Online dating is becoming an increasingly used method for meeting significant others. This study had two central goals. The first goal was to explore the factors that contribute to deception used to attract a romantic partner online. The second aim was to discover the reasons that people with different attachment styles might lie as well as their justifications and interpretations for those lies. Male and female single college undergraduates (N = 208), who had previously completed an attachment style measure via an online screening, were asked to complete an online dating profile and an email to a potential dating partner. Participants reviewed these correspondences and noted any inaccuracies. They also completed a questionnaire related to lying in romantic relationships. It was hypothesized that both attachment style and gender would affect lying behavior. For online dating, results indicated that women told more self-oriented and subtle lies than men, and that high attachment avoidance and anxiety predicted greater lying behavior for participants with relationship experience. Offline, attachment predicted the motivations, justifications, and acceptability of lying to romantic partners. Implications related to online dating and attachment processes in relational deception are discussed.

Climate change is a source of anxiety and stress. To be resilient to the changes that are occurring, individuals must cope with that stress. Because there are many ways that people might manage stress we examined variation in coping strategy use among Americans who reported some concern about climate change to understand generally how people cope with such stress, and whether it can be predicted from individual difference factors, namely degree of climate change concern and political ideology. We examined these variables specifically because in the study of responses to climate change, conservatives and liberals often report divergent beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. To investigate these questions, we conducted two studies, recruiting American adults via MTurk (Study 1 N = 425, Study 2 N = 247). Participants completed online surveys with measures of how concerned they were about climate change, what they were stressed about in relation to climate change, how they cope with such stress, using the Brief COPE inventory (Carver, 1997), and political ideology. A variety of stressful experiences were reported, ranging from observations about changing weather to concerns about political inaction. We find that certain coping strategies (e.g., acceptance and active coping) are highly reported, whereas some strategies are less used (e.g., substance use). Overall, use of almost all coping strategies was found to be related to levels of concern about climate change – greater concern predicted greater use of most strategies. However, political ideology moderated the relationships between concern and use of certain coping strategies – conservatives who are more concerned were using more avoidant strategies to cope (i.e., disengagement), whereas the relationship was positive, but weaker for liberals. We did not observe such an interaction for problem-focused or social-focused coping strategies. The implications of these findings around coping responses to climate change in relation to the need for resilience are discussed.

Heterosocial cognitions, skill, and anxiety were identified as constructs which are components of heterosocial performance. Each of these constructs was defined, and Likert-scale items intended to reflect these definitions were generated. The possibility that these constructs differed for men and women was tested both consensually and statistically. Judges determined the suitability of of each item for each sex, as well as the appropriateness of each item for each construct. Items judged as belonging to the three constructs were assigned to three separate subscales of a self-report measure. The construct validity and reliability of each subscale were determined through, three administrations of the measure to groups of approximately 300 people each. Data from the first administration used to verify what items might be gender specific and two versions of the subscales were generated from the results, one for men and one for women. Additionally, normative data were derived for men and women from the sample of people surveyed. The study was successful in the initial development and validation of two self-report instruments, one for each sex, for concurrently assessing heterosocial cognitions, skill, and anxiety with coefficient alpha ranging from .86 to .90 in the final iteration. The normative data indicated that there are few sex differences in responses to items in each of the three subscales.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>Certain factors associated with online video communication have negative effects on the quality of an interaction. One’s propensity to trust others or reciprocate trust with others online may be influenced by these factors of video-mediated communication. I investigated the effects of two such factors on pro-social behaviours in two separate experiments. In the first experiment I assessed levels of reciprocation in the presence of absence of a web-camera, to see if the presence of a camera was a sufficient enough cue of observation to induce trustworthy behaviours. In the second experiment I tested the effect eye gaze had on trusting and trustworthy behaviours. Results from the current research suggest that direct eye gaze is an important factor in deciding whom to trust and with whom to reciprocate trust. The current research introduces methodological changes that help to combat high levels of variability in participant responses. Future directions for research on eye gaze and other factors of video-mediated communication are discussed.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

<p> The current study was conducted to examine the relationship between personal, internal variables, and various measures of video game ratings. Individual differences equated in the present study included trait aggression, video game preferences, sex, and gender identity. These measures were experimentally manipulated to evaluate various game ratings including ratings of violence, enjoyment, and age recommendations. Comparisons of ratings were made across E10+, T, and M rated video game conditions. Participants completed a demographic profile, the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, and a video game questionnaire, which was administered after viewing video game clips. Correlational analyses revealed that trait aggression was not significantly related to video game ratings. However, video game preference was correlated with higher enjoyment ratings in all game conditions and lower violence and age recommendation ratings in the M game condition. The results further revealed that sex was a significant factor for enjoyment and age recommendation ratings, but not ratings of violence in the offered video games. Regarding gender identity differences, masculinity was found to be correlated with higher violence ratings for the violent video game conditions; femininity was correlated with lower enjoyment ratings and higher age ratings in the most violent game condition. Implications for the ESRB video game ratings process and media portrayal of violent video game players are discussed in the context of the present study.</p>

Negativity and Hedonic Relevance are examined as factors potentially influencing attributions associated with changes in the built environment. Ninety-nine male and female university students participated on a "survey" testing the extension of previous research identifying these variables as biasing perceivers toward asserting "person" as opposed to "situational" causation. As predicted, increased negativity resulted in significantly more inferences of negative dispositions to only implicitly involved actors. A significant interaction effect was also identified between negativity and gender, with males making more attributions of causality (blame) in response to a more negative event, as predicted for all subjects, and females making less. No new evidence for the role of Hedonic Relevance was identified due to failure of the associated manipulation. A greater focus on gender differences in future attribution research is recommended, as is a greater awareness among architects and planners of the psychological processes underlying the experience of environmental change.

<p> A fundamental aspect of successful social interactions is the ability to accurately infer others&rsquo; verbal communication, often including information related to the speaker&rsquo;s feelings. Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by language and social-affective impairments, and also aberrant functional neural responses to socially-relevant stimuli. The main objective of the current research was to examine the behavioral and neural effects of making affective inferences from language lacking overt prosody or explicit emotional words in individuals with and without autism. In neurotypical individuals, the current data are consistent with previous studies showing that verbal emotional stimuli enhances activation of brain regions generally responsive to discourse, and also &ldquo;social-affective&rdquo; brain regions, specifically medial/orbital frontal regions, bilateral middle temporal areas, temporal parietal junction/superior temporal gyri and pCC/PC. Moreover, these regions respond differentially to positive and negative valence, most clearly in the medial frontal area. Further, results suggest that mentalizing alone does not account for the differences between emotional and neutral stories, as all of our stories required similar inferencing of the feelings of the protagonist. In autism, there is general agreement that the neurodevelopmental disorder is marked by impairments in pragmatic language understandings, emotional processes, and the ability to &ldquo;mentalize,&rdquo; others&rsquo; thoughts, intentions and beliefs. However, findings are mixed regarding the precise nature of emotional language understandings. Results of the present study suggest that autistic individuals are able to make language-based emotional inferences, and that like neurotypical controls, social-affective brain regions show task-related facilitation effects for emotional compared to neutral valence. However, the neural activations in the autism group were generally greater than controls, especially in response to emotion. Additionally, results showed greater difficulty with incongruent judgments in participants with autism. Together, these findings represent a first step toward revealing social-affective abilities in the language context in autism, despite irregular brain response. Such understandings are critical to generating effective intervention strategies and therapeutic practices for autistic individuals and their families. For remediation to be most beneficial, one must understand and utilize areas of skill, and leverage those to positively impact deficits.</p>

<p> The workforce in today&rsquo;s organizations is increasingly diverse, including racial, ethnic, cultural, gender, age, sexual orientation, personality, motivation, values, and a multitude of other differences. These differences are often a source of friction and conflict in work groups, whether or not the conflict is openly expressed. Yet they can also add significant value to groups by providing a richer work experience and a broader pool of knowledge from which to solve problems and make decisions. The literature on this topic crosses multiple disciplinary boundaries, and includes social psychology, conflict studies, linguistics, political science, and management. Research on the performance of diverse work groups has been inconclusive, and has left us with limited understanding of the way in which difference plays out in groups, how group members make meaning of their differences, and how these differences shape and are shaped by group interactions. The research, using a social constructionist frame, analyzed videotapes of actual group interactions using a CMM methodology and compared group interactions to group member perceptions of difference and performance to achieve a deeper understanding of the dynamics of difference and performance in work groups. It found that groups that were relationally generative (i.e., that achieved better results than those of their individual members) had unique patterns that included a description of differences as strengths, better listening, stronger consensus, balanced participation, and inviting and building on each others&rsquo; ideas.</p>