Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Customer Envy At Service Encounters, Gerardo Anaya

Open Access Theses

Envy has been regarded as a complex emotion which can produce both positive and negative outcomes for consumers. This study explored the subjective experience of customer envy at service encounters in order to better understand how customers respond to unflattering comparisons with an envied customer. A questionnaire was designed to measure the cognitive appraisals, emotional responses, and consequences of customer envy. Study participants were also asked to share their envy incidents in the survey. A sample of 300 participants was collected and used for analysis. The findings illustrate that distinctively different patterns of cognitive appraisals such as preferential treatment, are …

Optimization Of Switch Virtual Keyboard By Using Computational Modelling, Xiao Zhang

Open Access Theses

In this thesis, I first reviewed some keyboard technologies used by people with motor difficulties, and described design elements that influence efficiency. I cast the design of a switch keyboard as an optimization problem, and arrangement of keys on such a keyboard as a Mixed Integer Programming problem. One significant variable in the MIP problem, the error rate, is related to several other variables. I treated modeling of the error rate as a parameter estimation problem, and used a data mining method. I designed HCI experiments to gather data for parameter estimation, using Bayesian logistic regression model. The empirical data …

Influence Of Seductive Details, Belief-Congruence, And Repeated Testing On Memory For Controversial Information, Daniel Adam Nuccio

Theses and Dissertations

People often encounter conflicting information on a wide array of topics. How they evaluate this information in relation to their current beliefs, and the effects of other influences, such as the weight given to superficial aspects of the information (e.g. pictures, anecdotes, or jargon that are at most minimally related to an author's argument), has been of interest to researchers for many years. One component of their processing

and evaluation of this information is their memory for the information. This study set out to examine the following questions: (1) Is belief-congruent in

formation remembered better or worse than belief incongruent …

Explaining Implicit And Explicit Affective Linkages In It Teams: Facial Recognition, Emotional Intelligence, And Affective Tone, Mary M. Dunaway

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over 80 percent of task work in organizations is performed by teams. Most teams operate in a more fluid, dynamic, and complex environment than in the past. As a result, a growing body of research is beginning to focus on how teams’ emotional well-being can benefit the effectiveness of workplace team efforts. These teams are required to be adaptive, to operate in ill-structured environments, and to rely on technology more than ever before. However, teams have become so ubiquitous that many organizations and managers take them for granted and assume they will be effective and productive. Because of the increased …

Preschoolers’ Physical, Social, And Engineering Play Behaviors: Differences In Gender And Play Environment, Zachary S. Gold

Open Access Theses

This study explored gender differences in the occurrence of 66 preschoolers' (ages 3-to-5; 29 girls, 37 boys) physical, social, and "engineering thinking play" behaviors across three play environments: the traditional playground, the dramatic play area, and an environment in which children played with large, manipulable, loose parts. Previous research has indicated that young children are not engaging in enough physical play to maintain healthy lifestyles. Play may also have benefits for social competency and cognitive development. Observations of children's engagement with a new and engaging play material, Imagination Playground TM blocks, which are designed to foster imaginative and creative constructive …

May I Help You? How Stereotypes And Innuendoes Influence Service Encounters, Lauren Michelle Brewer

Doctoral Dissertations

"You only get one chance to make a good first impression." The dissertation focuses on marketing agents; among the most visible is the "service provider." Previous research establishes the important role of cognitive social schemata in determining the way consumers react to different types of marketing agents, including service providers. In the literature review, a classification schema is developed for service provider stereotypes derived from theory using social stereotypes. The development of the Service Provider Perception Framework (SPPF) creates a classification for the individual service provider along two main dimensions: competence and affect.

In services design (particularly situations involving a …

Effects Of Licensed And Unlicensed Negation On The Activation Of Negated Concepts, Kevin Autry

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research on the activation of negated concepts has demonstrated situations in which negated concepts are less active than non-negated concepts (e.g., MacDonald & Just, 1989) as well as situations where negated and non-negated concepts are equally active (e.g., Autry & Levine, 2012, in press). Based on the pragmatic inference hypothesis (Levine & Hagaman, 2008), the present experiments tested the hypothesis that the activation level of negated concepts is a function of the context in which they occur. In two experiments, the activation level of target concepts was measured following licensing or non-licensing contexts using lexical decision and reading times. Although …

A Rat Model Of Mild Blast-Induced Head Trauma With Structural And Biochemical Abnormalities In The Absence Of Motor Deficits, Michael Kelso Walls

Open Access Theses

Blast injury has been coined the "signature injury of the Iraq war" resulting in a surge of interest in understanding and addressing the corresponding pathological sequelae. As modern warfare develops into a distinctly guerrilla style combat by smaller terrorist groups against larger, regimented forces, tactics like suicide bombing and roadside bombing with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) become more prevalent. 1,2 This increased use of IEDs countered with improved body armor and protective technologies has significantly increased the survival rate of such attacks. 1.2 However, as survival rates have improved with body armor and other protective technologies, the incidence of reported …