Other Psychology Commons^™

The Profiler's Story, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Courtesy of commercial television, we better be good. Or else the profilers will get us. It turns out that applied science and its sidekicks intuition and psychism (what psychics do) have our number. One step out of line and our number will be called, and we’ll be served our due comeuppance and just desserts. But is profiling more dessert or desert—or upon close inspection fated to desert us as a valuable tool in deterring or identifying perpetrators of egregious misbehavior? This article describes some implicit assumptions—as contradictory and interdependent as some may be—on which profiling often rests. For these purposes, …

Humility: Development And Analysis Of A Scale, Jeffrey Charles Elliott

Doctoral Dissertations

Humility is widely accepted as a character strength or virtue, yet very little research has been done as to its development or benefits, partly due to the lack of a reliable and valid explicit measure or scale. Since to date no such scale has been published, the current study investigates the importance and nature of humility and develops a measure to be analyzed as to its reliability and validity. Potential scale items were derived from participants’ recollection of humbling experiences and Tangney’s (2000) definition of humility. Principal Components Analysis revealed four humility subscales: openness, self-forgetfulness, accurate self-assessment, and focus on …

Heterosexism And Homonegativism In Sport: A Phenomenological Investigation Of Lesbian Athletes, Marie Elizabeth Shaw

Doctoral Dissertations

A female athlete who identifies as lesbian possesses multiple identities that exist within a heterosexist and homonegative climate. The primary objective of this research was to provide a voice to a marginalized group by describing and to understand the experiences of athletes who identify as lesbian. Phenomenological interviews were conducted with 11 women who identified as athletes and lesbian. An overall thematic structure containing a ground and three figural themes, supported by participant quotations, was developed to represent the lesbian athletes’ experiences. The ground was my own process. The three figural themes that emerged were support, homophobia, and emotions. Further …

Confident Parenting - A Book Proposal, Lisa Sansom

Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) Capstone Projects

Parental self-efficacy is a driver of positive parenting, especially as couples welcome a new baby into their lives, becoming parents for the first time. Confident Parenting is the title of an upcoming book that will aid the transition from couplehood to parenthood, allowing couples to parent effectively and with love, while maintaining their own self-care and relationship-care.

Other books may follow in the series, adapting to different stages of family life.

Differentiating Classes From Dimensions Under Unfavorable Data Conditions: Monte Carlo Comparisons Of Taxometric And Latent Variable Mixture Models, Anthony Olufemi Ahmed

Dissertations

Taxometric and latent variable mixture models can aid in (1) determining whether the source of population heterogeneity, a latent variable, θ, is best explain by a dimensional (one-class) or taxonic (two-class) model and (2) distinguishing between constructs continuously distributed and those that are Bernoulli distributed at the latent level. Although these models have gained widespread use in psychology research, few have been systematically evaluated to determine the robustness of their results when statistical assumptions are violated (e.g., severe skew, unequal mixing proportions, etc.). The current study examined the performance of Meehl’s taxometric procedures and two latent variable mixture models: a …

Total Fitness, Mark A. Tolmachoff

Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) Capstone Projects

Total Fitness is a course of instruction designed to provide participants with evidence-based approaches and tools for improving well-being in each of five domains of health: emotional, social, family, physical, and spiritual. It is based heavily on positive psychology concepts, research, and empirically supported interventions. The twelve two-hour lessons focus on building positive attributes and psychological resources, such as character strengths, self-awareness, self-regulation, optimism, mental agility, and strong social connections. Each lesson provides practical skills or activities participants can use in their daily lives. They are accompanied with enough theory and scientific background to establish credibility and evidence that the …

Counterterrorism Intelligence Analysis: Language As Threat, Vulnerability, And Risk, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the role of language in describing possible membership in or connection to al Qaeda.

A Combined Fmri And Dti Examination Of Functional Language Lateralization And Arcuate Fasciculus Structure: Effects Of Degree Versus Direction Of Hand Preference Author Links Open Overlay Panel, Ruth E. Propper, Lauren J. O'Donnell, Stephen Whalen, Yanmei Tie, Isaiah Norton, Ralph O. Suarez, Lilla Zollei, Alireza Radmanesh, Alexandra Golby

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The present study examined the relationship between hand preference degree and direction, functional language lateralization in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, and structural measures of the arcuate fasciculus. Results revealed an effect of degree of hand preference on arcuate fasciculus structure, such that consistently-handed individuals, regardless of the direction of hand preference, demonstrated the most asymmetric arcuate fasciculus, with larger left versus right arcuate, as measured by DTI. Functional language lateralization in Wernicke’s area, measured via fMRI, was related to arcuate fasciculus volume in consistent-left-handers only, and only in people who were not right hemisphere lateralized for language; given the …

The Political Personality Of U.S. President Barack Obama, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of U.S. president Barack Obama, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Information concerning Obama was collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with Axis II of DSM–IV.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the basis of interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of Personality Styles manuals. Obama’s primary personality patterns were found to be Ambitious/confident …

Optimism And Pessimism In Children With Cancer And Healthy Children: Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of The Youth Life Orientation Test And Relations With Health-Related Quality Of Life, Natalie A. Williams, Genevieve Davis, Miriam Hancock, Sean Phipps

Faculty Publications, Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies

Objective To test the measurement equivalence of the Youth Life Orientation Test (YLOT) in children with cancer (N = 199) and healthy controls (N = 108), and to examine optimism and pessimism as predictors of children's health-related quality of life (HRQL).

Methods Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to establish the two factor structure of the YLOT and to test for metric invariance.

Results A two-factor structure for the YLOT was confirmed and found to be stable across our study groups. There were no differences in mean levels of optimism and pessimism between cancer patients and controls after controlling for …

Mother Earth "Speaks": Change Yourself, Change The World, Use The Archetypal Energy "Harmony" As A Guide, Carroy U. Ferguson

Carroy U "Cuf" Ferguson, Ph.D.

In relation to the Cosmos, we all, as human beings, live on this tiny planet we call Earth, a planet that supports and sustains life, as we know it. There are many different kinds of people, plants, and animals functioning in harmony with soil, air, and water--all linked to one another in a complex web of life to form one Earth community. Unfortunately, we often take this miracle and ecosystem of life for granted. When, however, we take the ecosystem of life too much for granted, Mother Earth "speaks," reflecting imbalances and dis-harmonies. When Mother Earth "speaks," her message is …

Stanley Mcchrystal, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Jérôme Kerviel: Are We All Ciphers?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article examines the fall of United States (US) Army General Stanley McChrystal, and the concepts of the self and identity.

An Update On Suicide Terrorism, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author considers the potential moral and ethical merits of suicide and suicide terrorism from a historical and philosophical perspective.

Psychologists Gone Wild: The Politics Of Scientific Psychology, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

With power on the line in science, one should expect controversy beyond the substantive. In scientific psychology—whether discovering human nature or discovering what can be said about it—the search for the what of human nature becomes a mask for human nature.

Sea Cruise: Israelis And Palestinians Drowning In Water Sport, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The article discusses differing Israeli and Palestinian narratives in regards to the deaths of 9 people during an Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Spot Off: The Gao Takes On The Tsa’S Behavior Detection Program, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recently Issued Efforts to Validate TSA’s Passenger Screening Behavior Detection Program Underway, but Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Validation and Address Operational Problems (May 2010, GAO-10-763). This IBPP article will describe and comment on the main GAO findings and additional data on which the findings are based. The article will end with some basic challenges to behavior detection as a useful security measure.

Are We All On The M Squad? Murdering Schoolchildren In China, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the phenomena of violent attacks against schoolchildren in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and its relevance to political psychologists.

Messages In The Medium: The Relationships Among Black Media Images, Racial Identity, Body Image, And The Racial Socialization Of Black Youth, Valerie N. Adams

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Despite modest research relating racism and media (Tynes & Ward, 2009; Ward, 2004), how Black youth interpret negative stereotype images of Black people promulgated in the media has not adequately been explored. This dissertation study examines the relationships among exposure to Black media images, racial identity, racial socialization, body image and self-esteem for 14- to 21-year-old Black youth.

Focus groups were administered to learn about how Black youth interpret Black media images and whether they could identify negative stereotype messages. Next, survey data was collected to pilot the Black Media Messages Questionnaire and to examine the relationships among Black media …

The Word On Terrorism Threat As Terrorism Threat, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses terrorism (and terms associated with it), considering the social rhetoric surrounding the terms as well as other potential meanings. The constraints of the words used to define these terms of terror are considered.

Under The Volcano: Emergency Management And The Eyjafjallajokull Eruptions, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull eruptions that began on April 14^th, 2010 have exemplified challenges for transportation in a world of globalization, and ever-present need for preparation for emergencies.