Research Papers, Essays, Term Papers.
Psychology
Type: thesis. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0074.
Format: pdf.
Format: pdf.
A COMPARISON OF THREE GROUP DECISION-MAKING STRATEGIES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON THE GROUP DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
The objective of this experiment was to compare three group decision-making strategies and their effects on the group decision-making process. Two of the strategies, Dialectical Inquiry and Devil’s Advocacy, were structured while the control condition, Unstructured Consensus Seeking, was non-directed, thus unstructured. The following dependent variables were measured: (a) decision quality, (b) cognitive conflict, (c) affective conflict, and (d) decision commitment. Seventy-two undergraduate participants were randomly assigned across 3 conditions into groups of 6 to solve an interactive group decision task. Thirty-six trained observers were randomly assigned across the same conditions to observe intra-group cognitive and affective conflict and to assess how well the undergraduate participants implemented the structured approaches. The unit of comparison was groups (n = 12). The results of this study were analyzed using analysis of variance and no statistical difference was found between the treatment groups on any of the four dependent variables measured. Cognitive conflict levels and commitment to the decision, while not statistically significant, were higher in the two structured conditions compared to the unstructured control condition. A discussion of these results along with directions for future research is provided.
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Type: term paper. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0047.
Format: pdf. Pages: 30
Format: pdf. Pages: 30
Investigating the Effect of Employment Type and Performance Type on Performance Ratings
This study examines performance appraisal differences for two types of contingent employees and noncontingent employees in terms of task performance and contextual performance. The design of the study was 3 within (Employement Type: Noncontingent, Hopeful Contingent, Temporary Contingent) x 2 within (Performance Type: Task, Contextual). Participants (N = 250) read three brief scenarios, each describing one of the three types of employees. In one section, they rated the importance of the performance facets. In the following section, participants rated the employee`s overall performance as well as performance on the two performance facets. Results indicated that task performance was rated as more important across all participants. Overall, expectations were the highest for Hopeful Contingents, followed by Noncontingents and Temporary Contingents. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Keywordws: performance appraisal | performance modeling | job performance | contingent workers | performance ra
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Type: thesis. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0048.
Format: pdf. Pages: 80
Format: pdf. Pages: 80
The Language of Performance: The Link Between Language, Personality and Performance
The purpose of this research has been to assess the relationships between language use, personality and performance ratings. More specifically, this research attempted to assess whether writing style could predict student performance in a scholarship setting and whether a significant amount of variance in writing style could be accounted for by personality. Writing samples from two groups of applicants to a university scholarship program were drawn and content analyzed. Three factors of language were found including use of positive words, use of negative words and use of cognitive words. Analyses indicate that there were significant differences between selected and non-selected students in terms of usage of positive words, with selected applicants using significantly more positive words. Correlations between the three language factors and a five-factor model of personality showed no significant correlations. Regression analyses revealed that personality factors were better able to predict student performance ratings based on a four-factor model of student performance. However, use of positive words did add incremental variance in addition to personality on two of the four performance factors. Implications for the use of content analysis of student essays and administration of personality tests to scholarship applicants are discussed.
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Type: thesis. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0003.
Format: pdf. Pages: 170
Format: pdf. Pages: 170
A Multigroup Analysis of Reintegrative Shaming Theory: An Application to Drunk Driving Offenses
A restorative justice alternative to crime prevention termed reintegrative shaming theory by Braithwaite has seen increased attention as an alternative to retributive justice, although empirical investigations of its efficacy are limited. The purpose of the present study was to test confirmatory measurement and structural models of reintegrative shaming theory in order to assess the underlying theoretical model and the application of this theory in response to drunk driving offenses. Nine latent constructs were included in these models: reintegration, stigmatization, perceived fairness, self esteem, shame-guilt, embarrassment-exposure, unresolved shame, offender responsibility, and family support.
Multigroup structural equation modeling was used to assess for measurement invariance of indicators used to measure these nine latent constructs between 724 drunk driving offenders randomly assigned to traditional court processing versus offenders assigned to reintegrative shaming conferencing following arrest. Partial metric and partial scalar invariance were found. Thus, analyses proceeded by conducting tests for significant differences in the latent means between groups. Offenders assigned to conferencing reported significantly higher mean values on the constructs reintegration, perceived fairness, self-esteem, shame-guilt, and family support, supporting Braithwaite`s theory.
CONTENTS
I. PROBLEM STATEMENT
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Restorative Justice
Nature of Shame
Empirical Investigations of Reintegrative Shaming Theory
III. METHOD
Data
Procedure
Measures
Statistical Analyses
Hypotheses
IV. RESULTS
Descriptive Statistics
Tests for Factorial Validity
Structural Model Testing
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Type: thesis. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0061.
Format: pdf. Pages: 230
Format: pdf. Pages: 230
A Narrative of Charitable Acknowledgment: Reframing Interpersonal Communication in Intimate Relationships
The field of interpersonal communication conducts many descriptive studies. However, guidance for healthy communication within intimate relationships is more difficult to come by—a condition stemming in part from an emotivist ethical paradigm. MacIntyre (1984) describes “emotivism” as the current state of society where individual preference serves as the ethical decision making compass. Emerging from Enlightenment scholarship (e.g., Hobbes, Rousseau, sociobiology), individual preferences have become main tenets in intimate interpersonal research. In the interpersonal theories of social exchange and goal-orientation, emotivism is encouraged in the emphasis placed on self-interest and technique. This exposes itself metaphorically through descriptions of communication as a tool, an economic bartering system, and a means of gaining emotional satisfaction. As a result, communication phenomena such as love and trust in intimate romantic relationships are difficult to express due to the difficulties self-interested language has in moving beyond the dichotomy of egoism and altruism.
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Type: thesis. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0007.
Format: pdf. Pages: 105
Format: pdf. Pages: 105
A Social Norms Approach to College Alcohol Use: Drinking in a Low-Use Environment
Social norms interventions have been shown to be effective in reducing problematic alcohol use on college campuses. However, not all interventions have been successful, and the campus environment may be responsible for the variable reactions that students have to these interventions. The following three articles investigate the nature and utility of social norms interventions in an environment where alcohol use is relatively low. The first article details an online social norms intervention implemented on a low-use campus. Results suggest that if adapted to the campus culture, a social norms approach to reducing alcohol use could be successful in this unique environment. The second article investigates the impact of social norms in the form of censuring alcohol use. Using the theory of reasoned action, the study shows how alcohol use differs for those exposed to different types of norms, and how attitude toward being censured may change whether exposure to a particular social norm is indicative of decreased alcohol use. The third article is a process evaluation of the social norms intervention in a unique environment. It reviews difficulties encountered in implementing an intervention as well as recommendations for future online approaches to intervention implementation.
CONTENTS
1. SOCIAL NORMS AND ALCOHOL USE
2. A SOCIAL NORMS APPROACH TO DECREASING COLLEGE STUDENT ALCOHOL USE IN A LOW-USE ENVIRONMENT
3. CENSURING, SOCIAL NORMS, AND COLLEGE STUDENT ALCOHOL USE
4. A PROCESS EVALUATION OF AN ONLINE SOCIAL NORMS INTERVENTION
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Type: thesis. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0035.
Format: pdf. Pages: 45
Format: pdf. Pages: 45
Age Differences in the Effects of Conscious and Unconscious Thought on Decision Making
Recent research has suggested that young adults make the most optimal decisions
when the problem is weighed at the unconscious level, or when they engage in little
deliberation (Dijksterhuis, 2004). This is an intriguing finding with important implications
for older adults’ decision making given normative age-related declines in deliberative
processing. In the current study, I investigated age differences in the benefits of unconscious
relative to conscious thought. I also examined the extent to which these benefits interact with
the processing demands of the decision task, and further if age-related benefits associated
with unconscious processing might be specific to certain decision making tasks. For example,
if the decision task requires selective attention to relevant material, rather than simple
evaluation, conscious thought may be more beneficial than unconscious thought and aging
may negatively affect performance. Using a procedure developed by Dijksterhuis, young (N
= 62) and older adult participants (N = 63) engaged in unconscious or conscious thought
processing before selecting a choice from information regarding apartments and banks. The
information was presented as intuitive (i.e., optimal choice contained the most positive
attributes) or deliberative (i.e., optimal choice based on a subset of information). The results
of the study revealed that young adults performed well on the decision task when
unconsciously processing intuitive information and consciously processing deliberative
information. Older adults were more influenced by the type of information rather than
thought processing, which lead them to perform better when they received intuitive
information rather than deliberative information, regardless of thought condition.
Additionally, both young and older adults displayed choice supportive memory, whereas
neither age nor thought condition affected choice satisfaction.
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Price: 3.99 GBP (4.77 EUR, 6.27 USD)
Type: term paper. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0036.
Format: pdf. Pages: 55
Format: pdf. Pages: 55
Age-Related Differences in the use of Diagnostic Information in Social Judgments
The purpose of this research was to provide further evidence for a social expertise view of adult age differences in social cognitive functioning. Of specific interest was the extent to which such a perspective can be used to explain the differential use of trait-diagnostic information by young and older adults in the construction of social judgments. The use of such information has been shown to increase with age (Hess & Auman, 2001), suggesting the presence of superior social expertise in older adults when compared to younger adults. In the current research, factors associated with accessibility to relevant knowledge—extremity of trait-relevant behaviors and the amount of diagnostic information—was manipulated to determine if the differences between presumed experts (i.e., older adults) and nonexperts (i.e., younger adults) were attenuated when the salience of trait-diagnostic information was increased. Young, middle-aged, and older adults studied a series of behavioral description describing fictitious target individuals. Study times for individual behaviors contained in these descriptions and impression ratings for each target person were examined. Results of this study replicate past research; specifically, diagnostic information was studied longer and had a stronger impact on impression ratings than did nondiagnostic information, and the impact of diagnosticity increased with age. Further, extreme cues served to enhance the already present diagnostic effects in study time, while also causing ratings of target individuals to be more negatively rated overall. The expected moderation of age differences in the use of diagnostic information based on the extremity of cues did not follow the expected direction. The relationship between age, extremity of cues, and the use of diagnostic information was not significant, suggesting that extremity did not serve to differentially enhance the accessibility of knowledge structures across age groups as originally expected. In addition, larger amounts of diagnostic information actually resulted in greater age differences in the impact of diagnostic information on impression ratings. This, along with the absence of age differences when minimal diagnostic information was available, may suggest that those with expert knowledge are only willing to use it when sufficient cues are presented. I additionally tested an alternative explanation for observed age differences in the use of diagnostic information. Specifically, I investigated whether age differences in implicit beliefs regarding the stability of traits might mediate age differences. No support was obtained for this hypothesis. In sum, although the results were not entirely consistent with expectations, they were generally supportive of an aging-related increase in social expertise as an explanation for age differences in social judgments.
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Type: thesis. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0063.
Format: pdf. Pages: 88
Format: pdf. Pages: 88
Aging and Selective Attention in Causal Learning
This study investigated age differences in generalization of causal value employing similarity as a cue to causality. Exemplars from six food categories (A+, B-, C+, D-. E+, F-) were presented to both young and older adults in two contiguous training phases. Training Phase 1 included exemplars from categories A+, B-, C+, D-. Training Phase 2 included exemplars from A+, B-, E+, F-. Foods in the “+” categories were paired with an outcome of sickness and foods in the “-” categories were not paired with sickness. Tests of causal judgment and exemplar recognition were conducted. For causal judgment, individual exemplars experienced during training and novel exemplars from all six categories were presented. For categories A+ and B-, the categories experienced in both training phases, young and older groups generalized the causal value to the category label and to all exemplars regardless of whether they were experienced in training or were novel. For categories experienced only once in training (C+, D-, E+, F-), both groups were better able to successfully judge causal value for experienced exemplars than novel exemplars. For young and older adults, experience made a difference in the ability to generalize causal value. Experienced and novel exemplars were also presented for recognition. Participants in both age groups showed a false memory effect for individual exemplars from the more experienced categories (A+, B-) suggesting that the process that allowed them to generalize causal value also interfered with their memory for individual exemplars. There was a difference between the younger and older groups for the categories that were only experienced once in training (C+, D-, E+, F-). In this case, younger participants showed better recognition than older adults for the individual exemplars. Older adults showed the same false memory effects for these categories as they showed for categories A+ and B-. These findings suggest that older adults generalize causal value as well as younger adults, but they are less able to distinguish individual exemplars. This discrepancy may be explained by differences in ability to use verbatim and gist. Older adults’ reduced verbatim processing leads to default gist encoding that enables them to focus on category level features but not process detailed exemplar identity (Brainerd & Reyna, 1990). Younger adults appear to have a flexibility that enables them to encode and retrieve both category-level gist and verbatim individualexemplar features when the task calls for it.
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Type: thesis. Topic: Psychology. Code: psyc0026.
Format: pdf. Pages: 150
Format: pdf. Pages: 150
An Empirical Investigation of the Adaptive Nature of Shame
Throughout the empirical psychological literature on emotion, the general consensus is that shame is maladaptive, while guilt is the adaptive moral emotion. Conversely, evolutionary psychology concludes that all emotions serve adaptive functions. Specifically, shame serves an appeasement function in social relationships. In order to investigate the true nature of shame, the current study used an experimental design. Specifically, a 2 (high shame, no shame) X 2 (high guilt, no guilt) design with a no-mistakes control group was implemented, and shame and guilt were operationalized through an evolutionary lens (i.e., shame as a nonverbal display, guilt as verbalizations of apology). Participants (n = 110) were told they would be assisting psychology faculty members with interviewing candidates for a research position. During the interview, the candidate made three mistakes, and showed shame and/or guilt according to the 2 X 2 design. Participants then rated how well the candidate performed. Results were analyzed using a 2-way ANOVA and independent samples t tests, and it was found that participants rated the candidate more favorably in both shame conditions. Importantly, there were no significant differences between those participants who viewed the candidate who made no mistakes (control condition) and those that viewed the candidate showing shame after multiple mistakes. Thus, apparently saying `sorry` is not quite enough.
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