Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons^™

Male Collegiate Student-Athletes Masculinity And Attitudes Toward Mental Health Seeking, Jennifer L. Mayette

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The mental health and well-being of college student-athletes has recently come to the attention of the general public with the increase in current and past athletes speaking out about the stressors they faced during their collegiate careers. With this increase in attention, higher education institutions and larger athletic associations have turned towards research to identify factors that are contributing to the struggles of student-athletes. One factor that has consistently been identified as a barrier for athletes seeking help for mental health concerns is stigma. For male student-athletes in particular, perception of the stigma associated with receiving psychological help due to …

Is Trust A Zero-Sum Game? What Happens When Institutional Sources Get It Wrong, Andrew Dawson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, trust in mainstream institutions is on the decline while people are increasingly turning to alternative media and conspiracy theories. Previous research has suggested that these trends may be linked, but the exact nature of the relationship is unclear. In a fractured informational environment, is trust a neutral process, where each source is judged independently, or is it in fact a zero-sum competition, where a loss for one side is a gain for the other? Across three experimental studies (N = 2,951) we examined how people react when a source makes a serious error, …

Is Racial Diversity Important When Applying To Jmu Pa Program?, Gaelyn E Young, Deonte J. Hope

Physician Assistant Capstones, 2020-current

The Physician Assistant profession is predominantly female and Caucasian. In order to increase the diversity of the profession at the level of the workforce, it is necessary to examine PA programs' role as the entryway into the profession. To that end, this evaluation aimed at surveying current and future PA students at James Madison University to understand whether racial diversity of both the program's cohort and/or its faculty was a factor in their decision to apply and/or attend the school.

You Hurt My Feelings: Autonomic And Behavioral Responses To Social Exclusion And The Moderating Effect Of Psychopathic Traits, Liat Kofler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Humans have a fundamental need to form and maintain social connections, and thus experiencing social exclusion is extremely distressing as it threatens this basic human need. Individuals who are socially excluded often respond aggressively, not only towards their ostracizers but also towards innocent bystanders, with ostracism being implicated in extreme acts of violence such as school shootings. However, individual differences in behavior exist within the context of social exclusion as not everyone responds aggressively after being ostracized. Identifying risk factors for retaliatory aggressive behavior following experiences of social exclusion may facilitate the development of targeted interventions aimed at mitigating such …

Freedom, Abortion, And Hypocrisy: The Effect Of Hypocrisy On Pro-Life Abortion Attitudes, Emily M. Vance

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Previous research suggests that highlighting the gap between inconsistent values can result in long-term attitude change (Rokeach, 1971), that feeling hypocritical might prompt pro-attitudinal behavior (e.g., Dickerson et al., 1992), and that a reactance decoy makes participants more receptive to subsequent persuasive messages (Schumpe et al., 2020). Drawing from these findings, the purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the impact of induced hypocrisy on pro-life abortion attitudes, an attitude commonly grounded in the value of freedom, depended on a reactance decoy. Consistent with Aronson et al.’s paradigm (1991), participants first publicly advocated for the importance of personal …

Alternative Approaches To Police Interventions When Responding To Mental Health Crises Incidents, Karen Rivera Apolinar

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Purpose: This study explored mental health workers perspectives on alternative approaches in responding to mental health crises.

The study was carried out in Southern California, in collaboration with mental health workers who currently work or previously have worked in mental health crisis. It adopted a post-positivists paradigm and data was gathered through individual interviews with mental health workers who have direct experience with mental health crisis response in the community and with the police. The twenty participants in the study were men and women working in the mental health field, and of various backgrounds, licensures, and ages.

The study found …

Does Watching Videos With Natural Scenery Restore Attentional Resources? A Critical Examination Through A Pre-Registered Within-Subject Experiment, Andree Hartanto, Nicole Lee Anne Teo, Verity Y. Q. Lua, Keith Tay, Nicole R. Y. Chen, Nadyanna M. Majeed

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Existing studies have shown that direct exposure to a real nature environment has a restorative effect on attentional resources after a mentally fatiguing task. However, it remains unclear whether virtual nature simulations can serve as a substitute for real nature experienced in the outdoors to restore executive attention. Given the mixed findings in the literature, the present study sought to examine if viewing videos with natural scenery (vs. a control with urban scenery) restores participants’ working memory capacity – measured by an operation span task – in a high-powered pre-registered within-subject experimental study. Overall, our within-subject experiment did not find …

Multiple Approaches To Examining Gender Norms In Romantic Relationships, Carrie Underwood

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Romantic relationships are essential to the human experience, and gender stereotypes are so ingrained they can be automatic. In this dissertation, I address three empirical questions through both quantitative and qualitative research methods, all of which contribute to the growing body of literature on gender norms and romantic relationships. In Chapter 2, I present a mixed-methods study that examines how heterosexual men reason about benevolent sexism. Results revealed themes of equality in the workplace and men’s roles as providers. In Chapter 4 I implemented a two-study research design to understand how heterosexual women and men reason about troubled romantic relationships. …

The Long And Short Of Mistress Relationships: Sex-Differentiated Mate Preferences Reflect A Compromise Of Mating Ideals, Bryan K. C. Choy, Norman P. Li, Kenneth Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Objective: Evolved mate preferences have taken center stage in evolutionary psychology research, yet this literature has been fairly muted on mate preferences for extrapair partners. Here, we examined the mate preferences for mistress relationships (the traits that men prioritize in a mistress and mistresses prioritize in their male partners) and compared these preferences to those of short- and long-term relationships. Method: In two studies (NStudy 1a = 104, NStudy 1b = 191), we derived dimensions of mate preferences through exploratory factor analyses. In subsequent studies (NStudy 2 = 219, NStudy 3 = 101), we employed a budget allocation paradigm, where …

Insights Into Accuracy Of Social Scientists' Forecasts Of Societal Change, Igor Grossma, Andree Hartanto, Nadyanna M. Majeed, Et Al See Comments For Full List Of Authors

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on social media, and gender-career and racial bias. Following provision of historical trend data on the domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N=86 teams/359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts based on new data six months later (Tournament 2; N=120 teams/546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social …

The Implications Of Sexual Assault Awareness On Sexual Overperception Bias, Zach Buckner

Master's Theses

Heterogeneity has recently emerged in research investigating men’s overperceptions of women’s sexual receptivity, namely that such overperceptions are less robust than previously considered. Various social movements (e.g., #MeToo) could be a modern-day contextual factor that has reduced men’s tendency toward overperception. In this study, participants viewed hypothetical information regarding sexual assault perpetration committed by men or women (or control information) before rating opposite-sex targets on perceived sexual interest in them and reporting individual differences in just and dangerous world. The results indicate that individuals who hold stronger beliefs in an unjust world are more sensitive to perceived threats from potential …

Tools For Collective Thought: Augmenting Collaborative Sensemaking, Jacob Zimmerman

Pomona Senior Theses

As some pioneers of personal computing argue, we have yet to reach the potential that computing offers to enhance our cognition. Some modern scholars of tools for thought give a prerogative to develop transformative tools for thought (Matuschak & Nielsen, 2019), recognizing that the tools we may use enable new thought patterns and thus new cognitive abilities. As cognition is mediated both by our tools and by the minds of others, I evaluate the current state of literature on tools built to support collaborative sensemaking, a domain of collective cognition characterized by various interdependent cognitive processes. To apply and test …

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 …

K-5 Elementary Alternative Program: A Case Study, William E. Scheuer Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to examine how the K-5 elementary alternative program All Students Can Thrive (ASCT) used student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. There is a lack of research on K-5 elementary alternative programs, such as ASCT, and specifically those that integrate student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. Literature does not contain universally accepted interventions that are effective in the elementary alternative setting to help students return to the mainstream classroom setting better prepared to display appropriate behaviors when a student is removed from a mainstream classroom setting due to disruptive behaviors. …

Hurting To Helping: Regret As A Potential Motivator Of Helping Behavior, Chandler Ann Findley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has suggested that emotions can influence people’s motivation to engage in prosocial behaviors. Even negatively-valenced emotions, like sadness, guilt, and shame, have been shown to motivate prosocial behaviors. Exploratory analyses of a previous study indicated that regret may also motivate increased prosocial intentions, but no research has been published to experimentally test whether feelings of regret may motivate prosocial behaviors. Therefore, the present research seeks to experimentally manipulate participants’ current emotional state to empirically examine whether regret motivates greater helping behavior than other, similar negative emotions that have already been demonstrated to motivate prosocial behaviors in humans. These …

Attitudes Of The Colleges Of Education Students Towards Individuals With Mobility Disabilities In Jordan, Khalid Mohammed Al Jundiu

Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Research in Higher Education مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية للبحوث في التعليم العالي

This descriptive study aimed to survey the attitudes of students at the College of Education towards individuals with motor disabilities in Jordan, in order to benefit from it in knowing the extent of the need for programs to change negative attitudes towards individuals with disabilities. The population of the current study consists of all Jordanian public universities for the first semester of the academic year 2020/2021. The study sample consisted of (712) male and female students. It was randomly selected from seven public universities Jordan. The researcher built a scale to achieve the aims of the study. The researcher used …

Comparing Crime Scene Trajectories: Sexual Versus Nonsexual Serial Homicides, Jonathan T. Dixon

Student Theses

When faced with a possible serial offender, crime linkage analysis is crucial in identifying which crime scenes belong to the same offender. Thus, when analyzing behavioral consistency to link crimes, it is essential to use a classification model that is empirically tested and is based on the type of crime being investigated. Several classification models examine patterns of consistency and change using a combination of thematic and behavioral subgroups; however, they are tested using sexual and nonsexual crime scenes, which some recent literature argues are two distinct types of homicide and should be examined separately. The present study tests the …

The Long And Short Of Mistress Relationships: Sex-Differentiated Mate Preferences Reflect A Compromise Of Mating Ideals, Bryan K. C. Choy, Norman P. Li, Kenneth Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The mate preferences literature has been fairly muted on mate preferences for extrapair partners. In four studies, we examined mate preferences for mistress relationships--the traits that men prioritize in a mistress and that mistresses prioritize in their male partners--and compared these preferences to those of short- and long-term relationships. In studies 1a and 1b, (N = 104 and 191 respectively), we derived dimensions of mate preferences for mistress relationships through factor analyses. In studies 2 and 3 (N = 219 and 101 respectively) we employed the budget allocation paradigm to compare people's priorities for different traits for a mistress relationship …

The Significance Of Sonic Branding To Strategically Stimulate Consumer Behavior: Content Analysis Of Four Interviews From Jeanna Isham’S “Sound In Marketing” Podcast, Ina Beilina

Student Theses and Dissertations

Purpose:
Sonic branding is not just about composing jingles like McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It.” Sonic branding is an industry that strategically designs a cohesive auditory component of a brand’s corporate identity. This paper examines the psychological impact of music and sound on consumer behavior reviewing studies from the past 40 years and investigates the significance of stimulating auditory perception by infusing sound in consumer experience in the modern 2020s.

Design/methodology/approach:
Qualitative content analysis of audio media was used to test two hypotheses. Four archival oral interview recordings from Jeanna Isham’s podcast “Sound in Marketing” featuring the sonic branding experts …

Effectiveness Of Affective Based Intervention Depending On Personal Relevance To A Conspiracy Belief, Mallory Macdonald

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

With the increase in conspiracy theory beliefs, there is a need for intervention techniques. Do some intervention techniques work better when taking into account the personal relevance a person has towards a topic? One hundred and sixty undergraduate students first read an article that introduced the conspiracy theory and established personal relevance. To manipulate personal relevance, participants were told that a new vaccine mandate would be put into place either July 2023 or July 2031. Then, they considered an article that worked to intervene the conspiracy belief. Participants either read an article that was focused on affective or cognitive intervention …

Prospective Person Memory In The Case Of Missing Persons: A Coffee Shop Study, Cara Bascom

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Prospective person memory (PPM) is the process of remembering to perform some action after encountering a target individual, such as identifying and reporting a missing person sighting after viewing a missing person alert (Moore et al., 2021). Research has shown that identification rates generally tend to be low in simulated missing person studies (Lampinen & Moore, 2016b). The purpose of the current research is to determine how to improve missing person recognition rates. This project explores the potential effects of using videos in missing person reports as compared to using static images. We also consider differences between rigid and non-rigid …

Algorithms Vs. Human Nature: A Tale Of Selective Exposure, Dené E. M. Wamsley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The public’s turn towards news websites and social media for news consumption has sparked anxiety over echo chambers, avoidance of opinion-challenging content, and potentially fragmentation and polarization among sociopolitical groups. Algorithms have specifically been blamed for increasing the ease of filtering out counter-attitudinal online content and potentially exacerbating selective exposure tendencies. However, longstanding classic psychological research has demonstrated the ubiquitous phenomenon of cognitive dissonance and selective exposure far before the internet became the primary tool for news consumption. Research investigating how algorithms directly influence online approach and avoidance behavior is unfortunately scarce. This dissertation work aimed to analyze the impact …

Non-Verbal Pride Expressions As A Predictor Of Lgbtq Health, Craig Gilbert

Theses and Dissertations

Pride is a self-conscious, positive emotion that has been assessed in a wide range of populations and with a variety of pre-validated measures. Research has shown that the presence of pride can function as a potential resilience factor against minority based stress and has been linked to increased emotional well being, life satisfaction, and self-esteem. However, a majority of this research relies upon self-report questionnaires as opposed to observational data. To evaluate the predictive power of non-verbal pride behaviors, a group of LGBTQ+ individuals (n=125) were asked during a recorded interview to describe an experience where they felt prideful about …

Material World: The Effects Of Meditation Content On Materialistic Values, Azalia White, Katie Young, Hannah Wright, Nicole Walheim, Samantha Urban

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

In the twenty-first century, Western cultures are highly materialistic and defined by consumeristic goals to garner as much “stuff” as possible (Berger, 2015). This constant pursuit has demonstrable adverse effects on personal and social well being (Bahl et al., 2016; Wang, et al., 2017), while overconsumption also has devastating impacts on the global environment. Previous studies found a negative relationship between levels of mindfulness and levels of materialism (Nagpaul & Pang, 2015; Watson, 2019), indicating the potential for mindfulness to combat otherwise materialistic behaviors. Furthermore, previous research demonstrated gratitude interventions led to lower scores on materialism (Chaplin, et al., 2018), …

The Impacts Of Learning 2 Breathe On Rumination, Adessa Flack

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

The present study examined the impact of Learning2Breathe (L2B), a mindfulness-based stress reduction program developed for use with adolescents on rumination. The program was applied to rumination in college-age men and women. Our experiment utilized a quasi-experimental design. The sample consisted of 50 undergraduate students that were placed in either the experimental or control group. Data was collected pretest and posttest through a variety of measures including the Rumination Reflection Questionnaire (RRQ) which consisted of a rumination and reflection subscale, and the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). A two-way mixed ANOVA design was used to analyze data. There was no …

The Relationship Between Social Media Use And Depression And Anxiety Symptoms During Covid-19, Tene'sha L. Crews, Christina Sheerin

Undergraduate Research Posters

The rise of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global surge in exposure to disaster and crisis-related media. Increases in poor mental health outcomes such as anxiety and depression, are associated with increased exposure to such media content (Abbas et al., 2021; Riehm et al., 2020; Zhao & Zhou, 2020). In recent years, social media has become one of the most widely used sources for news; approximately 48% of adult Americans receive their news from social media (Pew Research Center, 2021). During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in social media use due to social distancing and …

Homelessness, Dehumanization, And The Role Of Empathy, Christina Esker

Kean Quest

Dehumanization reflects a psychological process that denies individuals and groups the positive traits and attributes that make them human. Those experiencing homelessness are frequently dehumanized and perceived as social outcasts in American society. This study demonstrates the tendency of others to dehumanize individuals that are homeless and how increased empathy changes how this social outgroup is perceived. Results revealed that when exposed to information that humanizes a man experiencing homelessness, participants’ levels of empathy increased, and levels of disgust decreased. However, general attitudes and beliefs of homelessness were unchanged. The implications of increasing empathy levels for this social outgroup are …

The Nature Of Anti-Asian American Xenophobia During The Coronavirus Pandemic: A Preliminary Exploration Into Envy As A Key Motivator Of Hate, Daisuke Akiba

Publications and Research

Background. The current Coronavirus pandemic has been linked to a dramatic increase in anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) hate incidents in the United States. At the time of writing, there does not appear to be any published empirical research examining the mechanisms underlying Asiaphobia during the current pandemic. Based on the stereotype content model, we investigated the idea that ambivalent attitudes toward AAPIs, marked primarily with envy, may be contributing to anti-AAPI xenophobia. Methods. Study 1 (N = 140) explored, through a survey, the link between envious stereotypes toward AAPIs and Asiaphobia. Study 2 (N = 167), …

Add Me As A Friend: Face To Face Vs. Online Friendships And Implications For Happiness, Andrew Griggs, Emily Rickel, Elizabeth Lazzara, Christina Frederick

Publications

Friendships are beneficial to individual happiness. Studies have examined virtual relationships; however, the quality and utility of adult, online gaming friendships and their relationship with happiness is still not well understood. Respondents were surveyed about friendship quality with their closest friends across two modalities (face-to-face or online via gaming), as well as other relationship characteristics including communication frequency and friendship length. We identified a statistically significant difference between the modalities in friendship quality. We also identified a relationship between friendship quality and happiness. We discuss these results in terms of practical implications concerning friendship quality in face-to-face and online gaming …

Examining Own-Race Bias: A Cooperation And Memory Study Using Diverse Emojis, Jillian Franks

Theses

Other-race-effect or own-race bias is a well-documented phenomenon in memory. Findings suggest that humans are better at recognizing and remembering faces of their own race than other races. Previous research suggests that these results are due to a lack of interracial contact or exposure to other racial groups. Evidence from previous studies has demonstrated that individuals process own-race faces differently than other-race faces, paying more attention to more salient features that become better encoded. While there is empirical support for both hypotheses, it has yet to be studied if the other-race effect for memory extends to representational human faces, for …