Other Psychology Commons^™

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review Spring 2018

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

No abstract provided.

A Program Evaluation Of Zgirls: The Role Of Cognitive Emotion Regulation In Predicting Mental Health Outcomes In Adolescent Girls, Julie Vieselmeyer

Clinical Psychology Dissertations

This study investigated the impact of ZGiRLS, a sport-based youth development program (YDP) that seeks to empower adolescent girls by teaching psychological skills. Sport-based YDPs have shown great potential for promoting healthy psychological development (Anderson-Butcher et al., 2013), and may even serve a preventative function by providing an effective setting for developing positive traits, attitudes, and skills (Weissberg, Kumpfer, & Seligman, 2003). The purpose of this study was to conduct a program evaluation to explore the effectiveness of ZGiRLS. Four specific aims of the study were to examine (a) a change in psychological skills (i.e., self-talk and goal setting), (b) …

A Growth Mindset Intervention In Female Collegiate Athletes, Cierra Latrice Williams

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Growth mindset interventions have been evaluated within academic settings for years and have demonstrated links between one’s mindset and achievement goals. However, despite this research, limited research has evaluated the effectiveness of a growth mindset intervention within an athletic setting. This research aimed to remedy this shortcoming by conducting a growth mindset intervention within a sample of 27 female collegiate athletes. Participants viewed two videos about the malleability of the brain, listened to the researcher discuss personal sport experiences, and wrote a letter to a future athlete. Measures of growth mindset, fixed mindset, competitiveness, win orientation, and goal orientation were …

Evaluating The Benefits Of Art Therapy Interventions With Grieving Children, Meagan Dye

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

Art therapy has numerous benefits when working with a variety of populations and many studies support the efficacy of art and art therapy interventions. This research paper aims to specifically assess the impact of a formal, semi-structured, individual art therapy intervention with grieving children. The researcher reviewed the records of thirteen clients who worked with three art therapists at a small palliative care agency in Central Virginia. Clients were between the ages of 5-18 years old and were assessed to gauge their positive and negative affect before the art therapy intervention and after the sixth session. Each therapist worked with …

An Exploration Of The Collegiate Coach-Athlete Relationship And Its Impact On Female Athlete Attitudes And Behaviors Toward Disordered Eating And Body Image, Bridget E. Smith

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Collegiate female athletes face the challenges of conflicting feminine body ideals in society and in their sport all while striving for athletic success. Coaches are believed to play a significant role in an athlete’s development, and thus have potential to (knowing or unknowingly) reinforce, or even introduce, eating pathology as a means to achieve athletic performance and/or a body ideal. Previous research has found a link between insecure attachment and subsequent eating pathology in athletes and non-athletes alike. The coach can be viewed as an important attachment figure in an athlete’s life and development and thus serve a mediating role …

Mental Toughness, Well-Being, And Coach-Created Motivational Climate Within Collegiate Athletics, Chad Doerr

Dissertations, 2014-2019

This study examined the relationship between college student-athletes’ well-being, self-ratings of mental toughness in sport, and perceptions of the coach-created motivational climate. One hundred and two NCAA Division I female student-athletes completed measures of well-being, mental toughness, and coach-created motivational climate over the course of a university academic year. The author hypothesized that mental toughness and perceptions of the coach-created motivational climate would predict well-being. Overall, the results of the study found a predictive relationship between well-being and mental toughness, and well-being, mental toughness, and an ego-involving coach-created motivational climate.

These results provide initial evidence that cognitive, affective, personality, and …

In Search Of Equality: Developing An Equal Interval Likert Response Scale, Elisabeth M. Spratto

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Attitude scales are an important component of educational and psychological research. One consideration when seeking to make valid inferences from attitudinal data is the issue of the degree to which response options can be assumed to have equal intervals. Many response options on attitudinal measures may produce ordinal-level data rather than interval. This poses a problem for the statistical tests that may be used, as many analyses assume interval-level data. It also poses an interpretational issue if the conceptual distance between response options is not the same – for example, if a researcher believes that someone who answered Agree differs …

Treating Adhd With Suggestion: Neurofeedback And Placebo Therapeutics, Robert T. Thibault, Samuel Vassière, Jay A. Olson, Amir Raz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objective: We propose that clinicians can use suggestion to help treat conditions such as ADHD. Methods: We use EEG neurofeedback as a case study, alongside evidence from a recent pilot experiment utilizing a sham MRI scanner to highlight the therapeutic potential of suggestion-based treatments. Results: The medical literature demonstrates that many practitioners already prescribe treatments that hardly outperform placebo comparators. Moreover, the sham MRI experiment showed that, even with full disclosure of the procedure, suggestion alone can reduce the symptomatology of ADHD. Conclusion: Non-deceptive suggestion-based treatments, especially those drawing on accessories from neuroscience, may offer a safe complement and potential …

The Ability Of Students With Dyslexia To Follow Sequential Oral Instructions, Crystal Hermann

Honors Theses

There seems to be differences between children with dyslexia and those without in their ability to follow sequential oral instructions. In this paper this possibility was explored by testing children with and without dyslexia on nine short term memory tasks that represented the different aspects that make up serial instruction. My hypothesis was that those students with dyslexia would have a smaller recall span than the controls for all sequential recall tasks. My hypothesis was not supported by the data; children in the control group only showed a significant advantage on three tasks: memory for items, non-sequential verbal memory span, …

The Presentation Of Postmodern Sexuality In Short Fiction, Allie J. Kapus

Senior Honors Theses

Shifting norms in twentieth century western society, coupled with emerging postmodern thought in the 1960s, radically changed the ways in which people viewed sexuality, gender roles, and the institutions of marriage and the family. The literature of the postmodern era, namely short fiction, also reflects such ideological shifts. Literature is a powerful communicator of the human condition as well as a crucial means for reflecting the customs, beliefs, and norms of a society at the time of its writing. Such evolving differences as were occurring in the realm of sexuality came to be represented in postmodern literature. This thesis aims …

The Influence Of Dispositional Greed On Creativity: A Conservation Of Resources Perspective, Allyson Tiriolo

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Although historical literatures view greed as an important factor affecting work effort and innovation, scholarly research examining such influences remain scant. Drawing from the principles of conservation of resources theory (COR), I predict dispositional greed will be negatively associated with individual creativity. In addition, I examine the potential for creative identity to weaken this negative relationship. The proposed model was tested among 161 matriculated students at a large Northeastern University. My results indicate no direct relationship between greed and creativity. Rather, my results indicate that the negative relationship between greed and creativity exists only when creative identity is low and …

Pavlovian Conditioning: History And Application Of The Revaluation Procedure, Bana Odeh

Honors College Theses

While Pavlovian conditioning is a widely recognized form of learning, the nature of this learned association continues to be debated and has significant implications for human and animal behavior. This paper will first address the basic structure of Pavlovian conditioning as well as the two major historical hypotheses—Stimulus-Stimulus (S-S) learning and Stimulus-Response (SR) learning—regarding the underlying neural representation of first-order conditioning. Next, the revaluation procedure, an experimental method used to distinguish between these two hypotheses, will be discussed. Furthermore, the history of revaluation studies on rats will be analyzed, with an emphasis on the specificity of the learned association formed, …

Parental Involvement Among Low-Income Filipinos: A Phenomenological Inquiry, Aileen S. Garcia

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Parental involvement in children’s education is an integral component of young children’s academic achievement. In the Philippines, a developing country with high rates of poverty and input deficit in basic education, school dropout rates are high especially among the poor. Given that many children from disadvantaged backgrounds do not get enough support (PIDS, 2012) and many parents are not equipped with skills to support their children’s education, it is essential to investigate how Filipino parents can help and contribute to their children’s academic success. In response to the lack of parental involvement literature situated in the Philippine context, the present …

Transgender Identity And Dress Behavior, Lauryn Devine

Senior Honors Projects

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine how transgender individuals experience their bodies (e.g. body dissatisfaction) and how their body experience affects their shopping and clothing experiences. Clothing is often used as a way to define and express oneself. Therefore, if transgender individuals have a negative shopping experience and a negative outlook on clothing, it could make it more difficult to express their true identity. Society places extremely high expectations on individuals regarding appearance, which can be psychologically and emotionally difficult for cisgender individuals, but even more egregious for those individuals who do not fit society’s conventional gender …

The Prospective Influence Of Religiousness On Alcohol Use: What Role Do Perceived Norms Play?, Corey Todd Brawner

Dissertations

Alcohol misuse is recognized as one of the most pressing health hazards for college students. Previous research has supported a protective relationship between religiousness and problematic alcohol use, but it is less clear what aspects of religiousness are protective and through what mechanisms its effect is exerted. The current study utilized a prospective design to accomplish three primary goals: (1) Delineate the protective effects of religious motivation and public participation on alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in a sample of undergraduates at a large public university in the southeastern United States, (2) determine whether effects were maintained long-term, and (3) …

Self Efficacy, Sense Of Belonging, And Sense Of Obligation In First Generation College Students, Bridgett Hernandez

Psychology | Senior Theses

First generation college (FGC) students are people whose parents didn’t earn a college degree (Stebleton, Soria, & Huesman, 2014). FGC students may come from marginalized backgrounds, which may limit or hinder their higher education experience (Nuñez, 2009). Self-efficacy is necessary for FGC students to surpass the challenges they face, as those who feel less capable don’t continue the pursuit of higher education. FGC students may feel like their demographics or the challenges they face are magnified by the salient stereotypes of their group identification (Wout, Danso, Jackson, & Spencer, 2008), which could then make them feel like they don’t belong …

Predictors Of Sleep Quality: Depression, Anxiety, And Sleep Self-Efficacy, Rayanna Johnson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The objective of the current study was to examine the relationship between depression, anxiety, sleep self-efficacy and sleep quality in college students by using both objective measures and self-report data. Participants included undergraduate students from a small liberal arts college who wore an ActiGraph wGT3X-BT wristband for a period of seven nights. At the end of the seven nights, participants also completed the Beck Anxiety Inventory, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, the Sleep Self-Efficacy Scale, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Results indicated that higher sleep self-efficacy scores were associated with lower anxiety and depression scores. Higher self-reported sleep quality, …

Drama Therapy And Transgender Adolescents, Ryan Lisman

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Transgender adolescents in the United States are currently a vulnerable population that often regularly face discrimination and are at a high risk for hate crimes (Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, 2016). Developing and implementing therapeutic interventions and models for working with transgender adolescents is essential at this time. In American society, there has recently been a cultural shift towards a greater sense of acceptance for the LGBTQ community (Benson, 2013), but within that, the transgender community has been consistently left behind in many aspects of progress that LGB (Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual) people have benefited from (Benson, 2013). There …

Social Media: On Tech-Caves, Virtual Panopticism, And The Science Fiction-Like State In Which We Unwittingly Find Ourselves, Michael Major

Theses

Making use of three historic philosophical thought experiments, this paper blends psychological perspectives with philosophical reasoning to show how social media is corrupting our perception of reality, the result of which is ultimately detrimental to society as a whole. This is accomplished by first using Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to analyze and discuss the ways in which social media is limiting humanity’s access to real knowledge. Next, Michel Foucault’s analysis of punishment in its social context, Discipline and Punish, is used to discuss the ways in which social media is adversely affecting our behavior. Finally, Robert Nozick’s “Experience …

Special Issue - Call For Papers: Applications Of Judgment And Decision Making To Problems In Personnel Assessment, Edgar E. Kausel, Alexander T. Jackson

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

No abstract provided.