Matching Items (5)
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- All Subjects: psychology
- All Subjects: Leachate
- All Subjects: Sanitary landfills--Leaching.
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Status: Published
Description
Life History Theory suggests that, in order to maximize reproductive fitness, individuals make trade-offs between allocating resources to mating and parenting. These trade-offs are influenced by an individual's sex, life history strategy, and environment. Here, I explored the usefulness of a Life History Theory framework for understanding endorsement of child support laws. This study experimentally manipulated sex ratio, and gathered information about participants' endorsement of child support, sexual restrictedness, and mate value. As predicted, women endorsed child support more than men, whereas men favored greater restriction of child support in the form of required paternity testing. However, in general, results do not support an effect of sex ratio, sexual restrictedness, or mate value on endorsement of child support. Results suggest sensitivity to exploitation in a male-biased sex ratio, reflected by an increase in men's endorsement of paternity testing requirements under a male-biased sex ratio prime. Women, on the other hand, report especially unfavorable beliefs toward paternity testing in a male-biased sex ratio. Although results of the current study are mixed, there remains much to be gained from applying an evolutionary perspective to understanding variability in endorsement of child support.
ContributorsWilliams, Keelah (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael (Committee member) / Kenrick, Douglas (Committee member) / Ellman, Ira (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Previous research on experiences of the endowment effect and buyer's remorse has often failed to compare the two seemingly related phenomena. The current study attempts to provide a framework in which the two can be compared and to offer a possible suggestion as to when it may be beneficial to experience either the endowment effect or buyer's remorse, namely situations of resource scarcity versus abundance. The current study employed an online dating paradigm in which resource scarcity was operationalized as the sex ratio of users on the site. Two hundred and one participants were exposed to a favorable sex ratio, an unfavorable sex ratio, or a no information control condition and asked to bid on potential dates. Once matched with a potential date, participants were asked how willing they would be to give up their date and the minimum amount of points they would request to do so. These dependent variables served as indicators of experiences of the endowment effect or buyer's remorse. Results indicated that the sex ratio of the online dating site did not influence experiences of the endowment effect versus buyer's remorse. Potential mediators and moderators were also investigated although no significant effects were found. Possible reasons for the null results are discussed as well as future directions.
ContributorsMeyer, Kaitlin (Author) / Cohen, Adam B. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas (Committee member) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Envy may be an emotion shaped by evolution to resolve large resource disparities in zero-sum ancestral environments. Previous research has found evidence for two types of envy: benign envy, which drives greater effort and self-improvement; and malicious envy, which drives hostility toward the better-off target. We predicted that perceived resource scarcity would stoke either type, moderated by individual differences. Specifically, we predicted that high self-esteem would steer people toward benign envy and self-improvement, whereas narcissism would spark malicious envy. After completing the Rosenberg self-esteem scale and the Narcissism Personality Inventory (NPI-16), participants were randomly assigned to either read an article detailing severe cuts to university financial aid budgets (scarcity) or an article summarizing various forms of financial aid (control). Each article ended with the same envy-inducing paragraph about a particularly affluent scholarship-winner, after which participants completed a measure of both envy types, capturing feelings, appraisals, and behavioral tendencies. Results show that self-esteem predicts less malicious envy, while narcissism and scarcity predict more. Self-esteem and narcissism interact such that self-esteem dampens the effect of narcissism on malicious envy. Self-esteem predicted benign envy when narcissism was low, but not when it was high.
ContributorsDuarte, Jose L (Author) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Thesis advisor) / Kwan, Sau Y (Committee member) / Kenrick, Douglas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Infectious disease presents a serious threat to our fitness. The biological immune system provides several mechanisms for dealing with this threat. So too does another system: the behavioral immune system. This second system is proposed to consist of a set of evolved cognitive, affective, and behavioral strategies for reducing the likelihood of infection, including xenophobia, traditionalism, and food neophobia. In the present work, I investigate how another suite of fairly novel culturally-learned disease avoidance strategies, namely hygiene behaviors and knowledge of germ theory, are related to the behavioral immune system. Across two studies, I find that individuals who engage in more hygiene behaviors show less evidence of reliance on several elements of the behavioral immune system (i.e., xenophobia, traditionalism, food neophobia). Similarly, individuals who know more about germ theory show less engagement in behavioral immune system components. These findings suggest that effective cultural strategies for avoiding infectious disease may supplant older, evolved psychological strategies with the same purpose.
ContributorsWormley, Alexandra S (Author) / Varnum, Michael E.W. (Thesis advisor) / Cohen, Adam B (Committee member) / Kenrick, Douglas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Zero-Valent Metals (ZVM) are highly reactive materials and have been proved to be effective in contaminant reduction in soils and groundwater remediation. In fact, zero-Valent Iron (ZVI) has proven to be very effective in removing, particularly chlorinated organics, heavy metals, and odorous sulfides. Addition of ZVI has also been proved in enhancing the methane gas generation in anaerobic digestion of activated sludge. However, no studies have been conducted regarding the effect of ZVM stimulation to Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) degradation. Therefore, a collaborative study was developed to manipulate microbial activity in the landfill bioreactors to favor methane production by adding ZVMs. This study focuses on evaluating the effects of added ZVM on the leachate generated from replicated lab scale landfill bioreactors. The specific objective was to investigate the effects of ZVMs addition on the organic and inorganic pollutants in leachate. The hypothesis here evaluated was that adding ZVM including ZVI and Zero Valent Manganese (ZVMn) will enhance the removal rates of the organic pollutants present in the leachate, likely by a putative higher rate of microbial metabolism. Test with six (4.23 gallons) bioreactors assembled with MSW collected from the Salt River Landfill and Southwest Regional Landfill showed that under 5 grams /liter of ZVI and 0.625 grams/liter of ZVMn additions, no significant difference was observed in the pH and temperature data of the leachate generated from these reactors. The conductivity data suggested the steady rise across all reactors over the period of time. The removal efficiency of sCOD was highest (27.112 mg/lit/day) for the reactors added with ZVMn at the end of 150 days for bottom layer, however the removal rate was highest (16.955 mg/lit/day) for ZVI after the end of 150 days of the middle layer. Similar trends in the results was observed in TC analysis. HPLC study indicated the dominance of the concentration of heptanoate and isovalerate were leachate generated from the bottom layer across all reactors. Heptanoate continued to dominate in the ZVMn added leachate even after middle layer injection. IC analysis concluded the chloride was dominant in the leachate generated from all the reactors and there was a steady increase in the chloride content over the period of time. Along with chloride, fluoride, bromide, nitrate, nitrite, phosphate and sulfate were also detected in considerable concentrations. In the summary, the addition of the zero valent metals has proved to be efficient in removal of the organics present in the leachate.
ContributorsPandit, Gandhar Abhay (Author) / Cadillo – Quiroz, Hinsby (Thesis advisor) / Olson, Larry (Thesis advisor) / Boyer, Treavor (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019