Psychology Commons^™

An Exploration Of Black Church Leaders' Intentions To Develop Critical Consciousness Among African-American Students, Taheesha Quarells

Dissertations

African-American students experience human capital opportunity and achievement gaps. Researchers have called for culturally relevant strategies to help close the gaps. The historic Black Church, a part of many African-American students’ culture and community, is a historic and current source of social capital for positive human capital development outcomes. Critical consciousness develops positive human capital outcomes, such as academic achievement, in African-American and other minority students. Much of the literature on critical consciousness is quantitative in nature and therefore does not include the intentions or the willingness of organizations to develop critical consciousness. Therefore, there is a need to understand …

Peer-Led Building Resilience And Enhancing Social-Emotional Skills Program, Danielle K. Enrico

Department of Occupational Therapy Entry-Level Capstone Projects

The purpose of the Capstone experience was to develop and implement a five-week peer-led building resilience and social-emotional skills training program at a public high school. This program addressed high school students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding resources, social-emotional skills, and resilience. A questionnaire was administered pre and post-program to measure effectiveness. The results indicated an increase in scores, demonstrating a clearer understanding in all three areas.

Emotion Regulation Variability And Relationship Functioning In Emerging Adulthood, Laura B. Kenneally

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic factor that functions as a crucial contributor to individual well-being and social functioning. Research seeking to identify adaptive or maladaptive strategies of emotion regulation has often focused on individual strategies, though emerging evidence suggests that what constitutes “adaptive” regulation is often context-dependent. Having a large repertoire of emotion regulation strategies that one is willing to use at different rates has been termed “emotion regulation variability,” and has been linked to positive individual outcomes. While the benefits of emotion regulation variability have been demonstrated on an individual level, the impact on romantic relationships has yet to …

Mental Health And Adolescents: The Impact Of Social Isolation In Adolescents During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Gabriella Aguinaldo

Nursing | Senior Theses

In early 2020, the coronavirus pandemic, first detected in late 2019, afflicted the world. The disease associated with the virus became known as COVID-19. COVID-19 was recognized as a highly contagious and deadly disease. In California, United States, COVID-19 was detected in February and the first shelter-in-place orders were ordered by the counties and state, which forced children and adults to stay at home and attend school and work virtually. Shelter-in-place orders were quickly implemented around the world.

As the world began this sudden switch in lifestyle, many were concerned for the mental health and safety of themselves and their …

Does Whispering Improve Children’S Memory? Comparing Auditory Vigilance And Salience Hypotheses, Christina M. Barnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oral communication is one of the primary tools children use to learn new information and speech registers can deliver additional meaning to the words someone uses. Cirillo’s (2004) vigilance hypothesis states “Whispering can affect the psychobiological state of recipients, and in particular raise their auditory vigilance” (Cirillo, 2004, p. 76). Building on this theory, the current study investigates the role of whispering and children’s memory by examining a whispering vigilance, whispering salience which focused on the changes between normal and whisper registers, and combined vigilance and salience hypotheses to determine if whispering contributes to the recall of information. Using video …

The Relationship Between Status Motives And Social Activism, Olajuwon Olagbegi

Honors Theses

Numerous social and cultural events have resulted in increased interest and participation in social activism in the United States, stemming from mounting dissatisfaction with social inequality. Though explanations have previously included increased issue exposure and awareness due to the proliferation of digital media and increases in progressive ideology amongst the nation’s younger generation, the current study tests the hypothesis that social activism may in part be motivated by interest in status acquisition, given the evolutionary value of status for securing access to resources and mates. To test this hypothesis, participants were randomly assigned to a status versus control priming condition …

Effects Of Gender And Sexual Orientation On Perceptions Of The Bereaved, John Dickinson

Honors Theses

The loss of a spouse is different for everyone who experiences it. There is no universal pattern for bereavement, and there is a wide variation in what is considered normal or healthy grieving (Hooyman & Kramer, 2010). Researchers have found that spousal bereavement is associated with increased risk of mortality, decrements in physical health, and diverse psychological reactions; some experience ongoing, disabling levels of stress, some experience symptoms that gradually decrease over time, and many experience little to no interference (Bonanno et al. 2004; Stroebe et al., 2007). The loss of a spouse or romantic partner affects most individuals at …

Future Possibilities For Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Nicolas Leonardi

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder’s nature of presenting socially awkward behaviors creates barriers for those with ASD in the job interview process. This problem raises questions on how the interview process can be redefined to be more inclusive. Dillenburger et al. conducted a study on interventions provided for individuals with ASD. The study concluded that most jobs do not provide an appropriate job interview process for those with ASD. Solomon et al. and Maras et al. both conducted studies that highlighted the social behaviors presented by individuals with ASD that prevented them from being hired during the job interview process. Both of …

Support For Militant U.S. Foreign Policy: The Role Of Authoritarianism And International Xenophobia, Brandon M. Garcia

Student Theses

Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) has been studied extensively in the domestic socio-political context, but its potential impact on foreign policy is still poorly understood. The current study replicated the putative two-factor model of the construct (Authoritarian Aggression/Submission and Conventionalism) and examined the associations of each factor with perceptions of overall danger to the U.S. posed by other countries and with the support for more militant U.S. foreign policy. As expected, both RWA factors correlated with self-reported levels of political conservatism (r = 0.32, r = 0.33; p < .001) Additionally, Authoritarian Aggression and Submission (but not Conventionalism) were correlated with increased perceived danger from foreign countries (r = .35; p < .001) and increased support for a more militant U.S. foreign policy (r = .25; p < .001). Participants higher in RWA were more likely to view the world as a hostile and threatening place, and in turn support more aggressive military action in response to those fears.

Factors Influencing Maladaptive Behaviour Among Street Children In Khartoum, Sudan, Najla Abdallah Mohammed Ahmed

Student Works (2020-2029)

Children living on the streets are a common sight in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and in other parts of the country. In the case of Khartoum's street children, they have left their homes for the streets to satisfy their basic needs among which are food, alternate shelter and clothing. The absence of these things may force children to take to the streets where they think they have better opportunities to have access to their basic needs. These children are vulnerable and defenceless, may be pressed or intimidated into being involved in criminal activities, including in the illegal drug industry. …

Smartphone Addiction And Checking Behavior Predict Aggression: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach, Shuna Shiann Khoo, Hwajin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite the potential risks of excessive smartphone use for maladaptive outcomes, the link between smartphone use and aggression remains less understood. Furthermore, prior findings are inconclusive due to a narrow focus on limited aspects of smartphone use (e.g., screen time) and reliance on self-reported assessments of smartphone use. Therefore, using objective measures of smartphone use, we sought to examine the associations between several key indices of smartphone use—screen time, checking behaviors, and addictive tendency—and multifaceted aggression (i.e., confrontation, anger, and hostility). In a cross-sectional study, we administered a series of questionnaires assessing aggressive tendencies (i.e., The Aggression Questionnaire) and various …

How Can We Reduce Racism? A Mixed Method Study Of Factors That Influence Attitudes Towards Social Change, Kindy Insouvanh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The resurgence of social movements such as Black Lives Matter has provoked public discourse about racial inequality and efforts towards social change. The current study sought to better understand how young adults reason about racism reduction with a focus on racial allyship and collective action. The present study used mixed methods to identify strategies young adults believe different racial groups could do to reduce racism and investigate the influence that individual factors have on reasoning about social change. Here, I present emergent themes to describe racism reduction strategies from a large and racially diverse sample of undergraduate students (N= 428). …

Shaul's "Our Brains Are Like Computers!: Exploring Social Skills And Social Cause And Effect With Children On The Autism Spectrum" (Book Review), Susanah J. Wilson Hanson

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

Perceptions Of The Appropriate Response To Norm Violation In 57 Societies, Kimmo Erikkson, Pontus Strimling, Et Al., Andree Hartanto, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriateness of various responses to a violation of a cooperative norm and to atypical social behaviors. Our findings highlight both cultural universals and cultural variation. We find a universal negative relation between appropriateness ratings of norm violations and appropriateness ratings of responses in the form of confrontation, social ostracism and gossip. Moreover, …

An Intergenerational Photo Exploration Of Self Care Actions In Self-Identifying Strong Black Women, Vanessa Patrice Goodar

Dissertations

The current study sought to expand upon the Giscombé Superwoman Schema (2010) specifically exploring the role of vulnerability resistance and help obligation as potential barriers to changing comprehensive self-care health commitments in self-identifying Strong Black Women (SBW). The Superwoman Schema characteristics of vulnerability resistance and help obligation along with socio-economic factors of income, religious affiliation and marital status were assessed in the project using a visual-ethnography approach to Photo Voice methods and five intergenerational focus groups of SBW's born between 1946 and 2002. The collective self-care knowledge of these eighteen participants was analyzed using a participatory action research discussion framework …

Intra-Participant And Inter-Analyst Cacophony: Working The Hyphen Between Modalities Using Provocative Reflexivity, David A. Caicedo, Andrea Nikté Juarez Mendoza, Miguel Pinedo

Publications and Research

Multimodal psychological research highlights the benefit of using complementary approaches to the phenomenological study of lived experience. Rather than focus on any individual method, this study attempts to concentrate on the transition, or hyphen, between them, as a place for reflexivity, ethics, and theory. Participants were 14 adults, recruited from ‘New York Community College’ and ‘New Jersey Community College’ in the U.S., who engaged in focus groups where they completed two activities: drawing a map of their personal journey to the college or of their self-identity, and their definitions for the immigration-related terms illegal and undocumented. Results demonstrated that …

Homelessness, Dehumanization, And The Role Of Empathy, Christina Esker

Kean Quest

Dehumanization reflects a psychological process that denies individuals and groups the positive traits and attributes that make them human. Those experiencing homelessness are frequently dehumanized and perceived as social outcasts in American society. This study demonstrates the tendency of others to dehumanize individuals that are homeless and how increased empathy changes how this social outgroup is perceived. Results revealed that when exposed to information that humanizes a man experiencing homelessness, participants’ levels of empathy increased, and levels of disgust decreased. However, general attitudes and beliefs of homelessness were unchanged. The implications of increasing empathy levels for this social outgroup are …

Mothers' Drinking Motives, Sheila Kathleen Umemoto

Dissertations and Theses

Increases in women's excessive alcohol use are leading to concerns about a developing public health problem since, for women, it takes fewer years and lower doses to develop a range of alcohol-induced health problems. Maternal status is generally considered protective against alcohol use; however, this effect is weakened by multiple social role strain, leading to higher stress and negative affect, and subsequent coping-related alcohol use. Given that the majority of mothers with young children are working or looking for work (72.3%; BLS, 2021), it is likely that the combination of competing demands and expectations associated with multiple roles of parent, …

The Nature Of Anti-Asian American Xenophobia During The Coronavirus Pandemic: A Preliminary Exploration Into Envy As A Key Motivator Of Hate, Daisuke Akiba

Publications and Research

Background. The current Coronavirus pandemic has been linked to a dramatic increase in anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) hate incidents in the United States. At the time of writing, there does not appear to be any published empirical research examining the mechanisms underlying Asiaphobia during the current pandemic. Based on the stereotype content model, we investigated the idea that ambivalent attitudes toward AAPIs, marked primarily with envy, may be contributing to anti-AAPI xenophobia. Methods. Study 1 (N = 140) explored, through a survey, the link between envious stereotypes toward AAPIs and Asiaphobia. Study 2 (N = 167), …

Model Of Inspiring Media, Mary Beth Oliver, Arthur A. Raney, Anne Bartsch, Sophie Janicke-Bowles, Markus Appel, Katherine R. Dale

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Scholars have increasingly explored the ways that media content can touch, move, and inspire audiences, leading to numerous beneficial outcomes including increased feelings of connectedness to and heightened motivations for doing good for others. Although this line of inquiry is relatively new, sufficient evidence and patterns of results have emerged such that a clearer picture of the inspiring media experience is coming into focus. This article has two primary goals. First, we seek to synthesize the existing research into a working and evolving model of inspiring media experiences reflecting five interrelated and symbiotic elements: exposure, message factors, responses, outcomes, and …

Civil Society Leaders’ Experiences Of Peacebuilding In Londonderry/Derry City, Northern Ireland: Transforming Cultural And Psychological Barriers, Leonardo Luna, Sean Byrne

Peace and Conflict Studies

This article reviews the empirical data the second author collected from 120 semi-structured interviews with the leaders of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and funding agency development officers conducted during the summer of 2010 in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. The research explores 44 Derry City respondents' experiences and perceptions regarding external economic aid in the Northern Ireland peace process. To this end, this article explores the role of economic aid from the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) and the European Union (EU) Peace and Reconciliation or Peace 3 Fund in engaging with civil society in transforming psychological and cultural …

Athletes With Neurodegenerative Disease: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Family Members’ Experiences, Matthew J. Smith, Georgia Young, John Batten, Keith D. Parry, Rosie Collins, Eric Anderson, Adam J. White

The Qualitative Report

This qualitative study involved in-depth interviews with 15 family members (mainly partners and children) of deceased athletes who experienced deterioration in their neurological health towards the end of their life. The purpose of this study was to examine the stressors these family members experienced with the ailed players, their emotional responses to their family member’s condition, as well as the coping strategies they used. Vertical and horizontal thematic analyses were conducted on the data, which revealed five distinct temporal stages, a range of emotional responses, as well as accompanying stressors and coping strategies at each temporal stage. The findings are …

Comparing And Contrasting The Construction Of Identity By Residents Of Dyess Colony And The Rohwer Resettlement Camp, Ismail Moufdi

Student Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to study, compare, and contrast the construction of identity by residents of Dyess Colony and the Rohwer Resettlement Camp in order to evaluate the crucial impacts of these two places on their identity. As a result, I have become curious to learn how such a short period of time in both towns had significant impacts on their lives and identity, especially when almost every one of them shows excellent connections to these places and how these two locations affected the rest of their lives even for those who left the areas a long time …

Social Experiences Of Muslim Americans Regarding The Intolerance Displayed By Non-Muslims, Munder Abderrazzaq

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Non-Muslims in the United States have openly expressed their opposition regarding Muslim Americans, which has led to the racial profiling and unequal treatment of Muslim Americans. Literature regarding the intolerance displayed by majority members indicates a need for further research that explores the point of view of minorities in the United States. Intolerance is defined as the refusal and unwillingness to respect or tolerate persons of a different social group or members of minority groups who hold beliefs contrary to one’s own. The intolerance displayed among members of different religious and cultural backgrounds can limit the ability to discover new …

Investigating Values In Discourse: Ideals And Social Plans, Luke Edward Hanst

Dissertations and Theses

Social scientists argue that values enable group coordination. I explore two theories of values before turning to evidence provided by Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem, "The Hill We Climb." First, the paradigm of Shalom Schwartz describes values as transsituational goals which enable groups to coordinate action and evaluate the world. I argue the Schwartz paradigm zooms out from values into categories while I need a means to zoom in to understand values in discourse. I turn to the Pragmatic Prospection paradigm to elaborate the cognitive ontology of goals and to understand the function of language. I argue that values are shared …

Behavioral Context Affects Social Signal Representations Within Single Primate Prefrontal Cortex Neurons, Vladimir Jovanovic, Adam R. Fishbein, Lisa A. De La Mothe, Kuo-Fen Lee, Cory T. Miller

Psychological Sciences and Counseling Faculty Research

We tested whether social signal processing in more traditional, head-restrained contexts is representative of the putative natural analog – social communication – by comparing responses to vocalizations within individual neurons in marmoset prefrontal cortex (PFC) across a series of behavioral contexts ranging from traditional to naturalistic. Although vocalization responsive neurons were evident in all contexts, cross-context consistency was notably limited. A response to these social signals when subjects were head-restrained was not predictive of a comparable neural response to the identical vocalizations during natural communication, even within the same neuron. Neural activity at the population level followed a similar pattern, …

The Giver: Vision & Memory, Alexander J. Dontre

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

A memory hole is the banishment of problematic thoughts. We exile that which we prefer not to exist. Enter the perilous Memory Hole: The Psychology of Dystopia, to explore a legion of social and psychological themes through the lens of dystopian literature. The crushing fist of 1984 annihilating thoughts from existence as a means of persuasion. The exquisite seduction of addiction as an agent of control in Brave New World. Incineration of the written word to bask in the embers of peace of mind in Fahrenheit 451. Each chapter weaves in and out of the dystopian realms forged …

Older Adult Employment Status And Well-Being: A Longitudinal Bidirectional Analysis, Jonathan L. Chia, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Mixed findings in the literature on the effects of older adult employment on well-being and the reciprocal influence of well-being on employment suggest the need for more careful methodology in teasing out this relationship. Moreover, as previous research has shown that different domains of well-being relate to constructs differently, more nuanced definitions of well-being may be appropriate. The present study examined the longitudinal bidirectional associations of employment and different domains of well-being, controlling for stable within-person variables. The present study sampled older adults from the Midlife Development in the US study at three timepoints on employment status and well-being, specifically …

The "Silent Teacher": Learning By Teaching Via Writing A Verbatim Teaching Script, Kagen Y. L. Lim, Sarah Shi Hui Wong, Stephen Wee Hun Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Learning by teaching others is a potent educational strategy, but its implementation is typically cumbersome. This study (N = 108) investigated “silent teaching”—writing a verbatim teaching script—as a convenient approach for independent learning, while assessing whether the teaching benefit is a production benefit. Learners studied a science text on the Doppler effect using one of three learning methods: (1) generating and studying their own notes (restudying control), (2) preparing to teach and then verbally teaching (verbal teaching), or (3) preparing to teach and then writing a verbatim teaching script (silent teaching). On a conceptual knowledge retention test 1 week later, …

Development And Psychometric Evaluation Of The Anticipated Food Scarcity Scale (Afss), Michal Folwarczny, Norman P. Li, Valdimar Sigurdsson, Lynn K. L. Tan, Tobias Otterbring

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Mass media extensively inform societies about events threatening the global food supply (e.g., pandemics or Brexit). Consumers exposed to such communication may perceive food resources as becoming scarcer. In line with an evolutionary account, these perceptions can shift decision-making in domains such as food preferences or prosociality. However, existing literature has solely focused on actual and past food insecurity experiences threatening mostly low-income families, thus neglecting the future-oriented perceptions among the general population. This paper broadens the food insecurity research scope by developing a new construct-anticipated food scarcity (AFS)-which is defined as the perception that food resources are becoming less …