Psychology Commons^™

Procedural Justice And Voice: Do Individual Differences Moderate The Voice Effect?, Mark N. Van Osdel

Student Work

Previous researchers (see Lind & Tyler, 1988) have reported that persons allowed an opportunity to express their opinions (voice) typically report a heightened level of perceived fairness-labeled as the voice effect. Instrumental and group-value theories have been proposed as explanations for this effect. The present study examined the voice effect in the context of personality theory to explore individual differences in relation to instrumental and group value theories of voice. This study was designed to test the effect of two individual difference components, Locus of Control and Need for Affiliation, across three conditions of voice (predecision, postdecision, and no-voice). Predecision …

The Situational Interview As A Measure Of Intelligence, Deborah F. Goodman

Student Work

The employment interview has traditionally been regarded as having low reliability and validity for predicting job performance. This assumption has been challenged recently by research findings which indicate improved reliability and validity for structured interview formats (Arvey & Campion, 1982). The situational interview in particular is associated with strong predictive accuracy; this fact has sparked debate regarding the source of this enhanced validity. This study tested Hunter and Hirsh's (1987) notion that situational interview validity is derived from its measurement of cognitive ability. In addition, their theory that the situational interview operates as an orally administered intelligence test for new …

The Influence Of Valence Of Additional Information And Affective State On Regret And Subsequent Decision Making Behavior, Rhonda A. Stutzman

Student Work

To date, there is little research on the phenomena of decisional regret. Most of the literature contains speculation about the antecedents, moderators, processes and consequences of regret rather than offering empirical evidence. This study looked at temporary affective states and the moderating effect of the valence of additional information in terms of the amount of post-decisional regret experienced, confidence levels, ratings of decision alternatives and subsequent choice. A 2 X 2 factorial design was used to examine the influence of affective state (positive vs neutral) and the valence of additional information (neutral vs negative) on regret and the evaluation of …

Task Experience, Assigned Goals, And Performance Norms As Determinants Of Goal Choice And Performance, Jon Shanahan

Student Work

A cognitive mediation model of goal setting (Garland, 1985; Meyer & Gellatly, 1988) is explored from a perspective that combines the social information processing, expectancy-valence, and control systems literatures. Assigned goals, performance norms, and task experience are viewed as information sources that influence goal choice, and therefore effort and performance, through performance expectancy (expectancy of success) and performance valence (anticipated satisfaction with any given performance level). Subjects were 100 introductory psychology and sociology students who participated in exchange for extra credit. Subjects performed a card sorting task and were assigned to one of five treatment conditions. Each experimental subject was …

The Perceptual Weighting Of Speech-Related Acoustic Cues For 3 & 1/2-Year-Old Children Differs From That Of Adults: Results Using Natural And Synthetic Stimuli, Carol J. Manning

Student Work

Previous studies have found that children’s judgments of syllable-initial /s/ and / ∫ / are more related to the vocalic F2 transition and less related to the fricative-noise spectrum than are adults’ judgments [Nittrouer & Studdert- Kennedy, JSHR, 30 (1987); Nittrouer, J. Phon., 20 1992]. These results have been taken as evidence that young children organize linguistic input in units more closely approximating syllable size than phoneme size. Furthermore, such results have led to a model of speech development proposing that children’s weighting of the acoustic cues for phonemic categories changes as they gain linguistic experience, with a general shift …

Mothers' And Fathers' Perceptions Of Parenting One-Month Old Infants With Respiratory Distress Syndrome Or Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia, Nancy Marron

Student Work

Recent significant advances in the field of neonatology have resulted in increased rates of survival of infants who are born prematurely (Avery & Taeusch, 1984). Although mortality rates have decreased, many of these children and their families may be faced with complications related to prematurity, extended hospitalization, numerous lifesaving medical procedures, and a lengthy recovery.

The Effects Of Gender Of Observers And Victims On Perceptions Of Fairness In Unjust Situations., Laura Leah Josoff

Student Work

The effects of gender of observers and victims on perceptions of fairness in unjust situations were investigated. Subjects participated in group sessions and were blocked by gender and then assigned to either the disadvantaged female (read a composition concerning a femal who received poor outcomes) or disadvantaged male (read a composition concerning a male who received poor outcomes) group. After reading the composition, subjects completed a questionnaire which was related to the composition. It was expected that the perception of fairness would depend upon the gender of the perceiver as well as the gender of the victim. Specifically, females would …

The Effects Of Child-Directed Speech Vs Adult-Directed Speech On Attention And Categorization In Prelinguistic Infants, Jean M. Schumacher

Student Work

The facilitative role of linguistic input on nonlinguistic categorization is frequently explained in terms of children's attention to uniquely linguistic forms such as words. In the three experiments reported here, 15-month-old infants were familiarized to visual stimuli in the context of hearing either adult-directed speech (ADS) or child-directed speech (CDS) during visual fixations. Categorization was successful with CDS and ADS input when accumulated attention was not constrained (Experiment 1). Moreover, there were no differences in accumulated attention as a function of input type. When attention was constrained to 90 seconds (Experiments 2 and 3), ADS input disrupted categorization more for …

Refining Personality Disorder Assessment Procedures: The Relationship Between Mcmi-Ii And Scid-Ii, Robert J. Pass

Student Work

The purpose of this study was to examine the compatibility of personality disorder diagnoses made by a self-report questionnaire (Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, MCMI-II) and a standardized interview (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R, Axis II, SCID-II). Diagnoses of 50 intake clients at NOVA Therapeutic Community's residential facility were compared using Chi-Square analysis. Agreement between the two instruments was promising at the cluster level (p

A Comparison Study Of The Wisc-Iii And Wisc-R With A Special Education Population, Henry P. Green

Student Work

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree of comparability between the WISC-R and the WISC-III over a three year period. The subjects were 207 children, 124 Learning Disabled, 51 Mental Disabled, and 32 Behavior Disabled, enrolled in special education, in a large urban district (Omaha, Nebraska) and several rural districts in southwest Iowa. Results from the comparison study between WISC-III and WISC-R supports the hypothesis that students in the special education population tend to have significantly lower IQs on the WISC-III than the WISC-R. A significant decrease in Full Scale IQ scores was found in the mental …

Expectancy Effects As Moderated By Expecter Need For Achievement And Target Self-Consciousness, Paula Ethington Felchner

Student Work

The phenomenon labeled "self-fulfilling prophecy” is one of the most widely researched areas of psychology (Miller & Turnbull, 1986). However, even after more than three decades of research related to the effects of expectancies, opinion about the importance and even the existence of selffulfilling prophecy is mixed (Jussim, 1991). Effect sizes are often small (Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978; Jussim, 1991), but even small effects cannot always be considered inconsequential. In certain settings small effects of invalid expectancies may rob individuals of opportunities to which they are entitled. Accordingly, this study was undertaken to evaluate the moderating effects of personality on …

The Role Of Cognitive Distractibility In Special Education Diagnosis, Mavis A. Nigro

Student Work

The three factor scores that Kaufman (1975) measured on the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (Freedom from Distractibility, Perceptual Organization, and Verbal Comprehension) were compared among students referred and/or placed in special education. Three diagnostic groups were compared: behavioral disordered (BD) , learning disabled (LD) and students who were referred but not placed in special education. Results indicated a significant factor structure difference on the WISC-R for the BD and LD diagnostic groups, but not for the referred but not placed students. However, only the LD group manifested a significantly lower distractibility factor score when compared to the referred but …

The Relationship Between Pain Locus Of Control And Treatment Adherence At Long-Term Follow-Up From An Interdisciplinary Pain Center, Lisa J. Wall

Student Work

Locus of control is a cognitive construct that can be quantified and used in conjunction with other social learning theory variables to predict human social behavior. Previous research suggests that when a person perceives rewards and punishments as being contingent upon personal actions, (i.e. they possess an internal locus of control) behavior is quite different compared to when such reinforcements are perceived to occur independently of personal efforts and characteristics.

Pain is one of many areas in which there has been a significant amount of interest in relating locus of control health beliefs to a variety of relevant behaviors. Whether …

The Effect Of Persuasion, Across Task Difficulties, On Self-Efficacy, Performance And Persistence A Thesis, Linda J. Kaiser

Student Work

Self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977a, 1982, 1986) postulates that efficacy expectations can be modified by persuasion if it is perceived as being instilled by a credible source, it is realistic, and it is not in opposition to performance information. Subsequent research revealed equivocal results for the relationship between persuasion and self-efficacy. This study investigates the effects of persuasion, across task difficulties, on selfefficacy, performance, and persistence. A mathematical task was utilized. Six hypotheses were tested. Persuasion was found to be effective in a hardtask situation. Gender had a substantial impact on the results of this study; overall findings may have been …

The Dispositional Approach To Job Satisfaction: Trait Or State?, Sharlyn K. Whingham

Student Work

Job satisfaction has been one of the most extensively researched areas of Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Although situational influences on job satisfaction have traditionally been the primary focus of research, staw and Ross (1985) asserted that job satisfaction may be determined as much by personal dispositions as situational factors. Specifically, they proposed that an individual's predisposition toward optimism or pessimism is a critical determinant of job satisfaction. However, subsequent empirical investigations purporting to test the influence of the trait-like predisposition of optimism/pessimism have employed measures of positive and negative affective states. This study attempted to disentangle the influence of temporary negative and …

Looking At Barbie: Social Comparison Processes And Body Esteem Among Women, Sally Elizabeth Ware

Student Work

In this thesis, three areas are described: the phenomenon of body dissatisfaction among apparently normal-sized women from a sociocultural perspective; social comparison theory, which is proposed to be the mechanism by which the phenomenon operates; and the results of an experiment designed not only to test the nature of the phenomenon itself, but also to test certain components of social comparison theory, such as selection of comparison targets and the role of derogation.

The study reports women’s responses to inescapable social comparison on the attribute of body size and shape with two groups of social comparison targets: photographs from popular …

Psychophysiological And Personality Correlates Of Repression And Sensitization, John Patrick Kline

Student Work

This study assessed relationships among indices of modulation of stimulus intensity by the autonomic and central nervous systems, perceptual defense, and repressive coping. Subjects were twenty female and nine male paid volunteers between the ages of 19 and 38. Perceptual defense, defined as the difference in recognition thresholds for unpleasant versus pleasant words, was assessed with a tachistoscopic masking paradigm. Auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were obtained in an augmentation reduction paradigm that evaluated cortical responses to discrete tones of varying intensity. Cardiac responses to these same tones were also obtained. Amplitude/intensity slopes were determined for P2 amplitudes obtained from the …

Touch Avoidance And Eating Disorders: A Relational Study, Christine L. North

Student Work

This relational study had therapists from an eating disorder program distribute a touch avoidance questionnaire to patients currently in treatment for an eating disorder. This study looked at touch avoidance among three groups: subjects with an eating disorder and non-sexual abuse background, subjects with an eating disorder and sexual abuse background, and a control group. The questionnaire consisted of the 20 question Same-Sex Touching Scale (SSTS) (Larsen & LeRoux, 1984) and the Touch Avoidance Measure (TAM) (Andersen & Leibowitz, 1978). T-tests revealed a significant value of -2.19 on the TAM between eating disorder and eating disorder/sexual abuse, a score of …

Myers-Briggs Personality Types In Chronic Pain Patients, Linda S. Mckee-Mcalpin

Student Work

This study uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to examine the possibility that there are personality types that are more likely to cope maladaptively, and experience the syndrome of chronic pain, when they are faced with an injury or pain which results in unexpected life changes.

The Chronic Pain sample in this study scored significantly higher than a Normal sample in their preference for Introversion, Sensing and Judging and were significantly more likely to be the personality types ISFJ or ISTJ.

This study also examines the relationship between MMPI depression scores and Myers-Briggs Introversion scores and the results tend to confirm …

Perceptions Of Fairness In The Frustration Effect: An Attributional Analysis, David T. Van Dyke

Student Work

Theories of both distributive (Adams, 1963) and procedural justice (Thibaut & Walker, 1975) have been demonstrated to be accurate in describing subjective evaluations of fairness in a wide variety of circumstances. However, a phenomenon known as the frustration effect (e.g. Folger, 1977) results in perceptions of fairness that are incongruent with the predictions of these two theories. This study attempts to explain the discrepant results in terms of attribution theory as it was proposed by Weiner (1985). By manipulating and measuring the attributions made by subjects, the attributional explanation was tested. The results of this experiment were not supportive of …

Ethical Dilemmas Confronting School Psychologists, Karol Basel

Student Work

This study was conducted to investigate school psychologists' perception of the utility to published ethics codes on ethical decision making. Subjects were randomly chosen for this national survey based on their membership in the National Association of School Psychologists. Subjects were presented 25 dilemmas based on specific ethical codes published by the American Psychological Association and National Association of School Psychologists. Respondents were asked whether they had encountered similar dilemmas in the past two years and how well ethical codes had prepared them to solve each dilemma. Respondents indicated that they had experienced few of the dilemmas in the recent …

The Effects Of Locus Of Control And Method Of Goal Setting On Task Motivation, Paula Coburn

Student Work

Motivation is a central issue in academics. Previous research has shown that goal setting is one method of increasing motivation, with specific goals being more motivating than nonspecific, do your best goals. Research has also shown that self-selected goals increase motivation more than externally imposed goals. The present study examined the effects of self-selected, externally imposed, and do your best goals on task motivation when the personality factor locus of control was controlled by blocking subject groups. It was shown that an interaction exists between method of goal setting and locus of control. It was also found that method of …

A Longitudinal Test Of A Proposed Vie Theoretic Control Systems Model Of Self-Regulated Human Performance, Vernon A. Peterson

Student Work

Research by Campion and Lord (1982) suggested that the goal-setting process could be explicated by a control systems model of self-regulated behavior. However, as noted by Campion and Lord (1982), the model did not specify the process performers used to select their standards. To address this deficiency and to further specify the control process, I proposed an expanded model of human performance: an integration of VIE theory (Vroom, 1964) and control systems theory (Carver & Scheier, 1981). The model posited that performers select standards of performance based on their motivational force. It also specified when cognitive or behavioral control responses …

Influence Of Feedback Specificity And Simultaneous Goals On Task Performance, David W. Furst

Student Work

A laboratory experiment was conducted examining the influence of feedback specificity and simultaneous quantity and quality goals on the performance of an assembly task including the effect of feedback specificity on perceptual and behavioral measures of intrinsic motivation. The hypotheses were framed in terms of a traditional goal setting model and a control systems-goal conflict model. Neither model was supported for the quantity performance measure in that varying the specificity of quantity of performance feedback did not result in differential quantity of performance. The traditional goal setting model was supported based on results from the quality performance measure . These …

Concurrent Validity Of The Pain Locus Of Control Scale And Its Relationship To Treatment Outcome Variables, Linda Kay Schaefer

Student Work

Studies have shown that locus of control orientation is related to emotional and behavioral adjustment to chronic pain. Researchers have begun the process of establishing the validity and reliability of the Pain Locus of Control Scale. This study was conducted to establish the concurrent validity of the PLC Scale at the time of follow-up from pain management treatment, an effort not previously undertaken. In addition, studies suggest that those persons with an Internal locus of control orientation demonstrate more favorable treatment outcomes, as compared to a Powerful others or Chance locus of control. This research examined the relationship between treatment …

Proxemic Behavior Of The Nonhandicapped Toward The Visually Impaired, Carol J. Olsen

Student Work

This study investigated spatial behavior of nonhandicapped individuals toward physically handicapped individuals. Initial seating distance was measured between a visually impaired experimenter and nonhandicapped subjects. Subjects were from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Students completed a survey and then, one at a time, went to an adjacent room to answer some follow-up questions posed by a visually impaired confederate. Distances were measured and compared to other studies measuring handicapped/ nonhandicapped interactions. Previous research showed significant differences in distance between handicapped/ nonhandicapped interactions and nonhandicapped/nonhandicapped interactions. Greater distances were chosen when interacting with a physically handicapped individual than with a …

The Predictive Value Of Mmpi Personality Style In Obesity Therapy, Jeffrey J. Harvey

Student Work

The present study assessed whether psychopathology influences obese subject’s ability to lose weight. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was used to differentiate between 46 pathological and 52 nonpathological subjects. A repeated measures analysis of variance did not support the hypothesis that the degree of weight loss is negatively associated with the amount of psychopathology measured by the MMPI. In addition, an analysis of covariance was conducted in an attempt to control for possible confounding factors at the start of treatment and also failed to support the hypothesis.

The Effects Of Feedback Referent And Content Upon Self-Determination, Rated Task Interest, And Intrinsic Motivation, Kerry L. Sheehan

Student Work

This study was an attempt to determine if verbal feedback could be used to convey information about feedback referent and feedback content to individuals in an experimental setting, and if so, if that information would influence their perceptions of perceived task competence, self-determination, task-interest, and intrinsic motivation. Eighty subjects were used from psychology classes. The majority were college freshmen or sophomores. Results showed that subjects did attend to the feedback referent, but that the referent had no subsequent influence on any of the dependent variables. Additionally, the feedback content manipulation did not produce the predicted effects upon the dependent variables. …

Construct Validity And Development Of Local Norms In The Assessment Of Adhd., Rose Ternes Hunter

Student Work

A pilot study was performed to determine the validity of on-task behavior and locally developed attention tasks# to assist in the identification of children with ADHD. Subjects were third grade students in the Hampton City Public Schools. Means and standard deviations were computed for time-on-task as well as number correct and number committed for each of five separate attention tasks. A correlation analysis was performed to compare results of attention tasks with each other as well as with the Abbreviated Conners Teacher's Scale (ACTS), a Hyperactivity Index, and IQ. Results were in the expected direction, although correlations with ACTS were …

The Moderating Effects Of Evaluation Apprehension And Group Goals On Social Loafing, Thomas Rauzi

Student Work

The social loafing effect, that subjects work harder alone than in groups, was contrasted against the use of two motivational techniques. Subjects were 80 undergraduate students at a midwestern university. A 2 x 2 factorial design was employed contrasting the use of group goals with the salience of evaluation apprehension. Subjects, working in groups of four, were asked to generate possible uses for common objects during two timed work periods. Results provided support for an Interaction Hypothesis: that group goal or evaluation apprehension conditions are sufficient to increase performance over a social loafing replication condition. However, the actual presence of …