Social Psychology Commons^™

From Accusation To Execution: A Case Study, Sophie Abber

Keck Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows

This project centers on the question: how are dynamics present in the Salem Witch Trials related to contemporary religious issues surrounding gender and agency? An existential approach to studying the Salem Witch Trials is used, highlighting themes like agency and intersubjectivity to create a new understanding of these events (Jackson 2002; Arendt 1962). Not only has this not been done in previous scholarship, but existential analysis opens the door to making connections between the Salem Witch Trials and modern times. Women today are still constrained by social and religious norms and motivated by existential needs and questions. This will be …

The Effects Of Counterfactual Priming On Belief In Fake News, Sean Bogart

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Fake news overwhelmed social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This new, digital brand of fake news that can be spread much more rapidly than older forms, is coupled with a lack of academic research into its effects, the reasons that certain individuals trust its veracity, and methods of decreasing overall belief in fake news. Confirmation bias is one of several reasons why individuals fall victim to fake news; although there are a few strategies that can be used to combat the negative effects of confirmation bias; counterfactual reasoning is one that has demonstrated …

Supervisor-Subordinate Conflict Negotiation: Examining The Core Concerns In Light Of Communication Accommodation And Gender Roles, Piyawan Charoensap-Kelly

Dissertations

This quasi-experimental study examined a supervisor-subordinate negotiation of an emotion-laden conflict from the lens of the core concerns framework, communication accommodation theory, and gender roles research. Results empirically support CCF that, by accommodating or attending to the employees’ core concerns, managers can stimulate employees’ positive emotion and integrative intention. However, under- and overaccommodating the core concerns can lead to distributive intention. Additionally, the employees’ perception of manager goodwill can strengthen or attenuate the positive effect of core concerns accommodativeness on outcome variables especially for male managers. Thus, moderate accommodation is recommended for male managers. For female managers, the results show …

Examining Intimate Partner Violence, Christine Wagner

Senior Honors Projects

Intimate partner violence is an often overlooked and misunderstood issue in contemporary society. Contrary to what some may believe, intimate partner violence is more than just abuse that results in a physical injury. There are several other subcategories under the umbrella term ‘violence,’ such as physical non-injury, emotional harm, financial harm, verbal abuse, and sexual violence. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1 in 4 women and 1 in 10 men experience sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime. Additionally, according to the National Intimate Partner and …

Impact Of Opioid Overdose Photos On Addiction Stigma, Explicit Bias, Willingness To Help, And Support For Policy Items, Anne C. Parent

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Objective: Opioids, commonly used in hospitals and pain management centers for treating pain, are becoming increasingly abused. Prescription opioids and synthetic opioids are found frequently on the streets, highlighting the rampant spread of these drugs in the black market. Rates of opioid overdose have also dramatically increased in the past few years. Police departments have publicly posted photos of individuals who have overdosed on drugs in order to generate awareness of the issue to the community. Current research has not scientifically measured the impact of these social media campaigns designed to combat the opioid crisis. The present study used …

Effects Of Skin Color And Clothing Color On Perceived Violence And Aggression Of Criminals, Courtney Merchant

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Introduction: Society has a history of attaching meaning to colors, and few colors have been given as much attention as red and black. In many contexts, these colors have strong negative associations. Red has long been representative of danger and aggression (Young, Elliot, Feltman, & Ambady, 2013), while black represents death and evil (Adams & Osgood, 1973; Sherman & Clore, 2009). Unfortunately, color associations are not limited to clothing or advertisements; skin color is also a subject of negative associations in the form of stereotyping. Darker skinned people, especially African-Americans, have long been subjected to negative stereotypes. The current …

Mathematics Attitudes And Mathematics Performance: Novel Approaches Towards Noncognitive Educational Measurement, Applications To Large-Scale Assessment Data, And Examinations Of Multigroup Invariance, Kalina Gjicali

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Academic performance is predicted by a multitude of demographic, contextual, cognitive, and noncognitive constructs. The noncognitive factors of achievement in mathematics that have previously been explored in depth are study skills, collaborative problem-solving, confidence, self-efficacy, and personality traits (Kyllonen, 2012). Limited applied research has explored the predictive value of noncognitive factors such as attitudes and beliefs in mathematics achievement – even though attitudes towards mathematics are a promising avenue for understanding the variability in mathematics achievement. The current research uses the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain high school students’ performance in mathematics in a series of three studies. …

Inheritances Of Injustice/Transference Of Freedom: An Intimate Project On Black Women's Intergenerational Relationships And The Consequences Of The Punishment System, Whitney Richards-Calathes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project centers the multi-generational familial relationships between system-impacted Black women, mapping and uncovering the ways in which incarceration and practices of punishment impact, shape, hurt, and displace Black femme lineages. Through a qualitative lens and a specific focus on the current social and political landscape of Los Angeles, this dissertation examines the ways Black women are impacted by carceral ideology; from punitive definitions of Black womanhood, to the surveillance on Black femme familial intimacy and the rupture of Black women’s sense of home and place. Understandings of mass incarceration are frequently male-centered and most analyses of Black women’s system …

The Measure Of A Man: A Critical Methodology For Investigating Essentialist Beliefs About Sexual Orientation Categories In Japan And The United States, Brian R. Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Methods for studying laypeople’s beliefs about sexual orientation categories have evolved in step with larger theoretical and epistemological shifts in the interdisciplinary study of sexuality. The dominant approach to measuring laypeople’s sexual orientation beliefs over the past decade was made possible through an epistemological shift from a nature vs. nurture paradigm to a social constructionist theoretical model of psychological essentialism (Medin, 1989; Medin & Ortony, 1989; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992). Despite this shift, I argue that the forced-response scale-based survey methodologies typically used to operationally define essentialist beliefs about sexual orientation at best only partially realize the social constructionist potential …

Who Needs Blame?: Answerability Without Expressed Blame, Sarah Gokhale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that we can hold other agents morally responsible without expressing blame and, more strongly, that doing so is preferable. I first argue that blame is fundamentally retributive, and that blame’s retributive foundation is incipiently present even in civilized guises. As such, even though some forms of expressed blame are quite civilized, expressed blame always involves a risk of emotional damage, entrenchment, and escalation. To make things worse, I argue that anger is an exacerbating feature of blame’s retributive foundation. I then argue that, generally speaking, cases of public blame involve higher stakes than cases of private judgments …

Racial Microaggressions Cohort Differences., Shayla R. Thompson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This study examines the relationship between racial microaggressions and psychological distress and anger rumination among younger and older cohorts who belong to a racial or ethnic group other than White or European-American. The purpose of this study was to compare these relationships between older and younger cohorts. The hypotheses were that age will moderate the relationship between racial microaggressions and psychological distress and that age will moderate the relationship between racial microaggressions and anger rumination. A survey method was used to test the two hypotheses. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and were compensated $1 for their participation. The …

Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Enhanced Mentoring For Delinquency Prevention, Allison Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Youth with certain risk factors (e.g., from a minority group, low-income status, previous contact with the juvenile justice system) are particularly at risk for juvenile delinquency and associated problems (e.g., school failure, mental health problems). In addition, these problems are quite costly to youth, their families, and society as a whole. Mentoring programs have shown modest, but consistent, effects in the prevention and reduction of juvenile delinquency and associated problems. Previous research has identified promising enhancements (i.e., advocacy/teaching roles for mentors, rigorous match processes, comprehensive mentor training, ongoing mentor support) that may increase the effectiveness of mentoring in producing positive …

Green Practices Among Fashion Manufacturers: Relationship With Cultural Innovativeness And Perceived Benefits, Dooyoung Choi, Tae-Im Han

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine green practices implemented among fashion manufacturers and identify factors that drive the adoption of those practices, specifically focusing on a company’s cultural innovativeness and the perceived benefits of green innovations. An online survey was created containing both open-ended and multiple-choice questions using Likert scales. Data were gathered from 29 fashion manufacturers that were identified by the Google search engine and then approached. Qualitative data were analyzed to obtain insights into fashion manufacturers’ green practices and a cluster analysis was conducted to categorize companies into distinct groups based on their level of green …

Steadfast Standards Or Fluctuating Fancies? Stability And Change In People’S Mate Criteria Over 27 Months, Carrie A. Bredow, Nicole Hames

Faculty Publications

Although research on mate preferences has been built on the assumption that the criteria people report at one point in time should predict their future partnering behavior, little is known about the temporal stability of people’s standards. Using survey data collected at four time points from 285 originally unmarried individuals, this study examined the rank-order, meanlevel, individual-level and ipsative stability of people’s mate criteria over 27 months. Overall, reported standards exhibited moderate to high baseline stability, with rank-order and ipsative estimates comparable to those reported for personality traits. At the same time, mean- and individual-level analyses revealed small, but significant, …

Send Nudes : Art On Social Anxiety And Human Connection In An Internet Driven Society., Lauren A Bader

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My social anxiety is the driving force behind my thesis work. Sufferers of social anxiety often have a hard time forming relationships because their fear of social interaction causes them to refrain from self-disclosure. Self-disclosure is the act of telling others personal details about yourself. This can be hard for people with social anxiety because of their intense fear of judgement. It is quite common for people with this type of anxiety to seek out opportunities to self-disclose online because they have the advantage of anonymity and time to construct thoughtful responses. In my work I seek out participants online …

Racial Becoming: How Agentic (Self-Initiated) Encounter Events Inform Racial Identity Refinement, Devin A. Heyward

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Racial identity literature has typically focused on identity formation through a series of stages. It also has centered how the experience of negative encounter events informs racial identity formation. With the advent of new genealogical and genomic technology, it is imperative to expand the focus of identity literatures to include encounter events, which participants elect to experience (i.e. self-initiated or agentic encounter events). By using this frame, identity processes become fluid and informed by individual life experiences. In the context of this study, direct to consumer genetic ancestry tests (DTC-GAT) are operationalized as a self-initiated encounter event. Participants were …

The Effects Of Sex Role Stereotype Endorsement And Work-Family Conflict On Emerging Adult Aspirations, Andrea Fink-Armold

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Workplace and household inequality remain prevalent in the United States and sex role (e.g. breadwinner and caregiver) stereotypes affect the roles that individuals seek out. This research used a mixed-methods approach to investigate the effects of sex role stereotypes and expected work-family conflict on the work and family aspirations of emerging adults. A racially diverse sample wrote freely about their future selves for ten minutes then completed measures to evaluate their sex-role stereotype endorsement, expected work-family conflict, and personal preferences for career and family roles. Results indicate that endorsement of stereotypes predicts increased expectations of work-family conflict, for both men …

Emerging Adults’ Identities, Attitudes, And Orientations Concerning Consensual Non-Monogamy, Amber Kory Stephens

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study considered the connection among aspects of emerging adults’ identities and their relational and sociosexual orientations as well as their attitudes toward consensual nonmonogamy (CNM). Results indicated significant relationships among individuals’ collective and social identity aspects, as dictated in the AIQ-IV, and how emerging adults label their relational orientations (e.g., strictly monogamous, monogamish, open, and polyamorous). Additionally, findings demonstrated that the salience/importance of social categories, roles, and reputations in one's identity influences how they choose to label their relational orientation, their attitudes toward non-monogamy, and their orientation toward uncommitted sex (sociosexual orientation). Discussion, implications and future directions follow.

Isolation And Support Dynamics Among Concurrent Victims Of Sex Trafficking, Leslie Unger, Chitra Raghavan

Student Theses

The present study analyzed wiretap data to determine the characteristics of social support among concurrent victims of sex trafficking. Using a grounded theory approach to determine prevalent elements and themes that characterize interactions, conversations between women and conversations between pimps and women that involve concurrent victims as a topic of conversation were examined. A coding scheme was created based on the derived elements, and network patterns were analyzed. Finally, temporal patterns of conflict were examined to determine whether periods of heightened threat were used to punctuate periods of seeming calm, similar to that seen in research on coercive control and …

Differential Mating Motives' Influence On Preferences For Facially Communicated Extraversion, Mitch Brown

Dissertations

Human facial structures communicate personality from which one can infer another’s behavioral intentions, forming a basis for mate selection. One particularly detectable trait through facial structures is extraversion. Extraversion is a trait associated with heightened interest in promiscuous mating strategies and preferred among individuals similarly interested in short-term mating, implicating extraverted mates as ideal trait for short-term mating. Nonetheless, behavioral repertoires associated with extraversion may also pose risks, particularly in long-term mating, as their increased promiscuity may undermine their fidelity to a specific partner, thereby potentially reducing biparental investment in any offspring produced. Thus, a preference for introversion (i.e., low …

When Essentialism Facilitates Intergroup Conflict Resolution: The Positive Role Of Perspective-Taking, Donna J. Yao, Melody M. Chao, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Essentialism, a fundamental belief of the fixedness of social group essences, is often associated with negative intergroup outcomes. However, research is yet to explore the role of essentialism in intergroup conflicts, despite their prevalence. To address this gap, we conducted the first direct examination on how essentialism influences conflict management toward out-group members. Moreover, we examined perspective-taking as a positive factor in improving conflict management among essentialist individuals relative to their non-essentialist counterparts in intergroup contexts. Results across three experiments provided little support to the negative effect of essentialism on intergroup (vs. intragroup) conflict management. Yet, we found that perspective-taking …

Adverse Childhood Experiences, Homeless Chronicity, And Age At Onset Of Homelessness, Joseph T. Tucciarone Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Childhood adversity is associated with numerous negative outcomes across multiple domains, including mental and physical health, interrelationships, and social functioning. Notably, research suggests that childhood adversity has a dose-response relationship with these outcomes; that is, greater numbers of adverse experiences in childhood are associated with worse outcomes. These outcomes overlap with many risk factors of homelessness. This study sought to address two questions: 1) Does a dose-response relationship exist between childhood adversity and chronic homelessness? 2) Does childhood adversity negatively predict the age at which homelessness first occurs? Adults experiencing homeless who are accessing homeless services in the Tri-Cities area …

Coercive And Deceptive Predictors Of Sexual Risk: The Moderating Role Of Self-Esteem, Morgan Barker

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Risky sexual practices can lead to concerning public health issues, including sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancy. Coercive or deceptive behaviors by one’s partner to engage in risky practices may be one factor contributing to sexual risk. This study examined experiences of sexual risk coercion and deception, including partner sexual infidelity, coerced condom nonuse, and fear of negative partner reaction to condom request, as predictors of engagement in sexual risk behaviors, including condom use, safer sex communication, and lifetime number of sexual partners. Self-esteem was examined as a moderator. College students (N = 216) were recruited through the …

The Role Of Dreams, Intuition, And Social Influences On Conscious Decision-Making Processes, Robert Bouffard

Senior Honors Projects

The average person makes approximately 35,000 conscious decisions per day, which, accounting for the daily amount of sleep a person gets, is equivalent to a decision madeevery two seconds. Upon realizing the frequency, I sought to find a distinctive connectionbetween the conscious and unconscious when it pertains to how people make decisions. I hypothesized that people make decisions regarding their personal relationships with the help of intuition, which I considered to be the ultimate link between our dreams and our conscious thought. I also believed the concept of intuition was entirely dependent on our processing and decoding of dreams. In …

Female Genital Mutilation In The United States: Estimating The Number Of Girls At Risk, Phyllis Chesler

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Female genital mutilation (FGM) destroys the capacity of women to experience sexual pleasure. It causes serious medical complications such as bleeding, painful urination, cysts, dangerous and recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections, the growth of scar tissue that make marital intercourse a nightmare and that turns childbirth into an experience of danger and torture. Due to immigration, FGM now poses a potential health crisis in the West, both in Europe and in the United States. To estimate how many girls who live in the West are at risk, one can measure the prevalence of FGM in the non-Western countries where …

How Diet Choices And Weight Change Person Perception, Nicole Tibbits

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Previous studies have explored the negative perceptions of overweight targets along with the specific physical and psychological characteristics commonly used to describe them. The current study extends this literature by experimentally investigating the effect that both weight and diet choices have on the characteristics attributed to an individual. Participants were exposed to one of four scenarios that involved exposure to an image (overweight or average) and a short description of the target with the diet manipulation (healthy or unhealthy) embedded. As expected, overweight targets with unhealthy diets were rated lowest on perceptions of physical health and independent of weight, targets …

Parametric Indices Of Peer Victimization As Predictors Of Children’S Internalizing Outcomes, Freddie Aníbal Pastrana Rivera

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Peer victimization has been linked to maladjustment in school-age children. However, the field is less clear about how different parameters of peer victimization (e.g., frequency, stability) confer risk to children. In this study, I evaluated the extent to which key parameters (operationalized as distinct peer victimization indices) predicted internalizing maladjustment in 4th grade children (N = 445). From self-, teacher-, and peer-reported victimization data gathered at three time points within an academic year, I generated the following indices: Mean Level, Stability, Cross-Informant Agreement, and Informant Source. Controlling for baseline internalizing scores, hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that: a) only self-reported Mean …

Attitudes And Perspectives Towards Undocumented Immigration In The United States, Nicole Morgan

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

Undocumented immigration has been a historically controversial political topic in the United States and under the Trump Administration. This study aims to look at attitudes towards immigration in the context of whether perception is related to ethnicity or rests on moral belief. It is hypothesized that individuals who score more conservative on the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) are more likely to reflect more anti-immigration beliefs than individuals who score more liberal. It is expected that individuals who have read the Mexican vignette will reflect more anti-immigration beliefs than individuals who have read the Swedish vignette or ethnically ambiguous vignette.

The Effects Of Being Labeled Smart By Friends: Burden Or Benefit?, Lauren Feldman, Isaac Abrams, Charlotte Bernot, Alexa Delmonte, Deegan Miller

Psychology Presentations

No abstract provided.

Lgbtq+ Student Safety On Western Michigan University's Campus, Kaitlyn Sedorchuk

Honors Theses

Campus climate, in general, has been a popular area of research for many years, and this also includes campus climate for LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus) students. Outside of the campus climate survey done back in 2013, there has been no recent campus climate research done on Western Michigan University’s campus as of Spring 2019. This means that there has been no research focusing on queer students’ perceptions of Western’s campus, as well.

In order to help and rectify this and create a platform in which queer students attending Western Michigan University could share their experiences, the current …