Social Psychology Commons^™

Personality Differences Between College Students With And Without Siblings, Lindsay Hammerle

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The purpose of the current study was to determine the personality differences between college students with siblings and college students without siblings in regard to the Big 5 traits of extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Additionally, the research aimed to examine whether college students with siblings engage in higher amounts of social comparison than college students without siblings. It was hypothesized that the group with siblings would score higher in extraversion and social comparison engagement, while the group without siblings would score higher in neuroticism and conscientiousness. The Big Five Inventory (BFI) and Social Comparison Scale were used to measure the …

Cultural Influences On Exercise Type And Body Confidence In Women, Skye Sakashita, Desiree Crevecoeur-Macphail

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This study examined cultural influences on exercise habits and body confidence in women, specifically between ethnic minority and white women. Past research has indicated that Asian women often feel more cultural pressure than their White counterparts. This study wanted to examine further and see if an individual’s parent being an immigrant differs in amount of cultural pressure. Another aspect that this survey examined is motivation for exercise. Past research found that women who felt greater dissatisfaction with their physical appearance were more likely to list factors such as appearance or weight as their reasoning for exercise rather than for health …

Developmental Dyslexia And Creativity: A Meta-Analysis, Nadyannam M. Majeed, Andree Hartanto, Jacinth J. X. Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite difficulties in reading and writing, some research suggests that dyslexia may be related to higher levels of creativity. However, this pattern is not consistently observed. The current research sought to ascertain whether individuals with clinically diagnosed dyslexia exhibit higher creativity than controls through a meta-analysis. Fourteen studies that assessed the creativity of 397 individuals with clinically diagnosed dyslexia and 453 controls were reviewed. Random-effects meta-analysis revealed an overall non-significant difference in creativity scores between those with dyslexia and controls. Additionally, method factors such as the type of creativity task and whether intelligence was controlled for, as well as sample-related …

The Effects Of Sexual Surrogacy On Satisfaction, Happiness, And Well-Being, Ryan Liu-Pham

Master's Theses

The study tested the effects of sexual surrogacy, which I define as the desire to fulfill sexual needs with a surrogate target (e.g., celebrity crushes), on sexual satisfaction, relationship, happiness, and well-being. To examine this topic, I conducted a cross-sectional experimental study. After being asked about sexual desire toward either their current partner or a celebrity crush with a sexual desire behavior inventory, participants were asked to answer questions about their sexual satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, happiness, and well-being. I predicted that desire toward both surrogates and interpersonal targets will predict higher levels of sexual satisfaction, happiness, and well-being but that …

Freedom, Covid-19, And Resistance To Public Health Orders, Benjamin Rosenberg

Psychology | Faculty Scholarship

As we look back on one year since the first Covid-19 lockdowns went into effect in the United States, several truths about this ever-changing virus have emerged. For one, well-fitting, multi-layered face masks significantly reduce people’s likelihood of spreading or catching Covid-19 (e.g., Leung et al., 2020), and the vaccines similarly reduce the risk of spread and infection (Thompson et al., 2021). Second, things that were, at best, at the outskirts of people’s attention have become commonplace over the past year: hand sanitizer, social distancing, mask wearing, vaccinations. The related third truth is that over the past year, most Americans …

Assessing Rat Behavioral Response To Novelty, Neha Mathew

Honors Scholar Theses

The hippocampus is the part of the brain that is involved in memory and navigation. Neurons in the hippocampus, known as place cells, fire in specific locations within this region of the brain as the subject navigates through their environment. As these cells fire, they create a map-like representation of this environment. However if the environment is altered in any way, the place cell firing pattern is adjusted to incorporate this new information. This adjustment will inevitably cause subjects to take more time to complete their task. The goal of our testing was to assess how various manipulations, both spatial …

A Participatory Action Research Study Of Police Interviewing Following Crisis Intervention Team Training, Maria Felix-Ortiz, Catherine Steele, Marisa Deguzman, Georgen Guerrero, Melissa Graham

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

Estimates vary, but a third to one half of individuals shot and killed by police have a mental illness or disability, and many who are taken into custody languish in county jails where no treatment for their illness is available. The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model is an increasingly important adjunct to U.S. police training because it de-escalates tense situations, diverts people with mental illness away from jail and into treatment, and can reduce the risk of civilian deaths during a police encounter. As such, it is a strategy for reducing the social injustice of incarceration or deaths of people …

Want To Change Perspectives On Social Justice? Academic Courses And Social Movements Matter, Benjamin Wolfe, Kenia Tumbiolo, Keriann Mosley, Sam Miller

Psychology Student Work

Background: Ending systemic racism and other interrelated forms of oppression depends on institutional change, as well as changing individuals’ hearts and minds. The present study examines first the impact of a course focusing on social justice and second the impact of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic, a critical stage of the Black Lives Matter Movement, and increasing awareness of racism and classism. Method: Participants were 139 WCU students (87% female identified, 36% BIPOC): 101 were enrolled in 2017-2019, and 38 in 2020. Measures included the White Privileges Attitudes Scale (Pinterits, Poteat, & Spanierman, 2009) in its original form as well …

Social Media Usage And Self-Esteem Of College Students In Los Angeles Vs. Other American Cities, Emily Tortora

Global Tides

This study examines self-esteem levels of college students in accordance with their social media behaviors and residential cities. An online survey was used to compare Instagram behaviors and their Heatherton Self-Esteem scores between 51 college students from the Los Angeles area and 148 students from alternate American cities. It was hypothesized that college students from the Los Angeles area would report higher levels of social media activity and lower levels of self-esteem. Results did not show any significant trend in one’s residential location dictating social media behaviors, nor did one’s social media usage predict their levels of self-esteem. The study …

Understanding Black Experiences And Access Barriers In The Expressive Arts Activities And Therapies, Jadea Harris, Ana K. Marcelo

Psychology

Black individuals in America experience racism, discrimination, and microaggressions that can affect their mental and physical health. (Alvarez, Liang, & Neville, 2016). Unfortunately, Black individuals typically do not seek out mental health treatment because of mistrust, stigma, misdiagnosis, and lack of culturally sensitive approaches to treatment (NAMI, 2002). One way to encourage Black individuals to seek mental health support and to provide more support could be through expressive arts. Expressive outlets may act as a protective barrier against adverse experiences and serve as an opportunity to bring healing amongst uncomfortable feelings of racial trauma and more. Historical and empirical evidence …

The Language Of Pandemic Leaderships: Mapping Political Rhetoric During The Covid-19 Outbreak, Cristina J. Montiel, Joshua Uyheng, Erwine Dela Paz

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

This paper maps political rhetoric by national leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify and characterize global variations in major rhetorical storylines invoked in publicly available speeches (N = 1201) across a sample of 26 countries. Employing a text analytics or corpus linguistics approach, we show that state heads rhetorically lead their nations by: enforcing systemic interventions, upholding global unity, encouraging communal cooperation, stoking national fervor, and assuring responsive governance. Principal component analysis further shows that country-level rhetoric is organized along emergent dimensions of cultural cognition: an agency-structure axis to define the loci of pandemic interventions, and a hierarchy-egalitarianism axis …

The Mode Less Traveled: Exploring Bicyclist Identity In Portland, Or, Christopher Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores bicyclist as a social identity in Portland, OR and a relatively under researched topic in the existing literature about transportation mode choice. The results indicate that bicyclists in Portland do have an understanding of what it means to be a bicyclist and particularly the normative behaviors associated with that social identity. Results also indicate that barriers to entry into this social group are quite low but the path to becoming someone who regularly chooses bicycling as a mode of transportation is not straightforward and is fraught with barriers that could easily discourage new group members. Bicyclists in …

Moving Morality Beyond The In-Group: Liberals And Conservatives Show Differences On Group-Framed Moral Foundations And These Differences Mediate The Relationships To Perceived Bias And Threat., Brandon D. Stewart Phd, David S. M. Morris

Faculty Publications

Moral foundations research suggests that liberals care about moral values related to individual rights such as harm and fairness, while conservatives care about those foundations in addition to caring more about group rights such as loyalty, authority, and purity. However, the question remains about how conservatives and liberals differ in relation to group-level moral principles. We used two versions of the moral foundations questionnaire with the target group being either abstract or specific ingroups or outgroups. Across three studies, we observed that liberals showed more endorsement of Individualizing foundations (Harm and Fairness foundations) with an outgroup target, while conservatives showed …

Social Responses To Media Technologies In The 21st Century: The Media Are Social Actors Paradigm, Matthew Lombard, Kun Xu

Human-Machine Communication

Clifford Nass and his colleagues proposed the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm in the 1990s and demonstrated that we treat computers in some of the ways we treat humans. To account for technological advances and to refine explanations for CASA results, this paper proposes the Media Are Social Actors (MASA) paradigm. We begin by distinguishing the roles of primary and secondary cues in evoking medium-as-social-actor presence and social responses. We then discuss the roles of individual differences and contextual factors in these responses and identify mindless and mindful anthropomorphism as two major complementary mechanisms for understanding MASA phenomena. Based …

College Students' Anxiety Levels And Perceived Experience Of The Spotlight Effect, Bianca Gomez

Campus Research Month

This presentation will go over recent research that was performed on Southern Adventist University’s campus. In this presentation, we will discuss how the spotlight effect can make a negative impact on college students, such as increased anxiety levels. The spotlight effect is best defined as a belief when one overestimates the amount of attention she or he is receiving from peers. When one believes to be viewed in a negative way, it can ultimately make a negative impact on mental health. The purpose of this study is to provide an opportunity to become more educated on social psychology, and overall …

Perceived Stigma Among Family Members Of Persons Suffering From Mental Illness: A Narrative Exploration From West Bengal, India, Bidisha Banerjee, Shikha Dixit

The Qualitative Report

In this paper, we report the findings of a qualitative study that, aims to understand the family members’ subjective experiences with perceived stigma of mental illness. The theoretical standpoint and the research method for the study employed are social constructivist theory and narrative inquiry respectively. We conducted semi-structured and in-depth interviews with family members and others accompanying patients to an outpatient unit of a psychiatric clinic. The professionals and the administrative staff at the clinic gave additional interviews. The constant comparative method was employed for the analysis of the narratives. The findings suggest the existence of perceived and direct stigma …

*Socioeconomic Status And Ethnicity: How Does It Affect Civic Engagement?, Jonathan R. Pinero

Campus Research Month

This presentation will cover the someone's civic engagement (voting, community outreach, etc.) and how it is effected by their socioeconomic status and ethnicity.

*The Impact Of Political Beliefs On Ethical Positions In Adults, Kiana Oliver

Campus Research Month

The purpose of this research study is to examine the differences between major political philosophies in the United States and how these beliefs influence ethical frameworks. A limitation found in the studies included the generalizability of the participants. The current research (Brandt et al., 2014; Everett, 2013; Graham et al., 2011; Haidt, 2012; Iyer et al., 2012; Thórisdóttir & Jost, 2011) selected adult participants but did not consider variations amongst younger generations. This research study could benefit people who are interested in American politics and ethical positions.

College Students' Anxiety Levels And Perceived Experience Of The Spotlight Effect, Bianca Gomez

Campus Research Month

This presentation will go over recent research that was performed on Southern Adventist University’s campus. In this presentation, we will discuss how the spotlight effect can make a negative impact on college students, such as increased anxiety levels. The spotlight effect is best defined as a belief when one overestimates the amount of attention she or he is receiving from peers. When one believes to be viewed in a negative way, it can ultimately make a negative impact on mental health. The purpose of this study is to provide an opportunity to become more educated on social psychology, and overall …

Challenging The Empirical Utility Of The Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale: Revisiting Factor Structure Across Race/Ethnicity And Gender Through Measurement Invariance, Alexandra Hernandez-Vallant

Psychology ETDs

The Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) is the most commonly used scale to measure domains of color-blind racial ideology (CBRI). CBRI broadly refers to the denial of racism on individual and societal levels. The factor structure of CoBRAS has yet to be rigorously tested to confirm the replicability of the factor structure and demonstrate measurement invariance across multiple groups. This study examined the factor structure, internal consistency reliability, and measurement invariance of the CoBRAS across race/ethnicity and gender in 911 diverse college students. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and measurement invariance of the CoBRAS were tested across race/ethnicity (Black, Latinx, and …

Assessing Learning Community Practices To Implement Student Retention And Belongingness, Ruben Manuel Lopez, Eunice Z. Gomez

Research Days

In a brief review of seven literature articles, our research poster aims to present ways learning communities could improve belongingness and student retention. Our poster will include a review of the literature of the research conducted amongst undergraduate learning communities.

Followers Of The Façade; The Rising Addiction Of Social Media, Kona Momoh

Quest

Social Media and Social Physiological Effects

Research in progress for COMM 1307: Introduction to Mass Communication

Faculty Mentor: Jenny Warren

The following paper was composed by a student in an Introduction to Mass Communication course at Collin College in response to an assignment that asked students to objectively analyze scholarly research regarding the effects of mass media. Initially, students were instructed to review scholarly research relating to mass media and its possible effects. Then, after gaining new insight and knowledge, students wrote a draft of their paper and had it peer-reviewed by another student. Using this analysis, students wrote follow-up …

Rising Stars And Underdogs: The Role Race And Parental Education Play In Predicting Mentorship, Veronica Fruiht, Jordan Boeder, Thomas Chan

Psychology | Faculty Scholarship

Research suggests that youth with more financial and social resources are more likely to have access to mentorship. Conversely, the rising star hypothesis posits that youth who show promise through their individual successes are more likely to be mentored. Utilizing a nationally representative sample (N = 4,882), we tested whether demographic characteristics (e.g., race, SES) or personal resources (e.g., academic/social success) are better predictors of receiving mentorship. Regression analyses suggested that demographic, contextual, and individual characteristics all significantly predicted access to mentorship, specifically by non-familial mentors. However, conditional inference tree models that explored the interaction of mentorship predictors by …

Work-School Conflict, Stress, And Alcohol Use Among Employed College Students, Casandra Faith Rollins

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between work-toschool conflict (WSC), role stress in the school domain, and alcohol use among employed, full-time college students (n = 51). It was also examined whether the relationship between WSC and school stress is influenced by student role salience. A within-person, daily diary design was used in order to measure participants’ daily WSC, school stress, and alcohol use over a 14-day period. Multilevel Random Coefficient Modeling (MRCM) was utilized to investigate the relationships of interest. A small nonsignificant, positive relationship between daily WSC and daily alcohol use was found. Although …

Do Emotion Words Influence Age Effects In Delayed Match-To-Sample Performance For Emotional Faces?, Ying-Han Li

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Age differences are apparent in using verbal labels of emotion to categorize emotion face stimuli. Particularly, older adults have more difficulty detecting emotion cues like anger and fear relative to younger adults, but seem to have less difficulty with disgust cues. However, age differences are diminished in situations when participants are limited to two possible emotion choices or are required to simply match stimuli based on emotion cues without the use of labels. One question that emerges from the disparities in these findings is the role that emotion labels themselves play in driving possible age differences in emotion perception. The …

Psychosocial Work Influences On Adaptive Performance, Eli Alvin Dickinson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The present study sought to understand why some employees may be more or less able to adapt to the changing work environment. Adaptive performance can help employees to be resilient to technological advances, economic factors, and/or cultural shifts, making it an important form of extra-role performance. According to conservation of resources (COR) theory, one reason employees may fail to adapt is because they lack resources that are required in order to be adaptive. I proposed that the resources needed for adaptive performance aggregate in a resource caravan. Job embeddedness is a proposed resource caravan that may facilitate more adaptive performance …

The Dark Side Of The Ivory Tower: Examining Incivility And Microaggressions Against Ethnic Minorities In Academia, Teresa San Hoang Nguyen

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Discrimination is still prevalent and pervasive in society, though there have been many attempts to mitigate its impact. Though often not as overt, “modern” discrimination is more subtle in nature, often slipping through as passable social interactions because of its ambiguity. However, the negative impact that ethnic and racial minorities experience because of this subtle discrimination cannot be ignored. In academia, as with many other workplaces, ethnic and racial minorities are impacted by subtle discrimination. During the Black Lives Matter movement that has surged in 2020 in the wake of social injustices against Black and Brown people, this issue has …

The Effects Of Virtual Panopticism, Emma E. East

Selected Honors Theses

As technology further integrates into everyday life, the effects of technological advancement surface. The research contained in this thesis places philosopher Michel Foucault’s ideas of the panoptic, discipline, punishment and a carceral society in a virtual reality thus creating a virtual panopticon. Adapting Foucault’s theories to the present-day technological climate allows researchers to begin understanding the why behind humans’ interactions with various forms of technology (e.g. iPhone usage, Smart TVs, online banking, Alexa/Echo, etc.). Additionally, virtual panopticism sheds light on the corruption of those who manipulate information online to wield power, maintain control and make money. I discuss surveillance capitalism …

Environmental Psychology: Open Syllabus, Valkiria Duran-Narucki

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus designed to work as a "frame" that you can use and populate together with students. The goal is to provide a perspective from environmental psychology.

Traits Of Religious Leadership, Alex J. Raymond

Honors College Theses

Religious leaders act in crucial roles throughout their communities, yet few studies have addressed these leaders. Despite numerous experiments having been conducted with religion and leadership, little has focused on specifically religious leadership. This study sought to contribute to the limited body of knowledge regarding the traits of religious leadership. We had developed eight preacher profiles that presented varying qualities of moral integrity, communal involvement, and the capability to instill personal meaning in individual religious members. After reading one of these profiles in an online survey, the 178 participants were asked to answer a series of questions to rate the …