Psychology Commons^™

Trauma And Crisis Counselor Preparation: The Relationship Of An Online Trauma And Crisis Course And Counseling Self-Efficacy, Julia Leigh Lancaster

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

The field of trauma and crisis is growing and ubiquitous to all counseling specialties. Updates in 2009 and 2016 to the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) counselor preparation standards added mandated teachings on crisis, trauma, and disaster counseling in counselor preparation programs’ (CPPs) curricula. Since then, some CPPs have created stand-alone crisis courses, while the majority have infused various related content and trainings into already established counseling courses. Research does, in fact, support an increased crisis, trauma, and disaster readiness with more hours dedicated to the study and practice of domain specific content, and confirms …

Psychosocial Factors And E-Cigarette Use: An Application Of Problem Behavior Theory, Samantha A. Fitzer

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use has increased among the U.S. population in recent years with estimates showing that nearly 15% of American adults have tried an e-cigarette (Villarroel et al., 2020). Problem Behavior Theory (PBT) has successfully outlined a variety of factors that affect an individual’s engagement in an identified problem behavior. In an attempt to better understand e-cigarette use among an emerging adult population (i.e., college student population), the purpose of the current study was to explore how a large subset of PBT factors may differentiate between e-cigarette user categories (nonuser, non-daily user, daily user). A sample of 487 college …

Can Obsessive Thoughts Predict Problematic Alcohol Use Through Thought Suppression?, Laura Pettigrew

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Alcohol misuse, which is a prevalent issue among college students, often coincides with psychiatric disorders or symptoms. Treatment of one facilitates treatment of the other. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or just obsessive-compulsive symptoms, is connected to alcohol misuse.

This study adapts part of the cognitive control model of OCD, which states that intrusive thoughts will only lead to distress if the individual interprets them in a dysfunctional manner and tries to control them. When the thought control attempt fails, if the individual interprets the failure in a dysfunctional way as well, they will become distressed. If …

College Students And Cyberbullying: How Social Media Use Affects Social Anxiety And Social Comparison, Travis N. Lam, D. Brayden Jensen, Joseph D. Hovey, Michelle E. Roley-Roberts

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

Cyberbullying is defined as aggression intending to inflict harm on others by electronic communication technologies. Cyberbullying has become more common as social media has grown and is accompanied by negative mental health consequences. Research on cyberbullying and mental health in adolescents suggests cyberbullying victimization moderates the relationship between social comparison and social anxiety, but little is known about this phenomenon in college students. Therefore, the objective of this study was to explore the relationship between cyberbullying, social anxiety, and social comparison amongst college students. A convenience sample of 486 undergraduate students from southern Texas and northern Ohio completed a PyschData …

Experiences Of Latinx Immigrant Parents Of Children With Developmental Disabilities In The Iep Process, Claudia Montoya, Carly Gilson, Valeria Yllades

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

Given the growing proportion of students receiving special education services who are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), there is a critical need to understand the experiences of Latinx immigrant parents of children with disabilities. This qualitative study sought to understand the perspectives of nine Latinx immigrant parents of children with developmental disabilities regarding their child's individualized education program (IEP). We conducted semi-structured interviews and analyzed the data using a general inductive approach and constant comparison analysis. Seven themes emerged: (a) parents' insecurity of knowledge, (b) difficult terminology , (c) confusion with the IEP process, (d) discrimination or misconceptions, (e) language …

Les Facteurs Qui Influencent L'Émergence D'Un Sentiment D'Injustice Suite À Un Accident Du Travail, Michael J. L. Sullivan, Manon Truchon, Pierre Coté, Marie Achille

Rapports de recherche scientifique

De nombreuses études ont rapporté que des niveaux élevés de sentiment d’injustice sont associés à un rétablissement problématique chez les personnes souffrant d’un large éventail de problèmes débilitants de santé et de santé mentale. On en sait peu actuellement sur les facteurs déterminants du sentiment d’injustice dans les suites immédiates d’un accident du travail, ou sur les facteurs déterminants des changements dans le sentiment d’injustice.

L’objectif principal de cette recherche était d’identifier les déterminants du sentiment d’injustice dans les premières semaines suivant un accident du travail. L’échantillon de participants comprenait 187 personnes (92 hommes et 95 femmes) ayant subi une …

The Effects Of Esports On Sport-Confidence And Imagery In Athletes, Kelton Mahon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the growing popularity of esports, athletes may be able to experience potential cognitive and performance-related benefits as a result of watching others play esports. In the current study, student athletes were randomly assigned to watch a sport esport video or a control esport video and then completed measures of sport-confidence and imagery. It was predicted that participants in the sport esport video group would score higher than the control esport video group in the cognitive efficiency and resilience aspects of sport-confidence, as well as the cognitive general, motivational general-mastery, and motivational general-arousal domains of imagery. The overall results did …

The Personality Profile Of China’S Empress Wu Zetian, Ruoyue Wang, Yunyiye Chen, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of Empress Wu Zetian, de facto ruler of China from 665 to 705, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Psychodiagnostically relevant data about Empress Wu were collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-5.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed in accordance with interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of …

Predictive Utility Of The El Paso Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument - Revised (Eppra-R), Chelsea Sierra Queen

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Pretrial risk assessments are used to divert defendants from pretrial detention by estimating risk of pretrial specific outcomes (i.e., failure to appear, rearrest). Ongoing validation of this tool is recommended to assess accuracy and ensure that there is no bias against specific subgroups (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, or age) of defendants. The present study evaluates the utility of a locally developed instrument in El Paso County - a predominantly Latinx county. Area Under the Curve (AUC) Receiving Operator Condition (ROC) analyses indicate statistically â??fairâ?? predictive utility for the tool. Binary logistic regression models suggest no evidence of bias. This study will …

The Rise Of Terrorism In Africa And What It Means For U.S. Policymakers, Bridget Mary Hughes

Master's Theses

This thesis utilizes three case studies to measure the rise of terrorism in Africa. This qualitative data leads the reader to one ultimate question: what does the rise in terrorism in Africa mean for the United States (U.S.) and U.S. policymakers, National Security academia, students in National Security, if anything at all? The answer is: if civilian and military compounds are being targeted by these violent extremists, as these three case studies demonstrate, it is my recommendation that U.S. policymakers cease sending troops to the African theater and, instead, allocate funding to the citizens and nonprofits of the countries whom …

Female Adults’ Experiences Of Sexual Harassment And Assault In The Presence Of Others: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Effectiveness And Consequences Of Bystander Intervention Strategies, Kayla Ford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bystander intervention programs aim to reduce the acceptance of violence against women by fostering prosocial behavior from community members, and often provide knowledge on behaviors associated with sexual risk and ways a bystander can intervene. However, there is limited knowledge on which intervention strategies are used, and how these interventions impact perpetrator behavior and incidence of verbal and physical harm to those involved. There is even less research on these phenomena from the perspective of the victim. To address these gaps, the current study utilized a qualitative approach to (1) identify bystander intervention strategies employed; (2) discuss trends of the …

Executive Functioning In Children And Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes : Associations With Hba1c, Glycemic Variability, And Household Income, Victoria Louise Ledsham

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Type-1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) has been repeatedly linked to executive functioning (EF) deficits in children and adolescents but the mechanisms underlying this association are not well understood. Chronic hyperglycemia — frequently measured as glycosylated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels — and increased glycemic variability have both been proposed as risk factors for EF difficulties in this population, but it is unclear whether they each uniquely reflect T1DM-related risk for EF deficits. Furthermore, few studies have considered interactions between glycemic factors and family-level risk factors in shaping children’s EF development. Particularly, household income may exacerbate risk associations between HbA1c or glycemic variability …

Cook's "The Asperkid’S Secret Book Of Social Rules:The Handbook Of (Not-So-Obvious) Neurotypical Social Guidelines For Autistic Teens (10th Anniversary Edition)" (Book Review), Amber C. Wessies

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

Sexual Harassment In An Overlooked Occupation: Experiences Of Cna And The Influence Of Nurses, Audrey Pennington

Honors Theses

The prevalence of sexual harassment (SH) in health care facilities has been documented in previous research, but few studies have focused on Certified Nursing assistants (CNA; Burgess et al., 2018; Dean, 2020; Deery et al., 2011; Hibino et al., 2006). The purpose of this study is to explore SH that CNA experience from their patients and what influence supervising nurses may have in impacting the negative outcomes of SH. Participants (N = 95) were recruited to take an online survey through social media and snowball recruiting. The hypotheses of this study were not supported by the data, but results may …

Aha! Examining Insight In Exploratory Learning Versus Traditional Instruction., Olivia Kaiser

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

In undergraduate classrooms, students are typically first taught the concepts and procedures for solving problems, then practice. With exploratory learning methods, students explore novel problems and generate original solutions before receiving instruction, which benefits conceptual understanding and future learning. The current study examined whether students who explore before instruction experience greater insight moments, and whether insight leads to better learning. Prior research demonstrates that individuals remember problem solutions better if they experience a sudden moment of solution clarity (Aha! Experience). Participants (N = 83) were randomly assigned to instruct-first or explore-first conditions and taught three types of magic tricks …

Causal Inference In Psychology And Neuroscience: From Association To Causation, Dehua Liang

Computational and Data Sciences (PhD) Dissertations

In psychology and neuroscience, inferring causality in non-experimental studies is almost taboo, because data in these studies, e.g., survey data and resting-state neuroimaging data, are often contaminated by unmeasured confounders. Psychologists and neuroscientists are often cautious about their results, and reluctant to make false claims about causality in non-experimental studies. Therefore, they adopt less stringent statistical analysis techniques that can only infer associational relations. However, the ambiguity about causality in traditional statistical analysis creates much confusion in interpreting analytical results - some studies make implicit causal claims about their results using words such as “impacts”, “lead to” and “affects”. This …

Assessing Treatment Access, Medication Use, Caregiver Strain And Emergency Service Use In Families Of Youth With Autism, Emmaline Thorpe

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Background: Families with autistic youth utilize emergency services (e.g., police, emergency department) at greater rates than neurotypical peers. While research has recently explored this phenomenon, unknowns remain in how pharmaceutical, therapeutic, family (e.g., caregiver strain), and child factors (concurrent challenging behaviors) may influence the likelihood of this population resorting to emergency care. Method: The current study recruited caregivers (N = 55) of youth with autism and co-occurring challenging behaviors (ages 2 – 22) to complete an online survey regarding their use of emergency services, child medication and therapy, and caregiver strain. Caregivers were compensated for their time. Results: Outcomes revealed …

The Effects Of Endogenous And Exogenous Progesterone On Ingroup Affiliative Bias, Abby Sibson

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Millions of women use hormonal contraceptives around the world and though the physical side effects are thoroughly described in the literature and clinical setting, the psychological effects have been largely ignored until recently. Recent studies have found that the use of hormonal contraceptives has an effect on women’s hormones and psychological well-being. The goal of the present research was to expand the current knowledge of the effect of hormonal contraceptives on women’s hormones and social behavior by examining how women with differing levels of progesterone due to menstrual cycle fluctuations (follicular or luteal phase) or using hormonal contraceptives (birth control …

Good Faith: Surveillance And Evaluation Of 911 Good Samaritan Laws In The United States, Shane W. Reader

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

To fight soaring overdose mortality rates in the United States, lawmakers adopted a variety of harm reduction tools. Among these, 911 Good Samaritan Laws (GSLs) derive their name from the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, a bystander who broke cultural convention to come to the aid of a man beset by thieves. These laws provide limited criminal immunity for bystanders in possession of controlled substances to encourage them to report drug overdoses. While previous studies associate GSLs with a modest reduction in opioid mortality, analyses often model them as equivocal or divide them coarsely across individual provisions. Evaluating these …

Mindset Theory Relates To Attitudes About Prison And Parole Among College Students, Cassandra R. Petersen

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The maintenance of prosocial relationships has been strongly connected to criminal desistance among past offenders. The opinions held by the community shape the prejudice often encountered by those with a criminal record. To promote desistance, we must understand how criminals and their abilities are considered by the public. In this study, 69 college students were surveyed about the United States prison and parole system in conjunction with Dweck’s mindset theory. Along with explicit questions, an Implicit Associations Test (IAT) was employed to measure unconscious associations between mentality and punishment preference. The IAT revealed that traits of a growth mindset were …

The Cultic Lifecycle: A Thematic Analysis Of Fulfillment And Fear In Cult Membership, Shaelen Grant

Student Theses

Prior research on susceptibility to cult recruitment has focused predominately on psychopathological risk factors, such as a prior personality disorder diagnosis and psychiatric and addictive disorders (Feldman & Johnson, 1995; Rousselet et al., 2017). While such studies contribute valuable information, they also inadvertently pathologize cult members. Furthermore, this focus has led to the overlooking of a more crucial question: what basic human desires does cult membership fulfill that cult leaders and recruiters exploit, to recruit and keep members in cults? To address this dearth, research team members interviewed 52 former cult members (N=52) from a variety of groups (e.g., Christian-based, …

Stability Of Universal Screening Over Time: An Examination Of The Student Risk Screening Scale, Rebecca Wagner Lovelace

Master's Theses

Universal screening is a proactive method to identify students that are at risk for social-emotional and behavior (SEB) problems and provide information to schools to support early intervention for at risk children. Current recommendations for practice indicate screening should be conducted at three time points during the school year. Previous studies suggest that this recommendation is not empirically based and fewer screenings per year may be sufficient for identifying students at risk. The current study seeks to extend the literature regarding the stability and consistency of screening scores over time by analyzing ratings from the Student Risk Screening Scale (SRSS) …

Drinking Motives As Mediators For The Relationships Between Overparenting And Alcohol Outcomes, Tatum Freeman

Master's Theses

The present study investigated the mediating role of drinking motives in the relationship between overparenting and alcohol outcomes using a sample of 207 traditional age college students (i.e., 18-25 years old; M = 19.8, SD = 1.64). Data on participant demographics, drinking motives, the practices of participants’ primary caregiver, typical weekly drinking, hazardous drinking, and alcohol consequences were collected via SONA (an online participant management software that allows researchers to collect data from a university psychology subject pool). Participants were 89.4% female and 54.1% White. Coping and conformity drinking motives partially mediated the relationships between overparenting, alcohol consequences, and hazardous …

The Influence Of Beliefs About Emotion On Avoidance Behaviors, Elise Warner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The beliefs individuals hold about emotions have been shown to influence their tendencies to avoid distressing situations. While much of the work to-date has been on beliefs about whether emotions can be changed (i.e., malleability beliefs), there is research suggesting that the belief that emotions last for long periods of time (i.e., longevity beliefs) have important implications for emotion regulation (Veilleux et al., 2020). Thus, our aim was to examine the relationship between longevity beliefs and experiential avoidance. We predicted that greater longevity beliefs would be associated with greater avoidance tendencies, and that stronger beliefs in the moment would also …

Disharmony Of The Soul: A Philosophical Analysis Of Psychological Trauma And Flourishing, Adam Blehm

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue that psychological trauma hinders human flourishing by disrupting psychic harmony and hindering virtuous relationships. Given the negative symptomology of posttraumatic stress related disorders (i.e., PTSD) this conclusion may seem a bit obvious to some. However, making the case for trauma as a hindrance to human flourishing is more complicated than it may first appear.

First, in the extant literature, trauma as a concept tends to be unclear. In much of the empirical and philosophical literature, trauma can include a certain kind of event, experience, effect, or a combination of all three. Furthermore, because of practical …

The Impact Of Video-Taped Social Modeling On Alcohol Outcome Expectancies Of Young Adults And The Role Of Social Anxiety, Kyle Kevin Jackson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol outcome expectancies (AOEs) represent people’s ideas about the effects of alcohol (Fromme, 1993). Positive AOEs particularly have been identified as a potential risk factor for hazardous drinking (e.g., Brown et al., 1985). The exact mechanisms that modify AOEs are not fully understood. Further, people higher in social anxiety may be especially receptive to social modeling due to attentional bias shift towards others in social contexts (Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). The current study examined how social anxiety and social modeling associate with AOEs. It was hypothesized that 1) those in the social modeling treatment condition would have higher social anxiety-adjacent …

The Impact Of Having Foreign Domestic Workers On Informal Caregivers Of Persons With Dementia: Findings From A Multi-Method Research In Singapore, Qi Yuan, Yunjue Zhang, Ellaisha Samari, Anitha Jeyagurunathan, Tee Hng Tan, Fiona Devi, Peizhi Wang, Harish Magadi, Richard Goveas, Li Ling Ng, Mythily Subramaniam

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Background: Informal caregivers of persons with dementia (PWDs) sometimes engage foreign domestic workers (FDWs) to support their caregiving journey. However, there has not been much research to establish if this is really beneficial. The current study aims to investigate whether engaging FDWs specifically for caregiving of PWDs truly moderates caregiver stress and to explore caregivers’ experiences of engaging FDWs. Methods: A multi-method study design with a quantitative and qualitative sub-study was adopted. For the quantitative sub-study, 282 informal caregivers of PWDs were recruited. Propensity score matching analysis was used. For the qualitative sub-study, 15 informal caregivers with FDWs were interviewed. …

Responses To Covid-19 Threats: An Evolutionary Psychological Analysis., Stephen M. Colarelli, Tyler J. Mirando, Kyunghee Han, Norman P. Li, Carter Vespi, Katherine A. Klein, Charles P. Fales

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Responses to COVID-19 public health interventions have been lukewarm. For example, only 64% of the US population has received at least two vaccinations. Because most public health interventions require people to behave in ways that are evolutionarily novel, evolutionary psychological theory and research on mismatch theory, the behavioral immune system, and individual differences can help us gain a better understanding of how people respond to public health information. Primary sources of threat information during the pandemic (particularly in early phases) were geographic differences in morbidity and mortality statistics. We argue that people are unlikely to respond to this type of …

Neurotypes: Do Ocd, Adhd, And Autism Play A Role In Life Satisfaction?, Morgan Mcleod Evans

Honors Theses

OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) are neurotypes that impact every aspect of life, including daily activities and socialization, which is why they have been shown in prior studies to negatively impact life satisfaction. This study compared the levels of life satisfaction now and before the COVID-19 pandemic in young adults (n = 324) with typical neurotypes, those with only ASD (autism), with only OCD, with only ADHD, with two of the neurotypes, and with all three neurotypes. Contrary to predictions from prior research, life satisfaction did not decrease after the onset …

Study Of Collective Self-Esteem And Academic Motivation Examining Perceptions Of Academic Statistics Of Black Traditional Undergraduate Students Attending A Pwi, Ariyah Robinson

Honors Theses

College enrollment for black traditional college-age students has been on the rise. Matriculation experienced a seven percent increase from 2000 to 2018 (NCES, 2020). However, Cokley et al. (2013) found that black students exhibit the highest minority stress among college students. Researchers also found that students may feel pressured to break stereotypes and perform well academically (Smith & Hope, 2020; Brooms, 2019; Mary et al., 2018). As more black students enroll in colleges nationwide, there is more than reasonable cause to continue examining how the matriculation of black students into predominantly white institutions impacts black students and their perceptions of …