Psychology Commons^™

Under Pressure : Self-Compassion As A Predictor Of Task Performance And Persistence, Allison Landgraf

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Self-compassion is a characteristic composed of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness that promotes adaptive cognitive, behavioral, and emotional processing. A self-compassionate mindset in the face of difficulties can lead to less anxiety and more self-forgiveness, and because of these benefits, some evidence suggests self-compassionate individuals tend to persist longer on a task after an initial failure. This study focuses on the extent to which self-compassion can improve task performance and persistence under pressure. Participants first completed the Self-Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003a) to measure trait levels of self-compassion. Self-compassion was then induced by leading participants to think about a mistake in …

Cross-Cultural Cannibalism Throughout Human History, Melissa Cochran

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Csa Survivors: What Heals And What Hurts In A Couple Relationship, Laura S. Smedley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a significant trauma that affects a person's self-concept and the ability to form healthy intimate relationships later in adulthood. Approximately 20% of adults who experience childhood sexual abuse go on to evidence serious psychopathology in adulthood (Harway & Faulk, 2005). Besides individual disturbances, CSA survivors struggle with many relational difficulties. These difficulties are usually most pronounced among their intimate partners (Reid, et al., 1995). According to attachment theory, attachment injuries are best healed in the context of a healthy, intimate relationship (Kochka & Carolan, 2002) (MacIntosh & Johnson, 2008). Conversely, the couple relationship may be …

An Evaluation Of Social Capital's Effect On Depression Among Adolescents, Ezechukwu Awgu

Dissertations

Mental illness has been described as a “global burden of disease,” and depression accounts for a large part of the burden (Aslund, Starrin, Nilsson, 2010). In 2009, 35.7 percent of the adolescent population in the United States who reported past-year symptoms of a major depressive episode, for example, feelings of sadness, discouragement, loss of feelings of self-worth, and loss of interest in social activities, also used illicit drugs including marijuana, inhalants, hallucinogens, cocaine, heroin, and prescription-type psychotherapeutics for non-medical purposes (SAMHSA, 2009, APA, 1994). Additionally, substance abuse due to alcoholism was among the major causes of death for adolescents aged …

How Is The Most Segregated City In The Country Addressing Disproportionate Minority Contact With A Juvenile Burglary Restorative Justice Program And What Implications Exist For Community Based Restorative Circles? : Conflict Analysis And Recommendations, Lauren Thrift

Capstone Collection

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is considered the most segregated city in the country and has the most disproportionate rate of minorities in Wisconsin’s juvenile justice system. The State of Wisconsin recognizes disproportionate minority contact (DMC) is a product of both differential offending by minorities and the racist differential processing by the juvenile justice system. Milwaukee’s residents are locked in a conflict about the role of racism in the high rates of minority crime and whether to address DMC with more stringent punishment or increasing alternatives to incarceration. The entrenched segregation between African American and Caucasian neighborhoods and social groups reinforces polarization, increasing …

Jewish Perspectives On Christian Privilege: A Consensual Qualitative Study, Robert Kinney

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Although multicultural considerations, privilege, and oppression are of current interest across the field, much of the extant research has failed to explore religiosity as a component of the psychological literature. Using Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) the authors set out to gain an understanding of Christian privilege and the impact it has on Jewish Identity. A sample of 12 adult, American, non-Orthodox Jews were interviewed using a semi-structured interview protocol. The interview data was collected to better understand the manifestations of Christian privilege and the impact of said issues on participant’s lives and identities. Seven themes were identified (1) Personal Conceptualization …

Sense Beauty Via Face, Dressing, And/Or Voice, Tam Nguyen, Si Liu, Bingbing Ni, Jun Tan, Yong Rui, Shuicheng Yan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Discovering the secret of beauty has been the pursuit of artists and philosophers for centuries. Nowadays, the computational model for beauty estimation has been actively explored in computer science community, yet with the focus mainly on facial features. In this work, we perform a comprehensive study of female attractiveness conveyed by single/multiple modalities of cues, i.e., face, dressing, and/or voice, and aim to uncover how different modalities individually and collectively affect the human sense of beauty. To this end, we collect the first Multi-Modality Beauty (M²B) dataset in the world for female attractiveness study, which is thoroughly annotated …

Impact Of Exposure To Violence On Urban Youth: A Biopsychosocial Perspective Of Aggression, Jodi S. Huntington

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Putting Their Best Foot Forward: Emotional Disclosure On Facebook, Lin Qiu, Han Lin, Angela K. Y. Leung, William Tov

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Facebook has become a widely used online self-representation and communication platform. In this research, we focus on emotional disclosure on Facebook. We conducted two studies, and results from both self-report and observer rating show that individuals are more likely to express positive relative to negative emotions and present better emotional well-being on Facebook than in real life. Our study is the first to demonstrate impression management on Facebook through emotional disclosure. We discuss important theoretical and practical implications of our study.

A Positive Approach: Training Coaches To Build A Positive Motivational Climate, J. Spencer John

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to develop a training program for youth sport coaches focusing on a positive motivational climate, with an intended outcome to increase intrinsic motivation in youth sport participants. The coaching workshops that are available today tend to focus on teaching the fundamentals of the sport; while largely ignoring the motivational side of coaching. Pop Warner Football is the largest youth football league in the country, they have a large coach training program that focuses on drills and skill development, but fails to address positive motivation. Providing youth sport organizations with a training program that adds …

Children’S Eyewitness Identification As Implicit Moral Decision-Making, Toni Spring, Herbert D. Saltzstein, Roger Peach

Publications and Research

Why are young children particularly prone to make false positive errors or false alarms when identifying a wrongdoer? In three studies the problem was approached using a signal detection analysis, focusing on the moral costs of false alarms, as understood at different points in development. The findings are: (1) decisional criteria became more conservative, indicating fewer false alarms, with age in three studies, (2) children’s beliefs about the seriousness of false alarms and misses changed from (a) a non-moral concern to (b) a moral concern for false negatives or misses to (c) a moral concern for false alarms. (3) These …

Evaluating Sustainability On The Cal Poly Campus: Attitudes, Behaviors, Knowledge, Social Norms, And Social Desirability, Rebecca Sokoloski

Psychology and Child Development

Previous research has shown that attitudes and behavior towards sustainability are not correlated. Social factors including norms and desirability have been found to explain these results. One hundred and six students from California Polytechnic State University participated in this study. The survey used was composed of several sections: attitudes, behaviors, knowledge, social norms, social desirability, and a demographic section. Attitudes and behaviors were found to be correlated in this study. Knowledge and behavior towards sustainability was not found to be correlated as expected. Participants’ attitudes were correlated with friends’ and families’ but not professors’ and peers’ attitudes. Participants’ behaviors were …

Examining The Relationship Between Emotional Schemas, Emotional Intelligence, And Relationship Satisfaction, Gregory Mears

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A review of the literature revealed that the relationship between emotional intelligence, emotional schemas, and relationship satisfaction has not been fully explored. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between emotional schemas, emotional intelligence and relationship satisfaction in a sample of married individuals, utilizing a cross-sectional, correlational design to assess the constructs via validated assessment tools. Baron and Kenny's methodology for assessing mediating relationships was used to explore the relationship between these variables. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis demonstrated that the higher values dimension of emotional schemas accounted for 4.1% of the variance in relationship satisfaction after controlling …

Reducing Knowledge Overconfidence By Reducing The Threat Of Knowledge Cue Utilization, Christopher Neil Burrows

Master's Theses

Overconfident judgments are common. We are often more confident about things than we should be, and this may lead us to make maladaptive decisions. Debiasing confidence by cuing people in to how confident they should be could help people make better choices. However, people may be unwilling to accept debiasing information if doing so implies their own ignorance. This study examined whether self-affirmation can buffer people against threats to self-image, helping people to accept debiasing cues. I hypothesized that combining a cue with self-affirmation would lead to enhanced debiasing over cues or self-affirmation alone. In order to investigate this hypothesis, …

Perceptions Of Industry Change: Decadal Comparative Analysis Of Consumer Satisfaction, Brent D. Bowen, Erin E. Bowen, Dean E. Headley, Edward Sabin

Aviation Technology Faculty and Staff Publications

Longitudinal comparisons of perceptions are rarely available over rapid industrial change, and few industries have changed to the degree of airline travel in the post-9/11 decade. This study presents comparative analysis of airline consumer perceptions following September 11th 2001 to findings from a Congressperson-initiated survey of 3,500 travelers ending 2011.

The National Airline Quality Rating (AQR), released annually each April at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and viewed each year by more than 75 million people both nationally and internationally, debuted in the national media as an innovative, objective method of comparing airline quality on combined multiple performance …

Development Of The Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms -- Childhood Obesity Model, Kristi Wilsman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This project developed a model to account for an obesity outcome in children who have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and whose parents have posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) or PTSD. A literature review provided the basis for the model and covered the areas of childhood obesity, parental PTSS, childhood PTSD, adverse childhood experiences, relational PTSD, ineffective parent support, and the stress response. A model to explain the outcome of obesity in children with PTSD as mediated by parental support provided after a traumatic event was developed: The Parental PTSSChildhood Obesity Model. The literature review supports a relational perspective for viewing child …

Social Comparison Theory In The Context Of Chronic Illness: Predictors And Consequences Of Target Selection Among Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes, Danielle Arigo

Psychology - Dissertations

Individuals often compare themselves to others (i.e., social comparisons) in order to determine their status in a given domain. Social comparisons may be particularly important for patients with chronic illness; patients often experience uncertainty and anxiety about their health, which increase the likelihood and utility of social comparisons. Among patients, social comparisons can have both positive and negative health-related consequences (for affect, motivation to improve one's health care behaviors, etc.), depending upon several contextual features. Various steps in the social comparison process have been proposed, but not tested directly. The present study is an examination of the social comparison process …

The Organization Of Self-Knowledge And Race: Does Self-Concept Structure Impact The Responses Of Black Individuals To Stereotype Threat?, Aisha Denise Baker

Dissertations

Stereotype threat is defined as “the concern or worry that a person can feel when he or she is at risk of confirming or being seen to confirm a negative stereotype about his or her group” (Steele & Davies, 2003, p. 311). Stereotype threat has been examined in a variety of stereotyped groups, but the primary focus of this research has been Black individuals because they often encounter negative stereotypes about their race in the course of their daily lives. Some researchers have suggested that stereotype threat may partially explain the achievement gap between Black and White individuals (Steele & …

Regional Differences In Relational Aggression: The Role Of Culture, Katherine Amanda Czar

Dissertations

It is becoming increasingly clear that relational aggression has just as much potential to cause harm as overt verbal and physical aggression. Though the literature base on relational aggression is growing, far fewer studies have been conducted with late adolescents and adults as compared with children and early adolescents. Moreover, the role of culture in relational aggression has received limited attention. The current study aimed to examine the potential impact of one aspect of culture on relational aggression by focusing on North-South regional differences in the United States. Differing norms and expectations for social behavior between Northern and Southern U.S. …

Empirical Identification Of Axis I And Axis Ii Symptom Subtypes Of Sex Addiction Using Lateny Profile Analysis, Maria Isabel Nino De Guzman

Dissertations

Sexual addiction is a disorder characterized by lack of control over sexual urges, pathological relationships and lack of intimacy, mood-altering experiences, and adverse consequences that tend to be disregarded by the person affected. Although not classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual-IV-TR (DSM-IV-TR, APA, 2000) this distressful sexual manifestation is increasingly recognized as a clinical and public health problem. Previous studies suggest commonalities with addictive disorders and maladaptive personality traits. The purpose of the current study was to analyze personality configurations of individuals diagnosed as sex addicts and uncover specific subtypes or profiles associated to sexually addictive …

Does Psychopathy Predict Future Risky Sexual Behavior?, Jessica Jade Fulton

Dissertations

Risky sexual behavior (RSB), such as having sex with an unknown partner, is associated with a variety of negative consequences including sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancy. Previous research (e.g., Fulton, Marcus, & Payne, 2010) suggests that psychopathic personality traits as assessed by the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) are associated with RSB. Self-Centered Impulsivity (SCI), which is characterized by impulsivity, irresponsibility, and reckless behavior, was positively associated with RSB among men and women. In contrast, Fearless Dominance (FD), which is characterized by fearlessness, manipulativeness, and social dominance, was positively associated with RSB among men but not women. …

Managing Sibling Conflict And The Relation Between Mothers' Emotion Socialization Beliefs And Children's Coping With Peer Victimization, Melissa Anne Faith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the degree to which children's strategies for coping with peer victimization were related to their strategies for coping with sibling victimization. Also examined were the relations among mothers' sibling conflict management strategies, their emotion Socialization beliefs, and children's coping with peer and sibling victimization. Data were obtained from 98 4th grade children and their mothers. Results indicated that children's peer victimization coping strategies were significantly related to their sibling victimization coping strategies. I found that mothers who value and accept children's negative emotions were more likely to coach their children through sibling conflict. Unexpectedly, I found that …

Making A Large Class Feel Small Using Social Psychology: Introducing Teams To Improve Performance And Learning In A Large-Enrollment Course, Bethany Johnson

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Large-enrollment lecture-based classes are increasingly common in higher education. As an alternative approach, active learning methods are meant to develop academic skills and improve understanding of course content. Group work is an effective form of active learning, but students typically despise it. Social psychological small group theory can inform teachers about the characteristics of small groups that influence their capability to improve learning, so that teachers can design more effectual group work for their classes. This study examined what effect introducing permanent teams into a large enrollment class had on students’ sense of classroom community and their learning outcomes, using …

The Effects Of Symbolic And Realistic Threats On Moral Exclusion From The Scope Of Justice, Dana Charles Leighton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Moral exclusion refers to a psychological process that removes others from our moral community--those whom we treat with fairness and concern for their welfare. The present research is concerned with how perceived symbolic threats (threats to the ingroup's values, morals, and worldview) and realistic threats (threats to the ingroup's well-being and resources) are related to moral exclusion. Perceived symbolic and realistic threats from an outgroup (Mexican immigrants) were measured (Study 1) and manipulated (Study 2) to discover their predictive and causal relationships with moral exclusion. It was found that both symbolic and realistic threats predicted moral exclusion and did so …

Evaluating The Interpersonal Nature Of Humor: Mapping Humor Styles Onto The Interpersonal Circumplex, Jessica Erin Vaughan

Dissertations

The present study examined the interpersonal content of the four humor styles outlined in the Humor Styles Questionnaire in order to gather additional information about the interpersonal content of these humor styles. This was accomplished by projecting each of the humor styles onto the interpersonal circumplex. Each of the humor styles possessed significant interpersonal content and demonstrated interpersonal cohesion such that the maladaptive humor styles were located in the Cold-Hearted region and the adaptive humor styles were located in the adjacent octants of Gregarious- Extroverted and Warm-Agreeable. These findings suggest that the adaptive humor styles and maladaptive humor styles possess …

A Study Of Social Injustice And Forgiveness In The Case Of North Korean Refugees, Jin Uk Park

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The current study evaluated the psychometric utility of Decisional Forgiveness Scale and Emotional Forgiveness Scale for the North Korean refugee population and explored the relationship among social adaptation, religious commitment, unforgiveness, forgiveness style and mental health variables (trauma symptoms and depression) among North Korean refugees. Confirmatory Factor Analyses were conducted to investigate the North Korean version of DFS and EFS with collected data from 269 North Korean refugees. The forgiveness instruments, when modified with appropriate item deletions, could be considered as useful for North Korean refugees. In the Multiple Regression Analysis, four of five predictors (social adaptation, hurt characteristics, forgiveness …

Ovulation Leads Women To Perceive Sexy Cads As Good Dads, Kristina M. Durante, Vladas Griskevicius, Jeffry A. Simpson, Stephanie M. Canfu, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Why do some women pursue relationships with men who are attractive, dominant, and charming but who do not want to be in relationships—the prototypical sexy cad? Previous research shows that women have an increased desire for such men when they are ovulating, but it is unclear why ovulating women would think it is wise to pursue men who may be unfaithful and could desert them. Using both college-age and community-based samples, in 3 studies we show that ovulating women perceive charismatic and physically attractive men, but not reliable and nice men, as more committed partners and more devoted future fathers. …

Processing Angry And Happy Faces: The Effect Of Perceptual Load And Familiarity, Peter D. Petronio

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science & Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Peter D. Petronio in July of 2012.

The Role Of Just Desserts, Deterrence, And An Apology In Recommending Punishment For Violations Of Hiv Non-Disclosure Laws, William Alexander Woody

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

HIV non-disclosure laws, which require people with HIV to disclose their HIV serostatus to potential sexual partners, are common in the U.S. This thesis applied philosophical theories of punishment to examine why people would punish these law violators. Specifically, retribution/just deserts (i.e., an eye for an eye) and deterrence (i.e., general crime prevention) were examined as punishment motivations. Additionally, offender apology was investigated as a potential moderator of the effects of retribution on punishment. A 2 (Just Deserts) X 2 (Deterrence) X 2 (Apology) ANOVA design was used with recommendations for a prison sentence and financial fine as the dependent …

Color In Context: Psychological Context Moderates The Influence Of Red On Approach- And Avoidance-Motivated Behavior, Brian P. Meier, Paul R. D'Agostino, Andrew J. Elliott, Markus A. Meier, Benjamin M. Wilkowski

Psychology Faculty Publications

A basic premise of the recently proffered color-in-context model is that the influence of color on psychological functioning varies as a function of the psychological context in which color is perceived. Some research has examined the appetitive and aversive implications of viewing the color red in romance- and achievement-relevant contexts, respectively, but in all existing empirical work approach and avoidance behavior has been studied in separate tasks and separate experiments. Research is needed to directly test whether red influences the same behavior differently depending entirely on psychological context.

The present experiment was designed to put this premise to direct test …