Psychology Commons^™

Shyness And Social Discomfort As Measured By The Mmpi-2, Lori Hebel

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to provide additional validity information for the Social Introversion Scale (Si), the Social Introversion Sub-scales (Si 1, Si 2 and Si 3), the Social Discomfort Content Scale (SOD) and the component scales (SOD 1 and SOD 2) of the MMPI-2. Previous research has focused on comparing the MMPI-2 with other self-report measures. The present study attempted to determine how well the MMPI-2 predicted behavioral observations of shyness and anxiety and self-reported discomfort in social situations. 88 participants took the MMPI-2 and then participated in a group activity. Observer and self-ratings of this activity were …

Moderation Of Personality Test Validity, Christopher Woolard

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Personality testing can be an adequate instrument for prediction of future job performance. However, the predictive ability of these tests has been only moderate at best. This researcher attempted to determine if feedback would help improve the predictive ability of personality tests. The results indicated that feedback did not moderate the relationship between the personality dimensions and job performance for all of the personality construct s except Openness to Experience. This researcher also attempted to replicate the findings of the Barrick and Mount (1993) study which found that autonomy moderated the relationship between Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and job performance. This …

A Study Of Highly And Moderately Gifted Students In Mixed-Age Settings And The Effect On Social Status And Self-Concept, Deeayne Mayfield

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This research addresses issues of self-concept, social status, and relative age as they relate to moderately (n=146) and highly (n=161) gifted students. Previous research regarding self-concept and giftedness yielded mixed results. The majority of social status research had not been conducted with gifted students, and relative age issues have been addressed only with young children. Therefore, the present research was conducted to carry the previous studies further. Only one self-concept scale, the Behavior scale, showed a significant difference between highly and moderately gifted students with highly gifted students outscoring moderately gifted students. No significant differences between moderately and highly gifted …

Factor Analysis Of The Mmpi-A Content Scales: Item-Level And Scale-Level Analyses, Lisa Kay Mccarthy

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This investigation identified and interpreted the overall factor structure of the MMPI-A content scales through the use of scale-level analyses, and examined the factor structure of each individual content scale through item-level analyses. The MMPI-A normative sample (805 males, 815 females) and a clinical sample (266 males, 92 females) were used in the analyses. Scale-level analyses yielded a two factor solution for the normative male and clinical groups and a one factor solution for the normative sample and normative female group. The factors were labeled General Maladjustment and Externalizing Tendencies. Item-level analyses provided one factor solutions for the majority of …

The Political Personality Of U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect psychodiagnostic assessment of the political personality of U.S. vice president Al Gore, Democratic nominee in the 2000 presidential election, from the conceptual perspective of Theodore Millon.

Information concerning Al Gore was collected from published biographical and autobiographical accounts and political reports in the print media, and synthesized into personality profiles using the second edition of the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with Axis II of DSM-IV.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the basis of interpretive guidelines …

What Makes A Life Good?, Laura A. King, Christie N. Scollon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Two studies examined folk concepts of the good life. Samples of college students (N=104) and community adults (N=264) were shown a career survey ostensibly completed by a person rating his or her occupation. After reading the survey, participants judged the desirability and moral goodness of the respondent's life, as a function of the amount of happiness, meaning in life, and wealth experienced. Results revealed significant effects of happiness and meaning on ratings of desirability and moral goodness. In the college sample, individuals high on all 3 independent variables were judged as likely to go to heaven. In the adult sample, …

Age And Violent Sexual Abuse: Does Victim's Age And Violence Associated With Sexual Abuse Influence The Risk Of Suicide?, Debra A. Keel

Graduate Theses

Previous research on childhood sexual abuse has indicated an increased risk of suicide for children who experience more severe sexual abuse and children who experience sexual abuse accompanied by physical abuse. This study investigated the difference in suicide risk associated with varying severity of sexual abuse, and the difference in suicide risk associated with age at the time of sexual abuse. Data was collected from the psychological records of a state juvenile correctional facility for boys. Statistical analysis revealed no significant difference between those who experienced penetrating sexual abuse versus non-penetrating sexual abuse; however, an overall significant difference was found …

Men Who Batter: Personality Variables, Relationship Variables, And Treatment Outcome, Lisa M. Petrica

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study investigated the relationship between the personality characteristics of male batterers and treatment outcome. It also examined a pattern of communication found in violent couples where the male pursues the female and the female withdraws in an argument. The study also compared alcohol use with treatment outcome.

Twenty-one men who attended a group psychoeducational treatment program for batterers completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2). The men were divided into three groups based on their scores: non-pathological (normal profile), narcissistic/antisocial (elevated psychopathic deviate scale), and severely disordered (elevations on several scales). Pre and post-test measures were completed: Dyadic Adjustment …

The Protective-Style Questionnaire: Self-Protective Mechanisms Among Stigmatized Adolescents, Shlomo S. Sawilowsky

Theoretical and Behavioral Foundations of Education Faculty Publications

Crocker and Major (1989) hypothesized three mechanisms by which members of stigmatized groups may protect self-esteem. The mechanisms are: a) ingroup social comparisons, b) valuing/devaluing performance selectively, and c) racial prejudice. We provide a test of Crocker and Major’s hypothesized mechanisms with the development of the Protective Style Questionnaire which was administered to a sample of 78 African-American adolescents. Evidence of high internal consistency reliability (about .86) and factor loadings support the orthogonality of the three mechanisms. Results showed varying levels of endorsement of each mechanism.

Seniors' Knowledge Of Elder Abuse, Neglect, And Exploitation In Urban Versus Rural West Virginia, Debra S. Evans

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Elder abuse, elder neglect/elder self-neglect, and elder exploitation, often referred to as elder maltreatment, is a present reality in the world today. Available research is limited since this topic has been formally recognized only since 1970. To date, limited progress has been made in understanding what elder maltreatment entails and its scope. The purpose of the present study was to test the knowledge of urban and rural West Virginia senior citizens (ages 55 and above) on the given topic. One-hundred and nine senior citizens from four senior citizen centers in WV (two urban and two rural) were included in this …

Group Productivity And How It Is Affected By An Imposed Group Structure, Vicki Fenwick

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The following study examined the ability of the stepladder technique to produce a high number of quality solutions using an applied industrial brainstorming task. Subjects were divided into three conditions; the alone group, the unstructured group, and the stepladder technique group. Each group then performed a task which required participants to provide solutions for an industrial brainstorming task. The quality and the quantity of the solutions were measured for each group. Two analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures were conducted but revealed no significant differences for either quantity or quality. Therefore, the stepladder technique showed no prominent advantages in this particular …

The Clinical Utility Of The Jesness Inventory, Stephanie J. Hayes-Harris

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Because previous research findings on the Jesness Inventory have been relatively inconsistent, the current study was conducted to further examine this instrument's reliability, convergent validity and classificatory ability. A 3 to 11 month test-retest interval used with 42 adjudicated adolescents yielded a mean correlation coefficient of .60 and suggested that the stability of the 11 individual subscales is questionable. Using 42 adjudicated adolescents and 48 outpatients, many significant correlations were obtained between the Jesness Inventory and the Adolescent Multiphasic Personality Inventory subscales. Similarly, the Asocial Index accurately classified the adjudicated adolescents as delinquent and the outpatient adolescents as nondelinquent, as …

Conduct Disorder Questionnaire, Dwayne L. Milam

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Conduct disorder is characterized by a pattern of rule violation in which the rights of those associated with the individual and society are violated. Frequently there are many problems at home, school, and within the community. Without early diagnosis and treatment these problems escalate. Many different techniques and assessment tools have been used to identify these individuals. Most rely on collateral informants, such as parents and teachers. Others are time consuming or not developed to specifically identify conduct disorder. The Conduct Disorder Questionnaire was developed by the author to address these issues. The questionnaire is a brief, easily scored self-report …

The Multidimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (Mdees), David R. Caruso, John D. Mayer

UNH Personality Lab

The Multidimesional Emotional Empathy Scale (Caruso & Mayer, 1998) is a scale of self-reported empathy.

Testing The Matching Hypothesis : Implementing A Minimal Stress Intervention By Matching Writing Task To Emotional Coping Style, Pamela D. Mcneill

Theses : Honours

The theory of inhibition and psychosomatic disease supports the concept that failure to express emotion is psychologically and physically stressful, and associated with long-term health problems. One aspect of this study was to investigate the discrepancy hypothesis proposing that specific emotional coping styles elicit patterns of discrepant self-report and physiological responses. The major focus of the study tested whether matching therapeutic writing tasks to specific emotional coping styles would significantly decrease stress and somatic symptoms, and whether mismatching such writing tasks to emotional coping styles would not decrease stress and somatic symptoms. Undergraduate students were identified as having an emotional …

How Do You Do Your Rage? : A Qualitative Investigation Into Contemporary Women's Experience Of Their Rage, Verena Homberger

Theses : Honours

Feminist researchers investigate women’s lives. This project is looking at a tiny thread embedded in a small section in the huge fabric of women's lives. The section is women’s capacity for violence, and the thread within it is women’s rage. This is a qualitative study of contemporary women experiencing and expressing their anger and rage. Discussions of violence within feminist literature have been largely restricted to accounts of male violence against women and children, and may have inadvertently endorsed the mainstream construction of femininity, which perceives rage in women to be an inappropriate emotion. In this project, I argue that …

Eating-Disorder Patterns In The Minnesota Multiphasic Personaity Inventory, Karen Baer-Barkley

Dissertations

Problem. Early intervention is crucial for effective treatment of eating disorders. While there have recently been many assessment tools developed specifically for eating disorders, a screening tool is still needed. This study sought to identify, in an eating-disordered sample, the existence of a v-shaped pattern on scales 4-5-6 of the MMPI, a commonly used general measure of psychopathology.

Method. The sample consisted of 356 females who were being treated for eating disorders through the HOPE program between 1989 and 1996. Past research on the MMPI has produced equivocal results on identifying significant patterns on the clinical scales. Since prior research …

The Clinton Chronicle: Diary Of A Political Psychologist, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Chronicle, from the perspective of political psychology, of events and controversies in the impeachment saga of President Bill Clinton, from the president’s August 17, 1998 testimony before the grand jury in the Starr investigation to his acquittal on February 12, 1999.

Hardiness And Job Fitness For The Intensive Family Preservation Specialist: A Correlational Study, Sandi Fisher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is costly to train the counselors who serve in intensive Family Preservation Services (IFPS). The hiring agency must pay for traveling expenses in addition to any fee paid for training. When an IFPS worker chooses to terminate employment before the end of two years of employment, this puts a strain on an already tight budget. This problem could be alleviated by finding an efficient pre-hire screening instrument. The three personality traits described in Hardiness Theory literature: commitment, challenge, and control, are traits often used to describe the ideal IFPS worker. This study assessed IFPS workers to determine if the …

A Discovery-Oriented Process Study Of Enactment In Family Therapy: Development Of The Family Therapy Enactment Rating Scale, Elizabeth Ong-Mythuan Fong

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

With the effectiveness of psychotherapy now well-supported in both the individual and family literatures (Garfield & Bergin, 1994), we are entering an era where questions of how and why therapy works are of interest. More specifically, there has been support and encouragement by some researchers (Rice & Greenberg, 1984; Mahrer, 1988) for the use of discovery-oriented methodologies to explore clinical phenomena that have yet to be empirically validated. The following is a discovery-oriented study of enactment, a structural family therapy intervention. The theoretical goals of enactments, their relevance to clinical practice, as well as how they are actually implemented in …

Personality Types Of Registered Nurses Employed In A Rural Community Hospital, Tina Snodgrass

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this study was to identify the personality types of registered nurses in a rural community. An extensive literature review revealed that no studies, utilizing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to identify personality types, had been conducted with rural nurses. Jung's Psychological Type Theory was the theoretical framework for the study. The MBTI operationalizes Jung's theory and was utilized to determine the most frequently occurring personality types of the nurses. A descriptive study was conducted at a 68 bed acute care hospital. The sample consisted of 40 experienced registered nurses working in staff positions within the hospital. Sensing, …

Affective Orientation, Alexithymia, And Multidimensional Empathy In Counselors-In-Training, Terrilyn J. Krueger

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive relationship between two affective measures, affective orientation and alexithymia, and five empathy measures in 67 master’s degree level counselor trainees. It was hypothesized that affective orientation would be predictive and alexithymia inversely predictive of five distinct dimensions of empathy: communicated, observed, emotional, cognitive, and relational. Communicated empathy was measured by trainees’ audio-taped responses to a client stimulus which were assessed by “blind” raters. Observed empathy was measured by practicum supervisors based on their observations of trainees with clients. Emotional, cognitive, and relational empathy were assessed by trainees’ self-reported responses about …

Implicit Theories And Conceptions Of Morality, Chi-Yue Chiu, Carol S. Dweck, Jennifer Yuk-Yue Tong, Ho-Ying Fu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this article, the authors propose that individuals' moral beliefs are linked to their implicit theories about the nature (i.e., malleability) of their social-moral reality. Specifically, it was hypothesized that when individuals believe in a fixed reality (entity theory), they tend to hold moral beliefs in which duties within the given system are seen as fundamental. In contrast, when individuals believe in a malleable reality (incremental theory), one that can be shaped by individuals, they hold moral beliefs that focus on moral principles, such as human rights, around which that reality should be organized. Results from 5 studies supported the …

Auditor Judgment Confidence: Direct Evidence For The Process View, Marshall A. Geiger, A.C. Lloyd Spurrell

Accounting Faculty Publications

Although there has been considerable research on audit judgment processes and structures, one area that has received little attention is auditor judgment confidence. Determining the nature of confidence attainment has direct implications for audit practice, particularly regarding the timing of evidence evaluation leading to final judgments. The present study extends the early work of Pincus (1991) and is the first to provide direct evidence in support of the process view of audit judgment confidence.

African-American Males' Perception Of Law Enforcement: A Psychophysiological Perspective, Adolph Brown Iii

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study compared the psychophysiological reactivity of African American and European American males to authority. Nineteen African American males and 23 European American males were randomly assigned to either be interrogated by a police officer, or see a police officer interrogate that experimenter or view a videotape of police activity. Participants' physiological reactivity, acceptance of authority, fear of negative evaluation or social anxiety, and apprehension and anxiety in stressful situations as well as EMG, SCR, heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure were measured. African American males were hypothesized to show greater physiological response than European American males and participants who …

The Political Psychology Of Deception Research, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes some substantive and ethical complexities in research on the psychology of deception.

Dating Violence Among Adolescents: When Does It Begin?, Kelly S. O'Hearn

Graduate Theses

Research has investigated dating violence (DV) in high * school populations- yet no studies have examined adolescents in the 7th and 8th grades. The present study investigated the prevalence of DV in the Permian Basin area of West - Texas. Comparisons of the prevalence of DV between junior high (7th & 8th grades), freshman high 4Sth grade)* and senior high school -(lOth, 11th, & 12th-grades) -found no significant differences of used or received DV. The prevalence of DV in the Permian Basin was similar to those found in some studies that used college-student -samples. Significant interactions effects and main effects …

The Relationship Between Personality Traits And Transformational Leadership Among North Carolina Elementary Public School Principals, Robert J. Mcgrattan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between personality traits as identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and transformational leadership as measured by The Nature of School Leadership. The subjects were 74 North Carolina public school elementary principals. The principals completed the MBTI. Principals also provided pertinent demographic information. Selected teachers in each school were asked to give their perception of the principal as a transformational leader by completing The Nature of School Leadership. Data were analyzed to look for significant relationships between personality and demographics as they related to transformational leadership. The analysis of demographic information yielded gender as a significant …

The Nlp Loss Pattern: Imagery And Experience In Grief And Mourning, F. Clayton Miller

Academic Support Division Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Self-Esteem Comparing Special Education With Regular Education Students During The Middle School Years, Debra A. Davis

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to compare differences in levels of self-esteem between special education students and a control group of normal students. One hundred sixty-two fifth- through eighth-grade students from Doddridge County Middle School, West Union, West Virginia, were assessed by teachers using the Self-Esteem Index. The students were initially divided into two groups according to their placement in the regular or the special education programs. There was a total of 81 students in each of the groups. The configuration of each group was as follows: 24 learning-disability students, 14 behavior-disorder students, 16 gifted students, nine speech/language-disorder students, …