Social Psychology Commons^™

Sense Of Immortality As A Death Anxiety Buffer: An Investigation Through Awe, Sabrina J. Eisenberg

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigated the emotion awe as protective against mortality salience by fulfilling sense of immortality – a proposed need created by mortality salience. Mortality salience has been shown to increase cultural worldview defense, which sometimes has detrimental social effects. This study aimed to test if inducing feelings of awe would reduce the need to rely on cultural worldview defense in response to mortality salience. The pilot study (N = 239) found evidence for a relationship between awe and sense of immortality. The primary study (N = 167) tested a main effect of mortality salience on cultural worldview defense (H1) …

Nepaliness As Assemblage: Diasporic Belonging, Colorism, And Caste In The Associational Life Of Nepali Migrants In Florida, Shuvechha Ghimire Sharma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The research fundamentally challenges romanticized ideas of migration—shedding older inequalities, idealizing “leveling up,” and being a part of “unified diasporic communities”—and unmasks a rather uneasy, far more intricate reality: the preexisting sociocultural and political structures and identities are not shed, rather actively reproduced and rigorously, often consciously, reconfigured within the transnational diasporic spaces. As such, the research reveals that Nepali diasporic associations in Florida play a vital role in perpetuating and reshaping social inequalities and contested national identities, significantly impacting transnational dynamics. The work contends that caste hierarchies persist in structuring associational life, influencing participation and resource distribution. Concurrently, colorism …

The Pilling Process: Significance Quest, Self-Verification, And Fusion In Online Incel Forums, Gregory J. Rousis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Incels (short for “involuntary celibates) are an online community of men who blame women for their reputed sexual and romantic failures. The misogyny of their worldview, called the blackpill, has inspired multiple instances of real-world violence against women. Alarmingly, we know little about the temporal processes whereby an incel goes from joining an online community to becoming deeply aligned (i.e., “fused”) with the group. This project sought to address this by scraping incels’ most popular web forum and using text analysis to identify psychological mechanisms that could be responsible for incels’ fusion. The resulting dataset consisted of 1,097,841 unique discussion …

Approach-Avoidance Action Patterns As Indicators Of Empathic ‘Care Drive’ Strength, Stephanie R. Hruza

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Empathy, care, and prosocial behavior are essential to social group cohesion, and antisocial and violent criminal behavior, on the other pole, can cause serious disruptions in group cohesion and negatively impact society as a whole. Different psychopathological conditions tend to present with impairments in affective empathy/caring and prosocial behavior, as is observed in psychopathic traits, which are tied to antisocial behavior and outcomes. It is essential to understand how empathy and care function, both in psychopathology and normal prosocial functioning, in order to inform interventions for empathy/care deficits and avoid the potential harm that such deficits can cause for others …

An Investigation Into Loneliness And Solitary Drinking In A University Sample, Daniel C. Faraci

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol consumption tends to occur in social contexts and has been shown to increase prosocial behaviors and facilitate social connection. Simultaneously, socially excluded drinkers tend to increase or continue problematic levels of alcohol consumption when alone, possibly consuming alcohol as a replacement for desired but unavailable social connection. This investigation attempted to examine the relationship between loneliness (i.e., lack of perceived social connection) and subsequent alcohol consumption in solitary versus social contexts using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) techniques. University students recruited through a research subject pool who drank at least once per week were asked to respond to 28 short …

The Power Of Class Consciousness: An Investigation Of Permeability Beliefs, Dehumanization, And Evaluations Of The Poor, Kirsten J. Lee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Class consciousness, a theoretical construct from the Marxist tradition, promotes an understanding of class dynamics as a structural phenomenon. I hypothesized that class consciousness would moderate animalistic dehumanization of the poor. A total of 435 participants took an online survey containing self-report questionnaires. While a priori hypotheses related to animalistic dehumanization were not supported, exploratory analyses revealed that permeability beliefs—the degree to which an individual sees class boundaries as impermeable—moderate emotional tone when discussing the rich and the poor. Mirroring Marx’s theorizing, those with class consciousness spoke more positively of the poor and less favorably of the rich than their …

Confronting Sexism On Tiktok: Is Sarcastic Humor Effective?, Rebecca A. Upton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Confronting sexism is important but can be difficult because of the social backlash that is associated with it. However, many individuals have begun to call out sexism online. For example, the social media platform TikTok is an increasingly popular space for women to confront misogyny. In one current trend, creators target individuals who create sexist content by using sarcasm to humorously mock their original video. In this study, I examined the effectiveness of this trend in persuading observers and how the use of sarcastic and mocking humor influences perceptions of a woman confronting sexism. 492 participants were randomly assigned to …

Effectiveness Of Contact-Based Strategies On Improving Mental Illness Stigma And Help-Seeking Behaviors Within Families, B. Michelle Wilks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Adolescence is a developmental period that often involves extreme physical, psychological, and emotional changes and sometimes the experience of significant personal and social challenges. In addition to these challenges, youth are trying to find their place in the world and developing their identities, which depend heavily on their relationships with others. Adolescents who struggle with their mental health and also fail to develop meaningful connections with others, tend to have poor self-esteem, self-isolate, are ostracized by others, and have a poor social self-concept, all of which are associated with poor mental health and increased risk for suicidal ideation. The impact …

A Longitudinal Investigation Of The Relationships Between Experiences With Sexual Harassment, Self-Objectification, And Self-Concept Clarity Among Women, Roxanne N. Felig

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This longitudinal research investigates the nuanced relationship between sexual harassment and self-concept development among both men and women over a six-week period, presenting a unified model that integrates theories of self-objectification and self-concept clarity. Across three waves of data collection (N= 370, N=315, N=279, respectively), I find evidence that women experience higher rates of sexual harassment, greater self-objectification, and lower self-concept clarity than men. Across time, I find that experiencing sexual harassment predicts heightened self-objectification, which further predicts a disrupted sense of self among both men and women. Critically, this work investigates the reciprocal nature of self-objectification and self-concept clarity, …

The Effect Of Emotion On Risk Perception And The Blackstone Ratio, Brianna Duncan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the public debate concerning crime, there are generally two opposing positions regarding error rates within guilt convictions: a greater concern for false positives (convicting an innocent person) or a greater concern for false negatives (not convicting a guilty person). Public attitudes have typically indicated that false positives should be considered worse, with a range in global surveys from 51% (Zhuo, 2021) to as high as 85% (Scurich, 2015) of the population expressing this perspective. To explore the reason behind these beliefs, the current study explores the effect of emotions. Lerner and Keltner (2000) found that fear and anger, though …

From Other And From World: Expanding The Current Model Of Existential Isolation, Roger Young Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Extant research investigating the nature of existential isolation (EI) has focused primarily on the experience of the gap between one’s mind and the minds of others (self-other EI). The general purpose of the current research was to begin exploring the experience of the gap between one’s mind and the world (self-world EI). This purpose was carried out across three studies. A pilot study confirms that self-world EI is a relatively common experience that usually involves meaning violation or dissociation, and results in psychological discomfort and self-doubt. Study 1 found that self-world existential isolation produces more “EI affect” (e.g., nervous, afraid, …

An Object For Sexual Pleasure: Does Viewing Sexualized Media Predict Increases In Self And Partner Objectification Impacting Feelings Of Sexual And Romantic Closeness?, Kaitlyn Ligman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Exposure to sexually objectifying media has been linked to the objectification of the self and of one’s romantic partner (e.g., partner-objectification); yet the implications of this for romantic relationships have remained relatively unexamined. There is, however, reason to suspect that exposure to sexually objectifying media and engaging in objectification may have implications for romantic couples. When a woman frequently monitors her appearance this may undermine her ability to sexually connect with her partner and when a man views his partner as an object for sexual pleasure it may impede his ability to develop intimate feelings of relational closeness to his …

Gender Differences In College Drinkers: The Role Of Masculine Norms, Jared A. Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drinking among college students has remained a prominent problem within the United States, with more than 50% of college students drinking alcohol, 30% considered binge drinkers, and 9% considered heavy drinkers (SAMHSA, 2018). Evidence also shows that males are more likely to partake in risky drinking behaviors (e.g., binge drinking or drinking to intoxication) and are at higher risk to be diagnosed with a alcohol use disorder when compared to women (Iwamoto et al. 2014; Grant et al., 2004). Recent findings suggest that adherence to particular masculine norms as a risk factor for problematic alcohol use among men (Mahalik, 2000; …

Individual Differences In Response To Hostile And Benevolent Sexism In A Stem Interview Context: The Moderating Role Of Behavioral Activation, Elizabeth Kiebel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Women continue to face sexism in workplace contexts, especially those that are male dominated, such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet, women often fail to confront the sexism they experience, despite confrontation being an effective way to cope with and prevent future harassment (Fitzgerald et al., 1995; Magley, 2002). To date, no one has assessed the potential moderating role of personality differences related to approach motivation on women’s confrontation of sexism. In this study, women were exposed to either a hostilely sexist or benevolently sexist question during a mock job interview that was purportedly being conducted as part …

Breast Health Esteem To Motivate Breast Health Behavioral Intentions: An Application Of The Terror Management Health Model, Emily P. Courtney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer is a pervasive disease affecting millions of people, and a family history of the disease can put individuals at a significantly higher risk of developing breast cancer over the course of one’s lifetime. In turn, women with a family history often perceive themselves as more susceptible to breast cancer. Further, women who have lost family members to breast cancer likely associate the disease itself with death to a greater extent. In addition to this increased risk perception, women with a family history might intertwine breast health with feelings of esteem. It follows that those feelings of esteem should …

Why Don’T They Just Ask?: Barriers To Directly Requesting Affirmative Sexual Consent By Gender And Sexual Orientation, Jessica A. Jordan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Most young adults report a discomfort with verbally and explicitly asking for sexual consent from a partner. Social scientists have theorized this discomfort is driven by conformity to rigid gender roles, sexual scripts, and peer norms, although little research has directly examined the relationship between these barriers and consent behaviors. Most consent research has focused on heterosexual individuals, and even fewer studies have compared the sexual consent attitudes and behaviors of heterosexual and sexual minority individuals. Through a series of three studies, I examined the reasons heterosexual and sexual minority young adults hesitate to ask a new partner for sexual …

The Need To Address Religious Diversity At Work: An All-Inclusive Model Of Spirituality At Work, Ivonne Valero Cázares

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the importance of embracing religion and spirituality in the workplace as an aspect of workplace diversity. This document aims to help us understand the definition of spirituality at the workplace and its constituents.

We conducted a literature review from predominant scholars about the salience of spirituality and religion at the workplace and its relevance to building meaning, connectedness, and a sense of belonging. We will also review Maslow's theory of Human Needs, his research on human peak-experiences, and its correlation to self-actualization and transcendence.

We will present a new model of Spirituality and Religion at the workplace …

Development And Validation Of A Scale To Measure Songwriting Self-Efficacy (Sses) With Secondary Music Students, Patrick K. Cooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social cognitive theory was developed to explain how individuals learn, in part, by witnessing the behavior of others. Self-efficacy is a construct within social cognitive theory which indicates the beliefs that an individual can be successful at a task under specific situational demands. The sources of self-efficacy include self-evaluating past experiences to predict future success, comparing our abilities to those around us, the verbal and social feedback we get from others, and the physiological feelings we experience when engaged in or thinking about the task. Measures of self-efficacy have been shown to be accurate predictors of successful learning outcomes, achievement, …

“Just Joking”: Women’S Cardiovascular Responses To Sexist Humor, Samantha Shepard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The ambiguity inherent to humorous communication may make women minimize experiences of sexist jokes, which may have downstream emotional and motivational consequences. The present thesis study tested whether the manner in which sexism is communicated, as a statement or joke, would reflect the motivational intensity model in cardiovascular responses during a performance-based task. Additionally, the present studies tested whether blatant and humorous sexism differentially affects emotional responses, evaluations of a male speaker, reporting of sexist misconduct, and ingroup identification. Using an online chat paradigm, participants were randomly assigned to receive one of three messages: a sexist joke, blatantly sexist statement, …

Counseling Clients With Traumatic Brain Injury: Exploring Counselors’ Perceived Knowledge, Comfort, And Self-Awareness, Michelle Bradham-Cousar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The number of traumatic brain injury (TBI) diagnoses continues to rise each year. Counseling is a critical factor in TBI treatment, and although numerous studies have investigated TBI outcomes, a paucity of researchers have studied professional counselors’ knowledge, comfort, and self-awareness when working with TBI clients. Due to the diversity of counselor caseloads, it is likely that counselors will serve clients with a dual diagnosis that includes TBI. These dual diagnoses include depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, psychosis, or another neurocognitive disorder. The purpose of this study was to explore counselors’ knowledge, comfort, and self-awareness when working with individuals with …

Effects Of Inter-Male Status Challenge And Psychopathic Traits On Sexual Aggression, Amy M. Hoffmann

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sexual aggression (SA) is a serious social problem that has been linked to a variety of negative physical and mental health outcomes for survivors and produces significant monetary costs to society. In the past five decades, a wealth of research has improved our understanding of the individual and sociocultural factors that contribute to SA perpetration; however, epistemological differences in theoretical approaches to the subject (i.e., evolutionary, feminist) have resulted in gaps in the empirical literature. Informed by both feminist and evolutionary perspectives, this study attempts to examine the ways in which same-gender interpersonal interactions and individual psychopathology interact to produce …

Editing The Self Away: The Effects Of Photo Manipulation On Perceptions Of The Self, Roxanne N. Felig

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The use of editing applications to manipulate photos of one’s self prior to sharing them on social media has skyrocketed over the past decade, particularly among women. However, there is little research examining the consequences of such behavior. In this research, we experimentally examined the consequences of editing a photo of one’s self on self-objectification and self-concept clarity in a sample of 231 women. A correlational Pilot Study provided preliminary evidence for a relationship between self-objectification, self-concept clarity, and photo manipulation, and my Thesis was conducted to further explore this relationship. We anticipated that when women were exposed to objectifying …

The Threat Of Virality: Digital Outrage Combats The Spread Of Opposing Ideas, Curtis Puryear

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The prevailing stage for conversations about politics and morality has shifted from private and face-to-face to public and digital. Moreover, the digital landscape itself changed considerably in the past decade. The era of static webpages has been replaced by dynamic social networks where ideas and reactions to events spread rapidly. With every comment we, or a political adversary makes, numbers quantifying social approval tick up or down. Instead of holding digitized versions of one-on-one conversations, we argue in front of audiences who throw digital “points” at and accelerate the spread of the winning side’s ideas. I argue this subjectively raises …

Probabilistic Modeling Of Democracy, Corruption, Hemophilia A And Prediabetes Data, A. K. M. Raquibul Bashar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Parametric analysis of any real-world data is the most powerful tool to characterize the probabilistic behavior in social, economic, medical, epidemiological, and other areas of study. In the present study, we identify the theoretical Probability Distribution Function(PDF) for Democracy Index Scores (DIS) from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) database and estimate the maximum likelihood estimates of the theoretical PDFS. We also identify the individual PDFs for each of the clusters, Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime, and Authoritarian Regime defined by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

A statistical model is a convenient instrument to predict the future value of any …

Palatable Shades Of Gender: Status Processes At The Intersections Of Race, Gender, And Team Formation, Jasmón L. Bailey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the importance of studying how race and gender influence partner selection processes of team formation. Stratified social systems influence the choice and decision-making behaviors that shape group and team formation (Hechter 1978). By testing Skvoretz’s and Bailey’s (2016) formal theory of team formation choice processes derived from expectation states theory, the dissertation aims to understand how race and gender influence a person’s choice and decision-making with respect to forming a group of problem-solving teammates. Through a quasi-experimental research design, subjects participate in simulated interactive environments in which they can select and personalize self-represented avatars and then choose …

The Effects Of Mortality Salience On Interest In Death (And Life) Among High Openness Individuals, Patrick Boyd

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Terror management theory suggests that the fear of death is ubiquitous. Only recently has death been examined as something potentially interesting from this framework, and specifically, to individuals high in trait openness (Boyd, Morris, & Goldenberg, 2017). This research, however, did not clearly delineate if participants were actually becoming interested in death. My studies address this ambiguity by examining what high openness individuals are becoming interested in and if the way death is construed impacts interest. Study 1 tested if in addition to becoming more generally interested, high openness individuals become interested in death per se following mortality salience (relative …

Women’S Orgasm Gap As A Function Of Precarious Manhood, Jessica A. Jordan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The disparity in frequency of orgasms between men and heterosexual women has been linked qualitatively to women purposefully not communicating their sexual needs in order to preserve their partner’s masculinity. In two studies I experimentally evaluated this relationship, sampling heterosexual undergraduate women. In study 1 (N = 246) I demonstrated that women who imagined not having an orgasm rated an imaginary partner as more insecure in his manhood, relative to women who imagined having an orgasm or going on a dinner date. These perceptions of insecurity mediated the relationship between not having an orgasm and reporting anxiety about hurting their …

Harnessing Social Norms To Increase Men's Interest In Heed Careers, Joanna R. Lawler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Men’s underrepresentation in the female-dominated domains of healthcare, early education, and the domestic sphere, or HEED roles, remains a persistent problem despite the fact that such careers often afford more job security and wage growth than blue-collar work. A growing body of evidence suggests that their lack of participation in HEED roles is not merely due to a skills mismatch, but rather an identity mismatch. I hypothesized that using descriptive and injunctive norms to reframe a stereotypically feminine career as more compatible with manhood could effectively reduce this identity mismatch. More specifically, I predicted that using a dynamic descriptive norm …

Investigating Transformation: An Exploratory Study Of Perceptions And Lived Experiences Of Graduate Teaching Assistants, Christina M. Partin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are becoming increasingly responsible for undergraduate instruction in the landscape of higher education. These experiences may serve as a pipeline for career readiness and success in faculty positions. Yet, the experiences of graduate teaching assistants are largely unexplored. This study describes the perceptons and experiences of a selected sample of GTAs, including their perceptions of available support, and the role of that support in navigating potential disorienting dilemmas.

Existing literature suggests that disorienting dilemmas lead to transformative experiences through an internal process of critical self-reflection, but neglects the possibility of differential outcomes to disorienting dilemmas. Further, …

The Effect Of Androstenone As A Mating Prime On Drinking And Approach Behavior, Robin Tan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent research has shown that sexual activity may be influenced by variables suggested by evolutionary theory, such as pheromonal cues. A recent study in our laboratory indicated that female pheromones influence men’s drinking and approach behavior based on hidden pathways of behavioral influence caused by chemosensory signals. The current study sought to examine whether a link exists between male pheromones and women’s drinking and approach behavior, through the use of a possible male sex pheromone called androstenone, and sought to examine this link within the context of a women’s ovulation cycle. One hundred and three female participants were primed with …