Social Psychology Commons^™

The Problem Is My Partner: Treating Couples When One Partner Wants The Other To Change, Kieran T. Sullivan, Joanne Davila

Psychology

Partners commonly present to couple therapy expecting that the relationship will only improve if their partner changes. In other words, the partner is the problem. In this paper we review research on people's capacity for change, the process of behavior change, and personality change, especially the role of attachment theory. We then review techniques for working with couples based on empirically validated approaches to couple therapy and general change principles in therapy. Finally, we present a case study and recommendations for working with change-demanding couples, emphasizing the importance of focusing on emotional acceptance.

Thinking Bigger And Better About "Bad Apples": Evolutionary Industrial/Organizational Psychology And The Dark Triad, Peter K. Jonason, Serena Wee, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The focal article by Guenole (2014) correctly contends that industrial–organizational (I–O) psychology has been overly reliant on the Big Five or the five-factor model (Benet-Martínez & John, 1998). Although popular and useful, the Big Five also tends to be limited in two important ways. The Big Five is a set of atheoretically derived, descriptive adjectives, and it tends to better tap “positive” aspects of people's personality over “negative” or “darker” sides. A number of authors have highlighted the importance of examining “darker” aspects of people's personality both outside (Jonason, Li, Webster, & Schmitt, 2009; Lee & Ashton, 2005; Paulhus & …

Adolescents And The Social Media: The Coming Storm, Daniel Houlihan, Meghan Houlihan

Psychology Department Publications

In her book Failure to Connect: How computers affect our Children’s Minds, sounded the alarm to the educational community that computers would not impact the intellectual growth of children in the ways that had been anticipated by the Clinton Administration when they started the push to have the world-wide web integrated into American classrooms by passing the Classroom 2000 education initiative. In a speech in April of 2013, Clinton would follow-up by saying that the modern internet has forced a change in what we consider to be forms of good citizenship. The future will redefine how we should act and …

Aligning Inside And Outside Perspectives Of The Self: A Cross-Cultural Difference In Self-Perception, Young-Hoon Kim, Chi-Yue Chiu, Sinhae Cho, Evelyn W. M. Au, Sunyoung Nicole Kwak

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Past research shows that European Americans tend to take a first-person perspective to understand the self and are unlikely to align the inside look with the outside gaze, whereas Asians tend to take a third-person perspective and are likely to shift their inside look in the direction of the outsize gaze. In three experiments, we compared Asians and European Americans' self-perceptions when the presence of their parents in the background of self-perception was primed or otherwise. Without the priming, both European Americans and Asians viewed themselves more positively from their own perspective than from their parents' perspective. With the priming, …

Stranger Danger: Parenthood And Child Presence Increase The Envisioned Bodily Formidability Of Menacing Men, Daniel M.T. Fessler, Colin Holbrook, Jeremy S. Pollack, Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Due to altriciality and the importance of embodied capital, children’s fitness is contingent on parental investment. Injury suffered by a parent therefore degrades the parent’s fitness both by constraining reproduction and by diminishing the fitness of existing offspring. Due to the latter added cost, compared to non-parents, parents should be more cautious in hazardous situations, including potentially agonistic interactions. Prior research indicates that relative formidability is conceptualized in terms of size and strength. As erroneous under-estimation of a foe’s formidability heightens the risk of injury, parents should therefore conceptualize a potential antagonist as larger, stronger, and of more sinister intent …

Conformist Opinion Shift As An Accommodation-Motivated Cognitive Experience In Strong And Weak Situations, Angela K. Y. Leung, Evelyn Wing-Mun Au, Chi-Yue Chiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The authors introduce accommodation motivation as an individual difference construct that predicts personal preference to display conformist opinion shift, or the tendency to align opinion of the self with that of the group. The authors hypothesize that the relationship between accommodation motivation and conformist opinion shift will be stronger when the situational press for conformity is weak. Having clarified the conceptual meaning of accommodation motivation, the authors present evidence from two experiments that accommodation-motivated individuals readily display conformist opinion shift in anticipation of discussing with disagreeing others when conformity demand is weak (vs. strong). The second experiment offers initial support …

Affective Language And Attitudes Toward Public Policy, Rachel A. Wolitzky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation project focused on affective and unconscious processes involved in the evaluation of public policy. It follows recent scholarship in political psychology showing how the response to political messages depends greatly on what values and emotions are evoked. Of particular focus has been the notable discrepancy between the conscious way people construe their political judgments and the unconscious operations that more truly account for their views and actions. Motivated by a neuroscientific and psychoanalytic model of the mind and brain that recognizes both the pre-eminence of unconscious (implicit) processing and the primacy of affect in mind (brain) activity, this …

Child Development Theory As A Mediator Of Novice Teachers' Ethnotheories To Increase Learning And Justice In The Classroom, Nancy Michele Cardwell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many urban public schools use teaching methods that isolate and silence children to compel compliance (Schwebel, 2004; Saltman & Gabbard, 2003; Baumrind, 1991). In these contexts, black and brown children are disciplined more often and harshly than white, sent through the court system 70% of the time (Alexander, 2012). Novice teachers, appearing expert without expertise, use unconscious personal theories or ethnotheories to compel compliance, projecting an illusion of expertise without understanding the consequences for children's development and achievement (Elliott, Stemler, Sternberg, Grigorenko & Hoffman, 2010; Skovholt, 2004). An advance in the field would be to learn how ethnotheories interact with …

Inter-Religious Relationships And Anxiety In The Regulation Of Automatic Inter-Religious Prejudice, Karla J. Felix

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Shared reality theory predicts and evidence suggests that inter-religious relationships are motivated to maintain or regulate interpersonal interactions with others. However, this motivation has been given little attention within the automatic attitude literature. This research is centered on the idea that automatic prejudice is moderated by two fundamental themes, shared reality and anxiety. These themes are reviewed to determine the degree to which participants socially tune to ingroup versus outgroup religious experimenters. In Experiment 1, automatic inter-religious attitudes toward Christian and Jewish experimenters were assessed via a subliminal prime procedure. Religious orientation (extrinsic, intrinsic) and regulation of inter-religious relationships were …

Acts Of Belonging: Perceptions Of Citizenship Among Queer Turkish Women In Germany, Ilgin Yorukoglu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how people who have multiple identifications develop a sense of belonging. It focuses on those with politicized, romanticized, and stigmatized identifications which are assumed to be in conflict with one another. My particular case is that of "queer" women of Turkish descent in Germany with Berlin as my main study site.

These people embody what is considered to be an oxymoron: being queer yet also Turkish, being a lesbian yet having a Muslim background, being of immigrant origin yet also German. In short, they are between all worlds and thus, seemingly, do not belong anywhere. Their ambiguous …

'I Like You Both The Same, But For Different Reasons': Differences Between Communication Mediums Related To Self-Disclosure, Responsiveness, And Self-Awareness, Kevin Joseph Wallpe

Theses and Dissertations

As computer-mediated communication (CMC) increasingly becomes a part of people's everyday lives (Mesch & Talmud, 2006), it becomes important to understand what differentiates this mode of communication from traditional face-to-face (FtF) communication. Some studies have shown that CMC interactions are related to greater liking (relative to FtF) of previously unacquainted interaction partners (McKenna, Green, & Gleason, 2002; Ramirez & Zhang, 2007), whereas others have concluded just the opposite -- that FtF interactions are related to more liking of previously unacquainted interaction partners (Mallen, Day, & Green, 2003; Okdie, Guadagno, Bernieri, Geers, & Mclarney-Vesotski, 2011). What leads to the inconsistent findings …

Sex, Power, And Women: Female Viewers’ Perceptions Of Popular Music Video Themes, Whitney Stefani, Ralf R. Greenwald

Student Published Works

Research has linked viewing highly sexual music videos with increased gender role acceptance, and concern over personal physical appearance. However, very few studies have assessed individual differences in how music video sexual content is perceived, and no studies to date have addressed non-objectifying sexual content. In the present study, fifteen college women were exposed to 21 pop music videos and asked to categorize each video on the basis of whether it depicted women a) as sex objects, b) using sex as a source of power, or c) non-sexually. At least one video achieved perfect consensus amongst the participants for each …

The Influence Of Close Others In Daily Goal Pursuit, Jonathan S. Gore

Psychology Faculty and Staff Research

This study tested the hypothesis that daily contact with close others during goal pursuit would activate relationally autonomous reasons and would also be associated with the corresponding levels of goal effort. We also hypothesized that the association would be strongest among highly relational and agreeable people. Participants (n ¼ 49) completed self-construal and agreeableness assessments at a face-to-face session, then they completed daily reports of relational motives, contact with close and distant others, and goal effort daily for the next 6 days online. The results of hierarchical linear modeling analysis showed that contact with friends and family members were associated …

Why Do Narcissists Disregard Social-Etiquette Norms? A Test Of Two Explanations For Why Narcissism Relates To Offensive-Language Use, John Milton Adams, Dan Florell, K. Alex Burton, William Hart

Psychology Faculty and Staff Research

Narcissists often fail to abide by norms for polite social conduct, but why? The current study addressed this issue by exploring reasons why narcissists use more offensive language (i.e., profanity) than non-narcissists. In this study, 602 participants completed a survey in which they responded on a measure of trait narcissism, rated several offensive words on the degree to which the words were attention-grabbing and offensive, and then indicated how frequently they used the words. Consistent with the idea that narcissists use offensive language to gain attention, narcissists were incrementally more likely to use offensive language if they perceived such language …

Social Presence Theory, Isalt Team

iSALT Resources: Theories, Concepts, and Measures

No abstract provided.

Meta-Analysis Of Social-Personality Psychological Research, Blair T. Johnson, Alice H. Eagly

CHIP Documents

This publication provides a contemporary treatment of the subject of meta-analysis in relation to social-personality psychology. Meta-analysis literally refers to the statistical pooling of the results of independent studies on a given subject, although in practice it refers as well to other steps of research synthesis, including defining the question under investigation, gathering all available research reports, coding of information about the studies and their effects, and interpretation/dissemination of results. Discussed as well are the hallmarks of high-quality meta-analyses.

Social Cognitive Theory, Isalt Team

iSALT Resources: Theories, Concepts, and Measures

No abstract provided.

Why Do Narcissists Disregard Social-Etiquette Norms? A Test Of Two Explanations For Why Narcissism Relates To Offensive-Language Use, John Milton Adams, Dan Florell, K. Alex Burton, William Hart

Psychology Faculty and Staff Research

Narcissists often fail to abide by norms for polite social conduct, but why? The current study addressed this issue by exploring reasons why narcissists use more offensive language (i.e., profanity) than non-narcissists. In this study, 602 participants completed a survey in which they responded on a measure of trait narcissism, rated several offensive words on the degree to which the words were attention-grabbing and offensive, and then indicated how frequently they used the words. Consistent with the idea that narcissists use offensive language to gain attention, narcissists were incrementally more likely to use offensive language if they perceived such language …

The Prosocial And Aggressive Driving Inventory (Padi): A Self-Report Measure Of Safe And Unsafe Driving Behaviors, Paul B. Harris, John M. Houston, Jose A. Vazquez, Janan A. Smither, Amanda Harms, Jeffrey A. Dahlke, Daniel A. Sachau

Faculty Publications

Surveys of 1217 undergraduate students supported the reliability (inter-item and test-retest) and validity of the Prosocial and Aggressive Driving Inventory (PADI). Principal component analyses on the PADI items yielded two scales: Prosocial Driving (17 items) and Aggressive Driving (12 items). Prosocial Driving was associated with fewer reported traffic accidents and violations, with participants who were older and female, and with lower Boredom Susceptibility and Hostility scores, and higher scores on Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness, and Neuroticism. Aggressive Driving was associated with more frequent traffic violations, with female participants, and with higher scores on Competitiveness, Sensation Seeking, Hostility, and Extraversion, and lower …

Identifying Perceived Barriers To Monitoring Service Quality Among Substance Abuse Treatment Providers In South Africa, Bronwyn Myers, Zainoisa Petersen, Rehana Kader, J Randy Koch, Ron Manderscheid, Rajen Govender, Charles Dh Parry

Psychology Publications

Background

A performance measurement system is planned for South African substance abuse treatment services. Provider-level barriers to implementing these systems have been identified in the United States, but little is known about the nature of these barriers in South Africa. This study explored the willingness of South African substance abuse treatment providers’ to adopt a performance measurement system and perceived barriers to monitoring service quality that would need to be addressed during system development.

Methods

Three focus group discussions were held with treatment providers from two of the nine provinces in South Africa. These providers represented the diverse spread of …