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Purpose: To examine: (1) whether Non-Hispanic Blacks (NHB) and Non-Hispanic Whites (NHW) with diagnosed arthritis differed in self-reported physical activity (PA) levels, (2) if NHB and NHW with arthritis differed on potential correlates of PA based on the Social Ecological Model (Mcleroy et al., 1988), and (3) if PA participation varied by race/ethnicity after controlling for age, gender, education, and BMI. Methods: This study was a secondary data analysis of data collected from 2006-2008 in Chicago, IL as part of the Midwest Roybal Center for Health Promotion. Bivariate analyses were used to assess potential differences between race in meeting either ACR or ACSM PA guidelines. Comparisons by race between potential socio-demographic correlates and meeting physical activity guidelines were assessed using Chi-squares. Potential differences by race in psychosocial, arthritis, and health-related and environmental correlates were assessed using T-tests. Finally, logistic regression analyses were used to examine if race was still associated with PA after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics. Results: A greater proportion of NHW (68.1% and 35.3%) than NHB (46.5% and 20.9%) met both the arthritis-specific and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommendations for physical activity, respectively. NHB had significantly lower self-efficacy for exercise and reported greater impairments in physical function compared to NHW. Likewise, NHB reported more crime and less aesthetics within their neighborhood. NHW were 2.56 times more likely to meet arthritis-specific PA guidelines than NHB after controlling for age, gender, education, marital status, and BMI. In contrast, after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, age and gender were the only significant predictors of meeting ACSM PA guidelines. Discussion: There were significant differences between NHB and NHW individuals with arthritis in meeting PA guidelines. After controlling for age, gender, education, and BMI non-Hispanic White individuals were still significantly more likely to meet PA guidelines. Interventions aimed at promoting higher levels of physical activity among individuals with arthritis need to consider neighborhood aesthetics and crime when designing programs. More arthritis-specific programs are needed in close proximity to neighborhoods in an effort to promote physical activity.
ContributorsChuran, Christopher (Author) / Der Ananian, Cheryl (Thesis advisor) / Adams, Marc (Committee member) / Campbell, Kathryn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Infectious diseases have been a major threat to survival throughout human history. Humans have developed a behavioral immune system to prevent infection by causing individuals to avoid people, food, and objects that could be contaminated. This current project investigates how ambient temperature affects the activation of this system. Because temperature is positively correlated with the prevalence of many deadly diseases, I predict that temperature moderates the behavioral immune system, such that a disease prime will have a stronger effect in a hot environment compared to a neutral environment and one's avoidant behaviors will be more extreme. Participants were placed in a hot room (M = 85F) or a neutral room (M = 77F) and shown a disease prime slide show or a neutral slide show. Disgust sensitivity and perceived vulnerability surveys were used to measure an increased perceived risk to disease. A taste test between a disgusting food item (gummy bugs) and a neutral food item (gummy animals) measured food avoidance. There was no significant avoidance of the gummy and no significant difference in ratings of disgust sensitivity or perceived vulnerability as a function of temperature conditions. There were no significant interactions between temperature and disease. The conclusion is that this study did not provide evidence that temperature moderates the effect of disease cues on behavior.
ContributorsOsborne, Elizabeth (Author) / Cohen, Adam B. (Thesis advisor) / Kwan, Sau (Committee member) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The present study explored the relationship between desired purchasing behavior and individual differences using two nationally-representative, longitudinal samples of the U.S. population early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Past research has shown that individual differences provide information about how one might respond to threat. Therefore, we predicted changes in desired purchasing behavior across different sociodemographic variables that might reflect those differences. Specifically, we investigated hypotheses related to political orientation, age, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and whether or not the participant had children. We measured participants’ reported desired purchasing behavior across eleven categories of goods and investigated the connection between specific demographic variables and desired purchasing behavior. We found that conservatives desired to purchase more basic protection goods (guns/ammunition, cash, gas) and that older people desired to purchase more cleaning supplies and toiletries. These findings illustrate possible explanations for purchasing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and reveal directions for marketing designed to influence purchasing behavior.
ContributorsZeider, Justyn (Author) / Varnum, Michael (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Regular instances of employee and petty theft seem to suggest that stealing is common. Certain situations make stealing an advantageous opportunity, and studies show that most people will steal under the right conditions. However, these "right conditions" vary widely among individuals and are a combination of biological, social, psychological, and situational factors. In an attempt to better understand the rationality of stealing, our research team applied evolutionary psychology principles to a social experiment involving gift card theft. To find trends in how people will steal when given the opportunity, we attempted to create these "right conditions" (which we believed would encourage theft by minimizing cost) so that we could measure how a random sample of subjects (male students on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University) responded to variation in benefit. We predicted that if the cost was kept low, and if some gift cards conferred greater advantages than others (by possession greater value or utility), then the more advantageous gift cards would be stolen at a higher frequency from the sample pool than less advantageous ones. The results show that our assumptions were wrong. Theft almost never occurred and the few cards that were stolen were not the more "rational" choices as predicted. The experimental design indicates a flawed understanding of how the subjects weighed the benefits and costs of stealing gift cards. One major issue is that we failed to consider pro-social behavior as the norm. We also neglected the evolutionary benefits of cooperative behavior while overemphasizing the evolutionary benefits of theft. A more thorough and nuanced examination of the literature must be performed to avoid these fundamental flaws in the experiment in the future. The experiment also suffered from issues which might have inadvertently discouraged theft including the location, population, presence of other students, and time given to contemplate theft. If we wish to truly examine trends in theft to see if there is a trend towards the rational theft model we proposed, we must work with a population in which individuals already have a propensity to steal, the benefit is sufficiently high, and social pressures to be cooperative are low.
ContributorsKumar, Davina Sangitha (Author) / Angilletta, Michael (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
With an excessive amount of resources in the United States healthcare system being spent on the treatment of diseases that are largely preventable through lifestyle change, the need for successful physical activity interventions is apparent. Unfortunately an individual's physical activity and health goals are often not supported by the social context of their daily lives. This single-case design study, Walking Intervention through Text messaging for CoHabiting individuals (WalkIT CoHab), looks at the efficacy of a text based adaptive physical activity intervention to promote walking over a three month period and the effects of social support in intervention performance in three pairs of cohabiting pairs of individuals (n=6). Mean step increase from baseline to intervention ranged from 1300 to 3000 steps per day for all individuals, an average 45.87% increase in physical activity. Goal attainment during the intervention ranged from 43.96% to 71.43%, meaning all participants exceeded the 40% success rate predicted by 60th percentile goals. Social support scores for study partners, unlike social support scores for family and friends, were often in the high social support range and had a moderate increase from pre to post visits for most participants. Although there was variation amongst participants, there was a high correlation in physical activity trends and successful goal attainment in each pair of participants. Less ambitious percentile goals and more personalized motivational text messages might be beneficial to some participants. An extended intervention, something the majority of participants expressed interest in, would further support the efficacy of this behavioral intervention and allow for possible long term benefits of social support in the intervention to be investigated.
ContributorsFernandez, Jacqueline Alyssa (Author) / Adams, Marc (Thesis director) / Angadi, Siddhartha (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Contextual cues can impact how statements are perceived. Specifically, they may be perceived as more aggressive than they otherwise would be. For the study, both medium of communication (in-person versus online) as well as how competitive the context was (non-competitive or competitive) were examined, with a bit of focus on gender. 130 Arizona State University students enrolled in Psychology 101 were surveyed; the mean age was 19.32 (SD = 1.43). A 2x2 factorial design was used, consisting of four possible conditions: In-person/Competitive, Online/Competitive, In-person/Non-Competitive, and Online/Non-Competitive. Participants read two scenarios, each featuring a target character who says an ambiguous statement, and each scenario with one of the four conditions at random. One scenario involved earning a promotion, and the other involved trying to win a voucher via mini-golf. After, participants answered questions regarding how they felt about the intent of the ambiguous statement, how the participant would feel in the scenario, and what kind of person the participant felt the target character was. Exploratory Factor Analysis with Principal Axis Factoring and Direct Oblimin Rotation was used to find outcome variables. We hypothesized that Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion would be higher in both the competitive condition as well as the online condition, and that Perceived Agreeableness would be higher in both the non-competitive condition as well as the in-person condition; this applied for both scenarios. The results were mostly not statistically significant, and contrary to the hypotheses, Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion were higher in the in-person condition than the online condition. However, as predicted, Perceived Agreeableness was higher for the in-person condition, and the competitive led to higher levels of Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion, along with lower levels of Perceived Agreeableness, as opposed to the non-competitive condition. Limitations included a small age range and only one type of online communication (instant messaging), along with the fact that the study was a survey. Future studies are needed to examine what factors affect perception of aggression, as very few have been conducted.
ContributorsRobins, Alexander Eric (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Lani) (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Danvers, Alexander (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
An increasingly sedentary population in the United States, specifically with adolescents, is putting youth at risk of future health related trauma and disease. This single-case design study, Walking Intervention Through Text Messaging for Adolescents (WalkIT-A), was used to intervene with a 12-year old, physically inactive male, in an attempt to test the efficacy of a 12-week physical activity program that may help reduce health risks by increasing number of steps walked per day. The components of the intervention consisted of a FitBit Zip pedometer, physical activity education, text messages, monetary incentives, and goal setting that adapted personally to the participant. Mean step count increased by 30% from baseline (mean = 3603 [sd = 1983]) to intervention (mean = 4693 [sd = 2112]); then increased slightly by 6.7% from intervention to withdrawal (mean = 5009 [sd = 2152]). Mean "very active minutes" increased by 45% from baseline (mean = 8.8 [sd = 8.9]) to intervention (mean = 12.8 [sd = 9.6]); then increased by 61.7% from intervention to withdrawal (mean = 20.7 [sd = 8.4]). Weight, BMI, and blood pressure all increased modestly from pre to post. Cardiovascular fitness (estimated VO2 max) improved by 12.5% from pre (25.5ml*kg-1*min-1) to post (28.7ml*kg-1*min-1). The intervention appeared to have a delayed and residual effect on the participant's daily steps and very active minutes. Although the idealistic ABA pattern did not occur, and the participant did not meet the target of 11,500 daily steps, a positive trend toward that target behavior in the latter 1/3rd of the intervention was observed. Results suggest the need for an extended intervention over a longer period of time and customized even further to the participant.
ContributorsLamb, Nicholas Reid (Author) / Adams, Marc (Thesis director) / Ainsworth, Barbara (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
In the current study, the author investigated whether sociosexual orientation interacted with an experimental manipulation of sex ratios previously used by Li et al. (2010) which showed that men and women report greater religiosity after viewing profiles of attractive members of their own sex. The author predicted that only people of restricted sociosexual orientation would be reporting greater religiosity after viewing profiles of attractive members of their own sex. A sample of 171 undergraduate students (85 men, Mage = 19.5) from a large Southwestern university participated in the study for course credit. Participants were first administered the Sociosexual Orientation Index (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991). Then, under the pretense of assisting psychology faculty in designing a dating website for incoming students, participants viewed a set of profiles (photo and description) of either attractive men or attractive women, after which they answered a series of questions on a religiosity scale developed for the current study. Results showed that sociosexual orientation did not interact significantly with the experimental manipulation. Additionally, the results of the current study failed to replicate those of Li et al. (2010). The author discusses possibilities for why the results of the current study failed to replicate the results of Li et al., and for alternative explanations of the potential role of sociosexual orientation in responding to shifting sex ratios.
ContributorsCottengaim, Isaiah John (Author) / Cohen, Adam (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The aim of this thesis was to explore whether major life changes can have a visual, perceptible impact on facial changes. The proposed mediation model suggested that changes in personality serve as a mediating factor between life experiences and facial changes throughout the lifetime. The proposed model was tested by examining (1) perceived personality changes, (2) perceived physical changes, and (3) major life changes in photos of individuals' old-aged faces compared to their respective younger faces. Participants in the current study viewed old and young photos of 29 Miss America pageant winners and rated how much each older face changed from its respective younger face on the following criteria: age change, overall change, personality change, and physical change. Responses were aggregated across participants for each target, and personality and physical items were separately composited into single measures of overall perceived personality change and overall perceived physical change. Results did not support the proposed model; however, some marginally significant correlations were found between the number of times the targets experienced a change in marital status and the appearance of being calm, feminine, and less changed in older age. However, these correlations were in the reverse direction from what was expected; further research is needed to understand how marital changes influence, and are influenced by, personality and physical changes. As a form of face perception, the processes underlying the proposed model are discussed in terms of possible social consequences. Further research is needed to explore whether changes in life events, such as the ones presented here, are related to specific facets of personality and physical changes, and how these perceptions translate to important social outcomes. Suggestions for future research pertaining to these issues are discussed.
ContributorsMichael, Kendra (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
What characteristics do people prefer in potential mates? Previous studies have explored this question, discovering that preferred characteristics vary by people's sex and sexual strategy, but have implied that these preferences remain constant across the lifespan. We suggest, however, that systematic variation exists in individuals' mate preferences across the lifespan, as they shift their investments from mating toward parenting. We suggest that the characteristics of a potential mate can be viewed as affordances that assist or hinder an individual in achieving certain fundamental goals. Incorporating the framework of Life History Theory with this affordance-management approach to social behavior, we propose that an individual's life stage, sex, and life history strategy together serve as the basis for these goals and thereby shape the characteristics people seek in potential mates. Using data collected from participants aged 18-45 recruited on Amazon's Mechanical Turk, we tested a range of hypotheses derived from our approach. In general, results provide mixed support for a role of life stage in shaping mate preferences. For example, nurturance and social competence were viewed as more necessary characteristics in a mate by participants invested in parenting. Moreover, as their investment in mating increased, females expressed a greater preference for ambition in their potential mates, but males did not. Other predictions were not borne out, however, suggesting that there is still much to be learned from investigating the relationship between life stage and mate preferences.
ContributorsKalina, Catherine Ellen (Author) / Neuberg, Steven (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Gangestad, Steven (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Graduate College (Contributor)
Created2014-05