Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Cross Cultural Analysis For Training And Facilitating Latin-American Audiences, Jose P. Alcazar

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this project is to help Creative Problem Solving (CPS) trainers and facilitators to improve the efficacy when working with Hispanic groups and individuals, either in a personal or in organizational environments. This project will guide the facilitators to use a more appropriate tools that will allow the resource group to feel more comfortable during the idea generation, creating an environment more according to the believes and behavioral habits; and the client to feel more confident to converge and make decisions accordingly to the initial goals. When training people in CPS, the project will align the methodology and …

Apologies Of The Rich And Famous: Cultural, Cognitive, And Social Explanations Of Why We Care And Why We Forgive, Janet M. Ruane, Karen Cerulo

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In recent years, U.S. and other Western media have inundated the public with celebrity apologies. The public (measured via representative opinion polls) then expresses clear ideas about who deserves forgiveness. Is forgiveness highly individualized or tied to broader social, cultural, and cognitive factors? To answer this question, we analyzed 183 celebrity apologies offered between October 1, 2000, and October 1, 2012. Results are twofold and based in both cultural and social psychological perspectives. First, we found that public forgiveness is systematically tied to discursive characteristics of apologies—particularly sequential structures. Certain sequences appear to cognitively prime the public, creating associative links …

Improv To Improve Interprofessional Communication, Team Building, Patient Safety, And Patient Satisfaction, Candace A. Campbell

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

The purpose of this process improvement project was to implement a test of change within a healthcare team utilizing applied improvisational exercises (AIEs), and to lay the groundwork for more effective inter- and intra-professional communication.

Literature review: AIEs have been shown to facilitate individual participant communication strengths through a process of un-learning certain common behavioral habits, and learning new habits that assist in creating and expanding closed-loop communication. Such un-learning and learning enriches the participant’s awareness of the environment and encourages participant adaptability through positive group interactions.

Method: An all-day AIE seminar/workshop was conducted with members of two healthcare teams …

Traditional Masculinity & Advertising Image Approval, Danielle W. Kailing, Peggy Cantrell Phd

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project investigates the relationship between adherence to traditional masculinity and approval of selected advertising images. Because traditional masculinity includes characteristics supportive of aggression and dominance; I hypothesize that an increase in adherence to traditional masculinity will correlate with approval of the violence found in some print advertisements. Participants include 259 men who completed an anonymous, online, survey. Adherence to masculinity is measured using the Male Role Norm Inventory-Revised (MRNI-R) (Levant, et. al, 2007). Each picture is scored on a 5-point Likert Scale. As hypothesized, an increase in total MRNI-R score, is significantly correlated with an increase in the approval …

Murder Mitigation In The Fifty-Two American Jurisdictions: A Case Study In Doctrinal Interrelation Analysis, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The essay surveys the law in the fifty-two American jurisdictions with regard to the three doctrines that commonly provide a mitigation or defense to murder liability: common law provocation and its modern counterpart, extreme mental or emotional disturbance; the so-called diminished capacity defense and its modern counterpart, mental illness negating an offense element; and the insanity defense. The essay then examines the patterns among the jurisdictions in the particular formulation they adopt for the three doctrines, and the combinations in which those formulations commonly appear in different jurisdictions. After this review, the essay steps back to see what kinds of …

Direct Human Service Experience And Its Effect On Volunteers' Self-Perceived Generosity And Meeting Volunteer Expectations, Emily M. Borger

Honors Program Projects

A study using participants (n=61) from a small liberal arts college was conducted to analyze the effect of direct human service on volunteers’ self‐perceived generosity, expected versus actual appreciation, expected versus actual satisfaction in work, and expected versus actual value of work. An experimental group (n=31) was given pre‐ and post‐surveys evaluating these dependent variables using a Likert scale. Between the surveys the experimental group received treatment of direct human service at a free community lunch program. The control group (n=30) was given the same pre‐ and postsurveys without treatment.

It was hypothesized that …

Stranger Danger: Parenthood And Child Presence Increase The Envisioned Bodily Formidability Of Menacing Men, Daniel M.T. Fessler, Colin Holbrook, Jeremy S. Pollack, Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Due to altriciality and the importance of embodied capital, children’s fitness is contingent on parental investment. Injury suffered by a parent therefore degrades the parent’s fitness both by constraining reproduction and by diminishing the fitness of existing offspring. Due to the latter added cost, compared to non-parents, parents should be more cautious in hazardous situations, including potentially agonistic interactions. Prior research indicates that relative formidability is conceptualized in terms of size and strength. As erroneous under-estimation of a foe’s formidability heightens the risk of injury, parents should therefore conceptualize a potential antagonist as larger, stronger, and of more sinister intent …

The Will To Lead: The Dynamic Integration Of Intrinsic Motivation And Social Change Leadership, Joshua M. Garrin

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

Discourse on the psychosocial substrates of human motivation reflects a hot-button theme in contemporary leadership research circles. For many aspiring leaders, role models and social support provide an undercurrent for instilling leadership attributes. Yet for others, the drive to optimize leadership potentials is a naturally occurring, internally guided event that is continually reinforced through self-regulatory processes. As such, questions remain as to which intrinsic motives underpin the leadership potentials that have implications for social change agency. To date, the extant literature fails to offer a comprehensive model that highlights (a) the self-motives that have preeminent applicability to intrinsic motivation, (b) …

The Power Of Workplace Wellness: A Theoretical Model For Social Change Agency, Joshua M. Garrin

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

As millions of individuals face the complex challenge of adopting prohealth behavior as a core lifestyle attribute, there is an ever-increasing need to take an opportunistic approach to practicing and internalizing such behavior. Time constraints, prioritization, and time mismanagement widely contribute to the perceived inability of individuals to adhere to prohealth behavior. Given vocation as a demand that constitutes approximately one third of daily life activity, the organizational setting has emerged as a context that can potentially offer a vast array of viable workplace wellness (WW) opportunities. Such initiatives go beyond framing organizations as vehicles for health behavior promotion—instead, the …

A Heart-Based Sufi Mindfulness Spiritual Practice Employing Self-Journeying, Faruk Arslan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Spiritual Psychology is the study and practice of the art and science of the human evolution of consciousness. The heart occupies an important place in Sufism and is considered to contain the divine spark that leads to spiritual realization. Fethullah Gülen’s action-oriented Sufi methods described in his book series “The Emerald Hills of the Heart” provides the basis for a heart-based therapeutic intervention through self-journeying, which is the objective of this thesis. These self-purification and mindfulness-related transpersonal methods generate a form of treatment that is culturally sensitive. Through my reflections in this research, I transformed my personal experiences into …