In this study we investigated the relationships among working memory, creativity (measured as divergent thinking and creative achievement) and nonverbal intelligence. Furthermore, this study examined the roles of working memory and intelligence in the creative process. In order to examine this, participants were evaluated using a variety of cognitive tasks that included the Alternative Uses Test, the Consequences Task, the Creative Achievement Questionnaire, the Alloway Working Memory Assessment, and the matrix test from the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence. The results of this study indicate that verbal working memory was related to divergent thinking over and beyond intelligence and creative achievement. Nonverbal intelligence was found to be related to divergent thinking over and beyond working memory. Finally, according to the model used in this study, creative achievement was the best predictor of divergent thinking. The findings of this study expand on the previous literature pertaining to the relationships between working memory, creativity and intelligence.

The present study investigated factors related to social connectedness and social support in a college population. Participants in the study were 486 volunteer students at the University of North Florida. All data were collected through a world wide web surveying program that allowed each participant to complete surveys on computers from any location. The surveys administered were the Social Connectedness Scale, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), the Perceived Stress Scale 10, the Patient Health Questionnaire 15 (PHQ15), and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale- Revised (CESD-R) along with a demographics questionnaire. Results show that participants in the ethnic majority group report greater social connectedness and social support than minority participants. Social connectedness is associated with perceived stress and health symptoms, even when controlling for other related factors. The impact of social connectedness on perceived stress explains the health effects of social connectedness, as perceived stress mediates the relationship between social connectedness and stress.

Music is one of the most popular activities while driving. Previous research on music while driving has been mixed, with some researchers finding music to be a distractor and some research finding music to be facilitative to driving performance. The current study was designed to determine if familiarity with the music might explain the difference found between self-selected and experimenter-selected music, and whether the difficulty of the driving conditions affected music’s relationship to driving performance. One hundred and sixty-five University students participated in a driving simulation both with music and without music. Under the “with music” condition, participants were randomly assigned to three music conditions: self-selected music, experimenter-selected familiar music, and experimenter-selected unfamiliar music. In the simulation drive, participants first drove under a simple, low-mental workload condition (car following task in a simulated suburban road) and then drove under a complex, high-mental workload condition (city/urban road). The results showed that whether music was self- or experimenter-selected did not affect driving performance. Whether the music was familiar or unfamiliar did not affect performance either. However, self-selected music appeared to improve driving performance under low-workload conditions, leading to less car-following delay and less standard deviation in steering, but also caused participants to drive faster, leading to faster mean speed and higher car-following modulus, but not more speed limit violations. Self-selected music did not have any significant effect in high-mental workload conditions.

Self-compassion is defined as the ability to treat oneself kindly following perceived failures and/or painful events; this construct is characterized by three components: self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness (Neff, 2003). Although some people may naturally be more self-compassionate than others, previous self-compassion manipulations have shown that self-compassion is a mindset that can be taught. Several short-term self-compassion inductions have been published (Adams & Leary, 2007; Breines & Chen, 2012; Leary, Tate, Adams, Allen, & Hancock, 2007) showing that such inductions lead to more positive emotional and behavioral outcomes. The purpose of this research study was to determine whether a short self-compassion induction would impact people’s responses to an imagined sexual assault scenario. Female undergraduates (N = 141) were randomly assigned to a self-compassion condition or a control. All participants imagined a vivid sexual assault scenario and rated how they anticipated they would feel following the scenario (i., e emotion, less identity, fault, state self-compassion, formal and informal disclosure, and future behavioral intentions). Women who received the self-compassion induction experienced less negative effects following the scenario than participants in the control condition. Some of these effects (e.g., negative emotion, negative identity, formal and informal disclosure) were moderated by past sexual assault experiences showing that the self-compassion induction was more effective for women with no previous sexual assault experience. Comparing groups based on sexual assault history revealed the benefits of a short self-compassion induction may be limited to those with no previous experience. If applied to domestic violence programs, we recommend using a longer self-compassion intervention.

Two studies were conducted to support the dual process model of moral decision making, which states that there are two pathways to moral decisions: one emotional and the other cognitive. Decisions made in personal dilemmas are driven by emotions and intuition, while decisions made in impersonal dilemmas are driven by cognitive factors. Intuitive, emotional reactions tend to lead to non-utilitarian decisions while deliberative reasoning tends to lead to utilitarian decisions. For the current studies, undergraduate students from the University of North Florida completed working memory tests, an empathy scale, and also responded to moral dilemma scenarios. In the second study, participants were asked to respond to the moral dilemma scenarios in the following conditions: baseline, working memory condition (counting task), cold water (cold pressor task), and warm water. In Study 1, participants in the high working memory group had slower reaction times while responding to self dilemmas. In Study 2, the empathy item “I feel other people’s joy” was the best predictor of participants’ utilitarian decisions. These results are framed in terms of the dual process model and possible directions for future research.

60 undergraduate students evaluated male and female counselors on fifteen counselor variables based on listening to a tape recording of a counselor self-introduction paired with an attractive or unattractive picture. Two groups served as control groups; they heard the tape but received no picture. The attractive counselor was perceived as significantly more decisive, interesting, caring, open-minded, likable and better adjusted than the unattractive counselor. These effects were more pronounced for the female counselors than for the male counselors.

Two studies were conducted to measure positive personality change expected to occur during four years of a self-actualizing program. The first study computed inter correlations among the scales of the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) for students in the Psychology and English Departments of a Spanish-speaking college, which were then compared with those reported in the test manual. Generally, correlations were greater than those in the manual, which suggested possible influence by the humanistic and Christian philosophy of the college. The second study examined the effect of training for self-actualization and personality growth on the behavior of a group of psychology teacher-trainees. Results indicated that subjects in the treatment conditions improved significantly in their levels of self-actualization as measured by the Time Competency and Inner-directedness scales of the POI.

Opportunities for aggression occur frequently and unpredictably, but little research to our knowledge has investigated the impact of the mere presence of multiple opportunities on aggression over time. Two studies, one with a Canadian sample (163 participants) and one with an American sample (103 participants) were conducted to analyze the impact of the number of opportunities for aggression on justified and unjustified aggressive thoughts, behaviors, and motivations. Individually, these studies yielded the result that justified aggression remains stable over time, but that unjustified aggression decreases when an individual is given multiple opportunities. Combined, they indicated that justified aggression increased when participants had a second opportunity. Future research is proposed to understand the impact of moral licensing on aggression over time, and to understand why unjustified aggression occurs.

In order to obtain a closer look into the psychosocial impact of chronic conditions, symptom severity, loss of resources, and demoralization were investigated through a mediation analysis. The function and implication of social support was also explored within the circumstances of chronic conditions. Lastly, symptom chronicity was probed as an influential element in the understanding of the consequences of being chronically ill. Participants were 200 men and women, with a mean age of 46 years, and the dataset came from the VOICE (Verification of Illness and Coping Experience) survey. The concepts of Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and Demoralization Syndrome were utilized to portray the underlying processes experienced by individuals with chronic condition. Analyses between symptom severity and demoralization via loss of resources as the mediator were statistically significant. Symptom chronicity did not interact with symptom severity on predicting loss of resources, but analyses showed that individuals with less symptom chronicity reported both larger loss of resources and demoralization. Social support was confirmed as a moderator, buffering the effects of symptom severity on loss of resources. Exploratory analyses with the inclusion of both symptom severity and chronicity as the predictor variable and the use of age as a moderating factor at the prediction of loss of resources was statistically significant, showing that when symptoms were more severe and chronic, younger participants experienced more losses than older participants. Additionally, when age was included as a moderator of the effect of symptom chronicity and severity on the prediction of social support, it was indicated that when symptoms were less chronic and severe, the average perception of social support was higher among younger participants, but, on the other hand, when symptoms were more chronic and severe, younger participants suffered an abysmal drop in their social support perception. In light of the aforementioned results, risk, protective, and developmental aspects are discussed, along with implications for health care providers.

Loneliness occurs in the absence of belonging or social connectedness and has been linked to many physical and mental health problems. Among these conditions are depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and stress. College students report these four conditions as the largest barriers to good academic performance. For as much is known about loneliness, much less is known about belonging and health or the role loneliness plays in these relationships prompting a need for investigation. Using a sample of 301 university students, we replicated previous findings that loneliness predicts depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and stress. Next we replicated and contributed new findings for the relationship between social connectedness and the same health outcomes of interest. Previous research has found gender to be a moderator in the relationship between loneliness and social connectedness. The current study found no evidence of moderation. Based upon the available literature, it was hypothesized that loneliness would mediate the relationship between social connectedness and the health outcomes of interest. Using conditional process modeling, loneliness was found to be a mediator in every case. These findings validate previous findings on the effects of loneliness on health. They also highlight the significance of social connectedness as a factor in health. Future research should investigate the effectiveness of social connectedness as focal point for treatment of mental and physical health conditions.