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- All Subjects: psychology
- All Subjects: Sustainability
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Arizona State University
- Status: Published
Description
University-level sustainability education in Western academia attempts to focus on eliminating future harm to people and the planet. However, Western academia as an institution upholds systems of oppression and reproduces settler colonialism. This reproduction is antithetical to sustainability goals as it continues patterns of Indigenous erasure and extractive relationships to the Land that perpetuate violence towards people and the planet. Sustainability programs, however, offer several frameworks, including resilience, that facilitate critical interrogations of social-ecological systems. In this thesis, I apply the notion of resilience to the perpetuation of settler colonialism within university-level sustainability education. Specifically, I ask: How is settler colonialism resilient in university-level sustainability education? How are, or could, sustainability programs in Western academic settings address settler colonialism? Through a series of conversational interviews with faculty and leadership from Arizona State University School of Sustainability, I analyzed how university-level sustainability education is both challenging and shaped by settler colonialism. These interviews focused on faculty perspectives on the topic and related issues; the interviews were analyzed using thematic coding in NVivo software. The results of this project highlight that many faculty members are already concerned with and focused on challenging settler colonialism, but that settler colonialism remains resilient in this system due to feedback loops at the personal level and reinforcing mechanisms at the institutional level. This research analyzes these feedback loops and reinforcing mechanisms, among others, and supports the call for anti-colonial and decolonial reconstruction of curriculum, as well as a focus on relationship building, shifting of mindset, and school-wide education on topics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and systems of oppression in general.
ContributorsBills, Haven (Author) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Goebel, Janna (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Several states within the United States have recently passed the Victim Life Photo Act, which allows prosecutors to present photographs of alleged murder victims when they were alive during the guilt phase of a trial. Critics argue that these photographs do not offer any relevant information about the crime or the defendant’s potential guilt and might bias jurors to vote guilty based on their sympathy for the victim—perhaps disproportionally so for high-status victims. Two mock trial experiments tested whether online participants who viewed alleged murder victim photographs would convict more because they increase anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and/or sympathy. Mock jurors who saw photographs of White (but not racial minority) victims while they were alive reported more sympathy for the victim relative to those who saw the same evidence without a photograph of the living victim—but the sympathy did not increase convictions (Study 1). Study 2 extended this study by testing whether the living victim photographs are more impactful in conjunction with seeing gruesome photographs of the victim after her death, creating a particularly disturbing contrast effect versus seeing the living photograph alone. Study 2 found that (a) living victim photographs on their own again had no effect on participants’ verdicts, (b) gruesome photographs on their own increased convictions through increased disgust, and (c) participants who saw both living and gruesome murder victim photographs (versus gruesome alone) were more conviction prone due to increased anger and sympathy. These studies inform current debates regarding the controversial Victim Life Photo Act: Admitting living victim photographs during the guilt phase—if presented along with gruesome photographs—can make jurors more sympathetic and angry, which can increase convictions.
ContributorsAdamoli, Madison Marie (Author) / Salerno, Jessica M (Thesis advisor) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Thirty percent of engineering students suffer from extremely severe stress, which is associated with poor academic performance, decreased motivation, and poor mental health. As a result, new, effective techniques must be developed to improve student outcomes. A potential technique that could be valuable in the classroom is persuasion techniques. There are six primary persuasion techniques: reciprocity, liking, social proof, scarcity, commitment, and authority (coercive and expert). Persuasion has been studied exhaustively with respect to altering behavior (e.g., sales, compliance), but has only briefly been studied in education. Studies show that positive student-teacher relationships can improve grades, positive peer relationships can improve mental health, and coercive power can increase stress. No studies have examined all persuasion techniques with respect to student outcomes, and this study aims to fill that gap. The objective of this study is to evaluate the use of persuasion techniques in the classroom to improve mental health and enhance academic outcomes.
I hypothesized that methods that enhance community and improve sense of belonging (reciprocity, commitment, liking, social proof) will lead to better academic and mental health outcomes, and methods associated with negative professor attitudes (coercive authority) will lead to poor academic and mental health outcomes. To evaluate these hypotheses, a sample of 336 university students were surveyed to see which persuasion techniques they perceived their professors to use and examine the effects of these on academic outcomes (grades, attendance, assignments) and mental health outcomes (engagement, positive impact, stress, well-being, executive function).
The data partially supports the hypotheses, with various student academic and mental health outcomes significantly improving with higher use of liking, social proof, commitment, and expert authority, and worsening with higher use of coercive authority. In conclusion, by teaching professors to use liking, social proof, expert authority, and commitment in their classrooms while decreasing coercive techniques, professors can effectively improve student grades and mental health.
ContributorsPautz, Daniella Joy (Author) / Honeycutt, Claire F (Thesis advisor) / Smith, Barbara S (Committee member) / Middleton, James A (Committee member) / Krause, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Research on self-regulatory variables like mindfulness and effortful control proposes strong links with physical and mental health outcomes across the lifespan, from childhood and adolescence to adulthood and old age. One pathway by which self-regulation may confer health benefits is through individual differences in reports of and emotional responses to daily negative and positive events. Mindfulness is broadly defined as non-reactivity to inner experiences, while effortful control is broadly defined as attentional and behavioral regulation. Mindfulness and effortful control have both been conceptualized to exert their beneficial effects on development through their influence on exposure/engagement and emotional reactivity/responsiveness to both negative and positive events, yet few empirical studies have tested this claim using daily-diary designs, a research methodology that permits for examining this process. With a sample of community-dwelling adults (n=191), this thesis examined whether dispositional mindfulness (i.e., non-reactivity of inner experience) and effortful control (i.e., attention and behavioral regulation) modulate reports of and affective reactivity/responsiveness to daily negative and positive events across 30 days. Results showed that mindfulness and effortful control were each associated with reduced exposure to daily stressors but not positive events. They also showed that mindfulness and effortful control, respectively, predicted smaller decreases in negative affect and smaller increases in positive affect on days that positive events occurred. Overall, these findings offer insight into how these self-regulatory factors operate in the context of middle-aged adults’ everyday life.
ContributorsCastro, Saul (Author) / Infurna, Frank (Thesis advisor) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Users of psychedelic drugs frequently report various types of healing effects after the experience has completed. How these substances actually do the healing work is still being understood. I argue that the phenomenology of the psychedelic experience is relevant to and doing at least some of the healing work. This occurs in part via the phenomenon of transformative experiences. Psychedelic experiences provide insight into first and second order desires of an individual. They alter an individual’s self-narrative and provide an ideal to aim for in addition to the motivation to achieve that ideal. Additionally, psychedelic experiences foster feelings of connection to other people and nature. This heals through altering an individual’s in-group/out-group perceptions and provide a sense of oneness which increases accurate perspective taking. The experience of ego-dissolution had under psychedelics can be compared to the ultimate transformative experience—death—which facilitates the healing process. These experiences promote social healing and serve as a reopening of previously closed possibilities due to trauma or mental illness.
ContributorsCriddle, Alex (Author) / Phillips, Ben (Thesis advisor) / Priest, Maura (Committee member) / Saint, Michelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Statistical word learning (SWL) has been proposed and tested as a powerful mechanism for word learning under referential ambiguity. Learners are adept at resolving word-referent ambiguity by calculating the co-occurrences between words and referents across ambiguous scenes. Despite the generalizability of such capacity, it is less clear which underlying factors may play a role in SWL, such as learners’ language experience and individual differences of working memory. The current study therefore asked two questions: 1) How do learners of different language experience (monolinguals and bilinguals) approach SWL of different mapping types–when each referent has one name (1:1 mapping) or two names (2:1 mapping)? and 2) How do working memory capacities (spatial and phonological) play a role in SWL by mapping type? In this pre-registered study (OSF: https://osf.io/mte8s/), 69 English monolinguals and 88 bilinguals completed two SWL tasks (1:1 and 2:1 mapping), a symmetry span task indexing spatial working memory, and a listening span task indexing phonological working memory. Results showed no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in SWL of both mapping types. However, spatial and phonological working memory positively predicted SWL regardless of language experience, but only in 1:1 mapping. The findings show a dissociation of working memory’s role in SWL of different mapping types. The study proposes a novel insight into a theoretical debate underlying statistical learning mechanisms: learners may adopt more explicit processes (i.e. hypothesis-testing) during 1:1 mapping but implicit processes (i.e. associative learning) during 2:1 mapping. Future studies can locate memory-related brain areas during SWL to test out the proposal.
ContributorsLi, Ye (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis advisor) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Although social cognitive deficits are considered a hallmark trait of schizophrenia, research on schizotypy and social cognition is inconsistent. The present study examines the associations among schizotypy, aberrant salience, and social cognition. Schizotypy and aberrant salience were assessed continuously using the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire Brief Revised (SPQ-BR) and the Aberrant Salience Inventory (ASI). Social cognition was examined using The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), an audio-visual paradigm that taps into multiple domains of social cognition. Data from 849 undergraduate students was analyzed. Results indicated that schizotypy overall was not associated with social cognitive deficits. However, when schizotypy was analyzed dimensionally, positive schizotypy was associated with social cognitive impairments. Further, aberrant salience was revealed to be consistently associated with social cognitive impairments, except when positive schizotypy was included in the model. This suggests the possibility that positive schizotypy could mediate the association between aberrant salience and social cognition. Overall, this study highlights the importance of focusing on positive schizotypy and aberrant salience in future investigations of social cognitive difficulties in psychosis.
ContributorsArnett, Ciera (Author) / Karoly, Paul (Thesis advisor) / Corbin, William (Thesis advisor) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) remains a persistent problem around the world, even though antiretroviral therapy has shown to be effective in reducing viral load and limiting transmission of the virus. Due to HIV’s infectious nature, visibility, the populations at risk, and its connections to race, class, and sexuality, it is more stigmatized than any other illness. HIV stigma has been associated with increased depression, social isolation, and poor psychological adjustment. HIV stigma can influence disclosure and care-seeking behavior. Internet-based interventions have shown to be effective in increasing knowledge on STIs and HIV, however, researchers have tested strategies that include educating participants on HIV to reduce stigma and have found that informational approaches alone are not effective. There is evidence that emotional intelligence and empathy are associated with prosocial behavior and influence attitudes towards stigmatized groups. Thus, this thesis aims to test an online intervention using an informational video from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in combination with an empathy-generating component to reduce stigma. It was hypothesized that the online intervention would increase HIV knowledge scores (H1), but stigma will only be reduced in the group introduced to the empathy-inducing component (H2) and those with high emotional intelligence would show the greatest reduction in stigmatizing attitudes (H3). Results did not support these hypotheses, suggesting that the CDC’s video does not significantly increase HIV knowledge in the general public. Further, the video intended to generate empathy and reduce stigma was also ineffective. These findings stress the need for further research and questions the effectiveness of empathy-generating interventions (e.g., FACES OF HIV, HIV Justice Network) to increase knowledge and reduce stigma. Future researchers should test the effectiveness of personalized interventions to reduce HIV-related stigma.
ContributorsEl-krab, Renee (Author) / Vargas, Perla (Thesis advisor) / Roberts, Nicole (Committee member) / Chen, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Automation is becoming more autonomous, and the application of automation as a collaborator continues to be explored. A major restriction to automation’s application as a collaborator is that people often hold inaccurate expectations of their automated collaborator. Goal alignment has been shown to be beneficial in collaborations and delegation decisions among human-human and human-automation collaborations. Few studies have investigated the difference that goal alignment has on human collaborators compared to automated collaborators. In this 2 (goal aligned or misaligned) x 2 (human or automated) between-subjects study, participants complete a simplified triage patient task and then are given the opportunity to stay with their manual task solution or to delegate their decision and go with their collaborator’s recommendation. Participants never delegated to collaborators with goals that were not aligned to theirs. Participants working with human collaborators that have similar goals to them were more often delegated to and more often associated with a better triage performance. These results can inform the design of similar systems that foster collaboration and achieve better team performance. Although goal alignment was crucial for delegation decisions, it was difficult to achieve complete agreement of goals. Future research should investigate effective methods to better communicate goals among collaborators.
ContributorsLee, Jessica Rose (Author) / Chiou, Erin K (Thesis advisor) / Cooke, Nancy J (Committee member) / Lum, Heather C (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
ABSTRACT
It is unclear how often defense attorneys ask child complainants questions with implied meanings. The present study examined the frequency and content of implied questions asked to 6- to 17-year-old children and analyzed how often children rebutted these questions. This study focused on cross-examinations (N = 122) of child complainants in Child Sexual Assault (CSA) trials. Content analysis revealed prevalent themes of implicit questions that alluded to child complainants having ulterior motives, having been coached, being untruthful, missing disclosure opportunities, having poor memory, and other credibility issues. Implicit questions were posed in 63% of cases, with children rebutting only 11% of implied inquiries. No significant correlations were found between the age of the child testifying and the frequency of implicit questions or rebuttals. However, as children age they are more frequently asked questions related to truthfulness and credibility issues and are less frequently asked implicit inquiries about coaching. These findings present novel evidence that children are frequently asked difficult to answer implicit questions that imply the child has ulterior motives, and that attorneys change the focus of the content of their implicit questions by age.
ContributorsSobrilsky, Lea (Author) / Stolzenberg Roosevelt, Stacia (Thesis advisor) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / O'Hara, Karey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024