Psychology Commons^™

The Effect Of Companion Animals On The Mental Health Of College Students During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Sarah E. Cooper

Global Public Health | Senior Theses

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the burden of mental illness in the United States, especially among young adults (Czeisler et. al., 2020).

Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine whether pet ownership has an effect on the mental health, specifically depression and anxiety, of students at Dominican University of California during COVID-19.

Methods: This study was a cross-sectional quantitative survey that included demographic questions as well as questions developed from modified questions from validated survey items. Data was collected on whether participants owned or lived with any pets. Participants who answered “yes” were asked whether the companion …

Determinants Of Subjective Memory In First-Degree Relatives And Care Providers Of Individuals With Dementia, Cassidy Marie Tiberi

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Subjective memory may help practitioners understand who pursues assessment and treatment for memory concerns. Two factors that are related to subjective memory are depressive affect and fear of dementia, and two groups of older adults who may be susceptible to these factors are first-degree relatives and care providers of patients with dementia. This study seeks to determine how depressive affect and fear of dementia influence the subjective memory of these two groups. Fifty-five adults ages 55 and older who were a care provider and/or first-degree relative of patients with dementia reported their perceptions of their own memory, feelings of depression, …

Painting A Pretty Picture: The Role Of Social Desirability In The Memory Self-Efficacy Of Young And Older Adults, Keegan Grace Sawin

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The current study examined the relationships between social desirability, depression, memory self-efficacy, and objective memory in both young and older adult populations. I designed the study to replicate the previous findings of Lineweaver and Brolsma (2014) and to determine whether these findings would generalize to individuals in later adulthood. 45 young adults and 47 older adults (young adults: 88% female, 80% White; older adults: 42% female, 100% White) completed measures of depression, objective memory, memory self-efficacy, and social desirability. As predicted, older adults were higher in levels of social desirability than young adults, but the memory self-efficacy of young adults …

The Effects Of Consensus Information On Perceptions Of Children With Autism, Kaitlyn C. Thornton

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are often the target of prejudice and discrimination. The current study was conducted to better understand why individuals react to children with ASD in a negative manner by focusing on the role of consensus information (i.e., what an individual perceives most others to believe). To investigate the potential impact of consensus information, we asked a sample of Butler University students (n = 111) to read classroom scenarios describing undesirable behaviors enacted by a student (e.g., interrupting the teacher). The target student was described as either a student from the general population or a student …

Masked Emotions: Studying The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On The Emotional Regulation In College Students And Beyond, Sara Katherine Taft

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Studies regarding the socioemotional selectivity theory have found that upcoming endings lead to a positivity bias in individuals’ executive functioning. The current study seeks to expand upon this theory by studying the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students and graduates. It was predicted that a) current students would demonstrate more negative emotionality than pre-COVID students, b) that current students would demonstrate a greater positivity bias than pre-COVID students, and c) that this bias would be more pronounced in current seniors and weaker in current freshmen and college graduates. Participants responded to several scales regarding personality (neuroticism, shyness) and …

Signaling Organizational Identity-Safety Through The Use Of Gender Pronouns, Roua Daas

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

LGBTQ+ persons face unsupportive workplace environments, and including an employee’s gender pronouns, (i.e. one’s personal pronouns reflecting their gender identity), in organizational materials may signal that a workplace is an inclusive space for LGBTQ+ identifying people. We examined if the inclusion of gender pronouns in organizational materials encourages identity-safety for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Lesbian, gay, & bisexual participants (N = 111; 94.5% cisgender) were recruited via Turkprime.com to partake in this online study. They viewed the homepage for a fictitious company, Uptown Consulting, and were then randomly assigned to view a profile of a successful female employee of …

“In This Industry, You're No Longer Human”: An Exploratory Study Of Women’S Experiences In Pornography Production In Sweden, Meghan Donevan

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Despite being a global, billion-dollar industry, very little is known about the conditions women face within the pornography industry. The aim of this study was to explore women’s experiences in pornography production, with a particular focus on structural antecedents to entrance, coercion, and violence within the industry, as well as current needs and any barriers to exiting the industry. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine women with experiences in pornography production in Sweden. Participants identified young age, financial insecurity, earlier exposure to sexualized violence, and poor mental health as typical antecedents to entering the pornography industry. Once in the …

An Analysis Of The Factors That Impact Medicaid Recipient Tobacco Quit Rates, Raegan Winder

Schultz-Werth Award Papers

Background and Objectives: Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of disability and disease in the United States. Individuals of low socioeconomic status are more likely to use tobacco, suffer from tobacco related illness, and fail to quit or stay quit. Medicaid recipients enrolled in the South Dakota QuitLine have significantly lower quit rates than participants who aren’t enrolled in Medicaid. The purpose of this paper is to review the factors that impact Medicaid recipients’ ability to quit or stay quit.
Methods: Tobacco use and demographic data were collected at enrollment and seven months post-enrollment using standardized assessments for 16,323 …

Risk And Protective Factors Associated With Excessive Social Media Use, Addiction, And Reduction In A Hispanic/Latinx College Student Sample, Marcos Lerma

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The literature on social media as a behavioral addiction has grown considerably over the past decade. Excessive social media use and social media addiction have been associated with multiple adverse health consequences. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of research assessing potential risk and protective factors for social media use, social media addiction, failure to control oneâ??s social media use, and motivation to reduce social media use in a Hispanic/Latinx sample. This study aimed to fill this gap in the literature by assessing potential risk and protective factors within the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Framework. Hispanic/Latinx …

Emotional Motivation: How Anger, Fear, Hope And Pride Impact Women’S Political Participation, Ashley Martin

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Despite the great strides the United States has made since passing the 19th amendment, a woman’s emotions continues to become relevant in political discussions. Research has supported that emotion has a place in motivating political involvement, however, additional evidence has shown that for women and People of Color, the display of certain emotions disparage their abilities to influence. Because of these determinations, the present questions stand, is emotion effective in motivating women to participate in politics? If so, does that apply to all women, and to what extent? I utilized the American National Election Studies Cumulative Time-Series dataset to determine …

Equine-Assisted Services For Children With Disabilities, Mara Kleinman

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

The Mediating Role Of Self-Blame In The Relationship Between Alcohol Intoxication, Bystander Intervention And Ptsd Symptoms Following A Sexual Assault, Hannah Sawyer

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Introduction: Sexual assault (SA) incidents are common. One in five women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime (NSVRC, 2015); some will experience Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because of SA experiences (Resnick et al., 1993). Further, approximately two-thirds of all cases of sexual assault involve consumption of alcohol by the victim, perpetrator, or both (Testa & Livingston, 2009). Previous research has been dedicated to delineating cognitive and situational factors surrounding SA occurrences that contribute to risk for developing PTSD (Jaffe et al., 2013; Peter-Hagene & Ullman, 2018). Peter-Hagene and Ullman (2018) found that SA survivors that engage in more self-blame …

Disgust Versus Anger-Relevant Trauma Analogues: Associations With Affect And Disclosure Behavior, Teah-Marie Bynion

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Due to high prevalence rates of sexual assault experienced by college-aged women, it remains important to consider factors associated with negative posttraumatic outcomes (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder). One factor consistently linked to negative outcomes following sexual assault is elevated peri- and posttraumatic disgust. Particularly, when such feelings are self-focused, peri- and posttraumatic disgust is linked with feelings of dirtiness (mental contamination). The current study extends this line of research to disclosure behavior. Disclosing a sexual assault to another person can be beneficial, however many survivors will never disclose. Theoretical accounts suggest that specific feelings associated with a sexual assault may …

Gender Differences In Communication : A Task-Oriented Corpus Analysis, Bimash Budha

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The current study explored the usage of various categories of words within the Montclair Map Task Corpus (MMTC) to determine if any relationships between the use of a certain category of words and task performance existed. The MMTC utilized a collaborative map task to explore the relationship between various patterns of communication styles and task performance. The current study built upon those goals by engaging in an in-depth analysis of the category of words utilized within the corpus. Based on the prior research on gender differences, it was hypothesized that category word usage would vary across different pair sex (male, …

Attribute Framing Effect As A Function Of Selective Auditory Frequency Amplification, Nicole Marie Desimone

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

A set of cognitive biases that have been associated with functional asymmetry of the brain’s hemispheres are framing effects. The attribute framing effect is when valenced descriptive messages – “frames” – influence judgements towards the topic of the message consistent with the valence of the frame. Evidence suggests that information processing in the right hemisphere contributes to framing effects. Double Filtering by Frequency (DFF) theory asserts that the hemispheres are biased to process sensory information based upon relative frequencies, with the right hemisphere dominantly responding to stimuli containing relatively lower frequencies. Previous work links differential processing by the right hemisphere, …

When Leaders And Followers Do Not Hold Similar Constructions Of Leadership : How Followers Are Impacted By Conflicting Leadership Expectations, Christine Griffith

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The rationale of this study was to examine the potential relationship of team members’ leadership expectations and followers’ attitudes and team’s performance. Leadership expectations can vary between the individual level leadership and leadership as a collective or shared team activity (Zhu et al., 2018). Although relational models of leadership consider leadership as an emergent social construction of the team, there may be instances where it is difficult for the team to converge on a single agreed upon model. The purpose of this experiment was to better understand the impact of different alignment of leadership expectations between leaders and followers on …

Does Racial Bias In Size Perception Extend To Women?, Eliana Legelen

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Race and gender biases are embedded in society in various forms, and decades of research in social psychology have examined these biases. As demonstrated in previous psychological research, Black people, compared with White people, are subject to automatic negative stereotypes and prejudice (Devine, 1989). Much research has investigated the effect that racial biases have on the lives of individuals. Although prior research on racial bias has often focused on bias across gender lines, there is also a prominent strain of research that argues that intergroup bias is gendered. For example, the outgroup male target hypothesis (Navarrete et al., 2010) predicts …

I’M The Leader! How Shared Leadership Leads To Territoriality, Catrina Maryjane Notari

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Although research on shared leadership is growing (Zhu, Liao, Yao, & Johnson, 2018), to date, little to no research has focused on how differing expectations of the role of the leader and the role of the followers impact the leader, the followers, and the team as a whole. Shared leadership is typically presented as a benefit to both leaders and followers; however, there can be a dark side too. The purpose of this study is to examine the dark side of shared leadership through leaders’ perceptions of their group and feelings of territoriality when faced with misaligned leadership expectations. Participants …

The Comparison Of Utilizing Functional Electrical Stimulation Device Versus Ankle Foot Orthosis Brace And The Effect On Participants’ Activities Of Daily Living After A Cerebrovascular Accident, Cynthia Victoria Vlad

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

A cerebrovascular accident occurs in less than 24 hours resulting in chronic physical and cognitive deficits. However, little is known about how a cerebrovascular accident impacts the individual’s activities of daily living (ADL). This study sought to compare and analyze the impact of two therapeutic devices on patients’ responses to ADL questionnaire items from baseline to 6 months. It was hypothesized that the Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) would be more effective and have a greater positive impact on patients’ response of ADL items than the AFO brace. In this study, subjects’ responses were recorded on the Stroke Impact Scale questionnaire …

A Hero At Home, But Losing The Zeros At Work? : How Length Of Maternity Leave Effects Women's Income, Dhanisha Nandigama

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

An increasing number of mothers are involved in the workforce and often take maternity leave. Women taking maternity leave experience various career implications. Importantly, leave length can impact the nature of these career outcomes. In this study, I explore the relationship between length of maternity leave and one key career outcome: income. Drawing from social role theories, I investigated whether longer parental leave is related to less positive career outcomes, such as income across women over time and if there is a curvilinear relationship between length of maternity leave and women’s income, such that the relationship between length of leave …

What Drives Collective Informal Learning : The Influence Of Team Learning Orientation, Process Efficacy, And Metacognition, Gabrielle Danna

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The primary level of investigation for informal learning has been the individual level despite the social nature of informal learning, and organizational learning more broadly. This study extends goal orientation and self-regulated learning theoretical frameworks at the individual level to the collective team level to understand the inputs and processes that may predict team informal learning. A model is proposed where team learning orientation positively predicts team informal learning. Process efficacy and collective metacognition are proposed to mediate the relationship between team learning orientation and team informal learning. One hundred and two students holding a club officer position in 32 …

Against Empathy Bias : The Moral Value Of Equitable Empathy, Zoe Fowler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Empathy has long been considered central in living a moral life. However, mounting evidence has shown that empathy is often biased towards (i.e., felt more strongly for) close and similar others, igniting a debate over whether empathy is inherently morally flawed and should be abandoned in efforts to strive towards greater equity. This debate has focused on whether empathy limits the scope of our morality, with little consideration of whether it may be our moral beliefs limiting our empathy. Across two studies conducted on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N= 604), we investigate moral judgments of biased and equitable feelings of empathy. …

Bystander Intervention Among College Student Drinking Gamers : Sexual Assault Attitudes, Self-Efficacy, And Intent To Intervene, Rena L. Pazienza

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Heavy and problematic drinking and sexual assault warrant significant concern on U.S.college campuses. Emerging evidence suggests that the risk for sexual victimization is amplified in the context of high-risk drinking behavior—and despite recent attention to sexual assault (e.g., MeToo Movement), rates of perpetration remain largely unchanged. In applying the bystander intervention framework, our understanding of the relation between key factors that may facilitate or prevent behavioral action, or when and how these factors are most salient, is limited. The present study examined whether bystander attitudes and bystander self-efficacy predict bystander intent to intervene while accounting for prior intervention training exposure …

Cynics Are Right Nine Times Out Of Ten : Negative Ilts On The Evaluation Of Leader Errors, Gage Matyasovszky

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of negative-typical implicit leadership theories (ILTs), a follower’s cognitive framing and expectation for leaders on average to be more tyrannical and less sensitive in their actions and traits, on a follower’s evaluation of leader error. These are based on negative experiences with actual leaders. The study also investigated the effects of cynical beliefs that people are bad and that interactions with others will end poorly, on negative-typical ILTs and on the evaluation of leader error. A sample of 221 undergraduates read a vignette filled with potential errors and were asked …

How Do People Perceive Sexual Harassment Targeting Transgender Women, Lesbians, And Straight Cisgender Women?, Jennifer Mezzapelle

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Third-party observers’ opinions affect how organizations handle sexual harassment. Prior research has focused on perceptions of sexual harassment targeting straight cisgender women. We examined how targets’ sexual orientation and gender identity impact these perceptions. In three preregistered studies, straight cisgender participants imagined a coworker confided that a male colleague had sexually harassed her. The target was a transgender woman, a lesbian woman, or a woman whose sexual orientation and gender identity were unspecified. In Study 1 (N=428), participants reported believing that sexual harassment targeting lesbians and women with unspecified identities was most likely motivated by attraction and power, whereas sexual …

Intense News : The Role Of Emotion In The Perception Of (Fake) News, Allison Marie Wilck

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Today’s widespread access to the internet and social media platforms has vastly enhanced our ability to communicate stories and ideas. This includes the dissemination of both accurate and false information. Since 2016, the popularity of the term ‘fake news’ has skyrocketed, referring to the circulation of claims that were created with the intention to spread inaccurate information. Because of its inherent falseness yet widespread presence, fake news provides a rich outlet for exploring the variables that cause a claim to appear believable. Recent empirical explorations have well-established the presence of emotional information as a hindrance to overcoming susceptibility to misinformation …

A Jsm Approach To Modern Bias In Employment Interviews And Possible Remediation, Alexander Nassrelgrgawi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the last 10 years, the EEOC saw a 200% increase in the number of ethnic based discrimination charges involving individuals who were perceived to be of an Arab background (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2017). However, little empirical work has been done to detect and amend this trend. To answer this gap, this investigation examined the expression of modern bias through the lens of the justification-suppression model (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003) in order to detect and explain possible discrimination Arabs may experience during employment interviews. This was done in two studies using participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Study 1 …

Cue-Reactivity And Smartphone Dependency, Collytte Cederstrom

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Objective: Although Cue-Reactivity was originally developed and used with substance addictions, there has been development and validation of cue-reactivity paradigms with behavioral addictions. Concurrently, there has been a rise of literature and research into Smartphone dependency, a type of behavioral addiction. However, there has not been a study looking into cue-reactivity in conjunction with smartphone dependency. Therefore, the current study was developed to create and test a cue-reactivity paradigm for smartphone addiction to better understand the learning principles behind it. Since most individuals do not realize the severity of their dependence on the device, it is important to have definitive …

Creating A Workforce Analytics Action Plan (Video), Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Workforce Analytics Resources

An action plan can be a useful tool for implementing workforce analytics, especially if there are multiple people involved in the process. This resource provides some general advice on action planning, with specific examples for advancing the use of workforce analytics.

What is an Action Plan?

An action plan outlines the actions, resources, and people needed to achieve goals. It is vital to strategic planning. Action plans include the following components:

• A well-defined goal
• Tasks/steps needed to reach the goal
• Individuals or teams responsible for each task
• Task milestones and timeframes
• Resources and data needed to complete tasks
• Evidence or …

Shining A Light Into The Darkness: The Developmental Impacts Of Internment In U.S. Immigration Detention Centers On Detained Latinx Children, Rebecca Messer

Honors Theses

Americans are concerned about immigration politics and how to handle the migration of immigrants into the United States, especially those from Latinx countries who immigrate illegally. In response, the United States government has formed detention centers to house the children of these illegal immigrants. While the immediate safety and developmental appropriateness of current separation practices are of concern, few have considered what the long-term developmental and transgenerational impacts on Latinx immigrant children, held within these detention centers, will be. This thesis concludes that the negative physical, emotional, and psychological impacts both in the short and long terms are expected to …