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Sport is a widespread phenomenon across human cultures and history. Unfortunately, positive emotions in sport have been long vaguely characterized as happy or pleasant, or ignored altogether. Recent emotion research has taken a differentiated approach, however, suggesting there are distinct positive emotions with diverse implications for behavior. The present study

Sport is a widespread phenomenon across human cultures and history. Unfortunately, positive emotions in sport have been long vaguely characterized as happy or pleasant, or ignored altogether. Recent emotion research has taken a differentiated approach, however, suggesting there are distinct positive emotions with diverse implications for behavior. The present study applied this evolutionarily informed approach in the context of sport to examine which positive emotions are associated with play. It was hypothesized that pride, amusement, and enthusiasm, but not contentment or awe, would increase in Ultimate Frisbee players during a practice scrimmage. Further, it was hypothesized that increases in pride and amusement during practice would be differentially associated with sport outcomes, including performance (scores, assists, and defenses), subjective social connectedness, attributions of success, and attitudes toward the importance of practice. It was found that all positive emotions decreased during practice. It was also found that increases in pride were associated with more scores and greater social connectedness, whereas increases in amusement were associated with more assists. The present study was one of the first to examine change in positive emotions during play and to relate them to specific performance outcomes. Future studies should expand to determine which came first: emotion or performance.
ContributorsKuna, Jacob Anthony (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Danvers, Alexander (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
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Description
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two positive discrete emotions, awe and nurturant love, on implicit prejudices. After completing an emotion induction task, participants completed Implicit Association Test blocks where they paired photos of Arab and White individuals with "good" and "bad" evaluations. We hypothesized

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two positive discrete emotions, awe and nurturant love, on implicit prejudices. After completing an emotion induction task, participants completed Implicit Association Test blocks where they paired photos of Arab and White individuals with "good" and "bad" evaluations. We hypothesized that nurturant love would increase the strength of negative evaluations of Arab individuals and positive evaluations of White individuals, whereas awe would decrease the strength of these negative evaluations when compared to a neutral condition. However, we found that both awe and nurturant love increased negative implicit prejudices toward Arab individuals when compared to the neutral condition.
ContributorsCarrasco, Mia Annette (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / O'Neil, Makenzie (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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Description
The purpose of this thesis study is to widen the understanding of the effect culture on self-improvement. Past research found that Japanese students, when compared to their North American counterparts, are more likely to strive for self-improvement by persisting when they encounter academic setbacks. In addition to North Americans and

The purpose of this thesis study is to widen the understanding of the effect culture on self-improvement. Past research found that Japanese students, when compared to their North American counterparts, are more likely to strive for self-improvement by persisting when they encounter academic setbacks. In addition to North Americans and Asians, this thesis examines South Asians as well. It is hypothesized that South Asians will have similar levels of self-improvement as East Asians. This thesis also looks at possible explanations for why culture affects self-improvement. Two variables, future self-connectedness and growth mindset, are proposed as these explanations. It is hypothesized that culture affects future self-connectedness and growth mindset, and those two variables in turn influence self-improvement. 

For this thesis, 100 undergraduate and recent college graduates completed online self-report measures. Results of independent t-tests showed that there were no significant differences between South and East Asians in self-improvement, which is consistent with what was hypothesized. There were also no differences between South and East Asians in future self-connectedness or growth mindset. The two Asian groups were then combined and compared to North Americans. Further independent t-tests were run, and results found that while the trend was as expected and Asians exhibited higher levels of self-improvement than North Americans, they did not exhibit significantly higher levels. There were also no significant differences between North Americans and Asians in growth mindset, however, North Americans had significantly higher levels of future self-connectedness than Asians, contrary to expectation. Results of mediation regressions found that neither future self-connectedness nor growth mindset significantly explained the effect of culture on self-improvement.
ContributorsShaikjamaludeen, Shaikhameedha (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Shiota, Michelle (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
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Description
Social situational awareness, or the attentiveness to one's social surroundings, including the people, their interactions and their behaviors is a complex sensory-cognitive-motor task that requires one to be engaged thoroughly in understanding their social interactions. These interactions are formed out of the elements of human interpersonal communication including both verbal

Social situational awareness, or the attentiveness to one's social surroundings, including the people, their interactions and their behaviors is a complex sensory-cognitive-motor task that requires one to be engaged thoroughly in understanding their social interactions. These interactions are formed out of the elements of human interpersonal communication including both verbal and non-verbal cues. While the verbal cues are instructive and delivered through speech, the non-verbal cues are mostly interpretive and requires the full attention of the participants to understand, comprehend and respond to them appropriately. Unfortunately certain situations are not conducive for a person to have complete access to their social surroundings, especially the non-verbal cues. For example, a person is who is blind or visually impaired may find that the non-verbal cues like smiling, head nod, eye contact, body gestures and facial expressions of their interaction partners are not accessible due to their sensory deprivation. The same could be said of people who are remotely engaged in a conversation and physically separated to have a visual access to one's body and facial mannerisms. This dissertation describes novel multimedia technologies to aid situations where it is necessary to mediate social situational information between interacting participants. As an example of the proposed system, an evidence-based model for understanding the accessibility problem faced by people who are blind or visually impaired is described in detail. From the derived model, a sleuth of sensing and delivery technologies that use state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms in combination with novel haptic interfaces are developed towards a) A Dyadic Interaction Assistant, capable of helping individuals who are blind to access important head and face based non-verbal communicative cues during one-on-one dyadic interactions, and b) A Group Interaction Assistant, capable of provide situational awareness about the interaction partners and their dynamics to a user who is blind, while also providing important social feedback about their own body mannerisms. The goal is to increase the effective social situational information that one has access to, with the conjuncture that a good awareness of one's social surroundings gives them the ability to understand and empathize with their interaction partners better. Extending the work from an important social interaction assistive technology, the need for enriched social situational awareness is everyday professional situations are also discussed, including, a) enriched remote interactions between physically separated interaction partners, and b) enriched communication between medical professionals during critical care procedures, towards enhanced patient safety. In the concluding remarks, this dissertation engages the readers into a science and technology policy discussion on the potential effect of a new technology like the social interaction assistant on the society. Discussing along the policy lines, social disability is highlighted as an important area that requires special attention from researchers and policy makers. Given that the proposed technology relies on wearable inconspicuous cameras, the discussion of privacy policies is extended to encompass newly evolving interpersonal interaction recorders, like the one presented in this dissertation.
ContributorsKrishna, Sreekar (Author) / Panchanathan, Sethuraman (Thesis advisor) / Black, John A. (Committee member) / Qian, Gang (Committee member) / Li, Baoxin (Committee member) / Shiota, Michelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011