Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- All Subjects: Emotions
Description
Since the early 1990's, researchers have been looking at intersections between education and music. After a highly popular study correlating listening to Mozart to temporary increases in spatial reasoning, many other researchers tried to find a link between different musical genres and learning outcomes. Using three musical treatments (Pop, classical, silence), this study had subjects (N=34) complete a reading-based task whereupon they were tested on their comprehension. Using a suite of sensors, data was collected to analyze the participants' emotions and affect while they read from an educational psychology textbook. The present study has two major focuses: They detail whether (1) changes in musical condition affect learning outcomes and (2) whether changes in musical condition affect emotional outcomes. The popular conception that listening to classical music makes you smarter was proven false long ago, but there may actually be some merit to using music to assist one in studying. While there were no significant changes in test scores depending on musical condition; frustration levels were significantly lower for those who listened to classical instead of pop music.
ContributorsPaley, Benjamin Henry (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis director) / Feisst, Sabine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Music (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Emotions have been defined as coordinated and functional changes in subjective experience, motivation, physiological activation, instrumental behavior, expressive behavior, and cognition that are evoked by important threats or opportunities in the environment. The proposed study looks at cognitive changes associated with the experience of several positive emotions, with a specific focus on awe. Prior research shows that positive emotions tend to increase people's use of cognitive heuristics (i.e. mental shortcuts used to simplify information we intake from the environment) and changes how they apply rules of thumb from stored knowledge to make decisions. Stereotypes, or assumptions about the characteristics held by individual members of a group, are one such heuristic. Awe, in contrast to other positive emotions, has been found to reduce people's tendency to rely on heuristics, rather than increasing its use. Thus, awe should tend to reduce stereotyping specifically. Participants made judgments on three characteristics and two types of theoretically valuable true/false statements. However, for both our measures, awe had no significant effect on stereotyping. Participants in the enthusiasm condition were significantly more likely than those in the awe condition to correctly identify stereotype-inconsistent statements present in the biography, which is the opposite of the predicted direction. Patterns for all four emotion conditions trended similarly to our predictions for stereotype-consistent statements correctly marked as being absent in the biography. There were no significant differences in ratings of three traits. Implications for enthusiasm and awe are discussed in the context of stereotypes of social objects and schemas of nonsocial objects.
ContributorsMurwin, Paige Elizabeth (Co-author) / O'Neil, Makenzie (Co-author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12