Digital Commons Network^™

Behind The Curtain: Fetishism And The Production Of Virtual Reality Treatment For Ptsd, Janice Haaken, Mariel Stadick

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan, a virtual reality (VR) exposure therapy designed for the treatment of combat-related PTSD, has generated wide public interest in the wake of growing concerns over mental health problems among service members. Enlisting concepts from the fields of cultural studies and psychoanalytic film criticism, the paper interprets the VR therapy program as a form of technology fetishism within the expanding apparatus of military mental health operations. Even as the program seeks to expose the “invisible wounds of war,” the stories produced through this use of visual culture conform closely to hegemonic military accounts of the psychological effects of combat.

Correlates Of The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Form (Mmpi-2-Rf) Scores For Asian Indian College Students, Saloni Taneja

Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to investigate empirical correlates of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) for Asian Indian college students using the NEO Five Factor Inventory-3, College Maladjustment Scales and Measures of Psychosocial Development. The study utilized an Asian Indian college student sample (N=48) from a private university in Florida. Pearson Product Moment correlations were computed to establish correlates of the MMPI-2-RF scale scores. Overall, a large number of significant correlates with large effect sizes were found across the three measures. Some correlates found in the study provided an expansion for the interpretation of the MMPI-2-RF scales for Asian …

Dreams, Aspirations And Related Constructs In Children And Adolescents: A Literature Review, Daniel T. L. Shek, Florence K. Y. Wu, Hildie Leung

Pediatrics Faculty Publications

Although children and adolescents are often asked about their “dreams” about life, scientific studies of “dreams” and related constructs are grossly inadequate. This paper describes the findings arising from a review study exploring the concepts of dreams, aspirations and related constructs in children and adolescents. Besides an overview of the concept of dream, conceptual features and unique underpinnings of other concepts commonly related to dream, such as “aspirations”, “hope”, “future orientation” and “resilience” are presented in this paper. The research questions surrounding “dream” and related constructs in children and adolescents are presented and future research directions are discussed.

Hope, Aspirations, And Resilience In Children And Adolescents: A Review Of Research On Measurement And Related Antecedents, Hildie Leung, Florence K. Y. Wu, Daniel T. L. Shek

Pediatrics Faculty Publications

Hope, aspirations, and resilience are important developmental assets for children and adolescents. Based on the existing Western and Chinese literature, this review aims to identify instruments used to assess hope, aspirations, resilience, and conceptually related constructs as well as antecedents of the constructs in adolescents. A systematic literature search in the major databases was conducted. A total of 223 articles, with 144 being retrieved from international databases and 79 from China’s database, met the criteria and were included in the present review. Findings revealed that the majority of the existing scales were developed predominantly in the West and there were …

Stress Coping Strategies In Indian Military Pilots-Preliminary Observations, Catherine Joseph

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

ABSTRACT

In aviators, stress coping has been linked to flying performance and has a bearing on flight safety and mission effectiveness. The objective of this research was to study coping strategies utilized by Indian military pilots. A sample of 160 military pilots was asked to complete a demographic data sheet and the Stress Coping Checklist. Preliminary findings suggest that, Indian pilots use flexible problem and emotion focussed coping strategies. This issue needs to be taken into account in both occupational and clinical realms of future research investigations on aviators.

Understanding Teamwork In The Provision Of Cancer Care: Highlighting The Role Of Trust, Elizabeth H. Lazzara, Joseph R. Keebler, Soosi Day, Deborah Diazgranados, Minggui Pan, Michael A. King, Shin-Ping Tu

Publications

Team science research has indicated that trust is a critical variable of teamwork, contributing greatly to a team’s performance. Trust has long been examined in health care with research focusing on the development of trust by patients with their health care practitioners. Studies have indicated that trust is linked to patient satisfaction, adherence to treatment, continuity of care, and improved outcomes. We explore the construct of trust using a case example of a patient who received a surgical procedure for a precancerous polyp. We apply the principle of trust to the case as well as present the literature on trust …

The Extent Of Implicit Bias In Gifted Students: Utilization Of The Iat To Inform Diversity Education, Adrienne Coleman, Kyle Thomas '15

Publications & Research

The National Association for Gifted Children position statement on “Identifying and Serving Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Gifted Students” suggests that educators need to change their view of CLD students from a “deficit to a strength perspective”. In addition, it states that “schools should create support programs to help gifted students from diverse backgrounds develop strong academic identities, learn coping strategies for dealing with negative peer pressure and discriminatory practices, and gain resiliency for responding to challenging life circumstances”. One approach to support and retain CLD students that can be utilized by both educators and gifted students is understanding one’s …

Out Of Place? Gender Relations In A College Fitness Center, Jeanne Marecek, J. Salvatore

Psychology Faculty Works

We turn attention to ordinary gym users and everyday social relations in athletic facilities. Our study concerned college students in the US and their experiences in the university’s fitness center. Using a critical incident procedure, we gathered brief accounts of “uncomfortable” experiences in day-to-day workout sessions. Drawing on the theories of Bruner, Ochs, Labove, and Bamberg, we analyzed how these accounts drew upon and reaffirmed normative gender orders. One prominent theme was that men—especially those on sports teams—pre-empted both physical spaces and certain pieces of equipment. Another common theme concerned men’s overt scrutiny of and judgments about women’s bodies, whether …

Human Creativity As A Vehicle For Societal Change: Can Social Action Through Art And Music Drive Positive Societal Change In Jordan?, Marina Qutab

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This case study addresses a gap in the research on society and culture as it examines the relationship between social action through human creativity and positive societal change in Jordan. This relationship was studied through the following methods: six formal interviews with three Musicians, one Artist, one Organizational Behavior and Work Psychologist, and one Cognition and Didactics Researcher; one informal interview with a Jordanian taxi driver; and 30 oral surveys provided to students at The University of Jordan. The researcher’s main goal was to investigate how human creativity expressed through music and the arts can address current pressing environmental and …

Examining Relationships Between Basic Emotion Perception And Musical Training In The Prosodic, Facial, And Lexical Channels Of Communication And In Music, Jamie Twaite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research has suggested that intensive musical training may result in transfer effects from musical to non-musical domains. There is considerable research on perceptual and cognitive transfer effects associated with music, but, comparatively, fewer studies examined relationships between musical training and emotion processing. Preliminary findings, though equivocal, suggested that musical training is associated with enhanced perception of emotional prosody, consistent with a growing body of research demonstrating relationships between music and speech. In addition, few studies directly examined the relationship between musical training and the perception of emotions expressed in music, and no studies directly evaluated this relationship in the facial …

Investigating The Construct Of Psychopathy In Lebanese And American Adults, Marie-Anne Issa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Psychopathy has been primarily investigated in forensic and psychiatric populations in North America. Cross-cultural studies, mainly conducted in Europe, have shown disparities in psychopathy scores and the measures’ psychometric properties, which raise the issue of cultural factors, such as individualism-collectivism, values, and different ways of emotional expression, and the impact of these cultural factors on the construct and its manifestation. Psychopathy has been rarely explored in Arab populations. This dissertation examines the construct of psychopathy among Lebanese adults, to assess its meaning, relevance, and utility among this population and compares the responses of Lebanese to American adults. The design of …

Perceptions Of Money: Relationships Between Remembered Parental Rejection, Extrinsic Life Aspirations And Maladaptive Attitudes Toward Money, Rebecca J. Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the extent to which maternal rejection, paternal rejection, maternal care, and maternal overprotection predict extrinsic life aspirations as well as maladaptive money attitudes in young adults. Additionally, this study sought to determine if the Adult Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire correlates with the Parental Bonding Instrument. The variable, extrinsic life aspirations, was examined to determine if it mediates between parental rejection and maladaptive money attitudes. Finally, the present study examined gender differences with regard to parental rejection, extrinsic life aspirations, and maladaptive money attitudes. A multiple regression analysis was conducted in a college sample of 366 participants using self-report …

War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract

This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …

Why Consciousness Matters: Insights From A New Generation, Kathleen Noble

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

The University of Washington-Bothell is home to a transdisciplinary and integral minor in consciousness that is the first and only such program at a public research university. This study reports a content analysis of reflection essays submitted by 122 students who completed at least four of the five courses that comprise the minor between 2012 and 2016. Results indicate that students derived significant benefits from this approach to the study of consciousness, including a deep appreciation for the depth and breadth of the mind and the need to release their understanding of consciousness from the constraints of scientific materialism. They …

From Norway With Love: A Study Of Oxytocin, Social Bonding, And Life-History Trade-Offs, Nicholas Grebe

Psychology ETDs

Oxytocin (OT) is a mammalian neuropeptide hormone that has been extensively studied in the field of obstetrics and mother-infant bonding. More recently, animal and human studies have suggested that OT might also have important functions within sexual pair-bonds. While some have advanced the perspective that OT is a ‘bonding’, ‘cuddle’, or ‘trust’ hormone, a number of opposing findings cast doubt on such interpretations. Several research groups have attempted to address this so-called ‘paradox’. I propose a different type of framework that attempts to address this paradox, but perhaps more importantly, also aims to provide additional explanatory power regarding the functions …

Understanding How Intentionally Unplugging From Cell Phones Shapes Interpersonal Relationships And The Undergraduate College Experience, Jadelin P. Felipe

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of what motivated college students—the Unplugged Students—to intentionally use their cell phones less and how they understood the impact that unplugging had on their interpersonal relationships and college experience. Nine undergraduate college students from four private schools were interviewed in one-on-one semi- structured interviews. These students, considered non-users, provided a particularly useful perspective as these students made a conscious choice to counteract social norms and experienced both being plugged in and unplugged. Cell phones and the act of unplugging proved to make up a complex and more nuanced topic than …

Asian American Men And Fatherhood: Relationship Between Acculturation, Gender-Role Conflict, Parenting Self-Efficacy, And Father Involvement, Zuzanna Molenda-Kostanski

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This study used a cross-sectional design in which 101 Asian American fathers completed an online survey that included questionnaires assessing for acculturation, enculturation, gender role conflict, parenting self-efficacy, father involvement, and demographic information. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of four predictor variables—including acculturation, enculturation, gender role conflict, and parenting self-efficacy—on father involvement, which served as the criterion variable. It was hypothesized that acculturation, enculturation, gender role conflict, and parenting self-efficacy predict the level of father involvement. The results of a multiple regression analysis revealed that there was a significant relationship between acculturation and father involvement, …

Exposing The “Shadow Side”: Female-Female Competition In Jane Austen’S Emma, Melissa M. Lyman

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Many critics have examined the shifting nature of female friendship in Jane Austen’s Emma from cultural and historical angles. However, a comprehensive scientific analysis of female-female alliance and competition in the novel remains incomplete. The Literary Darwinist approach considers the motivations of fictional characters from an evolutionary perspective, focusing primarily on human cognition and behaviors linked to reproductive success, social control, and survival. While overt physical displays of male competition are conspicuous in the actions of the human species and those of their closest primate relatives, female aggression is often brandished psychologically and indirectly, which makes for a much more …

Help-Seeking Intention Among College Students: Cross-Cultural Study Between East Asian International Students And Domestic Students In The Unites States, Ji Yun Kang

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to understand East Asian international student’s underutilization of counseling services (versus U.S. domestic students) by applying Theory of Reasoned Action/Planned Behavior (TRA/PB) and Ludwikowski, Vogel, and Armstrong (2009)’s stigma model to help-seeking. Participants were 146 East Asian international students and 210 domestic college students at Purdue University. AMOS 23.0 for Structural Equation Modeling was used to conduct a Latent Mean Analysis (LMA) and a multigroup analysis. The multigroup analysis results found that help-seeking intention was explained by the same hypothesized model in both groups, which was based on the TRA/PB (Ajzen, 2012) and the …

Multi-Sensory Emotion Recognition With Speech And Facial Expression, Qingmei Yao

Dissertations

Emotion plays an important role in human beings’ daily lives. Understanding emotions and recognizing how to react to others’ feelings are fundamental to engaging in successful social interactions. Currently, emotion recognition is not only significant in human beings’ daily lives, but also a hot topic in academic research, as new techniques such as emotion recognition from speech context inspires us as to how emotions are related to the content we are uttering.

The demand and importance of emotion recognition have highly increased in many applications in recent years, such as video games, human computer interaction, cognitive computing, and affective computing. …

The Social Brain In Human And Religious Evolution: Elucidating The Role Of Theory Of Mind In (Non)Religious Belief, Thomas J. Coleman Iii

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary theorists of religion have argued that religious beliefs are “natural” because they arise from normally functioning social cognitive capacities, especially Theory of Mind (ToM). Hence, attempts to explain atheism have relied heavily on the assumption that nonbelievers may have a malfunctioning ToM and other traits associated with the autism spectrum continuum (ASC). However, few studies currently address this topic and the evidence either way remains ambiguous. The current research narrows this empirical gap, addressing these claims with a two-fold approach. First, a near comprehensive review of ToM is provided. Second, this study is exploratory, employing a unique methodology and …

Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In this chapter I argue that teaching, as we now understand the term, is historically and cross-culturally very rare. It appears to be unnecessary to transmit culture or to socialize children. Children are, on the other hand, primed by evolution to be avid observers, imitators, players and helpers—roles that reveal the profoundly autonomous and self-directed nature of culture acquisition (Lancy in press a). And yet, teaching is ubiquitous throughout the modern world—at least among the middle to upper class segment of the population. This ubiquity has led numerous scholars to argue for the universality and uniqueness of teaching as a …

Ongoing Dialogue In Response To Editor’S Introduction, “Nonduality: Not One, Not Two, But Many”, Judith Blackstone

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

N/A

Associations Between Social Status Insecurity And Relational Aggression In Chinese Adolescents: Moderations Of Social Cognitive Prosesses, Yunyi Long

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Adolescents pay close attention to their social status and actively pursue it through certain social behaviors. Previous studies have revealed that when adolescents feel their social standing is unsafe, namely having social status insecurity, they often use relational aggression to cope with it. However, what roles different social cognition processes play on the association between social status insecurity and relational aggression are unclear in the literature. Additionally, given that the relationship between relational victimization and relational aggression has also been observed in the literature, social status insecurity may also exert an important mediating impact on such an association. Nevertheless, few …

Boundaries And Belonging: Asian America, Psychology, And Psychoanalysis, Natalie C. Hung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation addresses a vexing problem. In psychology and psychoanalysis, Asian Americans are more often understood as a collective Other than as individual Selves, more frequently an object of study than a subject. Through two overarching aims, my dissertation sheds light on neglected aspects of Asian American selves, the meanings of the invisibility surrounding them, and implications for clinical practice.

First, the project challenges extant psychological perspectives on Asian Americans, which often implicitly assume a wide gulf of difference between Asian American cultural values and the Western epistemologies of psychology and psychoanalysis. Through the examination of academic research, clinical literature, …

Pretty Princess And Hurdling Heroes: A Content Analysis Of Walt Disney Studio Movies, Jessica Noll

Communication Studies

This study investigated the portrayal of active and passive behaviors of male and female characters in Walt Disney Studio original animated films. It was hypothesized that males would exhibit more active behaviors than their female counterparts and that females would exhibit more passive behaviors than their male counterparts. The results indicated that both of these hypotheses were supported. The study also found that the least likely interaction of male and female characters was when the male character was being passive and the female character was being active. The most likely was male characters performing active behaviors and female characters performing …

Counseling Refugees Of Middle Eastern Descent In The United States, Jennifer Semaan

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

Refugees of Middle Eastern descent in the United States face a countless number of challenges throughout their journey. Many of these obstacles are overlooked or unaccounted for. This research paper serves to help mental health counselors identify the unique challenges of each phase during the refugees’ migration process, as well as provide information on evidence-based practices that can be useful when working with this population. This project also speaks to the different roles that counselors play in a therapeutic relationship, including direct therapy, advocating on behalf of refugee clients, and educating other counselors and the public on the specific needs …

Do Happy American And Japanese Adults Become Similar In Psychological Ttraits As They Age?, Masahiro Toyama

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

As happiness has been a popular topic, philosophers and researchers as well as lay people have continued to discuss it. The potential factors which lead to happiness may be influenced by culture and age. Referring to previous findings on distinctive characteristics between Western and Eastern cultures and age effects on psychological traits and well-being, the present study examined potential similarities and differences among age groups of American and Japanese adults with different levels of happiness. The age groups studied consisted of those aged 35-49, 50-64, and 65-79. It was hypothesized that psychological traits including independence, interdependence, extraversión, and neuroticism become …

The Relationship Between The Buss-Perry Aggression Scale And Evoked Heart Rate While Attending Aggression And Friendly Dyadic Interactions, Sarhand Awla Hasan

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The relationship between an individual's propensity of displaying aggressive behavior, as assessed via the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, and physiological responses (evoked heart rate (HR)) while viewing 5-sec video clips of aggressive and friendly dyadic interactions was examined. No significant differences between aggressive and friendly groups' Evoked HR were found. However, there were significant individual differences in aggression identified within the aggressive and friendly video groups. Individuals who scored low on Buss-Perry Verbal Aggression subscale displayed HR deceleration, whereas individuals who scored high on Buss-Perry Verbal Aggression subscale displayed HR acceleration when viewing verbal but not physically aggressive video clips. This …

Love On - The Life Of A Suicide Survivor: A Performance Autoethnographic Study, Patricia R. Wheeler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Suicide touches the lives of millions of people each year in this country alone, yet conversations about suicide loss and survival after a loss remain taboo and often do not happen. The story I performed for this performance autoethnographic study centers on my life as a survivor of suicide. It provides a starting point for dialog regarding trauma, grief, and suicide loss. The narrative was constructed directly following the sudden death of my father, which had a direct effect on my ability to produce artistic work. The development, staging and performance of the story were altered to account for the …