Social Psychology Commons^™

Daily Creative Practice: A Path To Well-Being For Self + Society, Ellie Cashman

Masters Theses

Daily creative practice is a proven way to promote health and happiness, and to counteract what many are currently calling a global crisis in mental health.

There has perhaps never been a better time to be creative. Our collective healing and future human flourishing depend on it.

The author’s life and teaching experiences are explored, in the context of human history, (social) psychology and the challenges of contemporary culture.

Finally, the author offers a preview of a curriculum for Daily Creative Practice that will be further developed and implemented in Fall 2025, thanks to a grant from RISD’s Graduate Commons. …

Welcome To My Mind Palace: The Power Of Fantastical Thinking, Sadie Levine

Masters Theses

What follows is a record of my efforts to make the magic and horrors of my internal world tangible and shareable. The brain constructs hyper-specific fictional realities from childhood to adulthood, yet the scientific study of the mind often forgoes the subjective and the visual. I offer a complementary exploration of the mind - one that is highly visual and based on my own experiences, yet still contextualized in psychological research. Finding the magic in everyday life, and by extension, retreating into alternate realities, is a conscious choice I make, but I have not always had the option to choose. …

Piloting Trauma-Informed Workshops To Enhance Life Skills In Housing Transitions: Action Research, Negar Ghaderi

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This action research pilot project explores how trauma-informed, life skills workshops grounded in critical and creative thinking methods can support Housing First (HF) residents transitioning from homelessness to permanent housing. The study is based on the understanding that addressing homelessness requires more than housing provision—it demands attention to the cognitive and emotional impacts of trauma through co-created, resident-centered interventions. Using iterative cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting, the project engages a small, fluctuating group of 4–5 participants from a diverse community of 60 HF residents. The pilot program includes six workshops, one focus group discussion, and individual interviews over …

Embodying Altruistic Love: The Role Of Emotions In Teaching Black Students With Disabilities Within An Inclusive Elementary School, Joshua Armentrout

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Teacher emotions play a pivotal yet understudied role in shaping the educational experiences of Black students with disabilities (SWDs). This study examines how five special educators in a fully inclusive elementary school understand, experience, and navigate their emotions in relation to Black SWDs. Using a qualitative approach grounded in portraiture, this study explores the intersection of race, disability, and emotion, revealing how teachers internalize, resist, and negotiate dominant ideologies within the broader educational system.

Guided by a three-dimensional space framework from the field of narrative inquiry—temporality, sociality, and spatiality—this study traces how educators’ emotions are shaped by past experiences, social …

A Teacher, A Tutor, A Friend: Chatgpt And The High School Experience, Saisha Gupta, Vivek Mehta, Rebecca Kam, Caroline Ehmann, Alma Orgad, Emily Kuang, Alejandro Castro Barrantes, Matthew Posada, Samay Shah, Nikhita Prasad, Tara Pai, Eileen Ho, Shirley Xi, Tianyi Zhou, Elaina Li, Stephanie Wan, Shreya Paranjape, Zoe Dearling, Siqi (Grace) Peng, Aanya Kaveti, Gwendolyn Lowrance, Angela Ziyi Xie, Mira Xu, Adhiti Hariram, Alexa Muse

The Qualitative Report

Given the increasing emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, high school students' perspectives on ChatGPT are underrepresented in current research literature. As high school student researchers in an English Language Arts course, we approached this gap in literature by asking the question: In what ways do pressures within high school communities influence students’ perspectives on justifying or rejecting the use of ChatGPT? We interviewed 24 secondary students and conducted a thematic and discourse analysis, coding the interviews through the lenses of social goods (Gee, 2014), Figured Worlds (Holland et al., 1998), and positioning theory (Holland et al., 1998; Ingram …

Mapping Our Tears: Risd Cry, Yimiao Wang

Masters Theses

RISD CRY is a participatory project empowering the RISD community to share their experiences of emotional vulnerability. The project includes physical sign-in forms in campus facilities, a Google Doc sign-in form, illustrations of participants’ comments, and an online campus map where individuals can mark where they have cried. This multi-format engagement fosters community connection, challenges the stigma surrounding emotional expression, and provides a platform for solidarity among individuals facing stress and burnout.

Beyond its tactical goals, RISD CRY also interrogates the cultural frameworks through which emotional struggle is perceived and processed. It critiques the institutional impulse to measure, diagnose, and …

The Red Thread: Objects As Medium, Hsin-Ning Alin Yang

Masters Theses

There are moments when people hesitate to speak their emotions or needs
—whether it’s love that feels too shy to articulate, needs that risk sounding too forceful, or feelings too vague to verbalize. By shifting the priority of emotion and communication factor ahead of pure functionality, this thesis posits that objects can serve as an alternative medium of communication.

This thesis begins by examining the root causes of communication difficulties and the coping strategies people use, ultimately identifying five situations in which objects can effectively substitute for verbal interaction. Building on these categories, the thesis explores how an object’s features, …

Philip Zimbardo And The Heroic Age Of Social Psychology, George R. Goethals

Heroism Science

This article explores Phil Zimbardo’s heroic contributions to social psychology within a framework that I call The Heroic Age of Social Psychology. This heroic era roughly spanned the years from social psychology’s inception in the early 1930s to the 1980s, during which Zimbardo conducted much of his most groundbreaking research. Zimbardo’s heroic influence can be attributed to research and service that transcended his famous prison experiment. Most notable were his contributions to teaching psychology to students and to the general public. Zimbardo demonstrated a lifetime of personal generosity and service to the discipline and to others outside the field of …

Cultivating Workplace Wellness: An Evaluation Of Gratitude Card Interventions Among University Faculty, Jeffrey Druck, Patrick Ockerse, Jamal Jones

Journal of Wellness

Introduction: There has been a growing interest in understanding the role of gratitude in promoting well-being. Gratitude, defined as a feeling of thankfulness and appreciation in response to receiving a benefit from someone else, has been shown to improve mood, increase social support, and decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety. This research paper explores an innovative intervention using gratitude cards for faculty members and measures the emotional impact of this intervention.

Methods: The study involved 32 clinical physicians from the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Utah. Participants were invited to write a gratitude card to …

Poetries Of Abandonment: A Study Of Plath And Glück, Yara Abdelmoneim

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersection between literature and trauma, which can be discerned in the key works of two poets, Sylvia Plath and Louise Glück. While offering readings of crucial poems, the thesis also examines the interrelations among trauma, memory and narrative as theorized by two contemporary psychiatrists, Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Herman. Both Plath and Glück wrote about personal and generational trauma after going through different experiences of abandonment. Absence, indirection and repetition provide the basis for literary techniques that allow their traumas to be better understood by authors and readers alike. The degree to which each …

Burnout, Life Satisfaction, And Meaning-Focused Coping In Correctional Mental Health Providers, Danielle Janet Tsamouris

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Studies have found that burnout among correctional mental health providers is related to unique stressors that impact their physical, psychological, and emotional health, including the perceived and actual threat of violence. Using the transactional theory of stress and coping, the purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the influence of burnout and meaning-focused coping strategies on life satisfaction in correctional mental health providers. Online survey data from 102 master’s-holding correctional mental health professionals were recruited by SurveyMonkey who also administered the survey. Results from a standard multiple regression analysis suggested that meaning-focused coping strategies significantly and positively influenced life …

Open Studio Concept Conducted By An Expressive Arts Therapist And Art Therapy Intern As A Replacement For Art Class In Special Education, Brianna Jewett

Expressive Therapies Theses

In 2022-2023, 15% of U.S. public school students between the ages of 3 and 21 were on an Individualized Education Plans (IEP) due to various disabilities. This paper examines the impact of an open studio model, conducted by expressive arts therapists, on the engagement of students with social and emotional disabilities aged between 16 and 18 years old. A thematic analysis of qualitative data revealed that using an open studio model facilitated by expressive arts therapists in place of a more traditional art education class for students who require additional social and emotional assistance can foster a sense of control …

Early Adolescent Intervention: A Therapy Group For Girls, Madelyn A. Ohm

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

As mental health concerns are on the rise, especially among adolescents, it is important to consider promoting early intervention. Paying attention to the nuances surrounding personal identity and interpersonal relationships during adolescence is crucial. Dialectical-Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills encompass just what is needed to address said nuances, including interpersonal effectiveness skills, emotion regulation skills, distress tolerance, and mindfulness. Thus, the proposed DBT group and therapeutic manual designated for adolescent girls summarizes and explores suggestions for early intervention of mental health services. This, alongside the careful attention to the population’s specific needs and noted modules, allows for the exploration of mental …

A Psychocosocial Behavior Modification That Impacts Social Belonging In College Students, Julia Roland

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Disparities in educational attainment have been at the forefront of many educational leaders' minds. For those in higher education, finding solutions to eliminate these disparities is critical to their viability. Research on these disparities has led to an encouraging discovery centered around the psychological construct of social belonging. Studies have been finding evidence that a student's sense of social belonging impacts their academic success in college. Furthermore, researchers have discovered an intervention that fosters a student's sense of belonging. This intervention has been shown to increase a student's sense of belonging at college and, in turn, has increased the students' …

The Lasting Impact Of Belonging: Exploring The Relationship Between Undergraduate Experiences And Black Alumni Contributions, Kauna Greene

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

Black alumni at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) remain underrepresented in alumni engagement and philanthropic research, despite a long and well-documented tradition of Black philanthropy. This qualitative, phenomenological study examines the relationship between undergraduate experiences and the post-graduation engagement of Black alumni from a private PWI in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Guided by Strayhorn's (2019) theory of sense of belonging, the study investigates what motivates Black alumni to contribute financially, non-financially (through mentorship, event attendance, and volunteering), or not at all, and how undergraduate feelings of belonging shape those decisions. Data were collected through an anonymous online survey …

Characteristics Of Parent-Adolescent Relationships As Predictors Of Adolescents’ Future Emotion Regulation Abilities, Jaclyn H. Snyder

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Adolescence is a critical period for the development of emotion regulation skills and parents play a pivotal role in the shaping of such skills. Indeed, several characteristics of the parent-child relationship have been implicated in adolescents’ emotional development. Namely, parental acceptance of adolescents’ emotions, the quality of parent-child attachment, and the tactics parents utilize to resolve conflict with their child appear to be significant sources of influence. The current study aimed to examine each of these three factors as possible predictors of adolescents’ emotion regulation abilities later in life. Additionally, this study sought to understand the relative strength of these …

Power Impacts Target Goals And Responses To Racism, Urmi Chatterjee

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Racial microaggressions are harmful to people of color (POC) and inhibit their social functioning in the long term. Explicit forms of racism have been focused on in previous studies on interpersonal racial interactions. While studies have found the effect of confrontation on POC who experience subtle racism, other forms of responses to racism lack research. Are responses influenced by how powerful targets are? What happens when a powerful target experiences subtle racism? This study shows how power shapes the strategies people of color use to respond to subtle racism. We used a negotiation framework between three types of goals and …

Grief As Slip: (How Little I Show) An Exploration In Clay, When Words Are Not Enough, Michelle A. Smith

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Grief as Slip (how little I show) implies that even as we acknowledge our mortality and the fleeting nature of life, we still only reveal a fraction of our true selves or our deeper realities. The ceramic artwork in this exhibition carries and conveys a journey through the present and remembered emotions of the artists’ personal narrative. By juxtaposing the tactile nature of clay with the ethereal quality of human experience, Smith contemplates the profound interplay between material transformation and emotional resilience. The exhibition’s intent is to translate the essence of complex emotional states into abstracted forms so they can …

Stronger Together: A Mixed-Methods Examination Of Identity, Efficacy, And Emotions In Young Adults’ Collective Action, Kindy Insouvanh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Young adults are increasingly engaging in collective action for social change, yet we lack a clear understanding of the factors driving their participation in social movements. This mixed-methods study uses a social psychological framework to examine key quantitative factors related to young adults’ intentions to engage in collective action for racial justice, as well as their reasoning around their involvement. A survey of 373 racially and ethnically diverse young adults (18-35 years old) assessed the impact of racial justice ally identity, emotions (anger and contempt), and dimensions of efficacy on action intentions. Path analysis revealed that young adults’ identification as …

Quiet Times: The Application Of Self-Management To Private Spiritual Practices, Noah R. Branson

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

A “quiet time” refers to the private spiritual practice of reading the Bible, praying, and meditating on one’s own initiative outside of religious sanctioned events. This study examines the effect of a self-management intervention on establishing and maintaining the habit of a daily quiet time. The study’s hypotheses predicted there would be an increase in quiet time 1) frequency, 2) duration, and 3) overall satisfaction from the baseline phase to the intervention phase. Data was collected via a daily check-in and pretest/posttest surveys, and participants attended an in-person intervention to determine how to apply self-management tactics to their own personal …