Browse Exhibits (28 total)
Alex Detrich, Emily Seward, Madison Small, Kayla Ramsey, McKinzie Thurman, Colette Delawalla | Exploring Impulsivity, Negative Urgency, and Cannabis Use in College Students
Impulsivity is a multidimensional personality trait that captures non-planful, sensation-seeking, emotionally driven rash action (Whiteside & Lynam, 2001). Research assessing the relationship between impulsivity and substance use is plentiful and interdisciplinary, including investigation into brain patterns, biological differences between the sexes, and internal and external stimuli. However, different substances are associated with different dimensions of impulsivity, for example, excessive alcohol use is associated with excitement seeking (Gunn et al. 2013).
Negative urgency, or the tendency to act rashly under extreme negative emotions, is associated with substance use, internalizing problems, and other negative health related outcomes (Bardo, Weiss, and Rebec, 2018). The current study will use archival data to determine if a relationship exists between impulsivity and cannabis use and negative urgency and cannabis use, using the UPPS-P measure of impulsivity and the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test (CUDIT) to quantify cannabis use. The goal of this study is to understand the association of impulsivity and negative urgency with different levels of cannabis use. We expect that both impulsivity, broadly and negative urgency, as measured by the UPPS-P will be positively correlated with scores on the CUDIT (i.e., cannabis use).
Faculty Mentor: Tayla Lee
Psychological Science
Graduate/Undergraduate
Alexandria Epperly | Cognitive Effects of Individual Differences in Sensory Processing Sensitivity
Research on environmental sensitivity has primarily focused on the genetic and environmental factors that may play a role in the development of this trait, as well as how the characteristic differential neural activity in highly sensitive individuals may relate to common features, such as increased awareness of environmental subtleties and increased ability to empathize with others (see Greven et al., 2019 for a review of current research). The current study aimed to contribute to the literature by investigating the implications of individual differences in sensory processing sensitivity on cognition, specifically in episodic memory performance. A convenience sample of 22 Ball State University students was used to assess this possible relationship and measurements were obtained using the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (Aron & Aron, 1997) and a semantic processing task developed from Packman and Battig (1978). The hypothesis that environmental sensitivity would correlate positively with episodic memory performance was not supported. Limitations to the study are discussed and suggestions for future research are highlighted, as further investigation may underline the importance of considering the impact of individual differences in sensitivity on cognition and other factors affecting of every-day life.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Daniele Nardi
Department of Psychological Science
Undergraduate
Alexis Detrich | Examining Gender Identity in Spatial Ability
Broadly, gender identity research has received more attention in recent years as research indicates that previous conceptions about gender identity and incongruence with sex are incorrect and are now known to occur from biological and environmental differences. Much of the research on spatial cognition focuses on sex differences found among certain tests of spatial ability (e.g., Levine et al., 2016; Nazareth et al., 2019; Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). However, little to none of the research considers the role of gender identity in spatial abilities. Gender identity, defined as the internal identification and expression of gender (Money & Ehrhardt, 1987), differs from sex in the sense that sex is assigned by a physician at birth, and does not always represent how the individual identifies later in life. As not much research exists on the measurement of individual high in masculine or feminine traits but who do not hit the threshold for gender incongruence with their sex, this study aims to address how varying levels of masculinity and femininity in individuals may influence performance on spatial ability tasks. Mental rotation tasks, spatial anxiety scales and object-location memory tasks were selected on the basis that each have a robust literature backing male or female advantages (ex: Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995; Lawton, 1994).
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Daniele Nardi
Psychological Sciences
Undergraduate
Alexis Jennings | Perceptions of Grief Severity: How Outsiders’ Perceptions of Grieving Pets and Humans Differ
An individual grieving a pet has not always been perceived as being a valid experience if at all comparable to grieving humans. Previous survey data has focused on the experiences of pet and human grief separately. This experimental research design aimed to compare the perceptions of pet and human grief. To meet this goal, this study set up a between-subjects design in which participants randomly were assigned to read a vignette about an employee experiencing a pet or human death. Participants pretended to be a manager and approved the employee to take zero to fourteen days off work then reported their perceptions of the employee’s perceived stress, psychological stress, and bereavement severity. Participants also rated their own previous grief symptoms.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Katie M. Lawson
Department of Psychological Science
Undergraduate
Alijah Forbes | The Effects of Agreeableness and Political Orientation on Perceptions of Aggression in Media
Research on aggression in media is often focused on the aggression’s influence of later aggressive acts. One area that is often not researched is the perceptions of these aggressive acts, and how they are influenced. Prior research on influences on perceptions have shown that they can be influenced by ingroup bias (Hastorf & Cantril,1954; Kim, 2016) and differences in personality (Costa & McCrae, 1986). These areas of research can be tied together in order to look at the differences of perceptions of aggressive acts and how they are influenced, specifically looking at political ideology and agreeableness. This is the focus of the present study, by seeing how the differences of political ideology and agreeableness affect how individuals perceive acts of aggression. The acts of aggression that will be focused on are video media of interactions between police and protestors during a Black Lives Matter protest.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Thomas Holtgraves
Psychological Science
Undergraduate
Honors College
Anna Himes | Trait Anxiety and Assessment of Ambiguous Emotions
The purpose of the current study is to examine whether trait anxiety affects participants’ ability to recognize facial emotions. Past research has supported the notion that high levels of anxiety may result in an inaccurate recognition of emotion. Specifically, possibly through mechanisms such as the Facial Feedback Hypothesis and Embodied Emotion Simulation, past research has supported the notion that individuals with anxiety are more likely to misclassify nonthreatening emotions as threatening. However, there has yet to be a robust set of studies that observe this relationship with the added factor of ambiguity created by surgical masks. In this study, college students completed a trait anxiety measure and emotion-recognition task consisting of 56 photographs of Black and White males and females who were expressing anger, fear, disgust, happiness, calm, sadness, or neutrality. Half of the photographs included surgical masks covering the bottom half of the person’s face. Three hypotheses were tested: Participants with higher trait anxiety will be less accurate at identifying masked and unmasked emotions than participants with lower trait anxiety overall; Participants with high trait anxiety will misclassify non-threatening masked and unmasked emotions (happy, calm, neutral) as threatening emotions (anger, disgust, fear) more often than participants with low trait-anxiety; and participants with high and with low trait anxiety will perform more accurately in assessing unmasked emotions than in assessing masked emotions.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kristin Ritchey
Department of Psychological Sciences
Undergraduate
Honors College
Audrey Hasser | The Relationship of Parental Communication and Emerging Adulthood Risky Behaviors of Binge Drinking and Vaping
Past research regarding parental communication and risk-taking behaviors largely focuses on risk-taking behaviors happening during adolescence, more specifically, the focus has largely been on sexual risk-taking behaviors. The current research examines this relationship of quality parental communication and risk-taking behaviors but shifts the focus to risk-taking behaviors happening in a different developmental period—emerging adulthood. The risk-taking behaviors examined in the present study are risky drinking behaviors, such as binge drinking and the risk taking behavior of vaping, as they have not been extensively researched in the past. The present study’s objective was to determine whether quality parental communication happening during adolescence would be related to risk-taking behaviors happening in emerging adulthood. Specifically, it was hypothesized that quality parent-adolescent communication would have a negative relationship with both alcohol use and the use of electronic cigarettes during emerging adulthood. Participants completed measures of parent-adolescent communication as well as measures regarding their current drinking and vaping habits and correlation and regression analysis were conducted. The results of these analysis indicated that quality parental communication during adolescence had a significant negative correlation with alcohol use in emerging adulthood but no correlation was found for quality parental communication and vaping habits.
Faculty mentor: Anjolii Diaz
Department of Psychological Science
Undergraduate
Honors College
Bobbie Burton | The Effects of Moral and Pragmatic Reasons for Diversity on Institutional Trust and Organizational Commitment
This study examines how an organization’s decision to implement a diversity program affects people’s perceptions of the organization. More specifically, is a simple commitment to diversity enough to elicit institutional trust and organizational commitment from its members, or do trust and commitment depend upon the motive for adopting the initiative? Specifically, this study focuses on moral motives (“It’s the right thing to do”) as compared to pragmatic motives (“It’s the practical thing to do”). Adapted versions of the Affective Commitment Scale (Meyer & Allen, 1990) and the Trust in Organization Scale (Robinson, 1996) are used to measure organizational commitment and institutional trust. Participants are randomly assigned to one of three conditions in which they are tasked with reading 1) a hypothetical policy that supports diversity implementation for a moral reason, 2) a hypothetical policy that supports diversity implementation for a pragmatic reason, or 3) a hypothetical policy unrelated to diversity. Participants are asked to answer questions about their perceptions of the organization’s decision and motives, as well as their support for the proposed hypothetical policy. It is expected that a moral motive for diversity implementation will elicit greater organizational commitment and trust than a pragmatic motive.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Andrew Luttrell
Department of Psychological Science
Undergraduate
Honors College
Cailon Nicoson | Between a Rock and a Hard Place: How Transportation into Stories Representing Protagonist’s Criminal Behavior Affects Reader’s Empathy
Previous research has found that reading fictional stories can increase empathy in individuals who read it (Bal & Vetkamp, 2013; Dodell-Feder & Tamir, 2018; Kaufman & Libby, 2012; Stansfield & Bune, 2014). One important factor that contributes to fiction’s potential empathy-teaching effect is the concept of transportation; transportation is the reader’s ability to “transport” themselves into the story, particularly in the shoes of the protagonist, to better understand how they themselves would react in the character’s situations (Bal & Vetkamp, 2012). The current study analyzed the effect transportation into a story in which the protagonist engaged in a criminal act (e.g., substance abuse and theft) could have on the reader. Participants were asked to read two texts each; one arranged as a list of facts and the second being an emotionally-charged, third-person perspective of either the protagonist’s engagement in substance abuse or theft. One group received one compilation of facts regarding the protagonist’s engagement in either substance abuse or theft and one emotionally-charged account of the protagonist’s engagement in the offense not represented in the first story.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kristin Ritchey and Dr. Thomas Holtgraves
Department of Psychological Sciences and Criminal Justice/Criminology
Undergraduate
Honors College
Caitie Flower | Evaluating a Course for Training Undergraduate Teaching Assistants
An 8-week course was developed to train undergraduate teaching assistants on a variety of ethical, professional, and practical topics. One semester of pre-and post-test data was collected to measure increases in students’ knowledge, skills, and consideration of a teaching-related career. Preliminary results indicate some increases in students’ skills across the semester.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kristin Ritchey
Department of Psychological Science
Undergraduate