Matching Items (28)
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- All Subjects: psychology
- Creators: Salerno, Jessica
Description
While acceptance towards same-sex marriage is gradually increasing, same-sex marriage is banned in many states within the United States. Laws that prohibit same-sex couples from marrying have been shown to increase feelings of depression, exclusion, and stigma for same-sex attracted individuals. The intention of this study was to explore the effect both pro- and anti-same-sex marriage advertisements have on heterosexual individuals' implicit attitudes towards same-sex couples. It was predicted that exposure to anti-same-sex advertisements would lead to viewing same-sex couples as more unpleasant and heterosexual couples as being more pleasant. However, heterosexual participants who viewed anti-same-sex marriage ads were more likely to rate heterosexual couples as being unpleasant and same-sex couples as pleasant. It is theorized that viewing anti-same-sex marriage advertisements led heterosexual individuals to report heterosexual stimuli as being more unpleasant compared to same-sex stimuli as a form of defensive processing.
ContributorsWalsh, Theodora Michelle (Author) / Newman, Matt (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Bully victimization has been associated with blunted cardiovascular responses to stress as well as elevated responses to stress. The difference between these altered physiological responses to stress is largely unknown. This study explored several possible moderators to the relationship between chronic stress and future cardiac output (an indicator of increased stress) in response to future stressors. These moderators include the difference between social and physical stressors and individual levels of loneliness. Participants were administered measures of loneliness and victimization history, and led to anticipate either a "social" (recorded speech) or "non-social" (pain tolerance test ) stressor, neither of which occurred. EKG and impedance cardiography were measured throughout the session. When anticipating both stressors, loneliness and victimization were associated with increased CO. A regression revealed a three-way interaction, with change in cardiac output depending on victimization history, loneliness, and condition in the physical stressor condition. Loneliness magnified the CO output levels of non-bullied individuals when facing a physical stressor. These results suggest that non- bullied participants high in loneliness are more stressed out when facing stressors, particularly stressors that are physically threatening in nature.
ContributorsHaneline, Magen (Author) / Newman, Matt (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Miller, Paul (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The main objective of this study was to use a genetically-informative design to examine the putative influences of maternal perceived prenatal stress, obstetrical complications, and gestational age on infant dysregulation, competence, and developmental maturity. Specifically, whether or not prenatal and obstetrical environmental conditions modified the heritability of infant outcomes was examined. A total of 291 mothers were interviewed when their twin infants were 12 months of age. Pregnancy and twin birth medical records were obtained to code obstetrical data. Utilizing behavioral genetic models, results indicated maternal perceived prenatal stress moderated genetic and environmental influences on developmental maturity whereas obstetrical complications moderated shared environmental influences on infant competence and nonshared environmental influences on developmental maturity. Gestational age moderated the heritability and nonshared environment of infant dysregulation, shared and nonshared environmental influences on competence, and nonshared environmental influences on developmental maturity. Taken together, prenatal and obstetric conditions were important nonlinear influences on infant outcomes. An evolutionary perspective may provide a framework for these findings, such that the prenatal environment programs the fetus to be adaptive to current environmental contexts. Specifically, prenatal stress governs gene expression through epigenetic processes. Findings highlight the utility of a genetically informative design for elucidating the role of prenatal and obstetric conditions in the etiology of infant developmental outcomes.
ContributorsMcDonald, Kristy (Author) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn S (Thesis advisor) / Fabricius, William (Committee member) / Luecken, Linda (Committee member) / Spinrad, Tracy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Introspective awareness refers to direct access to one’s own internal and subjective thoughts and feelings (Wimmer & Hartl, 1991). Two theories, simulation theory and theory-theory, have been used to understand our access to our mental states. Simulation theory (Harris, 1991) involves imagining yourself in another person’s situation, reading off of your mental state, and attributing that state to the other person. Theory-theory (Gopnik, 1993) involves an interrelated body of knowledge, based on core mental-state constructs, including beliefs and desires, that may be applied to everyone—self and others (Gopnik & Wellman, 1994). Introspection is taken for granted by simulation theory, and explicitly denied by theory-theory. This study is designed to test for evidence of introspection in young children using simple perception and knowledge task. The current evidence is against introspective awareness in children because the data suggest that children cannot report their own false beliefs and they cannot report their on-going thoughts (Flavell, Green & Flavell, 1993; Gopnik & Astington, 1988). The hypothesis in this study states that children will perform better on Self tasks compared to Other tasks, which will be evidence for introspection. The Other-Perception tasks require children to calculate the other’s line of sight and determine if there is something obscuring his or her vision. The Other-Knowledge tasks require children to reason that the other’s previous looking inside a box means that he or she will know what is inside the box when it is closed. The corresponding Self tasks could be answered either by using the same reasoning for the self or by introspection to determine what it is they see and do not see, and know and do not know. Children performing better on Self tasks compared to Other tasks will be an indication of introspection. Tests included Yes/No and Forced Choice questions, which was initially to ensure that the results will not be caused by a feature of a single method of questioning. I realized belatedly, however, that Forced Choice was not a valid measure of introspection as children could introspect in both the Self and Other conditions. I also expect to replicate previous findings that reasoning about Perception is easier for children than reasoning about Knowledge.
ContributorsAamed, Mati (Author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
Previous studies exploring variability in sentencing decisions have consistently found gender differences, such that women receive lighter sentences than men. In the proposed study, I present a new framework for understanding gender differences in sentencing preferences, including circumstances under which no gender differences should emerge. The Affordance Management Approach suggests that our minds are attuned to both group- and individual-level threats and opportunities that others afford us. I conceptualize the sentencing difference between men and women as driven by perceived affordances that assist or hinder an individual in achieving certain fundamental goals. When faced with sanctioning an offender in our community, the offender's sex, the victim's age, and environmental variables such as the ratio of men to women may influence our decision-making, because these factors have affordance implications. Thus, I hypothesized that individuals will express differences in the sentencing of offenders who commit assault, and that these differences vary by offender sex, victim age, and sex-ratio. The results indicate that, as predicted, female offenders received lighter sentencing than men when the offender committed an assault against a same-sex adult, but received equally punitive sentences as men when the assault was committed against a child. In general, results do not support a consistent effect of sex ratio as a factor when making sentencing decisions. Although results do not fully support the current study's specific hypotheses, there remains much to be gained from applying an affordance management perspective to understanding variability in sentencing between the sexes.
ContributorsUzzanti, Charlene Ann (Author) / Neuberg, Steven (Thesis director) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Prior research has indicated an attractive-leniency bias for defendants in mock jury studies. However, in recent years there have been highly publicized trials of attractive women who also appear sexual, in which juror's judgements do not show support for the attractive-leniency bias. The opposite effect seems to be taking place. The present study is the first to test the Femme Fatale stereotype that seems to be producing harsher judgements of attractive and sexually appealing women who commit crime, and the interaction of the relationship to their victim. The present study conducted a 2 (Attractiveness) X 2 (Sexual Appearance) X 2 (Relationship) between subjects design. Researchers conducted an ANOVA on all variables. Results indicate that women who are perceived as more attractive and more sexual, are more likely to be found guilty of their crime.
ContributorsBernal, Kelsey Joann (Author) / Salerno, Jessica (Thesis director) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
How do children understand how others see the world? I examined correlations between 4-8 year old children's understanding of beliefs and their understanding of other ways that people represent the world. Beliefs that I measured are understanding of pretense, understanding that things can have multiple identities, understanding that people can know things by inference, and understanding that people can look at the same thing and have different representations of it. I predicted that there would be correlations among these tasks. In particular, I predicted children would be able to understand these tasks when they understood true and false beliefs, based on current theories on belief understanding. I predicted that the classic false belief task alone would not be a good predictor of task performance, but that the combination of true and false belief tasks would. Participants were 100 children recruited at the Phoenix Children's Museum between ages 4 and 8. Previous research has found that children pass all of these tasks between the ages of 6 and 8, but no other studies have looked at the inter-correlations among them. Contrary to my prediction, children did not pass these tasks all at once, but scores went up gradually with age and belief understanding.
ContributorsLaitin, Emily Lynne (Author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
It has recently been argued that high-confidence eyewitness identifications are highly likely to be accurate regardless of the quality of viewing conditions experienced by the witness. However, new evidence suggests that evaluators of eyewitness identification evidence (e.g., jurors) do not trust highly confident eyewitnesses who experienced poor witnessing conditions. In fact, contextual information about poor witnessing conditions decreases evaluators’ belief of eyewitnesses to a greater extent for highly confident witnesses than for moderately confident witnesses. Why is the effect of witnessing-condition information greater for evaluations of high-confidence witnesses than for less confident witnesses? The current research tested the possibility that information about witnessing conditions influences evaluators’ perceptions of how well-calibrated a witness’s identification confidence is with the eyewitness’s accuracy. Using a paradigm adapted from the confidence calibration literature, I conducted an experiment to test this calibration account of the finding that witnessing condition information has a stronger effect on perceptions of highly confident witnesses than moderately confident witnesses. Although the results replicated the differential effects of witnessing condition context on perceptions of highly and moderately confident eyewitnesses, they failed to yield support for the confidence calibration hypothesis, potentially because the confidence calibration manipulation was ineffective. Directions for future research are discussed.
ContributorsLebensfeld, Taylor Cameron (Author) / Smalarz, Laura (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Arndorfer, Andrea (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This study investigates the effects of familiarity and the size of a novel object on perception of depth. Familiar size is a visual depth cue that provides information about the distance of an object. This project explores if the familiar size illusion is a result of an automatic perceptual process or an intellectual thought process. This data was collected in two phases, a familiarization phase and a testing phase. The experimental participants were familiarized for 30 seconds with a novel object, while the control group was not shown any objects prior to presentation of test objects. The novel test stimuli were constructed in 5 sizes and participants in the familiar group were familiarized with the medium size object. Participants were then asked to indicate the perceived distance of different sized objects by moving a rod with a pointer at the end to match the distance. The smaller comparison objects subtended visual angles that participants had not previously experienced, while larger comparison objects produced a larger visual angle than the participants had seen during the familiarization phase. The testing phase was identical for both familiar and unfamiliar control groups. Apparent distance was influenced by the size of the objects. Larger objects were judged to be closer than the smaller objects. Participants not familiarized showed smaller effects of stimulus size than the familiarized group. The effect of familiarity was not significant for the smaller stimuli but was very significant for the larger stimuli. The results were not consistent with the cognitive theory which argues that familiar size is a result of a conscious thought process. These outcomes are predicted under the model of familiar size being an automatic perceptual process.
ContributorsLawrence, Sahana (Author) / Yonas, Albert (Thesis director) / McBeath, Michael (Committee member) / Fabricius, William (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
In the legal system, the prediction of a person’s risk of committing a crime has mostly been based on expert judgment. However, newer techniques that employ machine learning (ML)—a type of artificial intelligence—are being implemented throughout the justice system. Yet, there is a lack of research on how the public perceives and uses machine learning risk assessments in legal settings. In two mock-trial vignette studies, the perception of ML-based risk assessments versus more traditional methods was assessed. Study 1 was a 2 (severity of crime: low, high) x 2 (risk assessment type: expert, machine learning) x 2 (risk outcome: low, high) between-subjects design. Participants expressed ethical concerns and discouraged the use of machine learning risk assessments in sentencing decisions, but punishment recommendations were not affected. Study 2 was a within-subjects design where participants were randomly assigned read through one of three crime scenarios (violent, white-collar, sex offense) and one of three risk assessment techniques (expert, checklist, machine learning). Consistent with Study 1, participants had ethical concerns and disagreed with the use of machine learning risk assessments in bail decisions, yet their own decisions and recommendations did not reflect these concerns. Overall, laypeople express skepticism toward these new methods, but do not appear to differentially rely on ML-based versus traditional risk assessments in their own judgments.
ContributorsFine, Anna (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Smalarz, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021