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Full-Text Articles in Social Psychology
We Need More Than 'Luck': How Students Learn About Pleasure, Eliza Koch
We Need More Than 'Luck': How Students Learn About Pleasure, Eliza Koch
Summer Research
Sex education primarily focuses on reducing the negative consequences associated with sex. Pleasure is often left unaddressed despite the impact it has on sexual and overall health. The present study investigated how people learn about sexual pleasure. Nine female and fem-identifying participants aged 20-24 completed interviews about their experiences learning about sex and sexual pleasure. Grounded theory was used to code interview transcripts. Participants identified flaws in learning from a variety of sources, including sex education, parents, friends, partners, and media. These flaws indicate a need for improvements to sex education, such as promoting communication and media literacy skills.
Is It Hot In Here Or Is It The Climate? Predicting Individual And Systemic Pro-Environmental Engagement, Alaina Geibig
Is It Hot In Here Or Is It The Climate? Predicting Individual And Systemic Pro-Environmental Engagement, Alaina Geibig
Summer Research
Reducing greenhouse gas contributions is increasingly critical in order to lessen global consequences of climate change. Despite this, U.S residents’ shift towards practicing pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) has been slow. This study investigated factors that predict everyday PEBs, including people’s beliefs about impact, difficulty of performing, and meaningfulness of PEBs, as well as perceived social norms, and the actor’s own sense of environmental identity. We predicted that people would participate in more PEBs if they believe that the behaviors are easy, meaningful, impactful, and reflect norms in their social environment. We also explored differences in the factors associated with individual and …
A Sociocognitive Perspective Of The Uncanny Valley, Andre Zamani
A Sociocognitive Perspective Of The Uncanny Valley, Andre Zamani
Summer Research
The “uncanny valley” is the effect of being ‘creeped out’ by things that are very close, but not quite, human (e.g., a ventriloquist dummy). Over the past two summers, I found that intranasal administrations of oxytocin, a hormone which affects attention to external social information, decreased participants’ reaction times when assessing uncanny valley stimuli, but did not affect their ratings of eeriness. Furthermore, oxytocin affected participants’ reaction times the most for stimuli rated to be intermediately eerie but altered their visual attention the most during the perception of stimuli rated to be either not eerie or very eerie. From these …
Role Of Religion In Recovery, Kayla Lovett
Role Of Religion In Recovery, Kayla Lovett
Summer Research
The primary purpose of this study is to identify themes regarding the role that religion plays in recovery from addiction, specifically for people experiencing homelessness in Tacoma. Fourteen men and from two treatment programs catering toward specifically homeless populations were interviewed. One of the programs was based in Christian faith, the other was not faith-based. In the interviews, participants were asked about their substance use and recovery history, their recovery experiences, the nature of their religious beliefs and practices, their ideas of self, and their community. Using the NVivo qualitative analysis software, interview transcriptions were analyzed based on Glaser’s (1978) …
I Know I Shouldn’T Eat That But I’M Going To Anyway: The Role Of Mood And Cognitive Depletion In Food Consumption, Stephen Baum
I Know I Shouldn’T Eat That But I’M Going To Anyway: The Role Of Mood And Cognitive Depletion In Food Consumption, Stephen Baum
Summer Research
Individuals who have exhausted their ability to self-regulate may react differently to a mood induction than individuals who have a full capacity to self-regulate. The present study examined the differences in eating behavior among individuals who had been exposed to a positive or negative mood induction and experienced either high or low cognitive depletion. College undergraduates (N = 41) saw a slideshow featuring either positive or negative images, and then completed a writing exercise that induced either high or low cognitive depletion. Participants were then given the opportunity to choose from a variety of foods to eat. Results …
Assessing Empathy In Rats: The Role Of Shared Experience, Dylan Richmond
Assessing Empathy In Rats: The Role Of Shared Experience, Dylan Richmond
Summer Research
Previous research has searched for empathy in rats (Rattus norvegicus) by placing a trapped rat inside a restricting tube, and giving a donor rat the opportunity to free it (Ben-Ami Bartal et al., 2011; Silberberg et al., 2014). It is unclear if freeing behavior is due to empathetic responses by donors, or if it is motivated by desire for social contact, or some other factor. The current study utilized a novel method to measure empathy in rats. Donors had the opportunity to free trapped rats from a restricting tube into an adjacent chamber. Half the donor rats spent …