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- All Subjects: psychology
- Creators: Department of English
Description
Attachment relationships serve a variety of important functions for infants and adults. Despite the importance of attachment relationships in adults, the mechanisms that underlie the formation or maintenance of these kinds of relationships outside of romantic relationships remains chronically understudied. The current research investigated whether the mechanism of synchrony, which is associated with attachment formation in the parent-infant literature, may still be tied to attachment in adults. To measure this association, these studies showed participants videos to prime synchrony, and then measured activation of attachment concepts in a word completion task. The results of Experiment 1 showed that attachment style moderated the effects of the video prime such that those who were securely attached showed activation of attachment concepts while watching the Synchrony video. Those with a preoccupied attachment style showed activation of attachment concepts when they viewed the Asynchrony video. Those with a dismissive attachment style showed an unhypothesized activation of social distance concepts when viewing the Synchrony video. Experiment 2 suggested an overall effect of the Synchrony video on activation of attachment concepts. However, there was no effect of attachment style on these results. Limits of these studies and future directions are discussed.
ContributorsYee, Claire Ida (Author) / Shiota, Michelle L (Thesis advisor) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Committee member) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Traditional perspectives on sexual prejudice typically focus on the distinction between heterosexual ingroup and homosexual outgroup. In contrast, I focus on an affordance-management paradigm which views prejudices as resulting not from ingroup/outgroup relations, but instead from perceptions of the threats and opportunities posed by members of different groups. Past research has demonstrated that non-heterosexual target groups are perceived to pose a variety of threats, including threats to the socialization of young children, of child molestation, of disease, and to values. My research, however, suggests sexual prejudices arise for college students from beliefs that certain sexual orientation groups pose threats of unwanted sexual interest. For young adults, mating concerns are salient and should define relevant threats and opportunities--including those that might drive prejudices. For individuals with different active motivations, however, different threats and opportunities and threats are salient, and so the threats driving sexual prejudices may also differ. I extend my past research to consider how activating different fundamental goals (e.g., disease avoidance, parenting) alters patterns of sexual prejudice. I posit that activating disease concerns will increase prejudice specifically toward non-heterosexuals associated with disease (gay and bisexual me)--but not other non-heterosexuals (lesbians and bisexual women)--whereas activating offspring care will increase prejudice toward all non-heterosexual target groups, as all are perceived to pose socialization threats. To test this, heterosexual participants were randomly assigned to a parenting or disease-avoidance goal activation, or control condition, and then rated their general negativity towards heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual male and female targets. They also rated their perceptions of the extent to which each target posed unwanted sexual interest, socialization, and disease threats. Contrary to predictions, activating parenting and disease avoidance systems failed to affect sexual prejudices. Furthermore, although the pattern of observed data was largely consistent with previously observed patterns, women's attitudes towards gay men in the control condition were more negative than that found in previous studies, as were men's attitudes towards bisexual and lesbian women. Multiple mechanisms underlie sexual prejudices, and research is needed to better understand the circumstances under which alternative mechanisms are engaged and have their effects.
ContributorsPirlott, Angela (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Mackinnon, David P. (Committee member) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
An emerging body of literature suggests that humans likely have multiple threat avoidance systems that enable us to detect and avoid threats in our environment, such as disease threats and physical safety threats. These systems are presumed to be domain-specific, each handling one class of potential threats, and previous research generally supports this assumption. Previous research has not, however, directly tested the domain-specificity of disease avoidance and self-protection by showing that activating one threat management system does not lead to responses consistent only with a different threat management system. Here, the domain- specificity of the disease avoidance and self-protection systems is directly tested using the lexical decision task, a measure of stereotype accessibility, and the implicit association test. Results, although inconclusive, more strongly support a series of domain-specific threat management systems than a single, domain- general system
ContributorsAnderson, Uriah Steven (Author) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Thesis advisor) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Committee member) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Committee member) / Becker, David V (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Nearly seven decades ago, the US government established grants to the states for family planning and acknowledged the importance of enabling all women to plan and space their pregnancies, regardless of personal income. Since then, publicly-funded family planning services have empowered millions of women, men, and adolescents to achieve their childbearing goals. Despite the recognized importance of subsidized family planning, services remain funded in a piecemeal fashion. Since the 1940s there have been numerous federal funding sources for family planning, including the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Program, Office of Economic Opportunity grants, Title XX Social Services Program, Title X Family Planning Program, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, alongside state and local support. Spending guidelines allow states varying degrees of flexibility regarding allocation, to best serve the local population. With nearly two billion dollars spent annually on subsidized family planning, criticism often arises surrounding effective local program spending and state politics influencing grant allocation. Political tension regarding the amount of control states should have in managing federal funding is exacerbated in the context of family planning, which has become increasingly controversial among social conservatives in the twenty-first century. This thesis examines how Arizona’s political, geographic, cultural, and ethnic landscape shaped the state management of federal family planning funding since the early twentieth century. Using an extensive literature review, archival research, and oral history interviews, this thesis demonstrates the unique way Arizona state agencies and nonprofits collaborated to maximize the use of federal family planning grants, effectively reaching the most residents possible. That partnership allowed Arizona providers to reduce geographic barriers to family planning in a rural, frontier state. The social and political history surrounding the use of federal family planning funds in Arizona demonstrates the important role states have in efficient, effective, and equitable state implementation of national resources in successfully reaching local populations. The contextualization of government funding of family planning provides insight into recent attempts to defund abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, cut the Title X Family Planning Program, and restructure Medicaid in the twenty-first century.
ContributorsNunez-Eddy, Claudia (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Hurlbut, James (Committee member) / O'Neil, Erica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Research on attachment in adults began by assuming parallels from attachment as a behavioral system for using relationships to balance the tradeoff between safety and exploration in infants, to the same tradeoff function in adults. Perhaps more pressing, for adults, are the novel social tradeoffs adults face when deciding how to invest resources between themselves and their close relationship partners. The current study investigated the role of the attachment system in navigating two such tradeoffs, in a sample of ASU undergraduates. In one tradeoff condition, participants had the option of working on puzzles to earn either themselves or their closest friend a monetary reward. In the second tradeoff condition, participants worked to earn monetary rewards for a close or new friend. Analyses showed no evidence of attachment avoidance predicting prioritizing redistributing money to a close friend in either condition. While there was no effect of anxiety on prioritizing one’s close friend over one’s self, there was a marginal effect in both prioritizing one’s close friend over a new friend when redistributing money and starting on the close friend’s word search first. Although attachment style largely did not predict earning or redistributing monetary rewards in these two relationship tradeoffs, implications for how these results fit within the broader theoretical perspective are discussed.
ContributorsYee, Claire (Author) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Committee member) / Luecken, Linda J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Friendships make us happy, keep us healthy, and can even facilitate our reproductive fitness. But most friendships are not forever—even when we want them to be. How do people maintain valued friendships? I propose that “friendship jealousy” arises when people perceive others as posing threats to valued friendships, and that this response can function to prevent friendship loss and friend defection. In preliminary experiments, I tested predictions derived from this functional view. As predicted, I found, first, that friendship jealousy is calibrated to friend value. Second, friendship jealousy predicts intentions to “friend guard” (i.e., engage in behavior to protect the friendship). Third, friendship jealousy has sex-differentiated features, which are consistent with sex differences in friendship structures and ancestral friendship functions. The present work pits against one another intuitive and functional predictions as to what drives friendship jealousy. Although intuition might lead one to expect greater jealousy when a friend spends more time with a new person, a functional view suggests greater jealousy when that new person threatens to fulfill the same function for one’s friend that one is currently fulfilling (i.e., to “replace” him/her). Preliminary studies revealed that greater friendship jealousy is evoked when friends form new same-sex friendships (which presumably pose greater replacement threat, but lesser time threat) versus new romantic relationships (which presumably pose lesser replacement threat, but greater time threat). The focal experiment explicitly and experimentally manipulates a version of “replacement threat” (whether the best friend “chooses” the new friend over you) and “time threat” (how much time the best friend spends with the new friend). In line with functional predictions, the amount of time the best friend spends with a new friend drives friendship jealousy—but only when direct information about replacement threat is unavailable. Regardless of the time threat posed, participants report high friendship jealousy when replacement threat is high, and low friendship jealousy when replacement threat is low. Results imply that friendship jealousy is calibrated to replacement threat (over time threat). Overall, findings suggest that friendship jealousy might be a functional response aimed at facilitating friendship maintenance.
ContributorsKrems, Jaimie Arona (Author) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Thesis advisor) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Aktipis, Athena (Committee member) / Ha, Phuong Thao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
In an affordance management approach, stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination are conceptualized as tools to manage the potential opportunities and threats afforded by others in highly interdependent social living. This approach suggests a distinction between two “kinds” of stereotypes. “Base” stereotypes are relatively factual, stable beliefs about the capacities and inclinations of groups and their members, whereas “affordance stereotypes” are beliefs about potential threats and opportunities posed by groups and their members. Two experiments test the hypothesized implications of this distinction: (1) People may hold identical base stereotypes about a target group but hold very different affordance stereotypes. (2) Affordance stereotypes, but not base stereotypes, are shaped by perceiver goals and felt vulnerabilities. (3) Prejudices and (4) discrimination are more heavily influenced by affordance stereotypes than by base stereotypes. I endeavored to manipulate participants’ felt vulnerabilities to measure the predicted corresponding shifts in affordance (but not base) stereotype endorsement, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations toward a novel target group (Sidanians). In Study 1 (N = 600), the manipulation was unsuccessful. In Study 2 (N = 338), the manipulation had a partial effect, allowing for preliminary causal tests of the proposed model. In both studies, I predicted and found high endorsement of the base stereotypes that Sidanians try to share their values and actively participate in the community, with low variability. I also predicted and found more variation in affordance (vs. base) stereotype endorsement, which was systematically related to participants’ felt vulnerabilities in Study 2. Taken together, these findings support my hypothesized distinction between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes. Finally, I modeled the proposed correlational relationships between felt vulnerabilities, base stereotypes, affordance stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations in the model. Although these relationships were predominantly significant in the predicted directions, overall fit of the model was poor. These studies further our critical understanding of the relationship between stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination. This has implications for how we devise interventions to reduce the deleterious effects of such processes on their targets, perhaps focusing on changing perceiver vulnerabilities and perceived affordance (rather than base) stereotypes to more effectively reduce prejudices and discrimination.
ContributorsPick, Cari Marie (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Martin, Carol L (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Research and theory in social psychology and related fields indicates that people simultaneously hold many cultural identities. And it is well evidenced across relevant fields (e.g., sociology, marketing, economics) that salient identities are instrumental in a variety of cognitive and behavioral processes, including decision-making. It is not, however, well understood how the relative salience of various cultural identities factors into the process of making identity-relevant choices, particularly ones that require an actor to choose between conflicting sets of cultural values or beliefs. It is also unclear whether the source of that salience (e.g., chronic or situational) is meaningful in this regard. The current research makes novel predictions concerning the roles of cultural identity centrality and cultural identity situational salience in three distinct aspects of the decision-making process: Direction of decision, speed of decision, and emotion related to decision. In doing so, the research highlights two under-researched forms of culture (i.e., political and religious) and uses as the focal dependent variable a decision-making scenario that forces participants to choose between the values of their religious and political cultures and, to some degree, behave in an identity-inconsistent manner. Results indicate main effects of Christian identity centrality and democrat identity centrality on preference for traditional versus gender-neutral (i.e., non-traditional/progressive) restrooms after statistically controlling for covariates. Additionally, results show a significant main effect of democrat identity centrality and a significant interaction effect of Christian and democrat identity centrality on positive emotion linked to the decision. Post hoc analyses further reveal a significant quadratic relationship between Christian identity centrality and emotion related to the decision. There was no effect of situational strength of democrat identity salience on the decision. Neither centrality or situational strength had any effect on the speed with which participants made their decisions. This research theoretically and empirically advances the study of cultural psychology and carries important implications for identity research and judgment and decision-making across a variety of fields, including management, behavioral economics, and marketing.
ContributorsBarbour, Joseph Eugene (Author) / Cohen, Adam B. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Mackinnon, David P (Committee member) / Mandel, Naomi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Past research has focused on the important role humor plays in interpersonal relationships; however, researchers have also identified intrapersonal applications of humor, showing that people often use humor to alleviate negative affect, and that humor has generally been found to beneficially influence mental health. The purpose of this study is to examine whether humor-based coping can be utilized as an intrapersonal tool to aid or facilitate creative thinking and problem solving when faced with a distressing situation. The current study posits reduced rumination as the mechanism by which humor facilitates creativity. To measure creativity, a task was devised that had individuals brainstorm under some distress; participants were asked to recall and describe an ongoing, unresolved problem they were facing, followed by a rumination induction, as rumination is characterized by perseverative thoughts that hinder constructive action. After the rumination induction, participants were randomly assigned to a control condition or either of two emotion regulation conditions: positive reappraisal or humor-based reappraisal. Following this, participants were asked to complete an “alternate solutions” task, based on Guilford’s Alternate Uses Task, generating solutions for their own unresolved problem. Results of the study showed that the use of humor was indeed related to a decrease in rumination, but that the humor condition did not outperform either control condition on any measure of creativity (performing worse in some cases). Limits of this study and future directions are discussed.
ContributorsPages, Erika (Author) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Varnum, Michael E.W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Netflix has positioned itself at the forefront of the future of television with its original programming, which has been rolled out in greater and more frequent amounts just in the last couple of years. The streaming service has already experimented with creativity in ways most other shows and creators haven't, playing with the pacing of overall seasons as well as the length of episodes. So, too, Netflix has been at the forefront of increasing visibility for minority characters on television. Many of its shows incorporate racially diverse casts and depict lots of LGBTQ characters, a refreshingly realistic view of the world that many of its viewers have always lived in but haven't yet witnessed on television. Visibility and representation are critical concepts for analyzing minority characters on television. It is important for diverse characters to be seen, first and foremost, but also to be seen in positive or at least realistic lights. Care must be taken to avoid fulfilling stereotypes or tropes, and attention must be paid to what has happened to other characters who have come before. However, many of Netflix's portrayals of these characters, particularly bisexual characters, leave much to be desired. With the original dramas House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, Orange is the New Black, and Sense8, all of which include characters who identify as or behave bisexually, Netflix has been reluctant to use the specific word bisexual to describe characters, and many don't even identify their sexuality with a synonym for the term. Many of the bisexual characters that I identified died or were killed on the shows, and nearly all of them fulfilled stereotypes or tropes in some way. There were multiple scenes of threesomes or other distinctly kinky sexual encounters, which served to exoticize bisexuality and distance it from the more normatively viewed identities of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Ultimately, while Netflix's original programming has offered increased visibility to bisexual characters, it has yet to reflect the real community it seeks to portray. In particular, Netflix's refusal to label characters as bisexual is frustrating and limiting. It can be argued that this is a progressive move toward more ideas of sexual fluidity and a post-modern lack of sexual labels, but there are not enough depictions of identified bisexual characters on television yet for this to make sense. Until bisexual characters and their identities are not invisibilized or stigmatized, more work has to be done to ensure that bisexual people are represented fairly and accurately on television and in all media.
ContributorsKoerth, Kimberly Marie (Author) / Himberg, Julia (Thesis director) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / College of Public Service and Community Solutions (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05