Social Psychology Commons^™

The Relationship Between Motivation And Volunteer Satisfaction In Conservation Programs 2015., Raena Blumenthal

Master's Theses

Conservation leisure service organizations are relying more heavily on volunteers to sustain their services and protect natural resources (Strigas, 2006). However, research focusing on volunteer vacationers, those who spend money to volunteer, is still in its infancy. Drawing on functional theorizing (Bruyer & Rappe, 2007; Clary, Snyder, Ridge, Copeland, Stukas, Haugen, & Miene, 1998; Houle, Sagarin, & Kaplan, 2005; Katz, 1960; Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956), this study explored volunteer vacationers’ motivations and the relationships between motivations to volunteer, satisfaction with the volunteer vacation experience, and inclinations to volunteer in the future (in both local and nonlocal settings). The study …

Personality, Character Strengths, Empathy, Familiarity And The Stigmatization Of Mental Illness, Jessica Shanna James

Master's Theses

The stigma associated with mental illness is pervasive and detrimental. The aim of the current study was to assess individual characteristics that may be positively and negatively associated with the stigmatization of mental illness. Two-hundred fifty-nine undergraduate students from the University of Southern Mississippi completed measures of the Big Five personality traits (i.e., Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience), Dark Triad personality traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy), selected character strengths (i.e., Open-mindedness, Perspective, Bravery, Integrity, Kindness, Social Intelligence, Fairness, Forgiveness and Mercy, and Hope), Empathy, and Familiarity with mental illness. Participants also completed measures of stigmatizing attitudes …

Bystander Confronting Of Anti-Black Racism: Effects Of Belonging Affirmation And Confrontation Training, Rayne Bozeman

Master's Theses

Confronting has the potential to reduce prejudice, especially when implemented by a non-target group member. Not knowing how to respond and fearing social rejection have been identified as barriers to confronting in previous studies. The current study tests whether providing training to confront prejudice and affirming the need to belong helps individuals overcome these barriers. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three training conditions: prejudice confrontation training (PCT), rude comment training (RCT), or no training control group (NT). Participants were also randomly assigned to one of two belonging conditions: belonging affirmation or control. Participants were then asked to imagine …

The Influence Of Backlash On Self-Sexualization And Cognitive Depletion, Mallory Helen Elizabeth Nurse Grembowski

Master's Theses

A woman who acts agentically in the workplace is more likely to be disliked and viewed as less competent than a woman who acts caring and communal. The negative consequences for acting outside of a cultural stereotype are called backlash. Cultural gender stereotypes for western society depict women as warm and communal while men are agentic and independent. Women in the workplace act outside of the cultural stereotype, and thus face backlash from their peers. This study examines the extent to which women utilize self-sexualization as a recovery strategy to cope with the fear of backlash, and ultimately how these …

The Impact Of Gender And Cultural Values On Savoring And Happiness Among Korean College Students, Soyeon Kim

Master's Theses

Historically, Korea has been strongly influenced by Chinese Confucianism, which emphasizes gender-role differentiation and patriarchal norms. Through globalization, however, Western values, which accentuate achievement and independence, have influenced Korean society and its emphasis on traditional values and sex roles. In particular, Korean females, relative to males, may gain more empowerment by rejecting traditional cultural values. Literature has shown that Asian cultures traditionally emphasize dampening rather than amplifying of positive emotions—a style of positive emotional regulation (i.e., savoring) that predicts lower reported levels of happiness. The present study examined gender differences in cultural values, savoring responses to positive experience, and happiness …

Effects Of Clarity And Group Membership, Fatima Akia Martin

Master's Theses

Reciprocal-trust relationships are at the very foundation of our social contracts with one another. Trust and the implied promise of reciprocity have real world effects on how we make decisions in our personal and professional lives. When we have received a benefit from another person, and later have an opportunity to give a benefit back to that same person, we often use the level of trust implied by the initial benefit received as a guide to the amount of benefit we should return. The current study investigated how the clarity of the trusting individual's intentions to trust and his/her group …

Predictors Of Major Commitment, Anna Jill Womack

Master's Theses

Contextual (e.g. job fit, job involvement), individual (e.g. job satisfaction, need for achievement), and demographic (e.g. gender, educational level) factors have been related to forms of career commitment (i.e. affective, continuance, and normative commitment), highlighting that the commitment one feels toward his or her career is a complex variable. Furthermore, commitment has been associated with intent to remain within a profession or organization (Bowling, Beehr, & Lepisto, 2006; Den Hartog & Belschak, 2007; Duffy, Dik, & Steger, 2011; Goulet & Singh, 2002), suggesting that commitment is an important component of retention within a career. Correspondingly, commitment to one's academic major …

The Effect Of Semantic Clustering On Idea Quality In Individual And Group Ideation, Amanda Christine Egan

Master's Theses

Rietzschel, Nijstad, and Stroebe (2007) have demonstrated the benefits of "deep exploration" on creative idea generation. The current study attempted to refine this understanding by differentiating whether this effect is due simply to the number of ideas generated within a specific semantic category (fluency) or the way in which semantic categories are explored (clustering). Four conditions compared maximum versus minimum clustering crossed with nominal and interacting groups, with total quantity and fluency held constant. The unique effects of these manipulations on the total number of high-quality ideas generated, as well as the specific number of highly original and highly feasible …

The Influence Of Ideal Similarity On The Relation Between Self-Discrepancy And Attraction, Natalie Jamila Hall

Master's Theses

Some research indicates that individuals with high self-discrepancy (distance between the actual self and the ideal self) are more prone to interpersonal attraction than those with low self-discrepancy and that perceived ideal similarity (how closely a target individual resembles your own ideal self) strongly influences attraction. To test the hypothesis that ideal similarity moderates the relationship between self-discrepancy and attraction, manufactured Facebook profiles were used to manipulate perceived ideal similarity of target before having participants rate the target on measures of liking and respect. This study surveyed 232 college students; 111 from a mid-sized, private Midwestern university and 121 from …

Examination Of Presenter Characteristics On Satisfaction And Learning In A Treatment Readiness Program, Haley M. Siler

Master's Theses

Determining factors that encourage thinking and attending to information is an important aspect of working to help people learn more effectively. Characteristics of presenters have been found to be cues for information processing, related to the results of those being presented to. It was found that both client's liking and perceived expertise of the presenter were related to both program satisfaction and learning of educational materials. Determining factors that encourage thinking and attending to information is an important aspect of working to help people learn more effectively. Characteristics of presenters have been found to be cues for information processing, related …

Secure And Insecure High Self-Esteem And Social Identity Affirmation In Response To Belongingness Threats, Reyna Jacqueline Pena

Master's Theses

The objective of this study was to examine the relation between implicit and explicit self-esteem on social identity affirmation among Latinos in response to belonging threats from other ingroup members. We predicted a three-way interaction between implicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem, and belonging threat condition predicting social identity affirmation (collective self-esteem), compensatory conviction and ingroup bias. We predicted that individuals with insecure self-esteem (high explicit, low implicit) would affirm their social identity more, offer greater conviction and express more ingroup bias in response to recalled threats as compared to a control condition of non-threatened participants. A total of n=174 Latinos participated …

The Effects Of Candidate Religiosity And Candidate Secularism On Voters' Support For The Political Candidate, Nathanael Gratias Sumaktoyo

Master's Theses

This study examines the effects of candidate religiosity, candidate secularism, and voter fundamentalism on voters' support for a political candidate. Seven effects were tested: 1) the religiosity effect, which suggests that a religious candidate will be supported more than a nonreligious candidate; 2) the secularism effect, which suggests that a secular candidate will be supported more than a nonsecular candidate; 3) the JFK effect, which suggests that a secular religious candidate will be supported more than a nonsecular religious candidate; 4) the deviant effect--an opposite of the JFK effect--, which suggests that a secular religious candidate constitutes a group deviant, …

Reducing Knowledge Overconfidence By Reducing The Threat Of Knowledge Cue Utilization, Christopher Neil Burrows

Master's Theses

Overconfident judgments are common. We are often more confident about things than we should be, and this may lead us to make maladaptive decisions. Debiasing confidence by cuing people in to how confident they should be could help people make better choices. However, people may be unwilling to accept debiasing information if doing so implies their own ignorance. This study examined whether self-affirmation can buffer people against threats to self-image, helping people to accept debiasing cues. I hypothesized that combining a cue with self-affirmation would lead to enhanced debiasing over cues or self-affirmation alone. In order to investigate this hypothesis, …

Physiological Politics: Stress And Dominance Responses To Political News, Erin Strauts

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Perceived Partner Commitment And Implicit Self-Esteem Predicts Connectedness Accessibility In Response To Relationship Threat, Norma L. Reyes

Master's Theses

The current research examined the impact of perceived partner commitment, implicit self-esteem, and relationship threat on connectedness. The present study predicted that individuals with high (versus low) implicit self-esteem are more likely to access connectedness goals (on an unconscious level) after experiencing a relationship threat, when they perceive their significant others are highly committed to the relationship. This relation between implicit self-esteem and connectedness goal accessibility will not be evident in the control condition. The findings reveal perceived partner commitment moderated the relation between implicit self-esteem and relationship threat on accessing connectedness goals. However, people with high implicit self-esteem were …

Illinois Mental Health Courts: Intra-Group Dynamics In The Courtroom Work Group, Shanti J. Raman

Master's Theses

This study was intended to gain insight into key social psychological constructs in an unexplored work-group context: one premised on true team structure. Exploratory information on intra-group dynamics in Illinois mental health courts addressed levels of trust, communication, coordination, efficacy, and conflict resolution within mental health court teams.

A survey assessed how court group members associate these central variables with their teams. All reported relatively high levels of trust and team efficacy, and solid capacities for communication, coordination, and conflict resolution. No notable differences emerged in these variables relative to length of courts' operation. Team members from multiple disciplines held …

Justice Efficacy And Argument Strength In Mock Juror Decision-Making In A Civil Trial, Katharina Kluwe

Master's Theses

In 2005, 48,300 state and federal civil jury trials occurred in the United States (National Center for State Courts, 2009). Approximately 15% of the verdicts juries render are inaccurate (Spencer, 2007). Therefore, it is of utmost important to increase juror accuracy. The current thesis investigated jurors' justice efficacy as it relates to persuasion. Mock jurors' levels of justice efficacy were manipulated by giving them false feedback on a moral reasoning task. Participants read a civil trial summary, and received weak or strong statements by potential other jurors. The relation between argument strength and verdict did not depend on the feedback …

Team Performance On A Computerized Intellective Task, Joseph Bihary

Master's Theses

This study examined the effects of a reflexivity manipulation on the performance of dyads and triads working on an intellective task known as letters-to-numbers. Past research has shown triads consistently outperforming dyads on this task. The current study sought to determine whether giving dyads an opportunity to reflect on strategy would close this gap in performance. Participants performed a computerized version of two letters-to-numbers problems in dyads or triads. Between problems, half of the groups performed a reflexivity task designed to facilitate strategy improvements. Experimental sessions were videotaped. It was predicted that triads would outperform dyads, reflexivity groups would outperform …

Testing For A Descriptive And Injunctive Norm Interaction In Promoting Health Behavior, Robert E. Low

Master's Theses

Social norms-based interventions have demonstrated efficacy as tools for behavior change interventions. Nonetheless, there is some theoretical and empirical evidence that the efficacy of injunctive norms-based appeals can be undermined by their tendency to 1) arouse psychological reactance among participants, and 2) inadvertently imply that few others are completing the target behavior. The author hypothesizes that supplementing an injunctive appeal with evidence of a supporting descriptive norm will counteract these problematic tendencies. The present research describes a test of of this hypothesis in the context of an intervention to fight H1N1 on campus. Boxes of sanitizing keyboard wipes were placed …

Understanding The Behavioral Determinants Of Retention In Hiv Care: A Qualitative Evaluation Of The Situated Information, Motivation, Behavioral Skills Model Of Care Initiation And Maintenance, Laramie Smith

Master's Theses

The goal of this study is to identify the content and context of critical informational, motivational, and behavioral skills related facilitators and barriers influencing retention in HIV care in an inner-city clinic population receiving clinic- and outreach-based HIV care services. Elicitation of retention-relevant factors was guided by the Situated Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills model of Care Initiation and Maintenance, using qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews. Deductive and inductive content coding were used to identify important theory-based dynamics of retention in HIV care and to identify factors discussed as important to retention in HIV-care that were not well specified by the model. Participants’ experiences …

A Relational Perspective On Sex Stereotyping, Jessica Kang

Master's Theses

The current study adopts a relational perspective of sex stereotyping by taking into account the perceiver’s group membership, the target group, and the content of the stereotype. We asked women and men to report their personal beliefs about men and women on three characteristics: competence, warmth and morality. The results showed that participants were engaging in three different patterns of sex stereotyping: traditional sex stereotyping (both sexes rated similarly by both male and female participants on traditional stereotypes), traditional in-group favoring sex stereotyping (participants favor his/her own group on a stereotype traditionally associated with his/her group), and counter-traditional sex stereotyping …

Distance Judgments For Joint Action: The Perceptual Consequences Of Anticipated Coordination, Benjamin R. Meagher

Master's Theses

Recent perception research has revealed that judgments of distance are influenced by the energetic cost required to perform particular actions, such as walking, across these distances (Proffitt, 2006b). However, this prior research has focused almost exclusively on the perceptual consequences of solo action, despite the fact that individuals regularly become embedded within social units for the purpose of joint action (Richardson, Marsh, & Schmidt, 2005). In two experiments, the current work sought to test the hypothesis that forming a social unit creates a new perception-action system with distinct perceptual attunement of the environment scaled to the unit’s action-potential. Participants, accompanied …

Exploring The Mortality Salience Paradox: The Effects Of High-Risk Employment On Interpersonal Decision Making, Bella Etingen

Master's Theses

Past research concerning Terror Management Theory (TMT) has displayed self-esteem bolstering and cultural worldview validation to be the foundation of subconscious defense mechanisms against mortality salience (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991). Recent studies have also identified intimacy and romantic commitment as form of such defense (Florian, Mikulincer & Hirschberger, 2002). The present study examines the effects of existential terror on people's intimacy-related milestone time frames, as well as the distinction between naturally occurring mortality salience (in a sample of soldiers) and the more standard form of laboratory induced mortality salience. It was hypothesized

that employees of high-risk fields will have …

Policy Appears Upon The Scene, Hand In Hand With Poverty: An Analysis Of The Moderating Effects Of Teacher Attitude On The Relationship Between Professional Development And Student Achievement., Kristen Beth Adler

Master's Theses

Massive deficits in local, state and national education budgets are forcing schools to adapt their spending to align with these reductions. Rather than merely increasing or decreasing resources, the effectiveness of resource allocation is demanding renewed attention at all levels of educational expenditure. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of teacher professional development across five campuses at Chicago International Charter School. It is the goal of this project to examine how teacher professional development directly impacts student performance, as well as to evaluate whether this relationship is moderated by teacher attitude towards professional development activities. It …

Prosocial Behavior And Teamwork In Online Computer Games, Julia Elizabeth Fredrickson

Master's Theses

The use of technology for training purposes is a growing field. Many of the traits for successful team building are shared by a variety of video games, overcoming the limitations of traditional team-building exercises. The goal of this research project was to study social and teamwork oriented behaviors within the settings of online computer games. One hundred and eighty-one individuals completed an online survey in which they were asked questions regarding team-work behaviors. These individuals also participated in a game scenario which measured their social orientation. The hypotheses for this research were that individuals who play online computer games will …

The Ends Determine The Means: Activated Goals Explain The Decision To Confront, Kala Jean Melchiori

Master's Theses

Women believe that they would confront perpetrators of sexual harassment, but when put in a sexually harassing situation they rarely confront (Woodzicka & LaFrance, 2001). Women may overestimate their likelihood of confronting because they think they would be concerned with fairness, but in actuality the need to belong strongly dissuades women from confronting harassers. I tested this idea by randomly assigning women to be primed with a belonging, fairness, or no goal, and then had them predict how they would respond to sexually harassing or surprising interview questions. Women who viewed the sexually harassing interview questions predicted more confrontational behavior …

An Attack On One Is An Attack On All: Factors That Influence Responses To Witnessing Discrimination, Hilary E. Slover

Master's Theses

Witnessing discrimination against a racial minority should be threatening to both racial minority and majority group members, but for different reasons. One's racial group membership and one's relationship with the perpetrator could both serve as sources of threat to a third party observer. Ninety-two participants identified as racial majority group members (i.e., White) and 48 identified as racial minority group members (i.e., Asian, Black, and other). Each participant was asked to report one instance of discrimination perpetrated by a close other and one by a distant other. Some differences between minority and majority group members' responses emerged. For example, compared …

Effects Of Discrete Positive Emotions On Attitude Change, Jennifer Lee Smith

Master's Theses

This study examines the influence of discrete incidental positive emotions (joy and contentment) on participants' attitudes and cognitive responses. Prior persuasion research has focused almost exclusively on negative emotions or comparisons between positive and negative moods. A 2 (argument strength: weak or strong) x 3 (emotional state: joy, contentment, or neutral) between-participants factorial design was used in this study. Participants (N = 460) were randomly assigned to one of six experimental conditions. Analyses revealed consistent argument strength effects on attitudes and cognitive responses. Compared to the joy and neutral conditions, participants in the contentment condition tended to generate fewer positive …

The Stigmatization Of Mental Illness And Drug Addiction Among The Criminally Involved, Brenda Arsenault

Master's Theses

This study examined the perceived stigma of mental illness compared to drug addiction among a sample of criminally involved persons who receive probation services through the Cook County Adult Probation Department. The first section of the study surveyed current probation clients using a modification of the PSAS scale by Luoma, Rye, Kohlenberg, Hayes, Fletcher & Pratte (2010), and assessed levels of stigma consciousness with a modified version of the SCQ (Pinel, 1999). Three groups of participants were surveyed for their perceptions of stigma and stigma consciousness. The first group consisted of drug probation case management clients with no known mental …

The Mirror Is Not You: Objectification And Eating Disordered Behaviors In Classical And Contemporary Dancers, David Matthew Doyle

Master's Theses

The current study extended the tenets of objectification theory to a population considered to be at risk for poor body image--professional dancers. Furthermore, differences in self-objectification and its sequelae due to participation in classical versus contemporary dance companies, styles with differential exposure to objectifying cues, were explored. Forty professional dancers and thirty-nine non-dancers completed measures of objectification and its sequelae. Differences in levels of self-objectification did not fit the predicted pattern, with dancers evidencing lower levels than non-dancers; however body shame levels were elevated among dancers. The proposed model of objectification fit both groups, with body shame mediating the relationship …