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Description
This was an audiovisual exhibit showcasing 10 participants' portraits, artifact photos & audio stories. In a world full of polarization in the media and bias, my thesis project strives to highlight the similarities in our differences with stories from people of all different ages, backgrounds & lifestyles. And what topic is more human than home & belonging?
Additional info, audio & photos from the event can be found at the website used during the event: https://gsorian18.wixsite.com/sob-thesis2024
ContributorsSoriano, Gabrielle (Author) / Soares, Rebecca (Thesis director) / De La Torre, Monica (Committee member) / Paulesc, Marie-Louise (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
The body tilt illusion relates to one’s exaggerated perception of body tilt angle in comparison to reality. People tend to overestimate this illusion and feel that they are tilted at 45º when they are tilted less than 45º in reality. This illusion increases with lack of sensory cues and decreases when sensory cues are added. In the present study, distortion in the perception of body tilt was examined as a function of center of mass. There are gender differences in regards to where one’s center of mass lies on their body, with females having a lower center of mass on average compared to males (Elert, 2005). We used a human-sized 3D gyroscope to test participants’ experience of the body tilt illusion. The findings support that perception of body tilt is multisensory and that visual information as well as the tilting plane affects the magnitude of the illusion. This is consistent with the illusion being functional for helping people keep their balance. Yet, we did not find significant differences in the size of the illusion due to differences in center of mass. The pattern of findings supports that the body tilt illusion is relatively universal, and likely functional, but does not vary much due to individual body shape differences like center of mass.
ContributorsOverby, Ashlyn (Author) / Mcbeath, Micheal (Thesis director) / Baia, Sophia (Committee member) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Cavanaugh-Toft, Carolyn (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2024-05
The Wham-Womb Sound Symbolic Effect: English-Speaking Children and Adults Link Phonemes with Arousal
Description
Sound symbolism—the association between word sounds and meaning—has been shown to be an effective communication tool that promotes language comprehension and word learning. Much of the literature is constrained to investigating sound as it relates to physical characteristics (e.g. size or shape), and research has predominantly studied the phenomenon in adults. The current study examined the sound symbolic wham-womb effect, which postulates that words with the /æ/ phoneme are associated with increased arousal while words with the /u/ phoneme are associated with little to no arousal. The effect was tested in both adults and children aged 5-7 years old using a word-to-scene matching task. Participants were presented with two pseudowords (differing only by their vowel phoneme: /æ/ or /u/; e.g. smad and smood) and two scenes depicting an animal in either a more arousing or less arousing situation. Participants were then asked to match which of the scenes fit one of the pseudowords. Results showed that the trial-by-trial performance for adults and children were significantly greater than chance, indicating that the wham-womb effect is exhibited in both adults and children. There was also a significant difference in performance between adults and children, with adults showing a more robust effect. This study provides the first empirical evidence that both children and adults link phonemes to arousal and that this effect may change across development.
ContributorsKuo, Jillian Elaine (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis advisor) / McBeath, Michael (Committee member) / Scherer, Nancy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
I examined the slogan, “Mental illnesses are illnesses like any other,” widespread in psychiatry and medicine, and in society more generally, to determine if it accurately and usefully characterizes mental illnesses, given current neurological and neurophysiological knowledge. Rather than focus on disease entities for comparison, I scrutinized the symptoms of somatic illnesses and mental illnesses and compared them in three areas: their production, their relationship to social and cultural context, and their potential use as indicators of underlying disease or dysfunction. In all three areas, I found that, contrary to the claim of the slogan, the symptoms of mental illness are not like the symptoms of somatic illness and therefore, by extension, mental illness is not “illness like any other.” I briefly surveyed the implications of this difference between mental illnesses and somatic illnesses, and provided some broad suggestions regarding how this finding might help to inform the characterization of mental illnesses, as well as help direct research and treatment of these conditions.
ContributorsDennert, James (Author) / Robert, Jason (Thesis advisor) / Creath, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Phillips, Ben (Committee member) / Neisewander, Janet (Committee member) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Encouraging women’s pursuit and retention in higher education has been an important movement in the United States over the last several decades. While there has been considerable progress, women are still underrepresented in fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The most significant gender gap being engineering, where women make up only 21% of all engineering majors. Lack of self-efficacy is one variable that has been implicated as a barrier for women in engineering, due to implicit and explicit biases and discrimination women experience relating to engineering in higher education. Self-compassion has been shown to be strongly correlated with self-efficacy, with explanations theorized at the level of each positive subcomponent: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. The current study investigates the effects of a self-compassion mindstate induction (SCMI) intervention on engineering self-efficacy compared to a control group. This study also explores gender and race discrimination from faculty and peers in the participants' environment to observe if this plays a role in the effect of the intervention. Women (N = 73) majoring in engineering were recruited from a large southwestern university to participate. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted, revealing a significant three-way interaction for condition type (SCMI or control), discrimination scores, and engineering self-efficacy from Time 1 to Time 2 (F(1, 69) = 6.51, p = .01). The results of this study suggest that participants in the SCMI condition experienced a significant increase in engineering self-efficacy from Time 1 to Time 2 when controlling for discrimination in the women's environment. Self-compassion based interventions that have the potential to increase engineering self-efficacy may be particularly helpful to women who experience more gender and race discrimination in their environment. Future work should be done to examine discrimination more directly in the context of self-compassion and engineering self-efficacy. These results show promise for using brief, accessible, cost-free, positive psychology interventions to support women pursuing engineering in higher education. This research contributes to the literature aiming to address gender disparities in engineering higher education, laying the groundwork for future interventions that support underrepresented populations in STEM.
ContributorsKampf, Taylor (Author) / Lum, Heather (Thesis advisor) / Roscoe, Rod (Committee member) / Lauer, Claire (Committee member) / Chiou, Erin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Research on creativity has yielded competing findings regarding whether it is beneficial or detrimental to individuals’ mental health outcomes. Studies on creativity have found associations with both positive (growth, purpose, and higher well-being) and negative (lower well-being, higher psychopathy) outcomes. This idea raises the question of whether there is a threshold whereby the pursuit of creative behavior becomes detrimental to the individual. Furthermore, what underlying mechanisms might contribute to both higher creativity and worse mental health outcomes? To address this question, personality traits that are commonly linked to creative expression (i.e. risk-taking, novelty seeking, and mind wandering) were examined as moderators in the association between creativity and mental health outcomes. Additionally, a neurodivergent classification was also assessed due to higher-than-average creativity scores seen in those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A cross-sectional study was conducted with 334 participants (160 of which consisted of individuals with ADHD) who completed an anonymous survey with measures of creativity, mental health, and personality traits. Findings and implications are discussed below.
ContributorsBeesley, Karissa (Author) / Mickelson, Kristin (Thesis advisor) / Nelson-Coffey, Katherin (Committee member) / Koop, Greg (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Cultural background and norms can shape beliefs and behavior. As such, the propensity toward seeking help from others is likely also dependent on cultural background. Those who identify strongly with their native culture may have different attitudes toward help-seeking compared to individuals who are more acculturated to U.S. culture. This investigation surveyed a sample of 551 participants from four ethnic backgrounds via Prolific and the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Participation System (SONA) to examine whether greater overall help-seeking was evident among 1) individuals from the majority U.S. culture (European American) compared with ethnic minority individuals in the U.S. identifying as Black/African American, Asian American, or Hispanic/Latino; 2) individuals who endorsed more individualistic cultural values; 3) individuals reporting higher levels of acculturation (i.e., greater comfort with mainstream American culture); and 4) individuals who reported greater emotion granularity (EG), which is the ability to understand one’s own emotions in a more detailed way; and 5) the interactions of ethnic group and each of these constructs (i.e., individualism, acculturation, and emotion granularity). Results based on analysis of variance revealed that, contrary to the first study hypothesis (H1), White/European American participants reported being less likely to seek help for personal or emotional problems than Black/African American participants. In exploratory analyses, Black/African Americans also reported greater help-seeking tendencies than Asian Americans. Also contrary to what was hypothesized (H2), participants high in individualism reported less help-seeking tendencies than participants low in individualism. The third hypothesis (H3) was not supported: Ethnicity did not interact with individualism in predicting help-seeking behavior. As hypothesized (H4), greater acculturation (i.e., comfort with mainstream culture), was associated with greater help seeking; however, (H5) acculturation and ethnic group membership did not interact to predict help-seeking. Finally (H6), there were not differences in help-seeking based on comparisons of individuals higher versus lower in EG, nor did EG interact with ethnic group membership (H7); however, exploratory correlational results indicated greater EG (when measured as a continuous variable) was associated with greater help-seeking. Understanding cultural influences on help-seeking can be invaluable in helping professionals navigate how to effectively provide diverse populations with culturally accessible resources.
ContributorsSuciu, Julia Anna (Author) / Roberts, Nicole A (Thesis advisor) / Burleson, Mary H (Committee member) / Nelson-Coffey, Katherine (Committee member) / Hall, Deborah L (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Choosing a video streaming service to subscribe to involves a complex decision-making process consisting of multifaceted factors that consumers must carefully consider. This dissertation identifies and examines the factors influencing consumers’ decisions by reviewing research from diverse fields such as human factors, psychology, economics, and human-computer interaction. The identified factors shaping consumers’ choices, in order of importance, are advertisements, social value, price, content, and content discovery methods. Additionally, this study assesses consumers’ willingness to pay for each factor and examines whether their perceived explanation of their choice of platform aligns with the behavior in the choice experiments. Opportunities for future research are discussed including, the potential for developing an algorithm to determine one’s likelihood of subscribing to a streaming platform based on the choice heuristics outlined in this study.
ContributorsWallace, Sydney (Author) / Roscoe, Rod (Thesis advisor) / Cooke, Nancy (Committee member) / Craig, Scotty (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Depression has been linked to a significant burden of disease, loss of life, and decreased efficacy of treatment for its comorbidities. Empirical evidence has mounted over the past several decades supporting health benefits from vinegar ingestion, including improvements in blood glucose management, blood cholesterol levels, and inflammation indicators. To date, there have not been any studies in human populations that explore the potential relationship between daily vinegar ingestion and changes in depression indicators and blood metabolomics. This blinded, randomized controlled trial examined the impact of twice-daily vinegar ingestion on mental health measures in healthy young adults recruited from a metropolitan setting. Participants (n=28; aged 25.8±7.0 y; body mass index [BMI] >23 kg/m2) were stratified by age, gender, and BMI and randomly assigned to the liquid (VIN) or pill (CON) groups. VIN participants ingested 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar (~1550 mg acetic acid; Pompeian Inc., Appendix J) diluted in 8-12 ounces of water, consumed with food at mealtimes twice daily (total ~3100mg acetic acid daily). CON participants consumed 1 vinegar pill daily (22.5 mg acetic acid; Spring Valley, Appendix J). The study lasted four weeks, and anthropometric measurements were conducted in a fasted state at weeks 0 and 4. Study adherence varied slightly (90±17% and 100±14% for VIN and CON respectively, p=0.084); hence, adherence was controlled for in all subsequent analyses. Changes in L-tryptophan (p=0.777, η2=0.003), peripheral serotonin levels (p=0.348, η2=0.035), GABA (p=0.403, η2=0.028), and gut-mediated short-chain fatty acids acetic acid (p=0.355, η2=0.034), and propionic acid (p=0.383, η2=0.031), did not differ significantly between VIN and CON groups respectively with the exception of isobutyric acid (p=0.0374, q=0.0473). However, Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) depression scores improved significantly for VIN participants in comparison to CON participants (-0.5±1.3 vs. +0.7±2.4 cm [p=0.026] and -0.4±0.7 vs. +0.3±1.0% [p=0.045]. Although these differences between groups are modest, which would be expected given the short study duration, changes were not driven by pharmacological or lifestyle interventions, suggesting the benefits of vinegar ingestion on mental health symptomology and the blood metabolome.
ContributorsBarrong, Haley (Author) / Johnston, Carol (Thesis advisor) / Alexon, Christy (Committee member) / Roberts, Nicole (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Appearance-related self-esteem is a facet of body image that encompasses the evaluative components of an individual's self-concept that pertains to their own physical appearance. Knowledge regarding how appearance-related self-esteem functions in adolescent social groups is scant in the literature and there is limited research using linear methods suggesting that adolescents can influence the appearance-related self-esteem of their peers. Given the negative consequences of negative feelings about one's appearance later in life, I examined how appearance-related self-esteem develops and relates to adolescent social processes during the transition to middle school. This dissertation investigated how appearance-related self-esteem related to the social processes of selection, similarity, and influence. I further explored the effect of gender on social processes and appearance-related self-esteem. Appearance-related self-esteem was not related to social processes of selection, similarity, or influence. Gender similarity was present in the network, such that adolescents were more likely to select same-gender peers than other-gender peers. Additionally, an effect of gender on appearance-related self-esteem was present, such that boys' appearance-related self-esteem increased over time more than girls'. Findings from the current dissertation provide foundational first steps in identifying the ways that peers impact appearance-related self-esteem during adolescence and provide insights toward understanding how different gender pathways around appearance-related self-esteem may develop over time.
ContributorsHoffer, Aubrey Linn (Author) / DeLay, Dawn (Thesis advisor) / Martin, Carol (Committee member) / Hanish, Laura (Committee member) / Markey, Charlotte (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024