Psychology Commons^™

Acting Wide Awake: Attention And The Ethics Of Emotion, Jacob Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In cases where two human cultures disagree over fundamental ethical values, metaethical questions about what could make one or the other position correct arise with great force. Philosophers committed to naturalistically plausible accounts of ethics have offered little hope of adjudicating such conflicts, leading some to embrace moral relativism. In my dissertation, I develop an empirically grounded response to moral relativism by turning away from debates over which action types are right and wrong and focusing instead on shared features of human emotional motivation. On my account, being motivated by ill-will is ethically bad (if it is), just because human …

A Psychoanalytic Exploration Into The Memory And Aesthetics Of Everyday Life: Photographs, Recollections, And Encounters With Loss, Dimitrios Mellos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The project at hand explores some of the psychological functions of photography as both an everyday and an artistic cultural practice from a psychoanalytic perspective. It is proposed that, contrary to commonsensical opinion, photographs are not accurate depositories of memory, but rather function as a functional equivalent of screen memories, thus channeling the subject's memory in ways that are objectively distorted and distorting, but psychologically meaningful and important; moreover, they are a special kind of screen memory in that they are often created pre-emptively and are physically instantiated.

Additionally, it is suggested that, by dint of their materiality, photographs achieve …

The Effect Of Malintent On Visual Attention, David Brian Wallace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Malintent is a relatively unexplored phenomenon, despite the practical and theoretical interest in its detection. The four studies presented here, informed by the Guilty Knowledge Test and Guided Search model of visual attention, illustrate how eye tracking can (and cannot) be utilized to detect malicious intent. Malintent, induced in two different mock crime paradigms (murder; theft), boosted the frequency and duration of fixations that fell upon objects relevant to their task. The size of the malintent effect ranged from moderate (fixation duration) to large (fixation frequency). The increased visual attention given to task-relevant objects was not unique to malintent; benign …

Exploring The Role Of Perceived Religiosity On Daily Life, Coping, And Parenting For Jewish Parents Of Children With Autism, Frances Rebecca Victory

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This two-part study (a) explores the multi-dimensional aspects of religious and psychosocial experience of Jewish mothers and fathers with and without a child with autism; and (b) uses a multi-method design to examine the influence of perceived religious beliefs, ritual practices, and community context on daily life, parenting, and coping processes for these parents. The first study included 20 fathers and 34 mothers of typically developing children. Participants were affiliated with Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox Judaism. They completed three online q-sorts and five open-ended questions. The three q-sorts focused on the perceptions of religious beliefs, ritual practices, and community …

Affective Language And Attitudes Toward Public Policy, Rachel A. Wolitzky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation project focused on affective and unconscious processes involved in the evaluation of public policy. It follows recent scholarship in political psychology showing how the response to political messages depends greatly on what values and emotions are evoked. Of particular focus has been the notable discrepancy between the conscious way people construe their political judgments and the unconscious operations that more truly account for their views and actions. Motivated by a neuroscientific and psychoanalytic model of the mind and brain that recognizes both the pre-eminence of unconscious (implicit) processing and the primacy of affect in mind (brain) activity, this …

Acts Of Belonging: Perceptions Of Citizenship Among Queer Turkish Women In Germany, Ilgin Yorukoglu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how people who have multiple identifications develop a sense of belonging. It focuses on those with politicized, romanticized, and stigmatized identifications which are assumed to be in conflict with one another. My particular case is that of "queer" women of Turkish descent in Germany with Berlin as my main study site.

These people embody what is considered to be an oxymoron: being queer yet also Turkish, being a lesbian yet having a Muslim background, being of immigrant origin yet also German. In short, they are between all worlds and thus, seemingly, do not belong anywhere. Their ambiguous …

Emotional Expression And Perception In Three Ethnic Groups: Is There An In-Group Advantage?, Ella Björt Teague

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The extent to which emotional recognition is universal or culturally determined has far-ranging implications for the success of cross-cultural communication. Although strong evidence supporting the universality of emotion recognition across differing cultures has accumulated, there is also mounting support for an in-group advantage (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002a), defined as the ease by which individuals recognize emotions displayed by members of their in-group group compared to out-group members. Due to mixed results from studies focusing on ethnic groups residing within the same country, the current study investigated the in-group advantage among Black American (BAm), Chinese American (CAm), and White American (WAm) …

The Effect Of Sleep-Dependent Consolidation On Pattern Separation And Pattern Completion In Delayed Retrieval, Jesse Ray James

Theses and Dissertations

While people sleep, the brain replays the same neural firings that resulted from waking activities that day. This results in greater memory strength following a sleeping delay than a waking delay. The current project built upon this fact in a series of three experiments. Experiment 1. Although previous research has demonstrated a benefit of sleep to memory strength, the literature has not established the impact of sleep on memory specificity. Computational models of medial temporal lobe function posit that discrimination and generalization across similar memories are accomplished through processes known as pattern separation and pattern completion, respectively. To discover whether …

Conformist Opinion Shift As An Accommodation-Motivated Cognitive Experience In Strong And Weak Situations, Angela K. Y. Leung, Evelyn Wing-Mun Au, Chi-Yue Chiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The authors introduce accommodation motivation as an individual difference construct that predicts personal preference to display conformist opinion shift, or the tendency to align opinion of the self with that of the group. The authors hypothesize that the relationship between accommodation motivation and conformist opinion shift will be stronger when the situational press for conformity is weak. Having clarified the conceptual meaning of accommodation motivation, the authors present evidence from two experiments that accommodation-motivated individuals readily display conformist opinion shift in anticipation of discussing with disagreeing others when conformity demand is weak (vs. strong). The second experiment offers initial support …

Mediating Factors Of Perceived Discrimination: Physiological And Affective Markers., Kymberlee O'Brien, Edward Tronick, Celia Moore

Kymberlee M. O'Brien

Early life adversity influences later health and may be mediated by psychosocial, affective, and physiological stress and immune factors. We report evidence from MIDUS biomarker project (N = 845, age 34-84, M = 55.09, SD = 11.70) confirming the predicted relationship between early adversity and frequency of diagnosed chronic illnesses (M = 2.8, SD =1.2). Specific psychosocial and physiological variables were tested as mediators. Lifetime (M = .95, SD = 1.5) and daily (M = 12.8, SD = 1.2) discrimination, urinary cortisol (M = 1.1, SD = 1.2 ug/dL), IL-6 (M =2.8, SD = 2.8 pg/mL) (all ps<.001), and …

Maritime Traffic Management: A Need For Central Coordination?, Fulko Van Westrenen, Gesa Praetorius

Gesa Praetorius

Traffic management is not formally organised in the maritime domain. Ships are autonomous and find their own way. Traffic is organised through rules, regulations, and “good seamanship”; it is a distributed system. In areas of high traffic-density support is proved by vessel traffic service (VTS) to promote traffic safety and fluency. VTS does not take control. This organisational structure has proven itself in situations with sufficient resources. When resources become insufficient (e.g. not enough sailing space), the traffic needs an organising mechanism. In this article, the authors argue that the most promising way to do this is by organising centralised …

Self-Talk As A Regulatory Mechanism: How You Do It Matters, Jiyoung Park

Jiyoung Park

Personality Heterogeneity In Ptsd: Distinct Temperamental And Interpersonal Typologies, Katherine M. Thomas, Christopher J. Hopwood, M. Brent Donnellan, Aidan G. C. Wright, Charles A. Sanislow, Meghan E. Mcdevitt-Murphy, Emily B. Ansell, Carlos M. Grilo, Thomas H. Mcglashan, M. Tracie Shea, John C. Markowitz, Andrew E. Skodol, Mary C. Zanarini, Leslie C. Morey

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

Researchers examining personality typologies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have consistently identified 3 groups: low pathology, internalizing, and externalizing. These groups have been found to predict functional severity and psychiatric comorbidity. In this study, we employed Latent Profile Analysis to compare this previously established typology, grounded in temperament traits (negative emotionality; positive emotionality; constraint), to a novel typology rooted in interpersonal traits (dominance; warmth) in a sample of individuals with PTSD (n = 155). Using Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality (SNAP) traits to create latent profiles, the 3-group temperament model was replicated. Using Interpersonal Circumplex (IPC) traits to create …

33. Disclosing Adult Wrongdoing: Maltreated And Non-Maltreated Children’S Expectations And Preferences., Lindsay C. Malloy, Jodi A. Quas, Thomas D. Lyon, Elizabeth C. Ahern

Thomas D. Lyon

How Attorneys Question Children About The Dynamics Of Sexual Abuse And Disclosure In Criminal Trials., Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Little is known about how the dynamics of sexual abuse and disclosure are discussed in criminal court. We examined how attorneys ask child witnesses in sexual abuse cases (N = 72, 6–16 years of age) about their prior conversations, both with suspects and with disclosure recipients. Prosecutors’ questions were more open-ended than defense attorneys, but most questions asked by either attorney were yes/no questions, and children tended to provide unelaborated responses. Prosecutors were more inclined to ask about children’s prior conversations with suspects than defense attorneys, but focused on the immediate abuse rather than on grooming behavior or attempts to …

Multiple Attachment Relationships: More Caregivers May Mean More Confidence To Behave Prosocially, Julie Carter, Jair Almaraz

Research on the Hill (Salt Lake City)

Most of the research on attachment relationships focuses on mothers as the primary attachment figure (Cherlin, 2013). As a society, we are seeing an increase of intergenerational caregiving for children. Mothers and Fathers are increasingly seeking their parents’ help to care for their children. Further, fathers are taking a larger role in the primary care for their children. As a result, ongoing questions about the quality of attachment relationships for multiple caregivers are beginning to rise to the top of our list of understanding attachment in general (Ireland and Pakenham, 2012). We approached 108 children coming from a variety of …

Overcoming Fear: The Effect Of Anxiolytic Medication Administration On Interval Timing Distracters, Chance Christensen

Research on the Hill (Salt Lake City)

Affective disorders such as depression, phobias, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder impair the ability to time in the seconds-to-minutes range, i.e., interval timing. According to the Relative Time-Sharing (RTS) model, presentation of task-irrelevant distracters during a timing task results in a delay in responding suggesting a failure to maintain subjective time in working memory, possibly due to attentional and working memory resources being diverted away from timing. Given that some anxiolytic medications have beneficial effects on attention and working memory, e.g., decreasing emotional response to negative events, we hypothesized that they would result in a decreased effect of distracters on …

Assessing The Knowledge Level Of Social Service Professionals On Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd): Creating Training Guides, Charles E. Lawrence, Ph.D., Geraldine L. Palmer Ph.D.

Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development

Objective: Creating training guides for social service workers to deliver more effective services for veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Background: Effective service delivery for veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome is often hampered by a lack of knowledge about how to identify the signs and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Appropriate training guides can provide integral benefits including: improved situational awareness, more accurate data gathered in the intake process, a reduction in veteran homelessness and prevention of chronic homelessness. Method: A pre-and post-test design was used to determine levels of knowledge guided by Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956). The study focused on …

Relationships Between Parenting Self-Efficacy And Distress In Parents With And Without Cancer, Julie Marie Cessna

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the relatively large number of parents with cancer, relatively little is known about the extent to which having cancer affects the parenting experience. Qualitative studies have identified issues and concerns that create distress among parents with cancer, but quantitative studies have yet to be conducted. Studies demonstrate that parents with cancer experience psychological distress, and that parenting self-efficacy is related to psychological distress among parents without cancer. However, no study to date has examined the relationships between parenting self-efficacy and psychological distress among parents with cancer. This study sought to address these gaps in the literature by comparing parents …

A Voice Is Worth A Thousand Words: The Implications Of The Micro-Coding Of Social Signals In Speech For Trust Research, Benjamin Waber, Michele Williams, John Carroll, Alex Pentland

Michele Williams

While self-report measures are often highly reliable for field research on trust (Mayer and Davis, 1999), subjects often cannot complete surveys during real time interactions. In contrast, the social signals that are embedded in the non-linguistic elements of conversations can be captured in real time and extracted with the assistance of computer coding. This chapter seeks to understand how computer-coded social signals are related to interpersonal trust.

The Virtual Research Lab: Research Outcomes Expectations, Lee Stadtlander, Martha Giles, Amy Sickel

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

This paper examines the complexities of working with student researchers in a virtual lab setting, logistics, and methods to resolve issues. To demonstrate the feasibility of a virtual lab, a mixed method study consisting of quantitative surveys and qualitative data, examined changes in doctoral students’ confidence as measured by research outcome expectations and changes in a self-assessment of research knowledge and skills test in a three quarter virtual psychology research lab. In the lab, 10 doctoral students conducted a faculty-designed project, analyzed data, and co-wrote a literature review. Findings indicate lab students’ research knowledge and research outcome expectations improved significantly …

A Kinder, Gentler Dopamine. . . Highlighting Dopamine's Role In Behavioral Flexibility, Jeff A. Beeler, Roshan Cools, Monica Luciana, Sean B. Ostlund, Giselle Petzinger

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

A Longitudinal Study Of The Bidirectional Relations Between Internalizing Symptoms And Peer Victimization In Urban Adolescents, Tess Drazdowski

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the bidirectional relations between anxious and depressive symptoms and two forms of peer victimization (i.e., overt and relational) within a sample of 358 predominantly African-American adolescents living in low-income urban areas across four years. Longitudinal path analyses tested progressively complex models for each type of victimization. For both overt and relational victimization the autoregressive model where only previous levels of each construct predicted future levels of the construct was the most parsimonious explanation. The best fitting model for both types of peer victimization suggested that internalizing symptoms helped to further explain future …

Executive Dysfunction: A Contributor To Subtypes Of Violence Or General Criminality?, Megan B. Hancock

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Purpose: The adverse consequences of violence on society are tremendous. Several factors have been identified as potential contributors to violent crime, including deficits in executive functioning. Executive functioning is a term used to a describe number of higher-order cognitive abilities (e.g., working memory, inhibition) that are thought to be essential for appropriate, socially desirable behavior. The extent to which executive functions influence the occurrence of general criminality versus specific subtypes of crime is largely unknown. Of particular interest is the ability of executive functioning to distinguish between reactive and instrumental subtypes of violence. Whereas reactive violence is committed with the …

Is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy An Effective Treatment For Autism? A Review, Daniel Dunleavy, Bruce A. Thyer

Journal of Adolescent and Family Health

Objectives: We review outcome studies regarding the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Method: Studies were identified through electronic bibliographic databases and manual searches of article reference lists. Results: A total of 8 studies met eligibility criteria, consisting of three randomized controlled trials (RCTs), one quasi-experimental study involving a comparison group, two pre-experimental one-group pretest–posttest studies, and two single-system designs. Studies reviewed did not offer credible evidence to suggest that HBOT is an effective treatment for autism. Conclusion: It is premature to call HBOT an effective treatment for Autism and ASD. Individuals clinically treated with …

Neighborhood Danger, Parental Monitoring, Harsh Parenting, And Child Aggression In Nine Countries, Ann T. Skinner, Dario Bacchini, Jennifer E. Lansford, Jennifer Godwin, Emma Sorbring, Sombat Tapanya, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Arnaldo Zelli, Liane Peña Alampay, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Anna Silvia Bombi, Marc H. Bornstein, Lei Chang, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Laura Di Giunta, Kenneth A. Dodge, Patrick S. Malone, Maria Concetta Miranda, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

Exposure to neighborhood danger during childhood has negative effects that permeate multiple dimensions of childhood. The current study examined whether mothers’, fathers’, and children’s perceptions of neighborhood danger are related to child aggression, whether parental monitoring moderates this relation, and whether harsh parenting mediates this relation. Interviews were conducted with a sample of 1293 children (age M = 10.68, SD = 0.66; 51% girls) and their mothers (n = 1282) and fathers (n = 1075) in nine countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States). Perceptions of greater neighborhood danger were associated with more …

Investigating The Early Stages Of Person Perception: The Asymmetry Of Social Categorization By Sex Vs. Age, Jasmin Cloutier, Jonathan B. Freeman, Nalini Ambady

Dartmouth Scholarship

The wealth of information provided by facial cues presents challenges to our understanding of these early stages of person perception. The current study aimed to uncover the dynamics of processing multiply categorizable faces, notably as a function of their gender and age. Using a modified four-choice version of a mouse-tracking paradigm (which assesses the relative dominance of two categorical dimensions), the relative influence that sex and age have on each other during categorization of infant, younger adult, and older adult faces was investigated. Results of these experiments demonstrate that when sex and age dimensions are simultaneously categorized, only for infant …

The Perfectionism-Psychological Outcome Link: The Mediating Effect Of Personal Resiliency, Martin M. Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Perfectionism is a multidimensional personality trait encompassing two higher-order dimensions: perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. People high in perfectionistic strivings rigidly and ceaselessly demand perfection of the self and hold unrealistically high personal standards. People high in perfectionistic concerns have overly negative reactions to perceived failures, nagging self-doubts, and excessive concerns over other’s expectations. Research suggests perfectionistic strivings are predominantly associated with positive psychological outcomes, whereas perfectionistic concerns are predominantly associated with negative psychological outcomes. Theory suggests differences in personal resiliency may account for the divergent psychological outcomes associated with perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. However, this contention has yet …

Mental Health Risk Factors Associated With Childhood Language Brokering, Robert Morrison

Robert Morrison

'I Like You Both The Same, But For Different Reasons': Differences Between Communication Mediums Related To Self-Disclosure, Responsiveness, And Self-Awareness, Kevin Joseph Wallpe

Theses and Dissertations

As computer-mediated communication (CMC) increasingly becomes a part of people's everyday lives (Mesch & Talmud, 2006), it becomes important to understand what differentiates this mode of communication from traditional face-to-face (FtF) communication. Some studies have shown that CMC interactions are related to greater liking (relative to FtF) of previously unacquainted interaction partners (McKenna, Green, & Gleason, 2002; Ramirez & Zhang, 2007), whereas others have concluded just the opposite -- that FtF interactions are related to more liking of previously unacquainted interaction partners (Mallen, Day, & Green, 2003; Okdie, Guadagno, Bernieri, Geers, & Mclarney-Vesotski, 2011). What leads to the inconsistent findings …