research suggests. Results indicated that whether the organization offered increased recognition or not, narcissism did not affect willingness to give …

Self-Transcendent Emotions And Social Media: Exploring The Content And Consumers Of Inspirational Facebook Posts, Katherine R. Dale, Arthur A. Raney, Qihao Ji, Sophie Janicke-Bowles, Joshua Baldwin, Jerrica T. Rowlett, Cen Wang, Mary Beth Oliver

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Although a great deal of research has examined the potential negative effects of Facebook, studies also show that Facebook use can lead to various positive effects. This study builds on this positive effects scholarship: together, the two studies presented herein aim to provide an understanding of the inspirational content available on Facebook and the way social media users in the United States encounter, recall, and interact with this content. Results from the quantitative content analysis in Study 1 show that inspirational Facebook posts contain similar frequencies of hope and appreciation of beauty and excellent elicitors when compared with other forms …

The Path To God Is Through The Heart: Metaphoric Self-Location As A Predictor Of Religiosity, Adam K. Fetterman, Jacob Juhl, Brian P. Meier, Andrew Abeyta, Clay Routledge, Michael D. Robinson

Psychology Faculty Publications

Metaphors linking the heart to warm intuition and the head to cold rationality may capture important differences between people because some locate the self in the heart and others locate the self in the head. Five studies (total N = 2575) link these individual differences to religious beliefs. Study 1 found that religious beliefs were stronger among heart-locators than head-locators. Studies 2 and 3 replicated this relationship in more diverse samples. Studies 4 and 5 focused on questions of mediation. Heart-locators believed in God to a greater extent partly because of empathy-related processes (Study 4) and partly because they tended …

What Can Early Childhood Education And Care Settings Teach Us About Skills For The 21st Century?, Dan Cloney, Kellie Picker

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings are naturally oriented towards promoting 21st century skills. This can be seen in Australia, where learning is defined as the development of identity, social and emotional skills, problem-solving, and communication skills. A 21st century orientation is also seen in the playbased pedagogies implemented in ECEC settings. A gap, however, exists in the ability of the ECEC sector to communicate its successes. This gap relates to the lack of measurement tools to quantify the quality of the adult–child interactions in ECEC settings, and children’s growth in these 21 century skills and abilities. This paper …

Assessment In The Interpersonal Domain: Experiences From Empathy Assessment In Medical Education, Neville Chiavaroli

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Frameworks for the teaching and assessment of 21st-century skills commonly recognise the importance of learning and skill development in the interpersonal domain. They also usually acknowledge the challenge of reliably and validly assessing students in this domain. In the field of medical education and in selecting students for medical courses, the concept of empathy has become central to representing the particular interpersonal understandings and skills expected of students and practising doctors. Attempts to assess these attributes during medical training are just as challenging as in school contexts. This presentation draws on several years’ experience of working with medical educators to …

Assessing And Understanding Social And Emotional Skills: The Oecd Study On Social And Emotional Skills, Sue Thomson

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

In an increasingly fast-changing and diverse world, the importance of developing social and emotional skills is becoming more evident. The large body of accumulated evidence shows that these skills have strong relationships with life outcomes and they have been referred to as a key component of 21st century skills. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Study on Social and Emotional Skills is a new international assessment of these skills in students at primary and secondary schools. This study also gathers information on students’ families, schools and community learning contexts, aiming to provide information about the conditions or practices …

Theoretical Considerations For Extracting Meaning From Personal Profile System Data: The Need For Independent Construct Validity Studies, Thomas G. Henkel, James Noel Wilmoth

Tom G. Henkel

The Personal Profile System (PPS) is a psychological testing instrument that has been widely used. The construct validity of the PPS was studied through a review of the literature. This paper organizes the literature review into three broad categories: the background of the PPS; the reliability of the PPS; and the validity of the PPS. The PPS is a self-scoring instrument measuring the behavioral responses of people along four dimensions: (1) dominance; (2) influencing; (3) steadiness; and (4) compliance. The instrument is designed to provide a systematic and comprehensive perception of an individual's behavioral tendencies and the behavioral tendencies of …

Researching Mbti Personality Types: Project Management Master’S Degree Students, Thomas G. Henkel, James W. Marion Jr, Debra T. Bourdeau

Tom G. Henkel

The purpose of this research study was twofold: 1) to explore if a university’s Master of Science in Project Management students’ MBTI® personalities differ significantly; 2) to gain a better understanding if the MBTI® personality traits of university students enrolled in a project management degree differ significantly from those MBTI® personalities of the general population. The goodness of fit test was used in order to test the hypotheses that the 177 graduate project management students (observed data) have the same MBTI® distribution as in the general population (expected data). Overall, the present study showed that the student population has 27.18% …

Factoring The Personal Profile System For Construct Validity: Three Analyses Under Different Standardization Assumptions, Thomas G. Henkel, James Noel Wilmoth

Tom G. Henkel

Three types of data were factor analyzed using principal components extractions with orthogonal and oblique rotations to test publisher claims for construct validity of the Personal Profile System (PPS). Behavioral descriptor data from 1,045 senior non-commissioned Air Force officers were factored as raw data, mean corrected data, and standardized z-scores (correlations). The most efficacious solution was produced with standardized z-scores generating four factors accounting for 86% of the total variance. The measure of sampling adequacy for every descriptor exceeded 0.922. The first factor was general with approximately equal loadings on each of the dominance, influencing, steadiness, and compliance dimensions. The …