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- Creator:
- Guzman, Isabel Pacheco
- Description:
- The purpose of this study is to examine group differences in attachment styles and relationship functioning among individuals with high and low psychopathic traits. It was hypothesized that individuals with high psychopathic traits would report greater incidence of dismissing attachment and a lower incidence of secure attachment, relationship satisfaction, and relational-anxiety as compared with individuals with low psychopathic traits. It was also hypothesized that high psychopathic traits will have greater negative associations with secure attachment, preoccupied attachment, fearful attachment, relationship satisfaction, and relational-anxiety, as well as a greater positive association with dismissing attachment as compared to lower levels of psychopathic traits. Procedures included recruitment of 117 undergraduate students and administration of several self-report measures. The high psychopathy group reported greater incidence of fearful attachment while the low psychopathy group reported greater incidence of secure attachment and relationship satisfaction. No significant group differences were found in relationships between psychopathy, attachment, relationship satisfaction, and relational-anxiety. Clinical implications are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Apodaca, Auckje Werkema
- Description:
- This study investigated the possibility that role taking by female subjects would be influenced by acts of power delegation occurring in 2-person groups. Power delegation consisted in having the experimenter transfer to a substitute the responsibility for conducting the experiment. Four conditions of power delegation were attained by varying the sex of the persons designated as source and recipient of power. The combinations of sex of experimenter (E) and sex of substitute (ES) were: male and female (MF), female and female (FF), female and male (FM), and male and male (MM). Thirty-two mixed-sex dyads participated. After E introduced ES as his substitute the two subjects answered a human relations questionnaire. The discussion was tape-recorded for subsequent analysis. After completing the task the subjects were asked to select one of them as the group representative. The measurements of interest were (1.) frequency of task-oriented behavior by female subjects and (2) number of female representatives. The results showed a significant effect for sex of BS. The interaction effect of sex of E and ES was also significant. Comparisons between means showed condition FF significantly larger than all others; no other comparison between means yielded significant results. No significant difference was found between the numbers of females chosen as representatives under the four conditions, but the predicted trend was observed. The main findings of this study were that the female subjects tended to behave in a more task-oriented manner when the recipient of power was a female and more so when both the source and recipient of power were females. These findings seem to warrant further research into the effects of situational variables on female role differentiation in small groups.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Armstrong, Douglas Pierce
- Description:
- Fifty-four men and fifty-four women served as subjects in a two-part experiment designed to test predictions based on Heider's Balance Theory (1946, 1958): specifically, that balanced groups will perform better in problem solving situations than will imbalanced groups. Triads of subjects were first exposed to manipulations of interpersonal attraction designed to create positive balanced groups (+++), negative balanced groups (+--), and imbalanced groups (++-). The groups were then given the task of solving simple common symbol identification problems, and more difficult arithmetic problems. The manipulation of balance/imbalance was found to have significant effects on group performance in the networks, and the data were generally ordered as hypothesized, in line with balance theory: +++ groups were faster and more accurate than +-- groups; +-- groups were faster and more accurate than ++- groups. The depressed performance of the imbalanced groups was attributed to the tension theoretically aroused.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Simon, Darien Audacity
- Description:
- While studies of the gifted are numerous, until recently, they have tended to focus on identification and special educational issues. Social and emotional issues have been explored as adjuncts to education. Except for a few longitudinal follow-ups of classical studies (Terman's and Hollingworth's), once the gifted individual has left school, he/she has been of little interest to researchers. Studies of adult giftedness have focused primarily on historically eminent individuals. There have been two traditional views of the gifted in terms of emotional and social stability. The gifted are either viewed as too well adjusted to require assistance, or they are regarded as inherently neurotic, or even insane. The former view seems to apply in research and education, while the latter is prevalent in society at large. Both positions tend to treat the gifted individual as if he/she were an essentially closed system, as if the effects of social interactions and responses have been excluded from consideration as factors in their lives. This paper describes six personality types, and five personality traits ascribed to gifted individuals in terms of the issues they present for gifted adults. Developmental aspects are also delineated. The gifted adult has grown up expressing traits that characterise giftedness, experiencing feedback from others, and has made choices for expression of excellence or satisfaction of intimacy needs based on this feedback. This forced choice creates internal stressors, while the overt expression of the traits of giftedness creates external stressors. These stressors lead to counseling needs unique to the gifted.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Greisman, Chaya
- Description:
- Self-esteem, an affective evaluation of one's own worth, has been shown to have positive associations with academic performance and achievement, future educational attainment, occupational success and civic involvement, and a negative relationship with delinquency and depression. Additionally, self-efficacy, a cognitive evaluation of one's abilities, is associated with positive outcomes such as increased academic performance, occupational pursuits, and diminished depression. A non-profit organization based in Los Angeles seeks to impact the lives of thousands of youth nationally via an intense creative therapy program. The organization has implemented several large scale projects- all with the same fundamental structure - over the last decade. General feedback has hinted at several potential positive outcomes of participation in the program, most notably selfesteem and self-efficacy. In this first evaluation of the program, surveys with self-esteem and self-efficacy measures were dispersed and collected from groups of the youth both before and after they participated in the program. Analyses of the pretest and posttest scores indicated an improvement in self-esteem for participating female youth, giving validation to the use and further development of the program's general structure.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Skerritt-Perta, Amaia Sofia
- Description:
- Of the first 250 convicted persons later proven innocent through DNA evidence, 16% had falsely confessed during the police investigation. Law enforcement interrogators' increasingly psychological methods frequently employ deception and manipulation accompanied by false evidence during these investigations, despite the fact that many studies have found that such evidence can greatly increase false confessions. Building on the literature, this experiment is the first to compare and contrast the impact of two particular types of false evidence on false confession rates during a Reid Technique-style interrogation: polygraph readings and a confederate accusation. The initial hypothesis posited that the polygraph equipment would elicit more false confessions than the confederate accusation. Because a small sample size precluded formal statistical analysis, the researchers are uncertain as to the broad applicability of these findings, but the results appear to indicate that statements made by a confederate "eyewitness" are more likely to induce false confessions than falsified polygraph data.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Pope Mayers, Jessica Monique
- Description:
- The current study investigated the effect of emotional valence and forewarning on the formation of false memories. Participants read standard instructions or were forewarned about the nature of semantic associations. Participants were asked to recall words from 12 lists containing both neutral and trauma-related words and then completed a recognition task in which words were judged as “old” or “new.” Two hypotheses were tested: first, forewarning would reduce false recall and recognition overall; second, based on previous research, false recognition would be higher for trauma-related words than neutral words. The first hypothesis was not supported, as a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) did not reveal a significant main effect of forewarning on false recall or recognition. The second hypothesis was also not supported; a series of paired samples t-tests indicated that on average participants had higher false recognition for neutral rather than trauma-related words.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Cerda, Jessica Alejandra
- Description:
- The current research investigated factors that influence perceived employability of former offenders: the effects of type of custody (state prison versus county jail versus a CBAC program), type of offense (violent versus N3: non-violent, non-serious, non-sex), vocational and life skills program participation (yes versus no), and work qualifications (high versus low). Another objective was to investigate conditions of the Public Safety Realignment. Seven hundred and eighty-two participants read a job description for a cashier position and then read 1 of 24 applicant descriptions which varied by type of custody, type of offense, program participation, and work qualifications. Participants indicated the degree to which they were willing to hire the applicant. Nineteen additional questions about employment-related attributes (basic skills, thinking skills, personal qualities, and dangerousness of applicant) were assessed. Results revealed interactions between the variables based upon whether the context focused on disqualifications (negative aspects of each condition such as low work qualifications, violent past, absence of vocational and life-skills classes) or qualifications (high work qualifications, non- violent past, participation in classes). Implications of the current research are discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Psychology