Following the 9/11 terror attacks, many Americans experienced some form of habit or mood-altering stress though, most had received their impressions of the violence via distributed media reporting rather than firsthand exposure. Researchers have found that the propagating effects of media broadcasting can exasperate the effects of terror. However, little is known of how reports of terror violence affect group dynamics in geographically distant nations. The purpose of this study, following terror management theory, was to understand if terrorist violence influences cognitive and implicit racial evaluations in a culturally similar, but geographically distant, population. The study's design was a quantitative natural experiment. Time of completing the assessment, either before or after the 2015 Paris Bataclan terror attack, comprised the 2-level independent variable; the dependent variables were the Race Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a cognitive evaluation of racial anxiety. Age and religiosity served as covariates. The target population included White citizen residents of the United States over the age of 18; 263 participants were derived from archival data. Comparisons of raw IAT scores showed an 8% increase in negative implicit racial evaluations following the attack; however, the MANCOVA failed to achieve multivariate significance (p > .05). Despite the lack of statistical significance, important details on implicit racial attitudes were uncovered. Results of this study have the potential to foster positive social change by informing individuals on how their implicit associations might be affected following exposure to reports of terrorist violence. Additionally, these findings may guide national security and intelligence professional's development of post-attack response measures and task forces.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) is a chronic, painful rheumatic condition characterized by recurrent musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, and nonrestorative sleep, for which there is currently no biological marker. People who suffer from fibromyalgia are extremely susceptible to the effects of psychological stressors which may in turn exacerbate the symptoms of the disease. As unrelenting pain is the main symptom of fibromyalgia, it follows that patients would experience personal losses and changes in their self-schemas or the way in which they view themselves as a result. This study was particularly focused on identifying the enmeshment of self-schemas and pain-schemas, and the extent to which women with fibromyalgia experience pain and self-schema enmeshment (PSSE). Additionally, this study sought to determine the utility of using the Implicit Association Test as a measure of PSSE. The present study compared FMS patients to a group of diabetes patients on several measures of schema enmeshment, including the IAT. It was hypothesized that the two disease groups would differ significantly on the level of PSSE indicated by the IAT, and the two disease groups would not differ on enmeshment with illness indicated by the IAT. Additionally it was hypothesized that the IAT would be correlated with explicit measures of PSSE. Results did not support either of these hypotheses; however the sample size and statistical power necessary to test these hypotheses was severely lacking and thus they could not be evaluated in an appropriate manner. Results did not support the hypothesis that the IAT would be highly correlated with the explicit measures of PSSE. Based on these results and the existing literature, it is still somewhat unclear as to whether or not the IAT would be an acceptable/feasible tool in assessing PSSE in fibromyalgia patients.

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No description available.

A robust associative self network automatically biases attention, memory, and impression formation in a heuristic-like way. This thesis examines whether this self-heuristic underlies association formation of novel person and object representations to the self network and how this structure influences perceptions. This was tested across three experiments. The first employed an implicit task to assess whether self-similar individuals were represented with greater association strength to self-concept than self-dissimilar individuals. The second used an implicit task to measure whether newly-owned, previously-owned, and unowned objects exhibited different association strength with self-concept. The third determined the impact of minimal self-similarity to another individual, presented either before or after encoding, on memory for encoded information about them. Results of these experiments support three conclusions summarizing how a self-heuristic affects perceptions of novel stimuli. First, self-relevance automatically biases cognitive representation of novel self-similar (versus self-dissimilar) people and owned (versus unowned) objects, evidenced by stronger implicit association strength between these stimuli and self-concept. Next, this representation biases memory accuracy and errors in favour of heuristic-consistent information, even in contexts of minimal self-similarity. Finally, representation of self-similar people and owned objects relative to the self network biases perception through first-order effects, whereby unrelated concepts sharing an association to the self-network can influence one-another. Owned objects were automatically more favourably evaluated due to a first-order association with self-positivity. Perception of well-established self-knowledge was malleable based on response pairing with first-order associated self-similar or self-dissimilar individuals. Finally, when memory retrieval for self-similar and self-dissimilar individuals failed, responses were predicted based on first-order associated personality traits. These conclusions provide novel support for the existence of an automatic and ubiquitous self-heuristic that biases representation formation and subsequent perception of novel people and objects. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / A highly accessible network of self-representation biases attention and memory in favour of self-relevant information. I investigated how this network mediates representation of novel people and novel objects, stimulus categories that have received little attention in the social cognitive literature. An implicit test of cognitive association strength (i.e. the Implicit Association Test) revealed that novel self-similar (versus self-dissimilar) people and owned (versus unowned) objects are immediately associated to the self network. The new representations led to perceptual biases through first-order associations, whereby strictly self-relevant information was generalized to self-similar people and owned objects. For instance, even minimal self-similarity to a novel individual biased memory retrieval and reconstruction so that the retrieved information was consistent with the expectation of self-similarity. Together, the findings highlight the ubiquity and automaticity with which self-associations mediate cognitive representations and consequent perceptions of novel people and objects in realistic social situations.

Genetic association studies usually include related individuals. Meanwhile, high-throughput sequencing technologies produce data of multiple genetic variants. Due to linkage disequilibrium (LD) and familial relatedness, the genotype data from such studies often carries complex correlations. Moreover, missing values in genotype usually lead to loss of power in genetic association tests. Also, repeated measurements of phenotype and dynamic covariates from longitudinal studies bring in more opportunities but also challenges in the discovery of disease-related genetic factors. This dissertation focuses on developing novel statistical methods to address some challenging questions remaining in genetic association studies due to the aforementioned reasons. So far, a lot of methods have been proposed to detect disease-related genetic regions (e.g., genes, pathways). However, with multiple-variant data from a sample with relatedness, it is critical to account for the complex genotypic correlations when assessing genetic contribution. Recognizing the limitations of existing methods, in the first work of this dissertation, the Adaptive-weight Burden Test (ABT) --- a score test between a quantitative trait and the genotype data with complex correlations --- is proposed. ABT achieves higher power by adopting data-driven weights, which make good use of the LD and relatedness. Because the null distribution has been successfully derived, the computational simplicity of ABT makes it a good fit for genome-wide association studies. Genotype missingness commonly arises due to limitations in genotyping technologies. Imputation of the missing values in genotype usually improves quality of the data used in the subsequent association test and thus increases power. Complex correlations, though troublesome, provide the opportunity to proper handling of genotypic missingness. In the second part of this dissertation, a genotype imputation method is developed, which can impute the missingness in multiple genetic variants via the LD and the relatedness. The popularity of longitudinal studies in genetics and genomics calls for methods deliberately designed for repeated measurements. Therefore, a multiple-variant genetic association test for a longitudinal trait on samples with relatedness is developed, which treats the longitudinal measurements as observations of functions and thus takes into account the time factor properly. / PHD / It has been widely recognized that complex diseases are results of poor habits and genetic predisposition. Though people can make their own choices about lifestyle, the mysterious genome language seems to be unchangeable and inevitable. Decoding the messages delivered by DNA can help with prevention, prediction and treatment of diseases. This work focuses on developing novel statistical methods that can make contributions to the detection of disease-related genetic factors. Specifically, given the genotype data and phenotype (e.g., fasting glucose level) data on a sample of individuals where some could be relatives and the rest may be not, three challenges are addressed in this work: (1) how to detect if a genetic region (such as a gene) is significantly associated with the phenotype, while non-genetic information (such as demographic data) is taken into account; (2) how to deal with missing values in genotype data via the relatedness among individuals as well as the similarity among genetic variants; (3) if the phenotype is measured over time for every individual, how to take advantage of the abundant information to discover genes with time-related effects on the phenotype. To address question (1), a hypothesis test is proposed, which is proved being able to successfully detect genes already discovered being associated with a specific trait in previous studies. To address question (2), an imputation method is developed and it is shown that this method can improve the power of association tests. For the third challenge, a second hypothesis test is proposed and it is verified to be able to identify genes contributing to the pattern of a longitudinal trait.

Though the workforce in the United States is comprised of more than 50% women, women hold only 26% of professional computing jobs, and at some companies the percentage is even lower (National Center for Women & Information Technology, 2011). This study aims to examine whether employees within the tech industry have an implicit association between the concepts of “maleness” and “tech”. Participants will complete a priming task, an Implicit Association Test, and a survey about existing sexist beliefs and their jobs. The Expectation States Theory (Eagly, Beall, & Sternberg, 2004) suggests that all participants will have an implicit association between these concepts, though participants primed with an article about a man in tech and participants from companies with more men overall, in leadership, and in tech positions will have a stronger bias. Additionally, the Unified Theory (Greenwald et al., 2002; Smeding, 2012) suggests that the proposed results will show that women working in tech positions have a slightly weaker bias, and priming about a woman in tech will not reverse the bias. If implicit biases are addressed within the tech industry, these fixes can help the field maintain its upward trajectory by becoming an inclusive space for men and women.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature of listeners' attitudes toward foreign-accented speech and the manner in which those attitudes are formed. This study measured 165 participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward US- and foreign-accented audio stimuli. Implicit attitudes were measured with an audio Implicit Association Test. The use of audio stimuli as repeated tokens for their phonological attributes represents an innovation in IAT methodology. Explicit attitudes were elicited through self-report. The explicit task was contextualized as a fictional medical malpractice trial; participants heard the recorded audio testimony of two actors (one US-accented and one Korean-accented) portraying opposing expert witnesses. Four test conditions counterbalanced across participants were created from the recordings. Participants rated the experts on fourteen dependent variables ('traits'): believability, credibility, judgment, knowledge, competence, trustworthiness, likeability, friendliness, expertise, intelligence, warmth, persuasiveness, presentation style, and clarity of presentation. Participants were also asked for their attitudes toward the speakers relative to each other (i.e., Which doctor would you side with in this dispute?). The question of speaker preference was posed as a binary choice, an 11- point slider scale measure, and two confirmation questions asking participants to state how fair they thought an outcome for each party would be. This study's hypothesis that participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward the same speech would diverge was confirmed. The IAT results indicated an implicit bias [ D =.33, p∠.05] in favor of the US-accented speaker, while the self-report results indicated an explicit bias [ F (2,121)=3.969, p=.021, η 2 =.062] in favor of the foreign-accented speaker in the slider scale and confirmation questions [ F (2,121)=3.708, p=.027, η 2 =.058, and F (2,121)=3.563, p=.031, η 2 =.056]. While the binary choice question showed a trend toward favoring the foreign-accented speaker, the result was not significant. No discernable pattern was found to exist in attitudes toward the speaker by trait. This study's findings argue for the recognition of both implicit and explicit attitude constructs and the integration of implicit attitudes measurement methodologies into future language attitudes research. Additional theoretical implications of these findings for future language attitudes research are also discussed, including implications for selecting an appropriate cognitive processing model.

Unverfälschbarkeit stellt ein wichtiges Gütekriterium psychologischer Testverfahren dar. Dieses Kriterium gilt dann als erfüllt, wenn das Testverfahren auf Grund seiner Konstruktion keine Steuerung oder Verzerrung der Ausprägung von Testwerten seitens der Versuchspersonen ermöglicht (vgl. Moosbrugger & Kelava, 2012). Im Gegensatz zu direkten Verfahren (z.B. Fragebogen und Interviews), bei welchen die Ausprägung hinsichtlich eines Merkmales durch Selbstbeschreibung der Versuchspersonen erfragt wird und eine Verfälschung (z.B. durch sozial erwünschtes Antwortverhalten) nicht ausgeschlossen werden kann, wurde indirekten Verfahren (z.B. dem Impliziten Assoziationstest; IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) lange Zeit Immunität gegen Fälschungsversuche unterstellt. Diese begründet sich unter anderem durch die Annahme, dass mittels indirekter Verfahren implizite Merkmale gemessen werden. Implizite Merkmale unterscheiden sich von den „eher klassischen“ expliziten Merkmalen, welche vorwiegend mittels direkter Verfahren gemessen werden. Ein wesentlicher Unterschied besteht darin, dass Versuchspersonen nicht notwendigerweise um die Ausprägung hinsichtlich ihrer impliziten Merkmale wissen und dass sie diese Ausprägung auch nicht kontrollieren können (vgl. De Houwer, 2006; De Houwer & Moors, 2007, in press). Die theoretischen Annahmen bezüglich der Eigenschaften impliziter Merkmale bzw. Messergebnisse legen zwei Implikationen nahe. Erstens: Wir können implizite Merkmale ausschließlich über indirekte Zugänge erfassen, da diese nicht notwendigerweise bewusst sind und so eine Selbstauskunft nicht möglich erscheint. Zweitens: Personen können ihre impliziten Messergebnisse nicht kontrollieren und folglich auch nicht verfälschen. Vermutlich gab es auch aus diesem Grund vor wenigen Jahren einen regelrechten Boom, der zu der Entwicklung einer Vielzahl indirekter Verfahren zur Erfassung impliziter Merkmale geführt hat. Ob jedoch die Messergebnisse dieser Verfahren tatsächlich implizit und damit nicht verfälschbar sind, darf nicht nur theoretisch unterstellt, sondern muss empirisch überprüft werden (vgl. De Houwer, 2006). Der IAT gilt als das bekannteste, reliabelste und valideste indirekte Verfahren (Bosson, Swan, & Pennebaker, 2000; Rudolph, Schröder-Abé, Schütz, Gregg, & Sedikides, 2008). In meiner Dissertation habe ich mich aus diesem Grund der empirischen Überprüfung auf Verfälschbarkeit des IATs gewidmet. Die vorliegende Dissertation besteht aus insgesamt fünf Kapiteln. Das 1. Kapitel bildet eine theoretische Einführung zu den Themen Fälschung im diagnostischen Kontext und zum IAT. Grundlegende Befunde und Fragen zur Verfälschbarkeit des IATs werden dargestellt. Kapitel 2 bis 4 bilden empirische Beiträge meiner Forschung, die sich jeweils schwerpunktmäßig mit unterschiedlichen Aspekten der Verfälschbarkeit des IATs beschäftigen. In Kapitel 2 wird der Frage nachgegangen, unter welchen Bedingungen der IAT verfälschbar ist. Bis dato haben die wenigen existierenden Studien ein sehr widersprüchliches Bild bezüglich der Verfälschbarkeit des IATs aufgezeigt. Ein Grund hierfür könnte sein, dass potentiell relevante Faktoren, welche die Verfälschbarkeit des Verfahrens beeinflussen können, noch nie gemeinsam in einer Studie untersucht wurden. Die vorliegende Studie wurde genau mit diesem Ziel konstruiert und durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse verweisen auf ein komplexes Zusammenspiel verschiedener Faktoren und zeigen auf, unter welchen Bedingungen der IAT verfälschbar ist. Implikationen dieser Ergebnisse werden kritisch diskutiert. In Kapitel 3 werden die Fragen beantwortet, wie Personen den IAT verfälschen und ob Fälschung im IAT detektierbar ist. Die Forschung hat sich bislang nur bedingt damit beschäftigt, was fälschende Personen tun, um ihre Messergebnisse wie gewünscht zu beeinflussen. Es wurde auch noch nicht untersucht, ob Versuchspersonen unter verschiedenen Bedingungen (z.B. Fälschungsziel: hohe vs. niedrige Testwerte) unterschiedliche Strategien anwenden. Dennoch wurden Indices vorgeschlagen, welche in der Lage sein sollen, Fälschung im IAT zu detektieren (Agosta, Ghirardi, Zogmaister, Castiello, & Sartori, 2011; Cvencek, Greenwald, Brown, Gray, & Snowden, 2010). In der vorgestellten Studie habe ich einerseits untersucht, welche Strategien fälschende Personen anwenden und ob sie, je nach Bedingung, zu unterschiedlichen Strategien greifen. Andererseits habe ich untersucht, welche dieser Strategien tatsächlich mit erfolgreicher Fälschung des IATs einhergehen. Schließlich habe ich untersucht, ob die in der Vergangenheit vorgeschlagenen Indices tatsächlich in der Lage sind, erfolgreiche FälscherInnen zu detektieren. Meine Ergebnisse zeigen, dass fälschende Personen unterschiedliche Strategien anwenden, um ihr Ziel zu erreichen. Damit verbunden zeigte sich auch, dass es schwerer ist als bislang angenommen, erfolgreiche FälscherInnen im IAT zu detektieren. Implikationen dieser Ergebnisse werden kritisch diskutiert. Kapitel 4 beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, ob kognitive Fähigkeiten ein erfolgreiches Fälschen im IAT erleichtern. Bisher wurden diese Fähigkeiten nur mit Fälschungserfolg in direkten Verfahren in Verbindung gebracht (vgl. Hartshorne & May, 1928; Nguyen, Biderman, & McDaniel, 2005; Ones, Viswesvaran, & Reiss, 1996; Pauls & Crost, 2005; Snell, Sydell, & Lueke, 1999; Tett, Freund, Christiansen, Fox, & Coaster, 2012; Weiner & Gibson, 2000). In der vorgestellten Studie habe ich untersucht, ob sie auch beim Fälschen des IATs eine Rolle spielen. Besonders habe ich mich dabei für die Rolle des g Faktors der Intelligenz, der Verarbeitungsgeschwindigkeit und der Konzentrationsfähigkeit interessiert. Die Ergebnisse meiner Studie zeigen auf, dass einige dieser Prädiktoren tatsächlich einen Einfluss auf den Fälschungserfolg im IAT haben. Implikationen dieser Ergebnisse werden kritisch diskutiert. Das 5. Kapitel bildet eine Zusammenführung und Integration der Befunde meiner Forschung in die bestehende Theorie. Zudem werden ein Ausblick für die weitere Forschung sowie Empfehlungen für die Praxis gegeben.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T13:16:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2021003 bytes, checksum: 5ad4eefd617aac07ae5ffec54035a65b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-12-28 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Traditionally, human values have been measured by explicit forms of measurement, like self-report questionnaires. Nevertheless, it is known that these measures are susceptible to social desirability influence, which tends to mask and skew the results. One of the forms that have been used to control this tendency is by the use of implicit measures, which presuppose a decrease in reactivity of the measurement. In this sense, considering the problems inherent in explicit forms of measurement and the lack of instruments in the area of implicit measures, particularly in regard of values, this study was designed, specifically, to focus on the Functionalist Theory of Human Values (Gouveia, 2003). This study aimed to: construct two measures of human values, based on an adaptation of the IAT (SC-IAT), versions pencil and paper (study 1) and computed (study 2). As specific objectives, we sought to test the structure of the Functionalist Theory of Human Values through implicit measures and correlate them with explicit measurement instruments. Participated in the study 1, 154 college students, which are predominantly women (70%) with an average age of 38 years (sd = 6.75). A Multivariate Analysis of Variance for repeated measures revealed differences between the scores in the congruent and incongruent tasks, thereby indicating the effect implicit in the association. Analysis of Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) Confirmatory revealed consistency between the theoretical model and the observed structure (Phi Tucker > 0.90), identifying the values belonging to each of the six sub-functions, which are structured by reason of the dimensions: kind of guidance and type of motivator. Through correlation analysis, we observed a low convergent validity between the SC-IAT-Values and the QVB. Furthermore, was observed the discriminating validity of the instrument within the social desirability scale. Moreover, no correlations were observed between the measured implicit and behavioral variable. The second study, with the participation of 50 students, which are predominantly women (54%) with a average age of 24.8 years (sd = 9.88). Through D score was observed on the implicit effect association. MDS analyzes revealed consistency between the theoretical model and the observed structure (Phi Tucker > 0.90) as well as computed. Through correlation analysis, can t to be observed the convergent validity of the measure with the QVB, however, it presented discriminating validity with the scale of social desirability. Again, no relationship was observed between the measured implicit and behavioral variable. In short, this dissertation has achieved its objectives, building the measure of human values implicit in version pencil and paper and computerized, testing the Functionalist Theory through this, as well as linking it with the explicit measures. / Tradicionalmente, os valores humanos têm sido avaliados por meio de formas explícitas de mensuração, como, questionários de autorrelato. Não obstante, sabe-se que estas medidas são susceptíveis à influência da desejabilidade social, o que tende a mascarar e enviesar os resultados. Uma das formas que vêm sendo utilizada para controlar esta tendência é por meio de mensurações implícitas, que pressupõem uma diminuição da reatividade da medida. Neste sentido, tendo em vista os problemas inerentes às formas explícitas de mensuração e a carência de instrumentos na área de medidas implícitas, em especial no que concerne aos valores, esta dissertação foi pensada. Especificamente, seu foco foi a Teoria Funcionalista dos Valores Humanos, objetivando construir duas medidas de valores humanos, com base em uma adaptação do TAI (SC-IAT), nas versões lápis e papel (Estudo 1) e computadorizada (Estudo 2). Como objetivos específicos, buscou-se testar a hipótese de estrutura dos Valores Humanos por meio das medidas implícitas, bem como correlacioná-las com instrumentos de mensuração explícita. No Estudo 1 participaram 154 estudantes universitários, predominantemente mulheres (70%), com idade média de 38 anos (dp = 6,75). A Análise Multivariada de Variância para medidas repetidas revelou diferenças entre as pontuações nas tarefas congruentes e incongruentes, indicando, assim, o efeito implícito na associação. Análises de Escalonamento Multidimensional (MDS) Confirmatório revelaram coerência entre o modelo teórico e a estrutura observada (Phi de Tucker > 0,90), cujas seis subfunções, se estruturam em razão das dimensões tipo de orientação e tipo de motivador. Entretanto, observou-se baixa validade convergente entre o SC-IAT-Valores e o QVB. Por outro lado, observou-se a validade discriminante da medida implícita com aquela de desejabilidade social. Ademais, não foram observadas correlações entre a medida implícita e a variável comportamental. O Estudo 2 contou com a participação de 50 estudantes universitários, majoritariamente mulheres (54%), com idade média de 24,8 anos (dp = 9,88). Por meio do escore D, observou-se o efeito implícito na associação. Análises MDS revelaram coerência entre o modelo teórico e a estrutura observada (Phi de Tucker > 0,90) também na medida computadorizada. Não foi constatada a validade convergente da medida implícita com o QVB, porém foi observada sua validade discriminante com a medida de desejabilidade social. Novamente, não foi possível observar relação entre a medida implícita e a variável comportamental. Em suma, esta dissertação cumpriu com os seus objetivos, construindo a medida implícita de valores humanos na versão lápis e papel e computadorizada, corroborando a hipótese de estrutura dos valores, assim como observando a validade discriminante desta medida.