Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Contemplative Pause: Practice As Pedagogy In A Liberal Arts Classroom, Sienna R. Craig, Sid Babla, Abbey Savin

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This article discusses the integration of contemplative pedagogies – including but not limited to yoga nidra – into two case study courses at an elite private liberal arts institution. We begin by describing the structure, context, and nature of this experiment in contemplative pedagogy, considering this experiment in the context of what we call the “liberal arts promise” at a moment of heightened mental health crises across institutions of higher education and increasing public skepticism about the value(s) of higher education. The article takes as a starting point the idea that building forms of contemplative pause into the fabric of …

“They’Re Not Just Leaving, They’Re Gone”: Challenges To Generational Renewal And Long-Term Care On The Islands Of West Cork, Amy Duley

International Journal of Islands Research

While the field of rural ageing has garnered attention due to the rapidly ageing rural population worldwide, islands are generally given less consideration when examining the needs of older people. This study aimed to explore the challenges to ageing in place faced by residents in the farming community of two West Cork islands in Ireland. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight islanders in January 2025. A qualitative content analysis was conducted and nine overarching themes situated within the social-ecological framework were identified. The loss of the younger generation, its effect on generational renewal and informal care, and poor access …

Tmc Library Newsletter: From Its Past To Present, Alice Sherwood

Library Staff Publications

This presentation describes the early beginnings of our library newsletter, and the progress of its technology changes over time. "The TMC Library Newsletter" started out in 1998 as a quarterly print newsletter, "Library Lines", and evolved into a web-based one, "The Insider," published 6 and then 12 times a year through 2013. Since 2015, its name changed to what it is today and is also available on Digital Commons, an open journal available for the community and beyond. As an open journal using Digital Commons as its platform since April 2025, the items in this journal has grown to more …

Shu World Review- November 9th 2026, Diplolab, Seton Hall University

SHU World Review

No abstract provided.

Personalizing Outreach For Scholarly Communication Initiatives At Mississippi State University, Julie D. Shedd

Presentations and Posters

Mississippi State University Libraries' Scholarly Communication Team provides a range of scholarly communication services and information. This presentation details the Team's outreach philosophy.

Panel presentation for the U.S. Repository Network's Community Call: Promoting Your Repository (11/9/2026).

Forecasting China’S Posturing For A Global War, Brennan Deveraux, Joshua Arostegui

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

This collaborative study conducts a comprehensive examination of China’s global strategy as it relates to preparing for a potential war with the West, using potential futures to help shape the present. It explores a hypothetical limited conflict scenario between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, predicting China’s deliberate decisions to horizontally escalate the conflict based on historical trends. This novel approach is a unique addition to the literature on great power competition, offering detailed, tangible forecasts of China’s upcoming actions and corresponding recommendations to help mitigate the rising power’s growing global influence. The study is separated into …

Patton - Weeden - Brahan Papers Correspondence To Dr. James S. Leonardo, Sept. 29, 1988, William Lindsey Mcdonald

Correspondence

Correspondence from William Lindsey McDonald to Dr. James S. Leonardo of Des Moines, Iowa concerning the Patton - Weeden - Brahan Papers housed at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library in Florence, Alabama. The papers contain information on various local historic sites connected with the respective families.

Taylor Publishing Company History Of Lauderdale County Book From Jesse C. White, Jan. 5, 1989, Jesse C. White

Correspondence

Correspondence from Jesse C. White of Taylor Publishing Company to William L. McDonald concerning the potential of publishing a book on local Florence, Alabama history.

Tobacco Consumption And Household Expenditure Decisions In Indonesia: A Microeconomic Analysis Using Ifls 5 Data, Ruth Eviana Hutabarat, Lucky Rachmawati, Wenny Restikasari, Siti Nurul Munawwarah Roslan, Brillian Akbar Aminullah, Emina Chandrakanthi

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Studi Pembangunan

Socioeconomic differences in tobacco consumption need not coincide with differences in spending among consumers. This study examines these associations among household heads using the 2014–2015 Indonesia Family Life Survey. A weighted logit model covers 12,279 heads, while weighted expenditure regressions cover a verified subset of 2,997 current-smoking heads with positive spending and child-related records. Education categories are harmonized across models, with robust standard errors and checks of age patterns, influential observations, and a gamma model with a log link. Male heads and employed heads have higher odds of current consumption; urban residence and secondary or tertiary education have lower odds. …

Talking Politics In The Workplace: Effective Practices For Leaders, Matthew Kohut

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Workplace conversations with leaders about politics underwent a pendulum swing between 2020 and 2025. In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, many corporate leaders engaged in conversations with employees on topics ranging from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to LGBTQ rights to access to abortion. Polls such as the Edelman Trust Barometer showed at the time that employees expected their leaders to address political issues. It didn't take long for an "anti-woke" backlash to emerge in which attorneys general in red states began targeting executives who spoke out on these and other issues. Corporations also took a stronger …

Relationships Across The Aisle: How Political Climates Impact Friendships And Relationships With People Of Different Political Affiliations, Jason M. Miller, Hayden Akins

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Political polarization is as strong as ever in this modern political climate. Part of this polarization is that people are being more selective than ever when choosing who to socially interact with. Our presentation will discuss research on how increasing political polarization impacts people's willingness to engage in friendships and romantic relationships with people who have opposing political views. We will also discuss the success of those friendships and relationships as a function of political differences. We will also discuss our research that demonstrates that people who are more invested in politics are particularly selective in seeking like-minded romantic partners. …

Using Learning Teams As An Organizational Assessment & Improvement Tool, Brian P. Baskette

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

I/O psychology practitioners frequently serve important roles to facilitate, promote, and lead initiatives to address organizational issues and improve overall employee performance. These roles usually involve the use of assessments to identify problems, gaps, drivers, and improvement actions to achieve the desired results. An important premise to these assessments is that we must learn from their resulting data and our experiences to achieve continuous improvement in individual, team, leadership, and organizational performance. A continuous learning culture where learning is embraced and applied brings about a continuous improvement culture. “Learning Teams” is a tool to facilitate learning about the context and …

Psychosocial Demands, Leadership Responsiveness, And Worker Well Being In The Construction Industry, Herman Algesson

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Construction work is one of the most high-risk and psychologically demanding industries globally, with workers facing long hours, intense physical labor as well as hazardous and unstable conditions. Contributing to reduced well-being, burnout and elevated stress, with evidence stating that psychosocial demands-referring to workload, conflict, low control and role ambiguity are key predictors of strain. The awareness of these challenges does exist by leadership, but responses to worker mental health remain inconsistent and understudied. Leading to insufficient responses from leadership and leaving gaps when it comes to the effectiveness of interventions and support systems. This study investigates how psychological demands, …

Ethical Leadership, Illegitimate Tasks, And Justice As Pathways To Employee Burnout, Heather D. Peters, Alexander T. Jackson

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Burnout is often attributed to excessive workload, but the kinds of tasks employees are asked to perform may also contribute. Illegitimate assigned tasks (IAT) are assignments employees view as unreasonable (outside their role) or unnecessary (should not exist). For example, a woman may be expected to plan office parties because of gendered workplace expectations, even when event planning is not part of her role. Such assignments can signal that organizations do not value employees’ time, skills, or contributions. Although IAT has been linked to burnout, the role of organizational justice in this relationship remains unclear, and leadership as an antecedent …

Burnout In College Athletes: The Roles Of Demands, Performance Anxiety, And Parental Warmth, Ainsley Simms, Alexander Jackson, James P. Loveless, Mark Frame

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Burnout is a significant concern among collegiate athletes, who experience substantial physical, psychological, academic, and social demands (Schlimmer & Chin, 2018). Athletics could be considered a college athletes job/workplace due to the amount of time and energy spent in that setting. Guided by the Job Demands-Resources (JDR) Model, this study examines the relationships among sport demands, performance anxiety, burnout, and parental warmth in collegiate athletes (Demerouti et al., 2001). Specifically, the study investigates whether sport demands are positively associated with burnout and performance anxiety, whether performance anxiety is positively associated with burnout, and whether performance anxiety mediates the relationship between …

An Examination Of Healthcare Professional Relationship Dynamics, Heather Williamson, Daniel R. Krenn

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Incivility and loss of interprofessional trust within the healthcare field compromise open communication and patient safety outcomes. While these behaviors have been widely studied, the dynamics of interprofessional trust and its effects on interprofessional collaborative behaviors based on previous experiences with incivility warrant further exploratory research. This study aims to determine the extent incivility plays a role in interprofessional trust across a variety of healthcare roles, the impact previous experiences of incivility have on interprofessional trust between those involved, and if the loss of interprofessional trust leads to hesitancy in speaking up about concerns regarding patient concerns. This multi-site study …

Freshman Outdoor Nature Study Extended: Social Connection And The Enhancing Role Of Nature On Mental Health, Dacey F. Ramroth, Reagan Breitenstein

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Previous research suggests that nature positively impacts student health outcomes by lowering stress and anxiety levels and improving cognitive functioning by lowering physiological markers such as blood pressure and heart rate. Students' mental health is crucial for the transition to college, as it plays into the success of college and academic adjustment. Stress regulation isn’t just a college necessity; it's also an everyday life tool, especially when transitioning into their profession. Additionally, social interaction might protect college students during the transition by fostering a shared sense of belonging and coherent social identity, which provides emotional stability and directly buffers against …

From Words To Warnings: Using Llms To Predict Injury Risk, Omarie Z. Swepson, Sophia Hendrick, Avery Livingston, Izzy Kelm, Lizzie Smith, Ethan Fountain, Ailyn Sanchez Corral, Shawn Bergman, Timothy Ludwig

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Occupational injuries create substantial human and financial costs, making effective hazard reporting essential for prevention. This study examines whether large language models (LLMs) can improve the evaluation of Behavior-Based Safety reports and predict future workplace incidents. Building on prior research that used an LLM to score over 33,000 refinery safety reports across ten quality indicators, we will compare multiple LLMs available through Azure AI Foundry using identical reports, scoring rubrics, prompts, and analytic procedures. Models will be evaluated for rating consistency, agreement across models, and their ability to predict next-day incidents through time-series logistic regression analyses. We expect some LLMs …

Answering The Call: Examining The Relationship Between Call-In Work And Occupational Injury Risk, Avery I. Livingston, Izzy Kelm, Charlie Wills, Shawn Bergman, Tim Ludwig

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Workplace injuries impose substantial human and organizational costs, with scheduling risks such as overtime, fatigue accumulation, and irregular work demands frequently linked to increased injury rates. Day-off call-ins, unscheduled work assignments requiring employees to report to work on a scheduled day off, remain an understudied source of schedule risk. This study investigates whether day-off call-ins are associated with workplace incident occurrence using 2022–2024 payroll and safety data from a large oil refinery. Using unit-level logistic regression analyses, incident occurrence (0 = no incident, 1 = incident), will be predicted from call-in staffing levels while controlling for unit, turnaround status, production …

Quality Indicators As Signals Of Risk: Improving Safety Reporting With Nlp, Sophia Hendrick, Avery Livingston, Omarie Swepson, Izzy Kelm, Lizzie Smith, Ailyn Sanchez Corral, Ethan Fountain, Shawn Bergman, Timothy Ludwig

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Workplace injuries in industrial environments pose significant risks to employees and organizations due to high physical and financial costs. Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) programs encourage avoidance of issues like “pencil-whipping”, vague, low-quality documentation (Ludwig & Laske, 2022). To address this gap, our project leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the quality of these reports and assess their predictive capacity for future incidents through various quality indicators.

Grief At Work: The Role Of Individual Differences In Shaping Satisfaction With Organizational Bereavement Support, Delaney Clark, Jacqui Bergman, Jack Carson, Shawn Bergman

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Bereavement is a common life experience that can extend into the workplace, yet employees differ considerably in how they experience grief and what they need from their organizations following a loss. This study examines the relationship between grief intensity and employees’ satisfaction with workplace bereavement support and whether individual differences help explain variability in this relationship. We hypothesize that greater grief intensity will be associated with lower satisfaction with bereavement support. We further examine whether Big Five and Dark Triad personality traits moderate this relationship. Hypotheses will test the roles of emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, narcissism, and psychopathy, while …

Reimagining Career Pathways: Bridging Education And Employment Through Ai-Assisted Ksa Mapping, Hunter Martin, Maggie Dobson, Neerali Patel, Jamie Da Costa, Shawn Bergman

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Underemployment remains a persistent challenge for psychology graduates, often making it difficult for students to identify and communicate workforce-relevant competencies gained through coursework. To address this issue, the Eugene platform was developed to help students connect completed courses to knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) and generate potential career pathways. A central component of Eugene is a faculty-led reconciliation process in which instructors evaluate the extent to which course activities develop specific work-related competencies. However, this process is resource-intensive and difficult to scale. This in-progress study examined whether an artificial intelligence (AI) agent could generate work activity (WA) ratings from course …

Developing A Chatbot: Enhancing Psychology Career Exploration Through Ai, Abby Crane, Dacey Ramroth, Mergenie Fleurimond, Ella Drawbridge, Shawn Bergman

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

As members of the FOCUS Team within HR Science at Appalachian State University, we contributed to developing and refining an AI-powered chatbot, named Eddie, designed to enhance Eugene, a career exploration platform for Appalachian State University undergraduate psychology students. This effort was driven by findings from a Eugene Assessment survey, which revealed that over 40% of respondents believed the platform's structure and instructions could be improved. In alignment with FOCUS' mission to address psychology student underemployment by connecting students to career and educational opportunities, our team worked to improve the user experience through AI technology. Student feedback specifically identified challenges …

Interrupting Aggression: The Role Of Supportive Messaging In Workplace Behavior, Lindsey C. Davis, Daniel R. Krenn

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Workplace aggression is a well-researched and known issue within the subdomain of Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Common examples of workplace aggression include, but are not limited to, physical violence, bullying, and verbal degradation. It is typically defined as intentional behavior, but some literature also considers unintentional behaviors that still have undesirable consequences. Further research has examined the construct of retaliatory aggression. It has been found that victims of workplace aggression are likely to “retaliate,” or take out the anger associated with their victimization on other individuals. Despite the numerous amounts of research that has examined workplace aggression and retaliation, not as much …

Improving Student Well-Being Through Financial Literacy And Budgeting Tools, Nicole Chuong, Mollie Green, Shruti Rai, Bryan Dawson

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Financial stress is associated with poorer well-being and academic outcomes among college students, and debt-related financial strain has been linked to elevated stress and anxiety in student populations (Heo et al., 2020; Mulligan et al., 2024). Despite concerns about student financial literacy, little research has examined budgeting interventions embedded in undergraduate coursework. The present study examined whether participation in a semester-long budgeting experience embedded in an undergraduate Psychology of Money course was associated with gains in financial literacy and better end-of-semester emotional outcomes. It also considered the intervention's relevance to workforce preparation, where graduates must manage income, benefits, debt repayment, …

Themes In Discontent With Management During And After The Great Resignation, Paige Grogg, Arianna Holmes, Teresa Ristow, Tanya Mitropoulos

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

The Great Resignation, a period of elevated voluntary employee turnover in the United States beginning in spring 2021 and easing by mid-2023 (Sull et al., 2022; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023), highlighted dissatisfaction with organizational culture and leadership. Sull et al. (2022) identified toxic workplace culture, including disrespectful and abusive management, as a strong predictor of employee attrition. To explore management-related concerns during and after this period, we examined discussions on r/antiwork, a Reddit community focused on workplace experiences and frustrations. We conducted an exploratory, longitudinal analysis of public r/antiwork posts from March 2021 through February 2025. Of 577,190 …

Authenticity In Recruitment: Assessing Accuracy And Perceptions Of Organizational Culture As Represented On Corporate Websites, Fiona T. Finger, Justin D. Horning, Leslie N. Goodman, Delaney M. Clark, Jessica L. Doll, H. Kristl Davison, Timothy J. Huelsman

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Proposal Organizations use websites to convey their identity and values through mission-vision-values language and positive emotions (Kostelić & Gonan Božac, 2026). During the job search process, prospective applicants utilize online sources as a primary tool to reduce uncertainty, conserve time, and elect positions to apply for (Smith et al., 2022). Using websites to uncover values and culture is referred to as organizational anticipatory socialization, specifically when individuals gather information that shapes their expectations and influences employment decisions (Dailey, 2016). The utility of organizational websites is predicated on both accurate portrayals of values and jobseekers’ perception of those values. Misalignment between …

Second Interviews In Employee Selection: Redundancy Or Added Insight?, Mobina Mohammadi

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

While interviews have been studied extensively, second-round interviews have remained understudied. The extent to which second-round interviews replicate, reinforce, or extend the information obtained in initial interviews remains unclear. According to Aptitude Research (2022), when the interview process is delayed or when too many interviews are conducted, organizations risk losing high-quality talent. SHRM (2015) includes second-round interviews in its selection process checklist, indicating their prevalence. These practical concerns increase the importance of determining whether a second structured interview contributes meaningful information beyond the first. This proposed study aims to examine whether there is a change in scores from the first-round …

Politics In The Projects: Examining Political Affiliation’S Effects On Workplace Efficiency, David Watson, Jasmine Shafer, Dr. Sean Rife

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects that political affiliation and perceived exclusion have on workplace productivity (an adaptation of previous work conducted by Stewart, 2025). Specifically, the impact of participants’ similar or different affiliations with teammates and inclusion or exclusion during a shared task on workplace contribution. Nadler (2016) explains that people have been shown to be less helpful towards outgroups if the “costs for non-helping are low” (p.64). Thus, the proposed study will attempt to examine if political affiliation is enough to hinder an individual’s likelihood of assistance on work-related projects. Participants will report their …

Organizational And Political Contexts Of Diversity Signaling In Higher Education Recruitment, Jaxson Hill, Waylon Price, Ruth Walker

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Recruitment materials, such as job advertisements, provide prospective employees with cues regarding an organization’s values, climate, and person-organization fit. Jobs ads including statements communicating an organization’s commitment to equal employment opportunities and workforce diversity can shape applicants' perceptions of organizations, and subsequently their intention to pursue employment with that organization (Brown et al., 2006; Heath et al., 2023). The job of the signaler in organizations is to properly convey organization values to reduce uncertainty and project the culture of the organization (Spence, 1973). Thus, job ads may serve as both a mechanism for communicating job vacancies but also as an …