Psychology Commons^™

Who’S To Blame? Blame Attributions And Obesity-Related Law And Policy, Lindsey E. Wylie

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Obesity is a foremost public health concern that has received considerable attention. Because of this so-named “epidemic,” law-makers are challenged with implementing effective policies that the public supports. Little is known, however, about the antecedents and consequences of these policies—especially attributions of blameworthiness. Study 1 developed the Obesity Blame Attribution Scale (OBAS). Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that controllability, responsibility and dispositional blame were separate constructs and were part of a higher-order dispositional blame factor. Situational blame was a separate higher-order factor, not correlated with dispositional blame, consisting of blame toward the food industry and towards government policy. Using the OBAS, …

I Need To Be In Control: Motivations To Compensate Personal Control Threat Through Hierarchy Endorsement Among Individuals With Low Vs. High Relational Mobility, Lay See Ong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Recent research on compensatory control indicate a motivation seek out external sources of control (e.g., hierarchical structures) when subjective control is threatened. As exiting/formation of interpersonal relationships within low relational mobility environments is likely to be beyond personal choice and may threaten subjective control, three studies were conducted to investigate whether the compensatory control account could explain the negative relationship found between hierarchy endorsement and low relational mobility. Study 1 provided initial evidence for the link; low personal-low environmental mobility individuals (vs. high personal-high environment mobility participants) were more likely to indicate higher internal control when they had higher (.vs …

What A ____ Thing To Do! Formally Characterizing Actions By Their Expected Effects, Dustin Wood, William Tov, Cory Costello

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A number of personality frameworks assume traits describe central tendencies of action-for instance, calling someone assertive indicates they have a tendency to perform assertive actions. But what makes it appropriate to characterize an action by terms like assertive, kind, or honest? We propose that actions are characterized by such terms in large part by having expected effects on the environment which match particular conceptual templates. In the present studies, we attempt to better identify the expected effect dimensions perceivers seem to utilize to make action characterizations related to the Big Five and HEXACO personality dimensions. To do so, a set …

Evaluating A Collaborative Ipad Game's Impact On Social Relationships For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Louanne E. Boyd, Kathryn E. Ringland, Oliver L. Haimson, Helen Fernandez, Maria Bistarkey, Gillian R. Hayes

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

This article describes how collaborative assistive technologies, housed on off-the-shelf, low-cost platforms such as the iPad, can be used to facilitate social relationships in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Through an empirical study of the use of a collaborative iPad game, Zody, we explore how assistive technologies can be used to support social relationships, even without intervention from adults. We discuss how specific design choices can encourage three levels of social relationship: membership, partnership, and friendship. This work contributes to research on both assistive technologies and collaborative gaming through a framework that describes how specific in-game elements can foster …

The Adaptive Value Associated With Expressing And Perceiving Angry-Male And Happy-Female Faces, Peter Kay Chai Tay

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Facial expressions are valuable for conveying and understanding the inner thoughts and feelings of the expressor. However, the adaptive value associated with a specific expression on a male face is different from a female face. The present review uses a functional-evolutionary analysis to elucidate the evolutionary advantage in the expression and perception of angry-male and happy-female faces over angry-female and happy-male faces. For the expressors, it is more advantageous for men to show angry facial expression as it signals dominance, averts aggression and deters mate poaching; it is more advantageous for women to display happy facial expression as it signals …

Till Death Do Us Part? A Study Of American Wedding Rituals And Marital Outcomes, Tiffany Diane Wagner

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Couple rituals range from everyday activities to once-in-a lifetime events. Weddings are arguably the most elaborate, complex, and rare couple ritual. Few studies have examined the association between wedding rituals and marital outcomes, yet millions of Americans marry and celebrate weddings each year. The purpose of the current study was to examine the associations between wedding ritual enactment, wedding ritual satisfaction, and marital satisfaction and commitment. The wedding rituals examined in the current study were the bridal shower, bachelor/bachelorette party, wedding reception, and honeymoon. It was hypothesized that enactment of a bridal shower, wedding reception, and honeymoon would be positively …

Addressing The Dual Primary Attachment Figure Model: An Exploration Of Father Attachment, Vanessa N. Greenwood

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study attempted to investigate father attachment using the dual primary attachment figure model by examining caregiving and exploration behaviors of mothers and fathers as they relate to attachment security utilizing an archival data set of 177 young adult females. A subsequent factor analysis of the involvement scales revealed four distinct items creating the caregiving variables (one for mother and one for father) and six items creating the exploration variables. Results showed that mothers engaged in caregiving and exploration behaviors more than fathers, but their exploration predicted mother attachment more than caregiving. Fathers engaged in more caregiving than exploration, but …

The Relationship Between Self-Determination And Client Outcomes Among The Homeless, Samuel M. Hanna

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This paper has attempted to determine if there is a significant relationship between self-determination and client outcomes among the homeless. The study has been based upon the conceptual framework set forth in Self-Determination Theory. The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between self-determination and client outcomes among the homeless. Using a data collection instrument, based on empirically validated instrumentation, clients from several homeless service providers in the City of San Bernardino were assessed for the level of self-determination and autonomy support they experience within these agencies. Outcome measures included such things as whether the client was going …

Crimean Tatars From Mass Deportation To Hardships In Occupied Crimea, Karina Korostelina

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The article begins with a description of the deportation of Crimean Tatars. It provides a brief review of the Nazi Occupation of Crimea, examines the negative images of Crimean Tatars published in Soviet newspapers between 1941-1943 and the explicit rationale given by the Soviet authorities for the deportation of Crimean Tatars, and reviews the mitigation of hostilities against Tatars in the years following the war. The article continues with accounts of the attempts to repatriate Crimean Tatars after 1989 and the discriminative policies against the returning people. The conclusion of the article describes current hardships experienced by Tatars in occupied …

Men And Women In Engineering: Professional Identity And Factors Influencing Workforce Retention, Caitlin Hawkinson Wasilewski

Industrial-Organizational Psychology Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation was to gain insight into professional identity and retention in the field of engineering, for both men and women, in an effort to mitigate the shortage of engineers in the United States. Although past efforts have predominantly focused on improving women’s retention since they represent a significant minority of this population, retention should be addressed in men as well, as both typically leave engineering within 10 years of entering the workforce (Frehill, 2012).

Professional identity and retention were evaluated with a mixed methods approach using archival data from a previous investigation on degreed engineers. Professional …

Investigating Relationships Among Work, Family, And Sleep: Cross-Sectional, Daily, And Intervention Effects, Tori Laurelle Crain

Dissertations and Theses

Few studies to date have investigated associations among work, family, and sleep outcomes. The following dissertation includes three studies that attempt to further understanding of such relationships by utilizing data from information technology workers within the Work, Family, and Health Network study. In Study 1, which is published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, associations between work-to-family conflict, family-to-work conflict, family-supportive supervisor behaviors, and sleep outcomes, measured both subjectively and objectively, are examined in a cross-sectional sample. Study 2 investigates associations among work-to-family conflict, family-supportive supervisor behaviors, and subjective sleep outcomes within a seven-day daily diary framework. Furthermore, workplace …

Affecting Neoliberal Public Health Care: Interdependent Relationality Between Disabled Care Recipients And Their Care Providers, Akemi Nishida

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the neoliberal turn of a public health-care program, Medicaid, and its effects on those who are involved in it: disabled care recipients and their care providers. Also examined is the emergence of an affective relationality between these individuals through their daily practices of care. In 1993, Medicaid went through a neoliberal turn that accelerated its privatization. I investigate the ways in which this turn--in company with the neoliberal transition of other welfare programs and the rise of a transnational care industry--further deployed a gendered, raced, classed, and immigration-based division of care labor that commodified and …

Nepantla And Ubuntu Ethics Para Nosotros: Beyond Scrupulous Adherence Toward Threshold Perspectives Of Participatory/Collaborative Research Ethics, Monique Antoinette Guishard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Participatory Action Research (PAR) refers less to a method and more to a continuum of approaches to collaborative inquiry. Within PAR, ideally, some phenomenon has been identified as a mutual area of concern to researchers and community members; working together they design, conduct, analyze, and disseminate the findings of a shared piece of research and coordinate action(s) aimed at using research to redress injustice. If PAR is embraced holistically boundaries inevitably blur as research team members become enmeshed in each other's lives. This blurring while momentous can give rise to ethical quandaries that IRB centered research ethics are inadequate to …

Sensitizing Jurors To Factors Influencing The Accuracy Of Eyewitness Identification: Assessing The Effectiveness Of The Henderson Instructions, Angela M. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recently, the New Jersey Supreme Court determined that jurors may not be able to effectively evaluate eyewitness evidence (New Jersey v. Henderson, 2011). Research generally supports this contention, finding that jurors do not take into account factors surrounding the commission of the crime and identification when determining the reliability of an identification (Devenport et al., 1997). Courts have implemented various safeguards to assist jurors in evaluating eyewitness evidence, including judicial instructions and expert testimony. The New Jersey Supreme Court proposed the use of judicial instructions and suggested their use would reduce the need for expert testimony. The current …

Examining The Effect Of Education Type On Common Misconceptions Of Traumatic Brain Injury, Monica De Iorio

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

It has been widely shown that misconceptions related to traumatic brain injury (TBI) are held among both family members of people with TBI and the general public. These misconceptions have the potential to increase the distress of people with TBI and negatively impact rehabilitation processes. Although increased education has often been suggested to reduce misconceptions, few studies have examined which methods are most effective in providing information to the public. In the current study, I investigated the effects of existing education materials – either a TBI factsheet or personal stories of people with TBI. These materials are currently easily accessible …

Ethnicity, Qualifications, And Peer Influence: Relative Effects In A Simulated Hiring Decision, Victoria Lynn Kerns

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Past research has examined the effects observed when résumés varying only in a name or a particular characteristic that is often stereotyped against receive differential feedback (see, for example, Derous et al., 2009). The current study sought to build on that design, adding the influence of peers as a possible way to reduce this discrimination in hiring.

Participants viewed two résumés varying in qualifications, one belonging to a seemingly Anglo candidate and one belonging to a seemingly Arab candidate. They chose a candidate for the position in the presence of peer influence which favored one candidate over another, or peer …

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

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

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

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

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

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

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

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

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

An Examination Of Personal Humor Style And Humor Appreciation In Others, Steven Lacorte

Senior Honors Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between individuals’ humor styles and their appreciation of various humor styles as presented by others. Eighty-five undergraduate John Carroll University students completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire and rated the funniness of six stand-up comedy routines, representing either aggressive, self-defeating, or affiliative humor styles with one male and one female comedian for each humor style. A mixed model Analysis of Variance revealed no relationship between humor style and humor appreciation. However, an examination of the effect of gender showed that men were more likely than women to endorse and appreciate aggressive …

Predicting Bystander Attitudes Using Rape Myth Acceptance And Adherence To The Commodity Model Of Sex, Kimberly J. Johnson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The high rate of sexual assault on college campuses has become a growing concern among college administrators. To combat the prevalence of sexual assault, colleges and universities have begun implementing mandatory bystander intervention training programs, which teach students to look for warning signs indicative of sexual assault and intervene before an assault occurs. Previous research has indicated that an individual’s endorsement of rape myths may play a role in whether or not that individual will intervene in a situation that may lead to sexual assault; however, little research has investigated from where beliefs in rape myths might stem. Sex educators …

Mental Illness Stigma In The Media, Brian Smith

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

The aim of this paper is to explore mental illness stigma and one of its primary causes, the media. Essentially the paper looks at various forms of media (e.g., prime time television, children’s programming, news media) and how they create negative perceptions of both mentally ill individuals, and those who help treat them. Previous research has shown that those with a mental illness are often depicted as violent and socially undesirable by the media. Other previous research has shown that those who treat mental illness are often depicted as unprofessional and untrustworthy by the media, creating a strong negative stigma …

The Relationship Between Motivation And Volunteer Satisfaction In Conservation Programs 2015., Raena Blumenthal

Master's Theses

Conservation leisure service organizations are relying more heavily on volunteers to sustain their services and protect natural resources (Strigas, 2006). However, research focusing on volunteer vacationers, those who spend money to volunteer, is still in its infancy. Drawing on functional theorizing (Bruyer & Rappe, 2007; Clary, Snyder, Ridge, Copeland, Stukas, Haugen, & Miene, 1998; Houle, Sagarin, & Kaplan, 2005; Katz, 1960; Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956), this study explored volunteer vacationers’ motivations and the relationships between motivations to volunteer, satisfaction with the volunteer vacation experience, and inclinations to volunteer in the future (in both local and nonlocal settings). The study …

Eye Movements Of Highly Identified Sport Fans, Michele N. Murdock

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Individuals who are highly identified with a sport team have a strong psychological connection with the team (Wann et al., 2001). Sport team identification can be beneficial to communities and individuals. It provides entertainment, helps form group affiliation, and improves self-esteem. Because team identification is important to people, they notice environmental cues related to the team. Individuals are more likely to attend to a stimulus that is liked or one that is familiar. When an individual has accessible attitudes toward an object, he or she is more likely to attend to and notice the object (Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio, 1992). The …

Facets Of Narcissism In Relation To Muscle Dysmorphia And Eating Disorder Symptomotology, Chanceton K. Littrell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Previous research exploring the relationship between muscle dysmorphia, drive for muscularity, and disordered eating behaviors in relation to personality characteristics, particularly narcissism, has yielded interesting, though often conflictual, results. The current study attempts to further explore these relationships through assessing muscle dysmorphia, drive for muscularity, and disordered eating in relation different facets of narcissism: grandiose and hypersensitive. Participants for the current study included 173 male students that were recruited via departmental Study Board. Participants completed demographic information, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory-40, the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale, the Muscle Dysmorphia Questionnaire, the Drive for Muscularity Scale, and the Eating Attitudes Test-26. Results …

The Embodied Crises Of Neoliberal Globalization: The Lives And Narratives Of Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers, Wen Liu

Graduate Student Publications and Research

This paper theorizes the lives and working conditions of Filipina migrant domestic workers in Taiwan. To do so, I focus on the life stories of two migrant women—their struggles with exploitation and care, and their contradictory relationships with home and nation in transnational labor migration. These narratives detail crises of bodily sickness, racialized surveillance, and gendered violence across individual, social, and transnational scales, demonstrating the architecture of neoliberal globalization as a whole. These “embodied crises”—at once personal troubles and structural disasters—show how an overburdened care enforced through the labor of women of color violently affects their very own bodies, with …

Can Quantitative Assessment Of Moral Identity Be Improved?, David Adrion Baker

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

According to results from Aquino and Reed (study 5, 2002) and Hall and Derryberry (2010), high means and very low standard deviations of the average score for each question for both the internalization and symbolization scales of the Moral Identity Scale (MIS) are common. This study attempts to measure the extent to which a person considers morality to be a central part of his or her self-concept. Because participants may feel pressure to respond in a certain way on the MIS, the role of social desirability to respond favorably is very plausible. The current study, therefore, attempts to reduce socially …

The Effects Of Classroom And Informal-Interactional Diversity On Learning And Democracy Outcomes, Chloe Elizabeth Williams

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Exposure to increased diversity has been found to produce beneficial results in both learning and democracy outcomes across races; however, this relationship is more consistent for White students than students of color (Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, & Gurin, 2002). Using the data from a campus-wide diversity survey, the relationship between two types of diversity (informal-interactional and classroom) with learning and democracy outcomes was examined in a mid-sized university. Additional analyses were conducted to identify trends in diversity attitude and perception of campus climate toward diversity. Increased classroom diversity and informal-interactional diversity were both found to be related to increased learning and …

Emotional Responses To Varying Sources Of Interpersonal Rejection, Molly K. Cleek

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Baumeister and Leary (1995) propose with their Need to Belong Theory that negative affect would occur upon the disruption of an existing or even potential social connection. The present paper presents two studies that sought to resolve past contradictory research by examining how rejection by various sources (romantic partners, family members, close friends, or strangers) impact the rejectee’s emotional responses. The first study, which used a recalled memory of rejection, yielded no significant differences in mood, need to belong, threat to the four fundamental needs, or state self-esteem for the different sources. However, the second study, which used imagined scenarios, …