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- Creator:
- Erica Walker
- Description:
- In everyday life, consciousness appears to be insulated from external control. Processes such as decision making seem voluntary. However, recent theories propose that consciousness operates automatically in a manner resembling a reflex. To investigate the boundary conditions of involuntary processes, the Reflexive Imagery Task (RIT) has been employed to elicit and measure the involuntary entry of contents into consciousness. The current study sought to extend the RIT to attention, while pairing the behavioral measures of the task with electroencephalography (EEG). By manipulating perceptual load and the duration of the presentation of stimuli, we observed decreased frequency and increased latency of involuntary cognitions for stimuli presented for brief durations (90 ms) in comparison to stimuli presented for long durations (10 s). Alpha power reflected subjects’ reports of involuntary cognitions, such that alpha power was significantly lower in the 10 second condition in comparison to the conditions with brief stimuli durations. These findings suggest that environmental content can directly affect how attention is allocated to external stimuli. That the cognitions were involuntary supports the view that attention could also operate reflexively under certain circumstances. This is consistent with a contemporary framework that construes attention as an effect, rather than as a cause, of processing. These findings have implications for many areas of research concerned with high-level cognitive control, including models of attention and action selection.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Alexander J. Cook
- Description:
- Stimulus-driven capture of attention has been used extensively in visual search tasks to examine the automatic deployment of attention. Few studies have examined the attention capture ability of salient singletons when the task requires the participant to not attend to anything. In these studies, involving a variant of the Reflexive Imagery Task, participants were presented with an array of six objects and instructed to not think of the name (subvocalize) of any of the objects presented. In Study 1, another condition instructed participants to subvocalize the name of any of the objects. On half of the critical trials, one object was presented in a color that differed from that of all the other objects (the Singleton condition). In this condition, the subvocalization was for the critical stimulus on a high proportion of the trials for both the voluntary and involuntary conditions. Study 2 included conjunction trials which contained target stimuli defined by two features (color and motion). The attention capture effect was not observed for the conjunction trials, but it was enhanced for trials with a flashing singleton. These results provide evidence that the visual saliency of an object influences which representations enter into consciousness, regardless of whether one intends to attend to the object or not. This finding has implications for advertising and the design of user interfaces.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Marquez, Christina Maria
- Description:
- While there is a positive relationship between self-compassion and compassion toward others (Crocker & Canevello, 2008; Gilbert, McEwan, Matos, & Rivis, 2011), the extent of the relationship between the two variables has not often been investigated. Researchers have identified stressful life events and parenting behaviors as possible predictors of compassionate outcomes throughout development (Kelly & Dupasquier, 2016; Satici, Uysal, & Akin, 2015). A total of 266 (83.70% female) undergraduates (Mage = 23.62, SDage- 5.167) participated in an online study. Participants were asked to complete selfreport surveys specific to measuring stressful life events, recent experiences with positive parenting behaviors, and levels of compassion. It was predicted that positive parenting behaviors would mediate the relationship between stressful life events and compassionate outcomes. Replicating previous work and in support of the hypotheses, there was a positive relationship between compassion toward others and self-compassion, and compassion toward others and stressful life events were also positively correlated. Additionally, self-compassion was inversely correlated with stressful life events reported at 3 months and 12 months while the relationship between life events experienced at least once showed a positive association. The proposed mediation was partially supported such that the relationship between stressful life events at 12 months and compassionate outcomes was mediated by positive parenting behaviors. Specifically, more reports of positive parenting behavior from students who experienced higher rates of recent stressful life events were indicative of higher levels of compassion reported within the sample. Findings from this study provide implications for developmental interventions focused on expanding the capacity for compassion across the lifespan.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Gilbert, Brandilyn Judith
- Description:
- From victimization literature, it is known that victims are often selected because they display nonverbal signals that flag them as easy prey. With the established knowledge that bullies are driven by the urge to dominate, it stands to reason that nonverbal signals of submissiveness may flag individuals as ideal victims. This paper expands the bullying victimization literature by exploring the potential role of nonverbal behavior of victims, specifically their body posture. Participants watched video clips of groups with individuals posed in either dominant, neutral, or submissive posture. They wrote notes to specified actors and then made bullying victim selection judgments. The notes showed less supportive behavior toward male actors with submissive posture than toward those with neutral posture. Participants selected actors with submissive posture significantly more for victimization than actors with neutral or dominant posture. This finding was consistent for male and female groups, as well as for Asian and Caucasian groups. These findings suggest that submissive posture flags individuals for bullying and, for males, results in less supportiveness from peers.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Peters, Phillip E.
- Description:
- Previous literature has shown that parents of children with autism experience more stress compared to parents of children without autism, but little is known about factors that reduce such stress. Based on Baker-Erikzen et al. (2005) explanations of stress, the present study investigated associations between parental stress, advocacy skills, self-efficacy, social support, and service utilization in a sample of 38 mothers and 8 fathers who had a child with autism (Mean Age = 7.17, SD = 3.7). First, social support and selfefficacy were hypothesized to additively explain levels of stress. Additionally, service utilization was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between advocacy skills and stress. Results indicated that more parental stress was associated with fewer advocacy skills, less social support, lower self-efficacy, and lower service utilization. Unexpectedly, service utilization did not mediate the effect between advocacy skill and stress, and social support did not significantly add to a reduction of stress after self- efficacy was explained. In a hierarchical linear regression self-efficacy, advocacy, and service use each uniquely predicted parental stress. Implications illustrated additional support focusing on developing advocacy skills and accessing social support is needed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
6. Evidence for an emotion maintenance deficit in schizophrenia : implications for motivated behaviors
- Creator:
- Cooper, Shanna
- Description:
- A common symptom in schizophrenia is amotivation, which has been linked to lower quality of life and deficits in cognitive functioning. Currently, however, the underlying mechanisms of amotivation are not well understood. The present study investigates emotion maintenance, or the ability to maintain information from an emotional experience, as one potential mechanism of amotivation. Twenty-eight patients with schizophrenia and 19 healthy comparison subjects participated, as part of a larger ongoing study, in a laboratory-based computer task judging intensity of emotionally evocative stimuli after a delay. Following this emotion maintenance task, participants rated the emotional experience of each previously viewed stimulus individually. All participants completed analogous tasks judging brightness of neutral stimuli. Patients with schizophrenia also completed an additional visual working memory task and a series of clinical interviews. Findings indicate that, relative to healthy controls, schizophrenia patients have difficulty maintaining an emotional experience when explicitly instructed to do so, even when controlling for visual working memory. Maintaining an affective state is likely an integral part of goal-directed behavior, and deficits in this area may be a future target for treatment.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Mansoori-Rostam, Sara Michelle
- Description:
- The prevailing U.S. cultural narrative suggests that integration of dual ethnic minority and queer identities should result in greater psychological well-being (PWB). Queer theorists, however, propose that this population might benefit from compartmentalization of one of their conflicting identities, depending on social context. To provide an initial answer to which of these approaches might be more accurate, the present study examined the importance of ethnic and sexual identities and how harmonious these identities are perceived to be on PWB. Specifically, multiple regression analyses predicted PWB using (a) the Affirmation and Belonging subscale of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), (b) the Importance of Sexual Identity, using the Collective Self-Esteem Scale (CSES), (c) Identity Harmony, (d) MEIM x Identity Harmony interaction, (e) CSES x Identity Harmony interaction, (f) MEIM x CSES and (g) respondents’ sexual identities (as lesbians or gay men). Participants low in MEIM and CSES, but high on Identity Harmony showed greater PWB; those high in MEIM and CSES, but low on Identity Harmony also showed greater PWB. These patterns are inconsistent with an identity integration account of well-being, and more consistent with a compartmentalization account. Implications of these results for identity management are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Razavi Ghahfarokhi, Seyed Pooya
- Description:
- Loneliness is associated with cautious strategies, such as lack of self-disclosure, during social interactions—a tendency that is harmful for relationships. Importantly, there is a gap in the literature about the way lonely individuals communicate their emotions, a critical aspect of establishing and maintaining social connections. To address this, I investigated the link between loneliness and expressive suppression in three studies (N = 646) in which participants completed questionnaires (Study 1), imagined a social interaction (Study 2), and went through an experimental manipulation of loneliness (Study 3). Overall, I found that loneliness leads to more negative and less positive metaperceptions about emotional expressivity, which in turn lead to increased expressive suppression. Considering the negative social consequences of expressive suppression, these findings have important implications and can inform future loneliness interventions.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Castellanos, Stacy Michael
- Description:
- Gaydar is thought to be an ability of gay men to identify other gay men. Interestingly, a majority of gaydar research has focused on examining gaydar among straight individuals while limited research examines gaydar among gay-identified people. Given this gap in the literature, this study aimed to investigate gay men's ability to identify the faces of other gay men. Our sample consisted of 114 gay/queer-identified male participants recruited from TurkPrime. Participants categorized the sexual orientation of 42 photographic stimuli of both gay and straight-identified men. Results indicated that this sample of gay men was unable to correctly classify the gay male targets at above chance levels. Follow-up, exploratory correlational analyses indicated that social outness/chronological age and confidence in categorizations were related to gaydar accuracy, in unexpected and expected ways. Given these findings, gaydar may not exist by simply looking at one's face - even for gay men - and future researchers should consider extending gaydar research to examine dynamic social cues related to sexual orientation.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Romero, Kristopher Paul
- Description:
- Previous research on Internet recruitment has suggested that recruitment websites may influence organizational attraction and applicant job pursuit intention. The present study aimed to further explore this topic by assessing whether or not the amount of cultural values displayed on an organization’s recruitment website has any effect upon these two constructs. A between subjects experimental design was utilized in order to test this assumption. Participants were asked to review one of three Internet recruitment websites, each displaying a varying degree of cultural information. After thorough examination, participants were asked to complete a short survey designed to gather information regarding organizational attraction, job pursuit intention, and demographics. The study found no support for previous research findings as the experiment yielded insignificant results. Further explanation of the study and its implications for future research are discussed as well.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Wear, Hope Elizabeth
- Description:
- Game-based assessments (GBAs) are a new type of technologically-based assessment tool which allow for traditional selection concepts to be measured from gameplay behaviors (e.g., completing levels by following game rules). GBAs use game elements to create an immersive environment which changes how assessments are traditionally measured but retains the psychometric properties within the game to assess a variety of knowledge, skills and abilities. In this study we examined the validity of a GBA for use as a measure of RIASEC vocational interests from Holland (1985). Participants played the GBA as well as completed traditional measures of RIASEC interests. We compared the scores from participants for congruence across the different measures using a multitrait-multimethod matrix (MTMM). The results from this study will be used to provide validation evidence for the use of GBA as a method to measure vocational interests and to extend the RIASEC literature to the area of technological assessments.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Reyes, Zaviera Bonita
- Description:
- While the factors are numerous, the mechanisms associated with the capacity for successful outcomes despite challenging circumstances (i.e., resilience) remain underexplored. One proposed mechanism is self-talk. Self-talk is a cognitive process that serves important regulatory functions and is proposed to be influenced by individual’s dispositional sensitivities to cues of reward and punishment. The role of self-talk in the relationship between approach (BAS) and avoidance (BIS) predicting resilient outcomes was examined across three studies with either a recalled or actual stressor. In Study 1, adults use of less reassuring and greater persecuting self-talk mediated the relationship between avoidance motivation (i.e., BIS) and less resilience while the use of greater reassuring self-talk mediated the relationship between approach motivation (i.e., BAS drive and BAS funseeking) and greater resilience. In Study 2, the relationship between BAS drive was replicated in students; yet, BIS predicted less resilience mediated only through the use of less reassuring self-talk. In Study 3, the relationship between BIS and less resilience was replicated from Study 2. Students’ use of motivational, positive, and reassuring self-talk was associated with greater resilient outcomes whereas the use of critical self-talk styles were associated with greater negative emotions pre-stressor, less resilience, greater anxiety, and less positive emotions following an actual stressor. Neither motivation nor resilience correlated with students’ performance scores but inadequate self-talk was associated with higher scores on the actual stressor. Implications for the function of self-talk in a college setting are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Ferreras, Anthony Charlie
- Description:
- The present study was inspired by the lack of research that the effects of the military and combat socialization have on veterans’ civilian social life. A new theory developed by Philip G. Zimbardo and termed Social Intensity Syndrome (SIS) is introduced and expanded upon in the present paper. A 100 item questionnaire was created to measure SIS. The questionnaire was administered to 225 active and retired military men who have and have not experienced combat. A factor analysis of the data resulted in four factors: (a) Military Social Bond, (b) Family/Relationship Bond, (c) Perception of Women, and (d) Social Context Need. Moreover, four military subgroups were compared using mean scores of the overall SIS measure and its four factors. Thirteen significant effects were found and their implications will be discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Du, Frank G.
- Description:
- Collectivism is a cultural value that focuses on the interdependence and harmony within an in-group. Previous research has identified that collectivistic values are associated with positive social outcomes. One reason why collectivists enjoy positive social outcomes is because they engage in behaviors that foster closer relationships. In the present studies, expressions of emotions were examined as another potential behavior that collectivistic individuals engage in to foster closeness. The present studies hypothesized that collectivistic individuals would report more relationship satisfaction and social support from their close friends and that this will be mediated by the expressions of happiness, surprise, and sadness. Two online studies in the United States were conducted to test this hypothesis. Consistent with the hypotheses, expressions of these emotions partially mediated the relationship between collectivism and social outcomes. The effect can be attributed to collectivistic values because the present studies directly assessed collectivism. These results suggest that expressions of happiness, surprise and sadness are beneficial toward relationships for collectivists.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
15. Parentification and psychological well-being : the role of cultural values and perceived unfairness
- Creator:
- O'Leary, Allison K.
- Description:
- Evidence suggests that children may be at risk for psychological maladjustment later in life when they are required to take on parental roles and responsibilities within a family. In light of Minuchin’s theoretical framework and Bowen’s family systems theory, the current study examined the link between retrospective parentification and psychological well-being with cultural values and perceived unfairness as mediators. Participants were 269 adults (59.1% female, 40.5% male, 0.4% transgender; mean age = 31.45) who completed an online survey of demographic questions and self-report measures including a retrospective measure of parentification. The parentification measure was comprised of three components: emotional parentification, instrumental parentification, and perceived unfairness of parentification. Results revealed a significant link between higher parentification and lower psychological well-being, however, perceived unfairness completely explained this association. Separately, emotional and instrumental parentification were not significantly associated with psychological well-being or cultural values. Cultural values were significantly associated with parentification and perceived unfairness and only partially mediated the link between higher parentification and lower environmental mastery. The implications of the present findings are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Wittorp, Danielle Elizabeth Ryan
- Description:
- Rivalry - a competitive relationship in which relational attributes and history amplify the significance of the competition - has received relatively little academic attention (Kilduff et al., 2010). This study explored rivalries among coworkers, extending recent research on sports rivalries. Study 1 gathered examples of rivalry antecedents and outcomes from working professionals. Study 2 assessed the prevalence of these elements and explored their importance, factor structure, and covariates. Results suggest that workplace rivalries are prevalent and impactful and that they share many defining features with sports rivalries, with the notable addition of several undesirable outcomes. Trait competitiveness was the strongest predictor of experiencing beneficial rivalry outcomes (e.g., increased effort), but personally liking one’s rival was the best predictor of a positive rivalry experience. Practical implications for the workplace are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Wallace, Lyndsey
- Description:
- The present research examines how individuals categorize and perceive women relative to men. Specifically, the current study looks to answer the question: Are women individuated less than men; and if so, what role if any, does the gender of the perceiver play? In Study 1, participants (N = 136) made a true/false judgment about whether a target face matched one of three labels: name (subordinate), human (basic), living thing (superordinate). Female faces elicited slower reaction times at the subordinate/individuating level, and faster reaction times at the basic/group, or categorical level, while male stimuli were responded to with equal speed at both the group and individuating level. There were no differences based on participant gender, both male and female participants de-individuated female targets. Study 2 (N= 91) was a conceptual replication, and expansion of Study 1 to a completely within-subjects design. However, the researchers failed to replicate the findings of Study 1; instead, both male and female targets were responded to fastest at the basic/group, or categorical level, and gender. Given the design differences between studies, it is difficult to draw conclusions; however, the compelling results of Study 1 merit further exploration.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Seol, JiYeon
- Description:
- Previous research that examined how collectivism is related to attachment styles and self-disclosure to close others were limited in that in many of the studies did not directly assess collectivism in their participants. The present two studies aimed to address this limitation by assessing collectivism in American participants and examining whether collectivism predicted greater self-disclosure to close friends. In both studies, individuals who endorsed greater collectivism reported engaging in more in-depth self-disclosure to their close friends. This relationship was mediated by avoidant attachment styles. Collectivistic individuals experienced less avoidant attachment to their close friends, which then predicted the depth of self-disclosure to their close friends. These results provide greater understanding of how collectivistic individuals engage in relationship enhancing behaviors, such as self-disclosure.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Manning, Michelle Lauren
- Description:
- My thesis explored whether women’s career expectations for an average ingroup member depend on one or both of the following: (a) career type (stereotypical masculine vs. stereotypical feminine) and (b) attitudes about women in general. The sample (N = 155; all female, 154 cis women, 1 trans woman; all U.S. residents) completed explicit measures of ambivalent sexism and gender-based stigma consciousness and ratings of career expectations of an average woman. Results indicated that women have more negative career expectations for an average woman in a stereotypical masculine career than in a stereotypical feminine career. Also, benevolent sexism may promote women’s tendency to pursue gender stereotypical careers and stigma consciousness may interfere with women’s desire to pursue gender non-stereotypical careers. These findings highlight the role of women’s ingroup gender attitudes in predicting biased career expectations, contributing to the larger psychological understanding of women’s career development.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Pradas, Jevan Miguel
- Description:
- A theory of happiness based on evolutionary theory is presented, followed by the introduction of the Natural Living Test (NLT). The NLT is a list of 45 activities that resemble the way humans lived in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. The NLT was administered to two different samples (N=132 and N=168, respectively). Results showed that persons who reported engaging in more natural behaviors rated higher on feelings of happiness, positive affect, and vitality in both samples. The evolutionary theories of happiness, the results and future directions are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Christensen, Eric Favro
- Description:
- Little research has been conducted on the effects or correlates of workplace attire. I hypothesized that obligations to wear formal attire would be associated with employee strain, as measured by several indicators of well-being. Potential moderators of pay satisfaction, job meaningfulness, and organization deviance from industry norms were believed to moderate this relationship. I administered a survey to measure these variables. Contrary to expectations, there was no relationship between obligations to wear formal attire and well-being. Contrary to expectations, the null effects were not moderated by pay satisfaction and organization deviance from industry norms. However, job meaningfulness did significantly moderate the attire - well-being relationship, but the moderating effect was not in the expected direction. Specifically, workers high in job meaningfulness indicated greater affective commitment when facing formal attire obligations. These results have practical implications for organizations, which strive to maintain both good relationships with employees and successful business outcomes.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Wu, Alison
- Description:
- This study examined how self-compassion and self-esteem are related to constructive responses during a conflict in romantic relationships. During negative self-relevant events, self-compassion has been shown to predict positive affect and motivation to improve, whereas self-esteem predicts aggression, resistance to feedback, and denial. This study suggests that similar reactions may manifest when interacting with a romantic partner, in that self-compassion predicts a constructive response to conflict and self-esteem predicts a destructive response to conflict. Participants completed an online survey in which they rated their levels of self-compassion and self-esteem before describing in detail the last argument the participant had with a romantic partner. Participants then completed measures on how they relate to their significant others, and constructive and destructive behaviors they typically engage in after a conflict. Results showed that self-compassion was a stronger predictor of constructive behaviors including handling conflict more effectively, being less likely to lose control and make personal attacks, compromise and negotiation, and accepting influence from one’s partner compared to self-esteem. In contrast, self-esteem predicted negative conflict behaviors such as handling conflict ineffectively, and marginally predicted less compromise, negotiation, and acceptance of a partner’s influence. These results suggest that in addition self-compassion being a better alternative to self-esteem when relating to the self, self-compassion may also be a better alternative when relating to others.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Levine, Derek
- Description:
- The purpose of the study was to show that earliest, most important, and recently recalled dreams contain predictable threatening themes, building upon Revonsuo’s (2000) Threat Simulation Theory of dreaming. Participants were 101 SFSU students (M age = 25.35, SD = 6.89). Participants completed an online survey, submitting reports of the above dream types, in addition to a Typical Dreams Questionnaire (TDQ) (Nielson, et al., 2003) and other related items. Frequency comparisons of the TDQ responses and content analyses of the dream reports using a Dream Threat Scale (DTS) (Revonsuo & Valli, 2000) resulted in many similar findings to previous literature (e.g., endorsement rankings of most typical dream themes, high description of threatening dream content). For the first time, a TDQ and DTS comparison could be performed within a sample population; the two approaches of scrutinizing dream content supported each other with both resulting in parallel typical themes even though the former used forced-choice and the latter an open format (dream reporting). Sex differences in threatening dream content included a higher proportion of verbal hostility in females’ than in males’ dreams. The current approach of retrospective reports for three dream types found a higher percent of dream material dedicated to describing threat than in previous studies which employed dream journaling immediately after awakening, inferring a recall bias for threatening content over time. Further studies using various age, cultural, ethnic, and other cohort populations are recommended to examine the TST.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Kusano, Kodai
- Description:
- The objective of this thesis was to examine whether uncertainty avoidance dimension of culture produces Unites State-Japan differences in cooperative behavior. I examined how uncertainty operated to produce cooperative behaviors differently between American and Japanese subjects. The subjects’ cooperative behaviors were observed during the ultimatum game. Individual differences in individualism-collectivism, intolerance of uncertainty, and neuroticism were also measured as potential mediators or covariates of the effect of uncertainty and country on the cooperative behavior. Data showed that although there was no cultural difference on cooperative behaviors between Americans and the Japanese, uncertainty generally increased cooperative behaviors across cultures. The individual-level analysis also demonstrated that the Japanese had higher intolerance of uncertainty than did Americans. This thesis suggests that the uncertainty avoidance dimension is a useful cultural framework to explore cultural differences between Americans and Japanese in various domains of behaviors.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Liu, Yunyun
- Description:
- Monolinguals outperform bilinguals in a sentence acceptability judgment task, but not a grammaticality judgment task. A recent study concludes that this pattern of results is evidence for a bilingual advantage in conflict resolution during sentence processing. This study attempts to replicate the previous study with crucial methodological changes, and finds no evidence for a bilingual advantage, yet does offer an alternative interpretation of the previous study's results. Finally, the authors discuss the importance of matching bilingual and monolingual participants on a variety of measures and the effects of confirmation bias on bilingual research.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Sanders, Erica Ruth-Ridgell
- Description:
- The present research sought to expand on the findings of representational role theory by focusing on the evaluation of women leaders who displayed anger and pride. Based on the representational role theory, it was hypothesized that women displaying agentic behavior for communal reasons would be rated less negatively than women who displayed agentic behavior for agentic reasons because the former behavior would be perceived as being more consistent with the gender stereotypes associated with women. After reading a vignette that depicted female or male leaders displaying anger or pride for communal or agentic reasons, participants rated each leader’s likability, status, competence, and deserved salary. The results partially supported the hypotheses. Status ratings of angry and prideful women were significantly higher when they were expressed for communal rather than agentic reasons. Likeability ratings were also higher for prideful women who expressed pride for communal reasons. The same pattern of results was not obtained for competence and deserved salary. The present research adds to a growing number of studies that examine ways to ameliorate the negative perceptions of women who do not adhere to traditional gender stereotypes.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Identifier:
- AS36 2011 PSYCH .S26
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
27. Exploring ethnicity's role in the level of cognitive processing adopted during depressive rumination
- Creator:
- Young, Gerald Robert
- Description:
- Depressive rumination among European Americans (EA) is a harmful style of responding to depressed mood because it is associated with a myriad of negative consequences, including the onset of depression. Recent work suggests that depressive rumination may pose less psychological harm among Asians compared to EA, but the reasons for this are not clear. The current study experimentally tested the hypothesis that depressive rumination differences between EA and Asians are a result of them having different depressive rumination thinking styles. EA and Asian Americans (AA) depressively ruminated about a self-identified unresolved problem and then provided self-descriptions to examine their self-concept. The self-descriptions were coded for whether adjectives (conceptually abstract) or verbs (conceptually concrete) were used to describe the self. There was some evidence that EA used more adjectives than AA in addition to AA using more verbs than EA to describe themselves. These findings suggested that compared to EA, AA may have a more concrete (“constructive”) depressive rumination thinking style. Implications of these findings in the context of theory and past research are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Dennehy, Tara Christa
- Description:
- A primary way to signal gender differences starting in infancy is via clothing color: pink for girls and blue for boys. We examined whether a violation of this seemingly innocuous cue would affect decision-making. Participants were given a modified version of Tversky and Kahneman’s (1981) Asian Disease Problem in a gain frame and asked to make riskaverse or risk-taking decisions about infants dressed in gender-congruent versus genderincongruent colors. In Experiment 1 and 2a, participants tended to choose the risk-averse option when presented with color-congruent and the risk-taking option with colorincongruent infants only. Experiment 2b yielded a surprising finding with female infants, such that girls dressed in pink were subject to riskier decision-making. Experiment 3 addressed the possibility that these findings could be explained through simple expectancy violation. We use psychological essentialism as a framework to discuss why people would make riskier decisions with boys in pink than boys in blue.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Belmi, Peter Ronald Villena
- Description:
- The present study expands the current discourse on the justice-affect link by examining the effect of displayed emotions on overall fairness judgments. One hundred twenty undergraduate students participated in an experiment investigating the effect of different employee affective displays on observers’ perceptions of organizational justice. The findings of this experiment showed that individuals constructed intuitive decisions concerning organizational fairness by relying exclusively on employees’ emotional displays, even if those emotional expressions did not have any direct relationship to fairness. Furthermore, the results showed that the participant’s integral emotion moderated the relationship between perceived affective displays and subsequent decisions concerning justice, providing substantial evidence that emotional states can influence the depth of fairness processing. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Dela Cruz, Kenn Lacsamana
- Description:
- Understanding how children’s cognition relates to their empathy (i.e., the ability to share and understand another’s emotional state) can provide valuable information for children’s socio-emotional development, especially since empathy is related to various child outcomes (e.g. lowering externalizing problems and promoting prosocial behavior). The present study is the first to examine whether Chinese children engage in a specific type of empathy more and whether language ability and executive functioning predict empathy in Chinese children who are growing up in a collectivistic culture. A sample of 92 Chengdu first graders (52% females) between 6 to 7.5 years old (M = 6.79 years, SD = 0.28) completed the Basic Empathy Scale, a working memory task, and an inhibitory control task. Chinese children demonstrated significantly higher cognitive empathy than affective empathy, a trend consistently found in collectivistic cultures. Additionally, Chinese children’s language ability significantly predicted their empathy, more specifically their affective empathy. The present study’s findings allow for further examination of the plausible relationship between children’s social cognition and empathy on cross-cultural basis.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Ng, Amanda
- Description:
- The current study examined if there were neural markers in the brain that can distinguish an individual with high Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) symptoms versus an individual with low GAD symptoms. We recorded brain wave activity to compare activation level of the frontal hemispheres while participants performed a baseline, an anxiety inducing task, and a relaxation inducing task. Our results indicate that there were Date no significant differences in activation between the frontal hemispheres in individuals with low and high GAD symptoms at baseline, after completing an anxiety inducing task, and after a relaxation inducing task. Keywords: electroencephalography, resting state, GAD, frontal lobe, asymmetry
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Pearson, Mercedes Dawn
- Description:
- A crossed-feedback design was used to isolate two possible mechanisms of manhood threat, the antifemininity mandate and self-to-ingroup comparison. Men either received feedback that they were like most men on a culturally feminine characteristic or they were unlike most men on a characteristic that is not culturally feminine. The results from Experiment 1 appeared to suggest that the self-to-ingroup comparison was a mechanism of manhood threat, where men who received the negative self-to-ingroup comparison reported more anxiety than men who received the positive self-to-ingroup comparison. However, results from Experiment 2 suggested that the self-to-ingroup comparison was not a true mechanism of manhood threat, and a Type I error was made in Experiment 1.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Cervantes, Laura Amalia
- Description:
- This research to examine the effects of race socialization and ethnic identity on academic achievement performance in ethnic minority identified adolescents. Ethnic identification, whether strong or weak, could play a role in academic achievement. Strong ethnic identified students who often face both negative academic stereotypes and peer pressure, will adopt anti-academic behaviors and place less emphasis on academic achievement, dis-identifying from school, and possibly dropping-out. Thus, this research sought to examine other possible alternative factors which can account for students’ ability to complete high school other than social-economic status.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
34. Under pressure? perceived pressure to conform to gender stereotypes and religious fundamentalism
- Creator:
- Tanguay, Chabrian Sea Carmichael
- Description:
- Religiosity and pressure to conform to gender stereotypes are often assumed to be correlated. However, previous research has not demonstrated this relationship, mainly because it has correlated religious fundamentalism with either anti-LGBT prejudice or conformity to heteronormativity - not pressure to conform to gender stereotypes. To avoid previous issues, this study used a scale measuring adults’ felt-pressure to conform to and freedom to diverge from gender stereotypes (adapted from Egan and Perry’s, 2001, child measure) to explore any link to religious fundamentalism. We gathered data from cisgender heterosexual women (n = 160) and men (n = 181), and examined polynomial relationships between religious fundamentalism and both felt-pressure to conform and felt-comfort to diverge from gender stereotypes. We found women’s fundamentalism and felt-comfort diverging showed a significant negative linear trend, while men’s fundamentalism and felt-pressure to conform showed a significant quadratic trend, and, finally, men's fundamentalism and felt-comfort diverging showed a significant negative cubic trend.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Sorensen, Katherine Satoko
- Description:
- Previous research has shown that women high in stigma consciousness perceive contempt—an emotion denoting status—as lasting longer on male versus female faces (Inzlicht, Kaiser, & Major, 2008), but this effect did not occur with anger—an emotion not directly associated with status. The present research tested an alternative account that hostility and benevolence toward men, the subfactors of the ambivalence toward men inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1999), explain this pattern. Replicating Inzlicht et al.’s (2008) design, participants completed ambivalent sexism and stigma consciousness scales then rated the duration of emotion expressions on male and female faces that slowly changed from a contempt or anger to neutral then to a happiness expression. The relationship between stigma consciousness and contempt duration was not replicated. However, a correlation between benevolence toward men and contempt duration was observed. No effect was observed for anger. These results suggest that the perception of contempt is related to sexist attitudes toward men and not to stigma consciousness.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Lenta, Jacquelyn Rose
- Description:
- The correlation between role stressors and strain has been found repeatedly in the workplace stress literature. There has been an increase in companies promoting wellbeing in the workplace, often through wellbeing programs, policies, etc. The current study examines the idea that a workplace culture of health could have a buffering effect on the relationship between the role stressors and strain experienced by employees. As supported by the previous research, the current study suggests that the role stressors of role ambiguity and role conflict are related to strain such as emotional exhaustion and turnover intent. The current study furthered the research by suggesting that a workplace culture of health can have a buffering effect on the relationship between role conflict and emotional exhaustion as well as role conflict and turnover intent. However, the buffering effects of a workplace culture of health on the relationships between role ambiguity and the two measures of strain were not statistically significant and these relationships should be examined further.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Thairani, Priyanka Vijay
- Description:
- This study uses data from a self-report online survey to explore how self esteem and cultural orientation correlate with helping attitudes. Understanding prosocial behaviors like helping attitudes explains other positive attributes such as decreases in antisocial behavior and increases in academic success. In this study, culture will be operationalized as the degree to which a person has a collectivistic orientation and individualistic orientation. Participants were college students between the ages o f 18 to 25 Of the participants, 79.1% listed themselves as female, 19.2% as male, and 0.9% declined to answer. Results indicated that higher self esteem and higher individualism were significantly correlated to more helping attitudes; however, collectivism was not. In addition, individualism and self esteem additively predicted helping attitudes although, there were no significant interactions found among self esteem, collectivism, individualism, and helping attitudes. It is important to continue research on helping attitudes to promote prosocial behaviors as they are related to many other positive attributes, such as decreased conflict and harmonious relationships.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Chan, Lann Kim
- Description:
- Previous research has shown that the lay conception of being a woman and feminine is synonymous with motherhood and the gender intensified prescriptions of warmth/kindness coupled with a keen interest in children (Veevers, 1973; Prentice and Carranza, 2003). Women who violate these gender norms of prescriptive traits and voluntarily choose to be childless are likely to be labeled as deviants and subjected to stigma and negative attitudes such as being perceived as selfish, atypical, unwomanly and cold (Gillespie, 2000; Kelly, 2009; Tate et al., unpublished manuscript) (for deviants, see Prentice & Trail, 2010). While previous research has found those who violate the gender norms of prescriptive traits are often labeled as deviants and are seen as “other,” (Gillespie, 2000) research has yet to associate the societal repercussions via dehumanization (for a general discussion on dehumanization, see Haslam 2006). The present research seeks to determine the relative contribution of dehumanization as an everyday mechanism for punishing deviants, specifically to explore whether the relationship between the target’s involuntary or voluntary choice of childlessness and perceived humanness is mediated by the target’s gender typicality and moderated by the target’s gender.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Chong, Joyce Wan Tien
- Description:
- Previous research has demonstrated the accuracy of thin-slice judgments in various domains. Due to the scarcity of thin-slice research in organizational contexts, the present study investigates whether thin-slice interview ratings are comparable to criterion measures. In study 1, participants were exposed to a thin-slice video interview or a full length video interview. In study 2, participants were asked to listen to a thin-slice audio interview or a full-length audio interview. Participants from both studies rated the interview candidates observed in several job and behavioral dimensions. Results demonstrated that thin-slice ratings are comparable to criterion measure in the majority of dimensions (e.g. leadership, trustworthiness, and job performance etc.). Results revealed rating differences by different Big Five personality types. In study 3, participants performed a reason analysis task before producing thin-slice video and audio ratings. Findings showed that reasoning interferes with thin-slice assessment in several dimensions, especially in the audio condition.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Lehr, Daniel Judah
- Description:
- In order to maintain manhood, men engage in prescriptive behavior and avoid proscriptive behavior. Yet, will manhood threats increase prescriptive behavior seeking even at the expense of ethics? In Study 1, men told they had a feminine personality (compared to a masculine personality) had an increase in unethical decision-making, /(92) = 2.28, p = .025, d= .47. In Study 2, men placed in a low status (compared to high status) position also had an increase in unethical decision-making, F (l, 193) = 9.94, p ~ .002, rj2p = .049. In Study 3, both status and gendered personality were simultaneously manipulated to determine the relative strength of each. Results suggest that the feminine personality threat increased unethical decision-making F( 1,193) = 5.14,p = .024, rj2p= .026, more so than the low status threat F(l, 193) = 2.85,/? = .093, ifp= .015. My results therefore suggest that men will seek prescriptive behavior even at the expense of ethics, and that gendered personality threats are stronger than status threats to produce this effect.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Adams, Shane Williams
- Description:
- Little is known about predictors of resilience and recovery in civilians exposed to acute trauma such as a terrorist attack. This study aims to expand the knowledge of adult resilience and recovery in 2,355 World Trade Center (WTC) tower survivors, surveyed by the WTC Health Registry an average of 2.5, 5.5, and 10.5 years after 9/11. Heterogeneous trajectories of posttraumatic stress symptoms were measured using latent growth mixture modeling. Covariates included socio-demographic, exposure/evacuation, and life event characteristics. Four symptom trajectories were identified: low symptom/resilience (72.8%), recovering (6.5%), worsening (8.1%), and chronically elevated (12.6%). Male gender, higher education, higher household income, fewer injuries and horrific events witnessed on 9/11, and fewer recent life stressors predicted low symptom/resilience. Lower household income and fewer injuries sustained on 9/11 predicted recovering. Participants who communicated with friends or family and were actively involved in an organization were more likely to be classified as resilient. Participants who attended religious services were less likely to be classified as resilient but more likely to be classified as recovering. This study demonstrates a healthy posttrauma adjustment and resiliency by 79.3% of WTC tower survivors following the most catastrophic terrorist attack in world history.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Hubbard, Jason Bradley
- Description:
- Interference paradigms such as the Stroop and Eriksen Flanker tasks illuminate the ways in which irrelevant visual stimuli can interfere with action production. However, no one has investigated whether representations that are internally-generated (i.e. not present in the external environment) can systematically elicit interference in ways similar to that of real-world, external stimuli. To illuminate this issue, the authors conducted three experiments based on the Eriksen Flanker task. In one variant of the flanker task, in which flanker-like stimuli were not visually-present but held in working memory (Studies 1 and 2), we found the same perceptual- and response-interference effects found with the classic flanker task. Study 3 found similar response interference effects in a Response-Effect Compatibility paradigm, in which anticipated ‘action effects’ yield response-interference when the effects are incompatible with the to-beperformed action. Together, these findings reveal that the ‘inter-representational dynamics’ among internally-generated representations are similar to those of externally-generated representations.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
43. Love and money (management) : how differences in skill perception predict relationship satisfaction
- Creator:
- Sackman, Rachel Samantha
- Description:
- Recent studies reveal that conflicts around money management in relationships contribute significantly to decreased relationship satisfaction, and can predict relationship termination at all stages of romantic partnerships (Vogler, 2005; Dew, Britt, & Huston, 2012). Research indicates that perceptions of a partner’s abilities can be as powerful in impacting relationship satisfaction as reported money management behaviors (Britt, Grable, Nelson, Goff, & White, 2008), and ability perception may spark financial conflict, leading to relationship dissolution. This study evaluated the role of perception and it’s relationship to money management behavior in predicting relationship satisfaction. Results indicate that while reported money management behavior does not impact relationship satisfaction, participant ratings of skill and the difference between a participant’s skill ratings of themselves and their partner significantly predicted relationship satisfaction, regardless of individual demographics such as age and gender. These findings are supported by social exchange theory and equity theory, and indicate a need for future research to address influences on skill perception in romantic partnerships.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Harter, Ann Katherine
- Description:
- Art is a human universal, but some people seem to need it more than others. Originally proposed by Maslow (1954/1970), the need for aesthetics has been suggested by other researchers, who have attempted to measure aesthetic personality with proxies such as openness to experience, education, experience with the arts, and frequency of aesthetic experiences. Following needs theory, I hypothesized there is a trait-level, non-universal need for aesthetics, an intrinsic motivation toward the arts and aesthetic experience. The scale was developed by paralleling the Need for Cognition Scale (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982), which provided a standard for the psychometric property of the scale. In Study 1, 73 items were generated based on research in the psychology of aesthetics and by adapting those from the Need for Cognition Scale. Examples include “I notice the arts in my everyday environment” and “I consider myself the kind of person who needs art in my life.” As expected (based on the Need for Cognition Scale), a unidimensional factor structure emerged, which explained 64.52% of the variance. In Study 2, the Need for Aesthetics was found to have convergent validity with openness to experience and frequence of aesthetic experiences as well as divergent validity with the need for cognition, among others, consistent with both the aesthetics and needs literatures. Study 3 established the scale’s temporal stability with test-retest reliability, r = .90. The Need for Aesthetics Scale contributes a 9-item valid, reliable scale for future research in both the exploration of the psychology of aesthetics and as an addition to needs theory. Future directions are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Eusebio, Eugene
- Description:
- Previous research has shown that the combination of anger, contempt, and disgust (ANCODI) is related to aggression. However, this was examined within the contexts of incidental emotions and self-selected outgroups. The current study examined (a) whether certain marginalized groups (transgender men and women, or Muslims) spontaneously elicit ANCODI from cisgender men and women, and (b) if ANCODI is related to aggressive thoughts. Results indicated Muslims significantly elicited more ANCODI than transgender women. Although cisgender men experienced more ANCODI than cisgender women, ANCODI was related to aggression only for cisgender women who evaluated the Muslim target group. Results provide support for the ANCODI hypothesis.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
46. Valence from conflict : Stroop interference influences likeability of shapes presented in the past
- Creator:
- Molapour, Tanaz
- Description:
- Research on perception and action reveals that fluent/effortless processing engenders a positive valence toward ambient stimuli. This, however, may not be a complete picture of how valence arises from processing dynamics. In this first investigation on valence from the Stroop effect, participants experienced response interference moments after being presented with a subliminal nonsense shape. Interference engendered a positive valence toward the shape, but only when interference and shape were temporally contiguous (separated by 200 ms). No effects were found for two conditions without response interference, or when the interference and shape were not temporally contiguous. Building on previous findings, these data illuminate how some processing-dynamics are preferred over others.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Wong, Kenson Kin
- Description:
- Work engagement has become a major focus for many organizations. Organizations seek to improve their bottom line by improving their understanding in the factors that contribute to work engagement. The purpose of this research is to determine the relationship between job demands and work engagement, and whether a social psychology concept, the implicit theories of intelligence (ITI), affects this relationship. A total of 190 participants were recruited through both paper and online surveys. Participants were asked on their current level of job demands, work engagement, their beliefs of intelligence and core self-evaluation. The results did not support moderation effect of ITI in the relationship of job demands and work engagement. However, there was unique correlations between the three types of job demands and work engagement. Future studies may benefit greatly by having two distinct scales for each of the theories in I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis. ITI.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- White, Arielle Elizabeth
- Description:
- Despite approximately 30 years of research in the area of prejudicial attitudes toward non-heterosexual persons, to date, there is no single scale that captures respondents attitudes towards four sexual minority target groups relative to each other: lesbians, gay men, bisexual females, and bisexual males. To address this issue, a new scale combined two existing scales (the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men scale, developed by Herek in 1988 and the Attitudes Regarding Bisexuals scale, developed by Mohr and Rochlen in 1999) into an initial 38-item measure. Factor analysis with varimax rotation extracted a single underlying construct: condemnation-tolerance, and item culling resulted in a final 16-item measure comprised of four subscales. It demonstrated high reliability (as > .893), and convergent validity with established homophobia measures (r = .892), as well as predictive validity with gender role beliefs measures (r = .650). This new scale provides a shorter measure that captures self-reported attitudes toward more groups than was previously available.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Morford, Alexandra E.
- Description:
- Emotion regulation (ER) is essential to every day, normative functioning. One aspect of emotion regulation is distress tolerance - the ability to persist in goal-directed activities when experiencing aversive states. Although research on the normative trajectory of distress tolerance during middle adulthood is lacking, there is a need to focus specifically on parents for two reasons: Children depend on parents to model emotions, and parenthood is an especially emotion-provoking aspect of adulthood. Theoretically, emotion regulation becomes less effortful over time due to long-term exposure and practice of dealing with emotion-evoking experiences. The purpose of the current study was to examine distress tolerance in a sample of parents whose eldest child belongs to one of three developmental groups (i.e., infancy, toddlerhood, pre-adolescence), and to evaluate potential moderators of the relationship between child’s age and parents’ distress tolerance. A total of 602 parents (66.3% female, Mage = 32.31 years, SD = 7.07) completed an online survey. The results indicated that although there was not a main effect of child’s age on parent distress tolerance, children’s negative affect and parents’ feelings of social support moderated the association between child age and parent distress tolerance. As children got older, parents that reported higher social support reported better distress tolerance. Children high in negative affect had parents who reported less distress tolerance as the child got older. The implications of the current study are discussed in the context of how the findings might contribute to future studies within developmental and clinical psychology.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Tooch, Erin Nicole
- Description:
- The use of job applicant personal information obtained via online social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook has become a growing medium for the selection and hiring of employees. The purpose of this research was to determine whether information about applicant personality, communicated through SNS profile, would impact job applicant hirability. A total of 367 participants were given a Facebook profile with one of three conditional levels of the Big Five trait conscientiousness. Participants were asked to assess the candidate’s basic resume and Facebook profile and complete personality assessments and predicted job performance measures. Results suggest that observers were able to accurately assess the level of conscientiousness presented in the Facebook profile. In addition, the applicant high in conscientiousness was predicted to perform better on the job and was considered a better fit and more hirable than the low conscientiousness applicant. These findings suggest that Facebook profiles could be used to accurately predict personality and potential job performance.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- San Francisco
- Department:
- Psychology