Matching Items (4)
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- All Subjects: emotion
- Genre: Academic theses
- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
- Creators: Saks, Michael J.
- Creators: Wingert, Kimberly Marie
Description
As the world's resources face increasing pressure from a growing population, it is critical that psychologists understand the motivational processes that lead to cooperation or defection in the context of social dilemmas. Research has uncovered several key strategies for encouraging maintenance of these resources, however, one area that remains understudied is the effect various emotions may have on cooperation. Furthermore, it is important to consider the specific type of desired behavior: reduction of consumption of a shared resource, or increased contribution to a shared resource. The current study takes a step in this direction, examining the effects of two self-conscious emotions, guilt and pride, on behavior in two different kinds of social dilemmas. Guilt, a prosocial emotion that has been described as a "behavioral interrupt mechanism," is predicted to increase cooperation in both a social trap game and a public goods dilemma game. However, its effects should be strongest in the social trap game, in which the desired behavior is reduced consumption. Pride, an emotion that is conceptually related to the constructs of status and power, is predicted to motivate action in both domains, by increasing both consumption in the social trap game and contribution in the public goods dilemma game. Results partially support these predictions: Whereas guilt and pride both had the predicted effects on consumption in the social trap game, neither had a significant effect on contribution in the public goods dilemma game. Individual differences are examined, as are the results of a Game Feedback Sheet, which yielded insight as to how participants understood the rules of the games, and why they chose the strategies they did. Results support the idea that emotions represent a potentially fruitful avenue of research in social dilemma cooperation, and possible future directions for this research are discussed.
ContributorsNeufeld, Samantha L (Author) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Ledlow, Susan E (Committee member) / Saks, Michael J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Individual differences in working memory capacity partly arise from variability in attention control, a process influenced by negative emotional content. Thus, individual differences in working memory capacity should be predictive of differences in the ability to regulate attention in emotional contexts. To address this hypothesis, a complex-span working memory task (symmetry span) was modified so that negative arousing images or neutral images subtended the background during the encoding phase. Across three experiments, negative arousing images impaired working memory encoding relative to neutral images, resulting in impoverished symmetry span scores. Additionally, in Experiment 3, both negative and arousing images captured attention and led to increased hit rates in a subsequent recognition task. Contrary to the primary hypothesis, individual differences in working memory capacity derived from three complex span tasks failed to moderate the effect of negative arousing images on working memory encoding across two large scale studies. Implications for theories of working memory and attention control in emotional contexts will be discussed.
ContributorsWingert, Kimberly Marie (Author) / Brewer, Gene A. (Thesis advisor) / Amazeen, Eric (Committee member) / Killeen, Peter (Committee member) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are important predictors of performance in educational settings. Thus, understanding the processes underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence is important. Three large scale individual differences experiments were conducted to determine the mechanisms underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. Experiments 1 and 2 were designed to assess whether individual differences in strategic behavior contribute to the variance shared between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. In Experiment 3, competing theories for describing the underlying processes (cognitive vs. strategy) were evaluated in a comprehensive examination of potential underlying mechanisms. These data help inform existing theories about the mechanisms underlying the relation between WMC and gF. However, these data also indicate that the current theoretical model of the shared variance between WMC and gF would need to be revised to account for the data in Experiment 3. Possible sources of misfit are considered in the discussion along with a consideration of the theoretical implications of observing those relations in the Experiment 3 data.
ContributorsWingert, Kimberly Marie (Author) / Brewer, Gene A. (Thesis advisor) / McNamara, Danielle (Thesis advisor) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Redick, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The legal system relies heavily on the contribution of forensic psychologists. These psychologists give opinions on a defendant’s ability to stand trial, their legal sanity at the time of the crime, their future dangerousness, and their competency to be executed. However, we know little about what extrinsic factors bias these experts. I assessed the influence of gruesome photographs on forensic psychologists’ evaluations of competency and legal sanity. Previous research has demonstrated that these photographs influence lay judgments of guilt. I predicted that gruesome color photographs (versus the same photographs in black-and-white or a textual description of the photographs) would influence forensic psychologists to judge the defendant competent and sane (decisions that might ultimately lead to punishment). I also predicted that this effect would be greater for sanity judgments than for competency judgments. I asked laypeople to make the same decisions in order to compare expert and lay judgments. I predicted that impact of photograph type seen in experts would be greater in the lay sample. No differences in judgments of competence, sanity, or mental illness emerged as a function of the type of visual information, for either expert or lay participants. Experts relied on competency evidence to make competency judgments and insanity evidence to make insanity judgments. In contrast, lay people relied on various types of evidence to make their ultimate judgments. This research suggests that people making competency and sanity judgments might not be biased by gruesome photographs.
ContributorsPhalen, Hannah (Author) / Salerno, Jessica M (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael J. (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nicholas J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018