Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Influence Of Lay Concepts And Causal Theories On Definitions Of Mental Illness And Social Outcomes, Kallen A. Bynum

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Lay concepts and causal attribution theories enable lay people to make sense of their social situations, more specifically, their encounters with those suffering from mental disorders by providing informational frameworks and explanations upon which to interpret their circumstances. Thus, lay concepts and causal theories about mental illness play a role in beliefs and behaviors toward those individuals. The current study surveyed 113 undergraduate students to investigate relations between knowledge of mental illness as well as causal attributions and explicit stigma associated with depression and schizophrenia, such as perceived dangerousness and desire for social distance. Scores for schizophrenia and depression were …

Can Small Details Bring Big Success? Construal Levels As Academic Goal Strategies, Christopher R. Deitrick

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

One avenue to help students reach educational goals is implementation intentions, a tool encouraging

planning the “when, where, and how” of goal-oriented actions (Gollwitzer, 1999). However,

implementation intentions need validating outside of the laboratory (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). To

help do so, they can be viewed through Construal-Level Theory (CLT), which explains why we may have

trouble setting intentions before we can fulfill them (Trope & Liberman 2010). A study was conducted

wherein 56 participants from a section of PSYC 330 either wrote about their college study habits or

completed implementation intentions preparing them to study for an upcoming exam. …

Helicopter Parenting And Parent-Child Attachment, Kaitlin S. Fitzgerald

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Helicopter parenting is the colloquial term that refers to a unique patterning of parenting dimensions that result in a style both high in behavioral control and levels of warmth and support, and low in autonomy-granting (Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012). Parental attachment–distinct from helicopter parenting–typically involves the initial relationship between parent and child which affects the child’s overall life satisfaction and well-being (mainly in areas associated with relationships, motivation, and health-related behaviors). Despite what areas may overlap between parent-child attachment and helicopter parenting, little research has been done on the relation among these variables. The current study examined the associations among …

The Relation Of Service Activity To Change In Empathy, Nancy L.C. Windsor

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between empathy, service, and other variables that have been seen in the past to be possible predictors of empathy and service. Undergraduate and graduate students took a survey measuring their emotional empathy, strength of religious faith, intent to engage in civic action, other predictor variables, and the amount of service each participant engaged in. Pearson’s correlations and independent t tests were run to analyze the relationships between the variables. The intent to engage in civic action measure was highly correlated with both the emotional empathy scale and strength of religious …

The Impact Of “Fearful” And “Serene” Mood On Mortality Salience, Kathryn A. Howard

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Seventy-eight participants were randomly assigned to receive either a serene, neutral, or fearful mood induction, followed by either a neutral salience or mortality salience induction. After these manipulations, participants read a political essay that opposed their world view. Participants then completed several measures examining how much they liked/did not like the author of the essay, along with a measure assessing their opinion on an ethnic out-group. It was hypothesized that participants who received the serene mood induction would derogate the author of the opposing essay and ethnic out-group members significantly less than those who received the fearful or neutral mood …