Social Psychology Commons^™

Book Review: Mythic Imagination Today: The Interpretation Of Mythology And Science By Terry Marks-Tarlow, Ivana Gligoric

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Terry Marks-Tarlow interprets mythology and science as endless curiosity about the workings of the Universe, combing with humans’ creative urges to transform inner and outer worlds. The author perceives mythology as a universal product of the human imagination in interaction with the physical and social world, driven by the urge to communicate with others symbolically and make meaning out of life experiences. Moreover, Marks-Tarlow studied the origins of a human story within the social brain, mythmakers, and myths from multiple cultures. At the same time, she explored how contemporary sciences of chaos, complexity theories, and fractal geometry unite with ancient …

Book Review: If Women Rose Rooted: A Life Changing Journey To Authenticity And Healing By Sharon Blackie, Katherine T. Ziemke

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Mythic Imagination Today: The Interpenetration Of Mythology And Science, Alexandra Sedgwick

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Relative And Absolute: States Of Consciousness And Turiya, Jenna Mcdonald

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper aims to explore the phenomena of dreaming, waking, sleeping and the witness-consciousness that is exists in and through all three states. It draws from current and past literature about consciousness, helping to build a framework for both psychological and spiritual development. It correlates the pause between the inhale and exhale to the self-evident junction between dreaming, sleep and waking states.

Nondual Writing: A Perspective On Who Owns Ideas, And A Way To Write With Greater Ease, Andrew Erdman

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The act of writing can cause great anxiety, stoking flames of perfectionism and fears of criticism, narcissistic injury, or indifference. While Buddhist teachings provide liberation from such egoic loneliness, it is not often recognized that postmodern and post-structural thought may also put the “author” and their “writing” in a less-individualized context—one in which a written work is understood to be in fact an ongoing process taking shape in interactions among writer, reader, critic, fan, and the world of literature at large. Keeping such a model in mind can help return joy to the act of writing as it poses the …

Autonomy And The Folk Concept Of Valid Consent, Joanna Demaree-Cotton, Roseanna Sommers

Law & Economics Working Papers

Consent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even …

Exploring The Impact Of The Achievement Gap On Shame And Resilience In African American College Students, Brittany R. Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The achievement gap refers to the stark difference that occurs between racial or gender groups, as one group performs significantly higher than the other. An achievement gap has the propensity to produce psychological distress, as well as buffering techniques that are necessary for survival and success. Growing research shows that African American college students experience unique levels of trauma, shame, hardship, macro, and micro-aggressions, suggesting that these students learn to self-preserve as early as 10 years old. This study used a Pearson correlation, Independent T-Test, and a Moderated Multiple Regression to explore the impact of the achievement gap on shame …

Investigating The Self In Self-Report, Samantha L. Boddy

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Self-report items are ubiquitous in social sciences and services and medical centers. However, there is some concern about whether people are able to accurately report about themselves. One well-known source of concern is social desirability bias (SDB) or socially desirable responding (SDR), which involves people providing overly-positive responses about themselves that better align with social norms than might their actual attitudes or behaviors. However, several researchers (e.g., Brenner & DeLamater, 2016; Hadaway et al., 1998) suggest that a person’s identity in the area of interest may bias their responding. Specifically, that people interpret and respond to items in terms of …

Perceived Neighborhood Cohesion Buffers Covid-19 Impacts On Mental Health In A United States Sample, Jennifer W. Robinette, Georgiana Bostean, Laura M. Glynn, Jason A. Douglas, Brooke N. Jenkins, Tara L. Gruenewald, David A. Frederick

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objective

This study examined whether perceived neighborhood cohesion (the extent to which neighbors trust and count on one another) buffers against the mental health effects of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

The XXX University National COVID-19 and Mental Health Study surveyed US adults (N = 3965; M age = 39 years), measuring depressive symptoms, staying home more during than before the 2020 pandemic, and perceived neighborhood cohesion.

Results

A series of linear regressions indicated that perceiving one's neighborhood as more cohesive was not only associated with fewer depressive symptoms, but also attenuated the relationship between spending more time at …

Can I Buy My Health? A Genetically Informed Study Of Socioeconomic Status And Health, Jennifer W. Robinette, Christopher R. Beam, Tara L. Gruenewald

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Background

A large literature demonstrates associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and health, including physiological health and well-being. Moreover, gender differences are often observed among measures of both SES and health. However, relationships between SES and health are sometimes questioned given the lack of true experiments, and the potential biological and SES mechanisms explaining gender differences in health are rarely examined simultaneously.

Purpose

To use a national sample of twins to investigate lifetime socioeconomic adversity and a measure of physiological dysregulation separately by sex.

Methods

Using the twin sample in the second wave of the Midlife in the United States survey …

Individual Differences In Social Play Behaviour Predict Alcohol Intake And Control Over Alcohol Seeking In Rats, Heidi M. B. Lesscher, E. J. Marijke Achterberg, Stephen M. Siviy, Louk J. M. J. Vanderschuren

Psychology Faculty Publications

Rationale

Social play behaviour is a rewarding social activity displayed by young mammals, thought to be important for the development of brain and behaviour. Indeed, disruptions of social play behaviour in rodents have been associated with cognitive deficits and augmented sensitivity to self-administration of substances of abuse, including alcohol, later in life. However, the relation between social development and loss of control over substance use, a key characteristic of substance use disorders including alcohol use disorder (AUD), has not been investigated. Moreover, it remains unknown how inherent differences in playfulness relate to differences in the sensitivity to substance use and …

Explicit And Implicit Attitudes Towards Prisoners: The Impact Of Level Of Contact, Samantha Peka

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Objective: Prisoners and ex-prisoners face overt and covert forms of prejudice and discrimination (e.g., barriers to employment, housing, healthcare, voting rights). Fueling this prejudice and discrimination are implicit and explicit negative attitudes towards prisoners. Negative implicit and explicit attitudes play a major role into successful reintegration into society post-release. The purpose of this study was to examine if exposure to prisoners/ex-prisoners and political affiliation influence implicit and explicit attitudes.

Method: Participants (n = 73) completed a prisoner Implicit Association Test (IAT). Then, participants completed the explicit measures, Social Distance Scale, Attribute Questionnaire, Belief in Redeemability, Attitudes Towards Prisoners, and Prosociality …

Git (Gender-Informed Trauma) In Black N Blue Boys / Broken Men: How Concepts Of Gender Restrict The Black Male Actor’S Creative Process And The Methods He Can Use For Creative Freedom., Tyler Tate

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how the black male actor’s creative process can be affected by historical and cultural constructions of masculinity connected to race, sexuality, and physical movement. My research on black men’s experience with gender identity finds that social and cultural forces lead black men to reproduce behaviors that mirror a prescribed masculine ideal through physical movement. This prescribed masculine behavior is typically coded in terms of stiffness or lack of expression. This study explores how self-imposed restrictions reiterated by social standards of masculine behavior limit the creative freedom in the black male actor’s creative process. Specifically, black male actors’ …

Too Cynical To Reconnect: Cynicism Moderates The Effect Of Social Exclusion On Prosociality Through Empathy, Bryan K. C. Choy, Kimin Eom, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Extant findings are mixed on whether social exclusion impacts prosociality. We propose one factor that may underlie the mixed results: Cynicism. Specifically, cynicism may moderate the exclusion-prosociality link by influencing interpersonal empathy. Compared to less cynical individuals, we expected highly cynical individuals who were excluded to experience less empathy and, consequently, less prosocial behavior. Using an online ball-tossing game, participants were randomly assigned to an exclusion or inclusion condition. Consistent with our predictions, the effect of social exclusion on prosociality through empathy was contingent on cynicism, such that only less-cynical individuals responded to exclusion with greater empathy, which, in turn, …

Social Mindfulness And Prosociality Vary Across The Globe, Niels J. Van Doesum, Ryan O. Murphy, Marcello Gallucci, E. Aharonov-Majar, U. Athenstaedt, Wing Tung Au, Liying Bai, R. Bohm, I. Bovina, N.R. Buchan, Xiao-Ping Chen, K.B. Dumont, J.B. Englemann, ..., Li, Norman P.

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one's location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater …

Distracted: Why Students Cannot Focus By James M. Lang, Joax Wong, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Humans are easily distracted creatures. Our attention seems to constantly waver, shifting every second to different objects, sounds or stimuli. As we transition into adolescence, we start to hear the all-too familiar phrase that technology – smartphones, laptops, televisions and gaming devices – is an obstacle preventing us from reaching full productivity and sapping our attention. In Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It, James Lang describes the oftentimes complicated and false conceptions about distraction and the part that technology plays in it. Currently, society places extremely high demands on students and expects them to …

Modeling Real And Fake News Sharing In Social Networks, Abishai Joy

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Online media is changing the traditional news industry and diminishing the role of journalists, newspapers, and even news channels. This in turn is enhancing the ability of fake news to influence public opinion on important topics. The threat of fake news is quite imminent, as it allows malicious users to share their agenda with a larger audience. Major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc., are making it easy to spread fake news due to the minimal moderation/ fact-checking on these platforms.

This work aims at predicting fake and real news sharing in social media. Specifically, we employ a multi-level …

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Comparing Short-Term, Intensive Therapy To Traditional, Long-Term Therapy, Laura Gonzalez, Sean Kruckenberg

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health diagnosis that occurs following a traumatic event, and military veterans are at higher risk of exposure to hazardous or life-threatening situations that may result in psychological trauma. PTSD sufferers experience symptoms such as distressing memories, nightmares, flashbacks, hypervigilance, and heightened arousal. Individuals with PTSD also experience higher rates of depressive and substance use disorders, involvement with the justice system, and self-harm and suicide. Many agencies, such as the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) provide treatment PTSD, however most programs experience dropout rates as high as 36%. Recent studies have shown that …

Interpersonal Needs And Suicide Risk: Examining Indirect Effects Of Internal Hostility And Feeling Forgiven, Kelley C. Berto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Suicide is a national public health concern, and unmet interpersonal needs (i.e., perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness) may contribute to enhanced risk. However, mechanisms of action and certain protective variables are not well understood. The present study examined simple mediation models, with internal hostility as a mechanism of action between interpersonal needs and suicide risk. Additionally, our study examined the moderating role of various aspects of receiving forgiveness on the association between interpersonal needs and internal hostility in these simple mediation models. A community-based convenience sample was surveyed (N=712). Our findings indicated that internal hostility partially mediated the association …

Forgiveness, Gratitude, Humility, And Spiritual Struggle: Associations With Religious Belief Status And Suicide Risk, Benjamin B. Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Religion is a known contributor to suicide risk, with both positive and negative effects. Negative religious experiences, such as spiritual struggle, can exacerbate suicide risk. Alternatively, religion may promote positive psychological characteristics associated with reduced suicide risk, such as forgiveness, gratitude, and humility. However, research has yet to assess how religious changes, including conversion and deconversion, affect the linkage between religious risk and protective factors and suicidal behavior. We conducted three studies assessing these associations across four belief status groups: life-long religious believers, former religious non-believers who now believe, life-long religious non-believers, and former religious believers who no longer believe. …