Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Humor On Energy, Tension, Task Choices, And Attributions: Exploring Hypotheses From Toughness Theory, Richard A. Dienstbier

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Hypotheses derived from toughness theory suggest that nonaggressive humor should lead to increased feelings of energy without influencing tension, to preferences for studying materials that require more effort and energy, and to ratings of mundane laboratory activities as more challenging but not more threatening. Eighty-one college-age men and women were randomly assigned to watch a 12-minute video of Bill Cosby's humor or to watch a nonhumorous control video that analyzed the Cosby comedy routine. The humor condition resulted in significant increases in feelings of energy but not in feelings of tension. The other hypotheses were also confirmed except that performance …

Changing Relationships Between Self-Help Groups And Mental Health Professionals: Shifting Ideology And Power, Vic Constantino, Geoffrey Nelson

Psychology Faculty Publications

Using qualitative methods, we studied current and desired relationships between members of mental health consumer/survivor and family self-help groups and mental health professionals. Two major themes, professional ideology and practices of power and control, captured both the positive and negative aspects of the relationships the participants had experienced. To move toward more desired relationships, participants suggested education and ongoing interaction between self-helpers and professionals are needed to change professional ideology and practices, while consumer/survivor and family participation and involvement in decision making are required to reduce the power imbalance between self-helpers and professionals. We discuss the implications of the findings …

Brief Therapy: Theory And Practice, Maurice W. Carroll

Graduate Theses

The psychotherapeutic environment is changing. Pressure from outside the profession is motivating changes that are resulting in cost cutting and cost containment. Health management organizations and preferred provider organizations are beginning to control third party payment to mental health providers. This is counselling the profession to reevaluate and remodel how it performs therapy as numbers of sessions become more limited. Therapy is changing from a long lasting relationship with a therapist, in which personality transformation is sought for the client, to forms of brief therapy in which only problems and solutions, arising from the immediate issues, are focused on. This …

Pathways Through Adolescence: An Overview, Lisa J. Crockett, Ann C. Crouter

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Given the connection between adolescent behavior and future well-being, it is important to understand the choices that adolescents make and how patterns of behavior evolve and are maintained during this period. The premise of this volume is that we can describe the behavior patterns young people develop in adolescence, and piece together the decisions that shape their paths through adolescence and into adulthood. Moreover, we can begin to identify the dynamic processes that affect adolescents7 life choices, the emergence of behavior patterns, and the development of lifestyles. This volume seeks to address three questions. How can developmental pathways in adolescence …

"Preface" To Pathways Through Adolescence: Individual Development In Relation To Social Contexts, Lisa J. Crockett, Ann C. Crouter

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The choices that adolescents make about peer relations, risky behavior, investment in school, and income-producing activities set the stage for subsequent development in later adolescence and into adulthood. Moreover, at the aggregate level, these choices have tremendous implications for the quality of life in such key social contexts as families, schools, neighborhoods, and communities. Thus, the pathways that young people follow through adolescence and beyond affect us all. Adolescents' choices, however, are not made in a vacuum; these social contexts provide opportunities--or obstacles--that influence the probability that adolescents will choose certain pathways and not others. Therefore, understanding these critical choices, …

Developmental Paths In Adolescence: Commentary, Lisa J. Crockett

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Much remains to be done to illuminate the processes shaping adolescents' developmental paths. Influences affecting adolescents' day-to-day behavior, as well as their decisions at specific turning points, need to be elucidated. The reciprocal influences operating between adolescent and environment, and the fact that selection processes (both passive and active) are likely to increase the correlation between individual and environmental characteristics, further complicate the task of disentangling causal processes. Furthermore, understanding adolescents' developmental pathways requires more than identifying the dynamic processes in operation at key turning points and in the settings the person enters subsequently. It requires examining the chain of …

Program Evaluation: A Look At A Case Management Program Of Big Spring State Hospital Community Services, Sharon Root Treadway

Graduate Theses

Case management services are an expanding program in the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation (TXMHMR) system's treatment for chronically mentally ill individuals (CMI). CMI’s are individuals who are unable to maintain a stable adjustment to community life because of persistent and serious emotional disabilities. Previous research findings as to the effectiveness of this type of service in other programs have been mixed, and because of differences in program guidelines are not directly applicable to the TXMHMR program. The hypotheses of this study, which was a program evaluation of one specific program of case management, were two-fold; one, …

Learning Lessons From Sunk Costs, Brian H. Bornstein, Gretchin B. Chapman

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Study participants rated the quality of several arguments for continuing an original plan in sunk cost situations in order to (a) avoid wasting resources, (b) learn to make better decisions, (c) punish poor decision making, and (d) appear consistent. The lesson-learning argument was perceived as most appropriate when adult teachers taught lessons to others, the original decision was carelessly made, or if it consumed comparatively more resources. Ratings of the lesson-learning argument were higher for teacher-learner than for adult-alone situations, regardless of whether the learner was a child or an adult. The implications for improving decision making and judging whether …

The Relationship Among The Contributing Factors To Anorexia Nervosa, Stephanie S. Plunkett, David Stein

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Anorexia nervosa is now being viewed as a multidimensional disorder in terms of predisposing factors such as genetics, biology, and environment. Results from twin studies suggest that part of a susceptibility to AN may lie in genetic factors (Holland et al., 1984, 1988; Treasure and Holland, 1991). However, the nature of a genetic contribution, if any, remains unclear. Neurochemical alterations have been found to be associated with AN, but it is difficult to assess what role these neurochemical changes play in the etiology of the disorder since they may precipitate, accompany, or follow weight loss (Fava et al., 1989). Abnormal …

Partnerships Between Community Residents And Professionals: Issues Of Power And Social Class Across The Lifespan Of Neighbourhood Organizations, Barbara Derksen, Geoffrey Nelson

Psychology Faculty Publications

We described a qualitative sutdy of four neighbourhood centres jointly created by a sponsoring agency and community members to prevent problems in the lives of chidlren and adults in these neighbourhoods. Individual and focus group interviews with staff, community members, and other agency workers were used to develop an understanding of issues involved at various stages across the lifespan of these settings. Two tensions noted in this process were between community members and professionals from the sponsoring organization and between lower-class and middle-class community members. We discuss the implications of these findigns for practice in community development.

The Relationship Between Homophobia, Peer Counseling Effectiveness, And Peer Counseling Self-Confidence, Marc T. Kiviniemi

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The relationships between a peer counselor's level of homophobia, their self-perceptions of counseling ability, and their effectiveness as a peer counselor were examined. Resident Assistants (RA's, N=27) completed the Index of Homophobia (Hudson & Ricketts, 1980) and the Peer Counseling Comfort Scale. Resident students (N=159) evaluated their RA's performance and ability as a peer counselor. Results from the three surveys were correlated. A significant correlation was found between Homophobia scores and self-perceptions of ability. Implications for counseling practice and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Memory Processes In Elderly Eyewitnesses: What We Know And What We Don’T Know, Brian H. Bornstein

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Research is reviewed on the memory abilities of elderly eyewitnesses. Two major issues are addressed: First, how credible are elderly witnesses? Second, how accurate are they? Despite negative stereotypes regarding elderly eyewitnesses, they do not necessarily lack credibility at trial. In terms of their memory performance, older witnesses are as accurate as young adults in many respects, but they are particularly vulnerable to misleading information that is presented after the witnessed event. Furthermore, their performance varies depending on the type of information that is sought and the manner in which their memory is assessed. Recommendations are made for improving the …

A Comparison Of Item And Source Forgetting, Brian H. Bornstein, Denny C. Lecompte

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The purpose of the present research was to compare memory for an item with memory for the item’s source. Experiment 1 investigated discrimination between two external sources: each item in a list of words was spoken in either a male or a female voice. Subjects received a test of item recognition and a test of source monitoring at each of four delay intervals (immediate, 30 min, 48 h, 1 week). In contrast with previous research, no evidence of differential forgetting rates for item and source information was found. With delay intervals of 0 and 48 h, Experiment 2 replicated Experiment …

Dangerous Decisions: An Essay On The Mathematics Of Clinical Violence Prediction And Involuntary Hospitalization, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article has two major purposes. First, it provides a mathematical
description of an ideal procedure for making clinical decisions about patients'
future violence, a description that provides a context for evaluating clinicians'
"dangerousness decisions." For purposes of illustration, the Article uses a specific clinical situation-deciding whether to hospitaize involuntarily a patient
based on his risk of harming another. The Article argues that the decision
involves balancing potential risks to third parties (often the patient's family
members) with the "massive deprivation of liberty and other potential
harms to the patient that could result from confinement. The mathematical
description of the …

Morphine Taste Conditioning And Analgesia: Assessing Conditioned And Novelty-Induced Analgesia, Rick A. Bevins, Joanne M. Valone, Melinda C. Bradley, Michael T. Bardo

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

In previous work showing a taste-elicited decrease in pain sensitivity (J. S. Miller, K. S. Kelly, J. L. Neisewander, D. F. Mc- Coy, & M. T. Bardo, 1990), the rats (Rattus norvegicus) were always habituated to an inactive hot plate after each drug injection. The present report examined whether the analgesic response was a conditioned response to the taste or a response to the novelty of the hot plate resulting from morphine disrupting the habituation process. In 3 experiments, it was found that hot plate novelty was mainly responsible for the analgesic response. For example, increasing the number …

How The Rat Turned White, Kenneth J. Shapiro

Experimentation Collection

This is the first in a three-part series on the use of animals in psychological research. In it, I describe how animals got into laboratories in the first place, and their purpose and life there. In the second, I will describe animal model research, the strategy whereby psychologists' develop nonhuman animal models to study human psychopathology. In the concluding piece, I will present a critique of this enterprise, using original data I gathered. The three articles are based on a forthcoming book, Animal Models of Human Psychology: Science, Ethics, and Policy.

Sex And Temperament In Modern Society: A Darwinian View Of The “Glass Ceiling” And The “Gender Gap” In Compensation, Kingsley R. Browne

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Methodological Issues In Occupational-Stress Research: Research In One Occupational Group And Its Wider Applications, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Jaesoon Rhee, Fang Xia

Publications and Research

The chapter addresses a number of important methodologic issues that are relevant to occupational-stress researchers. The issues addressed have arisen in the context of an ongoing research program involving cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of stress in teachers; the issues, however, apply to occupational research in general. The first issue involves measurement strategies required in operationalizing the stress process. The focal concern is the reduction of confounding in measures of the work environment. The second issue encompasses the question of whether to sample new or veteran workers. The third issue applies to types of job stressors. The chapter describes a …

Double Relative Deprivation: Combining The Personal And Political, Mindi D. Foster, Kimberley Matheson

Psychology Faculty Publications

Double relative deprivation, which has been virtually ignored in research on relative deprivation, was expected to predict women's collective action over and above egoistic and collective deprivation. The role of socio-political resources in perceiving deprivation and participation in action was also investigated. Female students (N=164) completed a questionnaire designed to assess their perceptions of egoistic, collective, double relative deprivation (defined as the interaction between egoistic and collective deprivation), resource availability and participation in collective action. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that double relative deprivation predicted collective action over and above egoistic and collective relative deprivation, and that resource availability also uniquely …

Visual Distinctiveness Can Enhance Recency Effects, Brian H. Bornstein, Craig B. Neely, Denny C. Lecompte

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Experimental efforts to meliorate the modality effect have included attempts to make the visual stimulus more distinctive. McDowd and Madigan (1991) failed to find an enhanced recency effect in serial recall when the last item was made more distinct in terms of its color. In an attempt to extend this finding, three experiments were conducted in which visual distinctiveness was manipulated in a different manner, by combining the dimensions of physical size and coloration (i.e., whether the stimuli were solid or outlined in relief). Contrary to previous findings, recency was enhanced when the size and coloration of the last item …

Legal Emotion: The Women's Story In Totem And Taboo, Arthur J. Jacobson

Cardozo Law Review

My aim is to uncover the unconscious emotions characteristically associated with some basic legal institutions. These emotions are ones we invariably have when we follow or enforce rules, fulfill duties, and claim or exercise rights. We know the conscious emotions that we experience-the cruelty of rules and our fear of them, the hopes in rights, security of duties, and so forth. Yet not all the emotions that we encounter in basic legal institutions are conscious. We experience unconscious emotions as well.

Rethinking The Beyond Of The Real, Drucilla Cornell

Cardozo Law Review

It is commonplace to note that Sigmund Freud "discovered" another reality. This reality is the reality of the psychic life. The meaning of its unconscious underpinnings surfaces in the other world of dreams and in the slips of the tongue that indicate a beyond to the day-to-day life given to us by conventions of our form of life. Certainly, Freud always returns us to the Jenseits, the other side, the beyond of the unconscious, which leaves its traces and marks on so-called "real objects," but which, on the other hand, can never be simplistically identified with them. An obvious …

Lacanian Ethics And The Desire For Law, David S. Caudill

Cardozo Law Review

American Critical Legal Studies has its own antinomies, its own indeterminacies, such that it is difficult to talk as though it is a unified position or movement, or even a single methodology or strategy. Generally, however, those who are suspicious of Critical Legal Studies have, from the beginning, aSked how the critical theorist explains his or her own ideology, and the answer is often that ideology is inescapable. Thus the critical project is about disclosure of ideology, not about the claim to know the truth outside ideology.

Psychological Types And Temperaments: A Correlational Study Using The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator And The Temperament Inventory, Ronda F. Daugherty

Master's Theses

Problem

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a significant relationship between the construct of psychological types, as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and temperaments, as measured by the Temperament Inventory (TI).

Method

A non-random sample of 113 individuals completed a demographic questionnaire, the MBTI, and the TI. The results of each preference score of the MBTI and the scores on each of the four temperaments from the TI were compared using a canonical correlation analysis.

Results

There is a significant relationship between the MBTI's psychological types and the TI's temperaments. A preference for …

Determining The Role Of Psychological Bonding In New York Foster Care Law, Brian L. Greben

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Aggression, Unconscious Conflict, And The Role Of The Lawyer, Jean Roiphe

Cardozo Law Review

Why does an individual need a lawyer? What use is she to her client? Well, we answer, because the lawyer is an expert. She has a superior understanding of a highly technical field. And, of course, this is usually true. But that is not all. The client needs the lawyer not merely for her legal expertise, but for the management of his aggression. The lawyer offers not just legal defense, but defense against the fury of the drives, on the one hand, and the fury of the superego, on the other. The lawyer operates for the client as an …

Life At A Rural Psychiatric Hostel : The Experience Of A Group Of Male Residents, Rosalie R. Van Aken

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The study reported in this thesis describes and analyses the experience of 15 men with long term mental illness, living and/or working at a rural farm and hostel complex. The research was set in the context of recent studies and literature focussing on the transfer of care of people with mental illness from large psychiatric hospitals to community based care and the consequent quality of life issues. A phenomenological approach was chosen as the most appropriate for the study, in order to understand the meaning of the residents' experience. Data was obtained from three sources: in-depth interviews with 2 key …

An Analysis Of Social Cognition And Health Insurance Cost-Benefit Analysis, S. Christian Wheeler

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

There are many types of social cognition which may affect one's health insurance cost-benefit analysis. Similarly, many situational variables could influence the desirability of condition inclusion. The present study examines the effect of cost and condition type (physical or psychological) upon health insurance decision-making. In addition, the effects of Perceived Health Competence, Health Locus of Control, Belief in a Just World, and religious orientation on willingness to insure are examined. Results indicate that, of these variables, the biggest predictor of insurance desirability is the PHLC, or belief in ''powerful others" in determining one's health state. In addition, the type of …

The Relationships Among Competitiveness, Age And Ability In Distance Runners, Robert C. Eklund, Jeffrey J. Martin, Alan L. Smith

Kinesiology, Health and Sport Studies

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships suggested by general achievement motivation literature and the popular literature in sport using the Sport Orientation Questionnaire (SOQ). The current study examined if faster runners are more competitive than slower runners, if older athletes were less competitive than younger athletes, and if faster runners were more goal oriented than slower runners. Distance runners (n=80), ranging from 10 to 61 years old completed race packets containing a cover letter, consent forms, the SOQ and a demographic questionnaire. Runners averaged 32.9 years of age and reported levels of competitiveness and goal …

The Impact Of Social Support On Long Term Adult Psychological Functioning: Study Of The Role Of A Confidant In Adult Survivors Of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Danny Ray Russell

Graduate Theses

This project examined the effects a confidant had on adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. The subjects were volunteer adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse solicited from undergraduate and graduate psychology classes at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. Volunteers completed a childhood sexual abuse questionnaire, a confidant questionnaire, the Jaloweic Coping Scale and the Brief Symptom Inventory in a structured interview. The Jaloweic Coping Scale determined the coping styles and the Brief Symptom Inventory determined the symptom level. Those subjects that had a confidant were expected to have more successful coping styles and fewer symptoms as adults. …