Psychology Commons^™

Confidence In College Athletics, Kimberly Halpin

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

I researched the processes used by intercollegiate athletes to maintain confidence throughout their sports career, including how they prepared for games/competitions, how they dealt with pressures, and how other factors affected their performance and thought process during games. For this research, I created and administered an online survey to 70 college athletes across four sports. I found that many things gave the athletes confidence in themselves to play their sport such as family and preparation. However, some things also lowered the respondents’ confidence levels such as failing and negativity. Results imply that athletes, for the most part, seem confident and …

Cluster B Personality Disorders Separated By Gender Expectations, Brianna Kloss

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Criticisms of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000), the most widely recognized system for classification of psychological disorders in the U.S., including gender discriminating disorders and diagnoses, have existed for all editions of the DSM. Arguably, gender construction has a profound influence on the standards and evaluation of normal and abnormal behaviors. Concern for the presence of gender bias of personality disorders has been raised within the DSM, in part, by the frequent diagnoses made according to gender stereotypes. The DSM-IV-TR characterizes personality disorders as marked distress and …

The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy How America Related To The Trilogy, Bethanie Sterling

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Development And Validation Of The Single Item Narcissism Scale (Sins), Sara Konrath, Brian P. Meier, Brad J. Bushman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Main Objectives: The narcissistic personality is characterized by grandiosity, entitlement, and low empathy. This paper describes the development and validation of the Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS). Although the use of longer instruments is superior in most circumstances, we recommend the SINS in some circumstances (e.g. under serious time constraints, online studies).

Methods: In 11 independent studies (total N = 2,250), we demonstrate the SINS' psychometric properties.

Results: The SINS is significantly correlated with longer narcissism scales, but uncorrelated with self-esteem. It also has high test-retest reliability. We validate the SINS in a variety of samples (e.g., undergraduates, nationally representative …

The Fatherhood Factor: The Impact Of The Father-Child Relationship On The Social, Interpersonal, And Recidivism Risk Factors Of Previously Incarcerated Men, Larissa A. Maley

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Of the men who return home from prison, nearly 7 out of 10 will be re-arrested and sent back within 3 years of their release (Travis, Solomon, & Waul, 2001). This trend has large- scale implications, not just for individuals, but for their families and communities as well. Clearly, understanding the factors that contribute to a man’s success or failure in staying out of prison is extremely important in constructing policy and programs to assist these at-risk individuals and communities. Of the few studies that have explored the lives of previously incarcerated men, some have found fatherhood to be a …

Career Decision Status, Career-Related Thinking, And Emotional Distress: A Structural Equation Model, Lindsey Marie Andrews

Dissertations

The choosing of a college major or occupation is an important decision with which many individuals struggle. Prior research has suggested that difficulty choosing a major or occupation affects a majority of students entering college and stems from multiple sources including lack of information, insufficient learning experiences, and ineffective decision-making processes. Cognitive-behavioral theory has shown utility in working with a diverse set of difficulties and with diverse populations through the examination of the influence of thoughts and emotions on resulting behavior. Research in the career literature has begun to emphasize connections between one’s thoughts and emotions in regards to career …

Males’ Expectations Of Counseling, Sheryl Kelly

Dissertations

In today’s society, a man upholding masculinity alone is not enough. There is a constant need to “prove” their masculinity. Men’s inability to recognize when they are experiencing stress, strain, and sickness is noted as being due to them being socialized to ignore their feelings (Wilson, n.d.). Although research that addresses the concept of help-seeking has expanded, it continues to be limited in its focus on men. In addition, not much attention has been given to counseling expectations. The purpose of the present study is to expand the current knowledge base on men and their counseling expectations. This study examined …

Test Of Personal Intelligence 1.4 (Topi 1.4) Manual, John D. Mayer, Abigail T. Panter, David R. Caruso

UNH Personality Lab

Personal intelligence involves the capacity to reason about personality and personality-relevant information. People high in personal intelligence are good at understanding themselves and others. The UNH Personality Lab developed a series of ability-based tests that assess this skill, under the name of the Test of Personal Intelligence (TOPI).

Persistent Emotional Extremes And Video Relay Service Interpreters, Dawn M. Wessling, Sherry Shaw

Journal of Interpretation

This mixed methods study explored how call content emotionally affects video interpreters (VIs) who work in Video Relay Service (VRS) and how this influences perceptions of job satisfaction and general well-being. The participants included 889 self-reported VIs who completed a survey containing open and closed-ended questions regarding their work. Whereas VRS call content can be extremely emotional for the non-deaf and deaf callers, whether positive or negative, the study seeks to identify a spectrum of coping strategies to perceived stressors brought about by these emotionally charged incidents. The study examined the frequency of these types of calls processed by the …

Effects Of Gender Bias And Gender Inversion Stereotypes On Assessment Of Personality Traits And Diagnosis Of Personality Disorders, Beatrice Charmaine Mosier

Doctoral Dissertations

Past research has shown the results of gender and gender role biases on the diagnostic decision-making process, particularly with regard to personality disorders. This bias has implications for homosexual individuals, as they often are viewed as displaying traits of opposite sex individuals. With regard to personality assessment, current research continuously supports a more dimensional conceptualization of personality pathology. In the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a hybrid model of personality assessment, which utilizes both categorical methods and dimensional approaches, has been added as an alternative model. The study explored the effects of …

Human And Canine Personality Assessment Instruments To Predict Successful Adoptions With Shelter Dogs, Sheryl Lynn Walker

Open Access Dissertations

Animal shelters are often over-crowded with animals, and efforts to match potential adopters with shelter dogs, to improve the quality of adoptions, are increasing. However, a lack of evidence-based practices makes matching difficult. This research was conducted to investigate the role of dog and human personality, using questionnaire-based measurements, on adoption success in two Indiana shelters, Clinton County Humane Society and the Humane Society of Indianapolis. Ultimately, the aim of this project was to assess dog personality, human personality, and satisfaction, to evaluate adoption success in shelter dogs.^ The present thesis contains three studies exploring dog and human personality traits, …

Interrelationships Between Sensation Seeking And Psychopathy, Casey S. Iwai

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Psychopathic and sensation seeking traits are often correlated; however, sensation seeking alone is not inherently pathological. This study seeks to investigate possible moderating variables between individuals who are high on sensation seeking but low on measures of psychopathic or antisocial traits. Specifically, a positive family environment is hypothesized to be a moderating variable in the development of psychopathic traits among high sensation seekers. A college student sample assessed for psychopathy, sensation seeking, and family functioning is used to test this hypothesis. Significant relationships between all three constructs were found. Similar to previous data, sensation seeking was found to correlate with …

Neural Correlates Of Suspiciousness And Interactions With Anxiety During Emotional And Neutral Word Processing, Joscelyn E. Fisher, Gregory A. Miller, Sarah M. Sass, Rebecca Levin Silton, J. Christopher Edgar, Jennifer L. Stewart, Jing Zhou, Wendy Heller

Publications and Research

Suspiciousness is usually classified as a symptom of psychosis, but it also occurs in depression and anxiety disorders. Though how suspiciousness overlaps with depression is not obvious, suspiciousness does seem to overlap with anxious apprehension and anxious arousal (e.g., verbal iterative processes and vigilance about environmental threat). However, suspiciousness also has unique characteristics (e.g., concern about harm from others and vigilance about social threat). Given that both anxiety and suspiciousness have been associated with abnormalities in emotion processing, it is unclear whether it is the unique characteristics of suspiciousness or the overlap with anxiety that drive abnormalities in emotion processing. …

Improving Data Quality With Four Short Sentences: How An Honor Code Can Make The Difference During Data Collection, Alexander Scott Mckay

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Careless responders have a large impact on a study by causing issues such as Type II errors (failing to reject a false null hypothesis), which then waste researchers’ time and money. Research on careless responding has focused primarily on detecting and removing careless responders rather than on reducing careless responding before data collection begins. The purpose of the present study was to test the use of honor codes with or without the presentation of a picture of watchful eyes to increase self-awareness thereby reducing careless responding. Participants (N = 305) were randomly assigned to one of five honor code …

Effects Of Jurors’ Gender And Attitudes Toward Intellectual Disability On Judgments For Disabled Juvenile Defendants, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Bette L. Bottoms

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Because many juvenile offenders are intellectually disabled and have their cases tried by jurors in adult criminal court, it is important to understand factors that influence jurors’ judgments in such cases. Using a mock trial methodology, we explored the relations among jurors’ gender, attitudes toward intellectual disability, and judgments in a criminal case involving an intellectually disabled 15-year-old girl accused of murder. Men mock jurors’ judgments were not influenced by their preexisting biases, but women's were: the more women favored special treatment for disabled offenders, the less likely they were to suspect the disabled juvenile was guilty and the less …

The Effects Of Tripartite Self-Construal On Prosocial Behavior, Nicole Ruser

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The current study examined the effects of both primed and unprimed tripartite self-construal on real helping behavior offered in a laboratory setting. Additional variables commonly associated with prosocial behavior, namely empathy (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987) and agreeableness (Graziano, Hasbashi, Sheese & Tobin, 2007; Caprara, Alessandri & Eisenberg, 2912), were also assessed. Undergraduate students (N = 119) completed self-report measures of empathy, agreeableness, and chronic self-construal, then completed a self-construal prime before the experimenter requested help with a simple task. It was predicted that the independence prime would increase helping among participants, as seen in the work of Finlay and …

College Students’ Attitudes Towards Adults With Developmental Disabilities: Does Direct Contact Make A Difference?, Caroline E. Greene

Honors College Theses

Data were collected from thirty college students who participated in an alternative break trip and approximately seventy college students who did not attend the trip. Study subjects served as counselors at a camp for adults with developmental disabilities. Data were collected using five measures: a) before the week started, students filled out a survey which questioned their comfort level and attitude when interacting with this population; b) this same survey was administered to a random sample of college students who did not attend the break trip c) at camp, students kept a journal throughout the week documenting their experiences; d) …

Affect Perception In Computer Mediated Communication, Rachel E. Townsend, Chris Allen

Student Research Symposium

The perception of affect influences the subjective perception of an individual’s environment (Isbell & Burns, n.d.). Accurate affect perception leads to increased resilience and positive coping mechanisms when faced with daily life stressors (Robinson, 2012). Communication technologies have revolutionized the ways in which individuals connect to one another professionally and socially (Walther, 1996). This study investigated accurate affect perception in computer mediated communication (CMC) from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Communication research posit several theories to accommodate the ways in which we communicate using CMC (J. B. Walther, 1996). Personality research has documented the correlation between the traits extraversion and neuroticism with …

Testing A Multi-Level Mediation Model Of Workgroup Incivility: The Role Of Civility Climate And Group Norms For Civility, Jessica Johnston-Fisher

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this study was to test a multi-level mediation model of incivility. Specifically, it was proposed that predictors of workplace incivility at the individual, group, and organizational level would be related to each other and negative individual outcomes. It was also proposed that the relationship between these predictors and outcomes would be mediated by workplace incivility victimization. Two hundred twenty eight participants completed an online survey through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Results indicated that variables at all three levels (i.e., civility climate, group norms for civility, and individual characteristics) were related to one another and predictive of negative individual …

Discovering The Perfect Study Abroad: Using The Five Factor Model To Fit Students To Their Ideal Program, Meagan Ann Halligan

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

The goal of this paper is to examine the relationship between personality types and study abroad program selection. This paper explores the different factors that play a role in the decision making process of individuals as well as the multiple dimensions of personality. In order to research the relationship between these two elements, a survey was sent to a portion of the University of Arkansas student population that had taken part in study abroad programs. It was discovered that there is indeed a relationship between personality types, study abroad program selection, and the successfulness of study abroad experiences.

Bullying: Prevention/ Intervention Strategies With High School Students, Chloe Blau

Senior Honors Projects

Bullying has been a prevalent issue within the public and private school systems for as long as they have existed. There have always been students who were victimized for various reasons, or for no reason at all, but this generation has become much more vicious when it comes to the lengths to which they will go to hurt someone. Many methods have been used in an attempt to create both prevention and intervention plans for these horrible acts, but it is quite difficult to change a person’s behavior. So what if instead of trying to alter the mind of the …

Investigating The Relationships Between Personality, Valence And Modern Health Worries, Thomas Green

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In our evolving world, new technologies and practices are frequently introduced to society and assimilated into daily life. People often form concerns about how these new technologies, and other types of change, affect public health and the surrounding environment. This paper aims to form a better understanding of Modern Health Worries (MHW). Two studies were conducted: one investigating personality correlates of the MHW scale, and a second examining the covariation of the MHW scale with participants’ valence and arousal ratings of images of MHWs selected in terms categories presented in the literature.

Undergraduate students at Syracuse University (n=143) took part …

The Influence Of Bystanders In Subsequent Bullying Behavior, Jenny Lane Morris

Dissertations

Aggression that is targeted towards an individual or a group of individuals who is at a disadvantage to respond is known by several terms in the literature, including bullying, harassment, and mobbing. There has been much interest in this sort of targeted aggression among school-aged children and, therefore, a large body of literature on the topic exists. In adult populations, especially in workplace environments, much research has focused on the respective roles of the victim and bully in this adverse social dynamic, with less information available on the role of the bystander, which has emerged as an important part of …

Social Rejection: Downward Simulation, The Road To Recovery, Monica L. Hesler

Honors Theses

Prior research on social rejection has found that people with high self-esteem tend to cope better with social rejection. However, there is still not a complete understanding as to why they tend to cope better with rejection. Some research has found that persons with high self-esteem think about rejection differently than persons with low self-esteem which results in a better ability to cope. This thesis further examines the relationship between self-esteem and social rejection. Specifically this thesis examines how different thought being used by persons with high or low self-esteem may affect their reactions to social rejection. Based on prior …

Passion Isn't Always A Good Thing: Examining Entrepreneurs' Network Centrality And Financial Performance With A Dualistic Model Of Passion, Violet Ho, Jeffrey Pollack

Management Faculty Publications

We propose a conceptual model that links entrepreneurs' passion, network centrality, and financial performance, and test this model with small business managers in formal business networking groups. Drawing on the dualistic model of passion, we explore the relationships that harmonious and obsessive passion have with financial performance, mediated by network centrality. Results indicate that harmoniously passionate entrepreneurs had higher out‐degree centrality in their networking group (i.e., they were more inclined to seek out members to discuss work issues), which increased the income they received from peer referrals and, ultimately, business income. Obsessively passionate entrepreneurs had lower in‐degree centrality (i.e., they …

Who Will Defy Authority? Personality Features And Destructive Obedience In The Milgram Paradigm, Ashton Caroline Southard

Dissertations

The present study examined the potential role of individual differences in personality in the likelihood of engaging in destructive obedience to authority within a modified version of the Stanley Milgram paradigm (Milgram, 1963, 1974). Personality features examined included the Big Five dimensions of agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion, and the dimensions of the Dark Triad, which consist of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Participants were 39 undergraduates enrolled in introductory psychology classes who participated in exchange for partial fulfillment of a research requirement. Data were collected in two phases. Phase 1 consisted of online completion of …

Co-Worry In Friendship Dyads, Michelle H. Goldstein

Honors Scholar Theses

Anxiety disorders increase in prevalence from childhood into adulthood. Although cognitive theories are prominent in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety, peer relationships are emerging as salient interpersonal risk factors. This study investigates the effects of specific interpersonal interchanges on anxiety symptoms in college students. 60 undergraduates attended the experiment with a same-sex best friend, and were randomly assigned to the co-worry or neutral conversation condition. Each person completed self-report measures of state anxiety, negative affect and positive affect prior to and following an 8-minute conversation about self-generated worry topics such as exams or neutral topics such as the weather. …

Parent Vs. Teacher Ratings Of Children’S Shyness As Predictors Of Language And Attention Skills, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Amanda Prokasky, Xiaoqing Tu, Scott R. Frohn, Kate Sirota, Victoria J. Molfese

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Shyness in childhood has been linked to multiple adjustment outcomes, including poor peer relations, internalizing problems, and clinical anxiety. However, shyness does not consistently emerge as a negative predictor of children’s success. This incongruity may stem, in part, from variations in the operationalization and measurement of shyness in different studies. Researchers often combine parent and teacher ratings of shyness, but correlations between parent and teacher reports are consistently small to medium. The purpose of this study is to examine parent and teacher ratings of shyness as they predict language and attention skills in preschool children, and explore discrepancies between parent …

Stress And Coping As A Function Of Experience Level In Collegiate Flight Students, Jennifer Kirschner, John Young, Richard Fanjoy

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

Aviation as an industry requires a high degree of precision at all times. Large amounts of stress have been known to decrease performance to undesirable levels. While stress reactions and the coping skills used after encountering stressful situations differ from person to person, generalities can be made by comparing differences between groups. A large number of pilot applicants receive initial training within a university flight program each year. In order to better understand the perceived stress level and the coping skills used by these students, the current research project administered a perceived stress test and a coping skills inventory to …

Openness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, And Family Health And Aging Concerns Interact In The Prediction Of Health-Related Internet Searches In A Representative U.S. Sample, Tim Bogg, Phuong T. Vo

Psychology Faculty Research Publications

Recent estimates suggest 60 % of the U.S. adult population uses the Internet to find health-related information. The goal of the present study was to model health-related Internet searches as a function of an interdependent system of personality adaptation in the context of recent health and aging-related concerns. Assessments of background factors, Big Five personality traits, past-month health and aging-related concerns, and the frequency of past-month health-related Internet searches (via Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, or some other search engine) were obtained from a representative U.S. sample (N = 1,015). Controlling for background factors, regression analyses showed more frequent health-related …