Personality and Social Contexts Commons^™

Boosting Creative Ideation Through Improving Self-Regulation, Sean Teck Hao Lee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Although creative ideation requires deviating sufficiently from conventional thoughts, people tend to fixate on highly salient and accessible concepts when responding to idea generation tasks. Surmounting such a default tendency then, is crucial to generating creative ideas. Bridging creative cognition with self-regulation research, I hypothesized that inhibitory control over such a default response may require self-regulatory resources. This would suggest that interventions that increase people’s self-regulatory resources may also boost their creativity. However, results from Study 1 did not support this hypothesis. Specifically, there was no significant difference between ego-depleted versus non-depleted participants in terms of inhibitory control over salient …

The Origins Beliefs Of Christian College Students, Emily Wilkinson

Senior Honors Theses

Many studies have focused on creation and evolution in academia, origins beliefs and biblical interpretation, and how students respond to origins challenges. The author then conducted a phenomenology of Christian college students’ origins beliefs, factors that influence those beliefs, and impacts that the beliefs have on students’ lives. Methods included a 44-Item Big Five Inventory and semi-structured interviews. Participants were eight residential undergraduate students at a Christian university who were currently or previously in a creation studies course. Results indicated that all participants held to young-earth creationism, and that family, Christian faith, education, personality, and academic major influenced the development …

Mindfulness And Food Selfies: A Naturalistic Investigation Of Healthy Eating, Alishea Hight, Mariah Isbell

Georgia College Student Research Events

Mindfulness is increasingly linked to effective self-regulation including regulation of health behaviors. Eating is an important behavior for health, and mindfulness has been linked to healthier eating choices in self-report, cross-sectional studies, and in laboratory eating paradigms (e.g., Jordan et al., 2014). In contrast, impulsivity is linked to poor self-regulation such as purchasing behavior (Baumeister, 2002), and impulsivity scores have been shown to be related to weight (Price, Lee, & Higgs, 2013). Along these lines, we sought to examine the links between trait mindfulness and impulsivity and eating behaviors. However, instead of examining eating behaviors through global self-report or forced …

Against The Wind: A Study On Aviation As A Female Career Choice, Bonnie Gagliardo

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study is to identify and describe the educational and social experiences that sparked the interest of female pilots as young women to pursue a career in aviation.

Methodology: This qualitative phenomenological study utilized semi- structured interviews to explore the lived experiences of female pilots, to understand if there were common social and educational factors which influenced them to become interested in aviation. Using convenience sampling, eleven pilots who hold a Federal Aviation Administration Commercial or Airline Transport Pilot’s License were selected to participate in this study.

Findings: The findings from this …

The Impact Of A Heroism-Themed Outreach With Title I Summer Program Students, Nathan Adams, Lori Fernald, Conway Saylor, Mike Akers

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

Is it possible to teach students about heroism? This presentation will examine how a five-session intervention influenced at-risk students’ understanding of a hero. Outcomes from the study may be of interest to educators, administrators, and counselors who encourage students to find positive role models in the community.

Using Escape Rooms For Conducting Team Research: Understanding Development, Considerations, And Challenges, Tara N. Cohen, Andrew C. Griggs, Joseph R. Keebler, Elizabeth H. Lazzara, Shawn Doherty, Falisha F. Kanji, Bruce L. Gewertz

Publications

Background. Modern organizations are increasingly reliant on teams, and many organizations are subsequently concerned with the development of interventions that can improve the performance of teams. Escape rooms are beginning to receive attention as a potential avenue to facilitate team-based research. Escape rooms are team-based recreational activities that require a team of individuals to work together and think critically in order to solve a series of puzzles or challenges to escape a room.

Purpose. This article provides considerations for researchers and organizations alike concerning the development of an escape room for team-based research, its methodological applications, and challenges associated …

The Political Personality Of 2020 Democratic Presidential Contender Bernie Sanders, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper reports the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of U.S. senator Bernie Sanders — a contender for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election — from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon. Information concerning Sanders was collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-5.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the basis of interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and …

Public Perception Towards Conservation Of Heritage Buildings In Berlin And Kuala Lumpur, Shaharuddin Shahariah Norain

Student Works (2020-2029)

This study examines the local public perception towards the intention to conserve the heritage buildings and sites in the city area. The need for an effective public interest and integrated heritage conservation in the city is vital which resolve the issues on the demolition of historic buildings. The objective of this study is to investigate the perception of attitudes, subject norms and perceived behavior control of the local public that influence the behavior towards the intention to conserve the heritage building in the city area. This study also investigates the behavior of local public from the opinion of stakeholders towards …

Similar But Not Quite The Same: Differential Unique Associations Of Trait Fear And Trait Anxiety With Inhibitory Control, Wei Xing Toh, Hwajin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Given the dearth of research regarding the relations of trait fear and trait anxiety to cognitive control processes, we sought to investigate how trait fear and trait anxiety are uniquely related to inhibitory control, which is a crucial component of the regulatory processes that inhibit inappropriate responses that interfere with goal achievement. Given that inhibitory control tasks are often plagued by task-impurity issues, we employed a latent variable approach based on multiple measures of inhibitory control. We found that trait fear and trait anxiety are related but separable constructs that, when their shared variance was controlled for, predicted inhibitory control …

Cognitive, Social, Emotional, And Subjective Health Benefits Of Computer Use In Adults: A 9-Year Longitudinal Study From The Midlife In The United States (Midus), Andree Hartanto, Jose C. Yong, Wei Xing (Zhuo Weixing) Toh, Sean Teck Hao Lee, Yue Qi Germaine Tng, William Tov

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Computer use has been proposed to carry a host of benefits for cognitive function and socioemotional well-beingin older adults. However, the literature on computer use remains equivocal as extant research suffers from mixedfindings as well as methodological limitations, such as overreliance on cross-sectional designs, small samplesizes, and use of narrow criterions. The current studies (NStudy 1 ¼ 3,294, NStudy 2 ¼ 2,683) sought to address theselimitations through the use of a large-scale, nationally representative, and longitudinal dataset. We found thatfrequency of computer use—over a period of approximately 9 years—longitudinally predicted positive changesin executive functioning, hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, sense of …

Personality Differences In Predicting Assault And Binge Drinking: Variation Across Explanatory Factors And Gender, Allison De Franco

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

General theories of offending seem to be favored in recent criminological literature, with the assumption being that the same factor(s) cause all forms of deviance and criminality. However, there is a case to be made for crime-specific models that predict different types of individuals will commit varying forms of deviant behavior. Using survey data collected from 108 female and 116 male college students, we measured their levels of various personality traits–empathy, guilt, detachment, and externalization–as well as their incidence of assault and binge drinking over the previous year. It was predicted that detachment and/or externalization would have significant positive associations …

Political Assortive Mating: The Effects Of Politics On Mating Choice And Relationships, Kathryn Block

Augsburg Honors Review

The current study investigates the theory of political assortative mating, which is the theory that people with similar political preferences are more likely to mate together. The current study broadens the research on political assortative mating by studying potential couples before they actually begin dating, rather than studying married couples as most previous research has done. Participants were asked to look at a fictitious dating profile in which political affiliation was manipulated and rate how likely they would be to contact, respond, and be a good match with the person represented. Results showed that politics do have a significant impact …

The Project Talent Twin And Sibling Study: Zygosity And New Data Collection, Carol A. Prescott, Ellen E. Walters, Thalida Em Arpawong, Catalina Zavala, Tara L. Gruenewald, Margaret Gatz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The Project Talent Twin and Sibling (PTTS) study includes 4481 multiples and their 522 nontwin siblings from 2233 families. The sample was drawn from Project Talent, a U.S. national longitudinal study of 377,000 individuals born 1942–1946, first assessed in 1960 and representative of U.S. students in secondary school (Grades 9–12). In addition to the twins and triplets, the 1960 dataset includes 84,000 siblings from 40,000 other families. This design is both genetically informative and unique in facilitating separation of the ‘common’ environment into three sources of variation: shared by all siblings within a family, specific to twin-pairs, and associated with …

The Balance Of Personality, Chris Allen

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

This open access textbook was developed as an upper division undergraduate textbook for theories of personality. Its intended audience are students from Portland State University enrolled in Psychology 432 Personality course. The chapters are shorter than some personality textbooks and in this particular course Psy 432 the textbook is combined with other readings including scientific articles on personality. This open access textbook may be of interest to other courses interested in teaching about theory and research on personality.

Please see the Open Textbook Library for faculty Reviews of this textbook

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Solving Mate Shortages: Lowering Standards, Searching Farther, And Abstaining, Peter K. Jonason, Simone L. Betes, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although much work on mating psychology has focused on mate preferences and responses to desirable sexual and romantic offers, less is known about what happens when individuals face a lack of mating options. We present 2 studies on (hypothetical) compensatory mating tactics. In Study 1 (N = 299), participants were asked to imagine they were struggling to find long-term and short-term mates and we revealed sex differences and context-specific effects consistent with parental investment theory. In Study 2 (N = 282), participants were asked to imagine they had been incapable of finding a short-term and long-term mate for 6 months …

Mate Preferences For Warmth-Trustworthiness Predict Romantic Attraction In The Early Stages Of Mate Selection And Satisfaction In Ongoing Relationships, Katherine A. Valentine, Norman P. Li, Andrea L. Meltzer, Ming-Hong Tsai

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

People seek warm and trustworthy individuals as long-term mates for numerous reasons. Indeed, such individuals are prone to cooperation, have strong parenting skills, have the ability to fulfill our need to belong, and may provide a relationship that is characterized by greater closeness, protection, acceptance, and safety. Although prior work has shown that both sexes indicate equally strong preferences for these traits in potential mates, few studies have examined whether people actually respond favorably to partners high in warmth-trustworthiness in live mating contexts. We, thus, demonstrated that people’s stated preferences for warmth-trustworthiness (a) predicted their attraction to potential mates in …

How Will President Trump Respond To Iranian Retaliation For The Killing Of Qasem Soleimani?, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This analysis attempts to predict the general tenor of President Donald Trump’s likely response to Iran’s anticipated retaliation for the targeted killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani, based on (1) empirical studies of Trump’s personality profile and leadership style conducted at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics and (2) rational-intuitive inference derived from Trump’s observed behavior in office.

The Adaptive Functions Of Morality, Michael R. Apostol

Copley Library Undergraduate Research Awards

Morality is the principles that distinguish right from wrong. Humans maintain a moral self-image: the views, judgements, and actions that reflect a sense of right or wrong (Jordan, Leliveld, & Tenbrunsel, 2015). In order to study the impact of moral attitudes on behavior we must understand why certain moral beliefs persist, the function of morality, and why errors in moral judgement occur. With an evolutionary framework, studying the adaptive significance of morality may provide answers to these questions. Researchers have studied morality in nonhuman animals, the development of moral principles, cultural factors that influence ethical frameworks, how morality functions, and …

Slasher Films And Self-Harm: A Relationship Of Self-Hatred And Trauma, Stevie Lee Steers

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This paper’s purpose is to look at slasher films and the potential relationship of trauma and self-hatred that these films hold to adolescents aged 14-20 who commit self-harm. The type of self-harm examined in this paper is cutting and the films that will be studied will have to be from 1979 to 1989, which is the “golden age” for slasher films. The films that will be studied are The Nightmare on Elm Street series, Hellraiser series, and Friday the 13th series. This paper will be using multiple literary lenses to discuss how slasher films convey trauma and self-hatred and how …

Interview With Karin Waller, Karin A. Waller, Patricia A. Schechter

Conflict Resolution Oral Histories

Karin Waller was interviewed by history professor Patricia Schechter on May 27, 2020, in Portland, Oregon. Also participating in the interview are graduate students Cleophas Chambliss and Liza Schade.

In this interview, Waller describes the personal, social, and intellectual intersections that brought her to graduate study, her mentors in the graduate program, and her thesis project.