Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Fear Of Reptiles And How To Change It, Maxwell Lyman

Honors Projects

Reptile fear is prominent across many cultures. Anti-reptilian attitudes can lead to anti-conservation attitudes towards reptiles. Person-animal interaction has been shown to decrease fear desensitization and increase positive attitudes towards "unpopular" animals. My project demonstrates the effectiveness of live animal presentation in dispelling negative attitudes of reptiles. However, due to the sample size of the project, further research is highly suggested.

Teaching Materialism Through Storytelling: A Collection Of Short Stories And Learning Materials, Zoie Zvonar, Katherine Arnold

Honors Projects

This collaborative projects seeks to combine the disciplines of psychology and writing into a collection of short stories and learning materials dedicated to teaching young students the psychological concept of materialism. In order to accomplish this goal, Zoie Zvonar and Katherine Arnold have designed and created a set of materials that seek to inform, educate, and instill in those young students what materialism is, how to recognize it in our own lives, its consequences, and potential strategies to lower high materialistic tendencies. Zoie Zvonar created the companion guide, learning activities for both students and instructors, and an additional resources list …

Neural Correlates Of Social Pain In Psychological Disorders: Implications For Educational Settings, Skye E. Johnson

Honors Projects

Pain has long been defined as a multidimensional construct; in past research, not only have the physical and sensory aspects of pain been investigated, but also the cognitive and emotional aspects, which include the experience of social pain. This experience is generally accepted to be very distressing and can have adverse effects on one's mental health, especially for those with neurological disorders. In my paper, I examine the effects of social pain on brain activity in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) as compared to those who are neurotypical. This research finds that while neurotypical …

Following The Guide: A Wilderness Theology Of Youth Ministry, Rachel M. Weisz

Honors Projects

Scripture offers readers a unique characterization of wilderness spaces and provides us with a great deal of information about what to expect. This discussion traces various scriptural narratives of encounter with God in the wilderness, offering the reader a model for what a wilderness experience of God may entail, and then turns to more current conversation about wilderness youth ministry. The project traces current research of fields that are tangentially related to wilderness youth ministry including wilderness therapy, outdoor adventure education, and camp ministry, and seeks to highlight the ways that they can enhance, alter, and confirm various practices within …

Technology And Its Associations With The Meaningfulness Of Interpersonal Relationships, Mikayla A. Logue

Honors Projects

The usage of technology is steadily increasing globally. More and more individuals are using mobile phones and social media as a way to communicate with others. This literature review explores the relationship between technology and the meaningfulness of relationships. Specifically, it examines how technology may impact levels of connectedness, relationship satisfaction, and empathy in friendships. The review finds that technology has both positive and negative associations with the meaningfulness of friendships, which in turn can affect the general well-being of an individual. Further research is also needed to understand the extent of the impact technology has on friendships, individuals, and …

Social Justice: A Catholic Autistic Perspective, Rebecca Schneider

Honors Projects

This is a collection of short stories about social injustices impacting the autistic community and how Catholic Social Teaching supports a more just approach. It is written from an autistic perspective and informed by the stories of people who are actually autistic. Each story is followed by an analysis that explains the choices made, which are backed by both research and the experiences of the autistic writer and the autistic community. This collection also includes information on how justice can be attained on the individual level by allies and on the institutional level by organizations.

Animal Assisted Therapy On Law Enforcement Mental Health: A Therapy Dog Implementation Guide, Melena Purvis

Honors Projects

The mental health of law enforcement officers is an ever increasing problem, with our nation’s police officers seeing a constant increase in things like PTSD, depression, and other mental illnesses. However, mental health is already a highly stigmatized topic that is not commonly addressed, and a police subculture of strength and toughness just reinforces that stigma and makes it that much harder for police officers struggling with these issues to get help. This project combines innovation with research to come up with a way to try and improve the mental health of those officers struggling. It provides a manual for …

Sources Of Anxiety In Emerging Adult Relationships: A Qualitative Analysis, Kayla Gay

Honors Projects

Anxiety is a fairly common experience for individuals, but when this anxiety is extreme or prolonged, it can have detrimental effects both emotionally and physically. Previous research has shown that romantic relationships can have both positive and negative impacts on the mental health and levels of anxiety for individuals and that a number of stressors can create anxiety between romantic partners. The aim of this study was to examine the causes and sources of anxiety experienced by emerging adults specifically within their romantic relationships. A sample of six respondents from the Toledo Adolescent Relationship Study (TARS) who had the highest …

Zentangles For Mental Health Awareness, Rachel Immel

Honors Projects

The world is starting to see the rise of a stress related epidemic. Finding time to balance the struggles of everyday life, like academics, finances, careers and relationships, while also maintaining personal mental health is becoming increasingly difficult. This is what prompted me to use my project as an opportunity to help people relieve stress and create a community through the use of art, especially during a time where social interaction has been severely limited due to COVID-19.

My project is a series of live-streamed Zentangle art classes I hosted personally that were open to the public through Zoom. Zentangle …

Cognitive Representations Of Dyadic Relationships: Determinants, Reciprocity, And Egocentric Bias, Casey Stephen Silva

Honors Projects

This study focuses on cognitive representations of one’s own and others’ dyadic relationships and tests the principle that there is a self-serving bias in the assessment of them. Not only do people believe they are superior to other individuals on many psychological dimensions, called egocentric bias, they also believe that their dyadic relationships with others are superior. Participants, called key persons, were brought into the laboratory, and instructed to select three family members and three friends that they know well, and who also know one another within groups but not across groups. After doing so, participants made ratings of their …

A Quantitative Approach And A Qualitative Approach Towards Intersectionality Among Individuals With Lgbtq+ Identities, Viet (Mason) Trinh

Honors Projects

This is a two-parted project that integrates a quantitative approach and a qualitative approach toward the concept of intersectionality. Research about intersectionality has shown the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. Therefore, I decided to explore the concept using both approaches. The quantitative section of this project investigates the relationship between victimization experiences due to race/ ethnicity and/ or LGBTQ+ identities and emotional well-being. The sample for this section consisted of college students from all states in the United States who identified as LGBTQ+ and were between 18 and 24 years old. The qualitative section examines salient identities, identity gaps, …

The Misogyny Of Psychology: A Tribute To Women Often Overlooked, Gabrielle Miller

Honors Projects

Although the remarkable achievements of these twelve women may seem of concern to only a small group of feminist scholars, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about equal representation of diverse identities, especially within the branches of science which historically refused to give due credit to individuals other than straight, white men. For this reason, we must be able to recognize and react quickly to social issues, otherwise we run the risk of perpetuating oppression of certain minority groups for the remote future. Under those circumstances, we must work toward positive change by doing away with such inequities …

The Ability Of Thaumoctopus Mimicus To Be Operantly Conditioned To A Sound Stimulus, Stephanie Wittman

Honors Projects

This paper focuses on the ability of the mimic octopus Thaumoctopus mimicus to be operantly conditioned to an auditory stimulus. The octopus is known to be the most advanced of the invertebrates and has learning abilities that are comparable to vertebrates in spite of their differences in brain structure. These animals have been shown to react to visual and tactile stimuli and can be operantly conditioned to perform behaviors to obtain a food reward. The goal of this experiment is to determine whether the octopus can be operantly conditioned to swim into a box on the side of its tank …

False Beliefs In Dogs, Sydney Rowley

Honors Projects

Compared to many other species, including non-human primates, dogs perform exceptionally well on social reasoning tasks such as locating a hidden object by following a human point. One such task, understanding false beliefs (FB)--that another individual may possess a belief contrary to both one’s own belief and reality--serves as a pinnacle in understanding social reasoning. Humans understand FB but whether nonhumans do remains controversial. We predicted that dogs, given their unusual social savvy, may understand FB. We presented dogs with a stage and a duck resting on it. The dog and researcher watched the duck move inside one of two …

Exploring How Media Portrayals Of Mental Health Affect Public Perceptions Through Devised Theatre, Lauren Lash

Honors Projects

A performance piece and this corresponding paper serve as my honors project, which has two main foci: devised theatre and how the media affects perceptions of mental health. This packet is a documentation of the rehearsal process and sources that influenced the piece and a link to the piece itself. Documenting the rehearsal process included a list of songs, rehearsal plans, rehearsal schedules, and my reflections on the process. Helpful sources included a photo release form, which allowed me to include a recording in this packet, and my annotated bibliography included sources about devising, portraying mental health in theatre, and …

Before-And-After Weight Loss Images' Effects On Body-Esteem, Audrey Boersen

Honors Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine how exposure to Before-and-After weight loss images affects body-esteem, and to explore if the race of the model moderates the relationship. Participants were 89 Caucasian females living in the United States. Participants viewed either a Before-and-After Caucasian or African American weight loss photo, or a control image. Measures of body-esteem and antifat attitudes were then collected. Unexpectedly we found that after being exposed to the images participants with a healthy BMI in the control and Caucasian model conditions reported higher body-esteem than overweight participants, however, there was no difference in the African …

Using Mental Imagery To Increase Intentions To Seek Psychological Help, Savannah L. Carpenter

Honors Projects

Individuals living with mental health conditions may run into myriad cognitive barriers increasing hesitations in seeking professional psychological help. The current research explores the potential for mental imagery to be utilized as a cognitive tool to enhance intentions towards seeking psychological help via shifts in imagined visual perspective. Participants (N = 129) were randomly assigned to either a first- or third-person visual perspective before engaging in a guided mental imagery task. Participants were asked to imagine having an emotional or personal issue that they could not solve on their own and walking into the Counselling Center on campus to …