The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 19, 2010). Thesis advisor: Dr. Steven A. Hackley. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

In modern organizations, individuals frequently choose silence over voice (e.g., Milliken, Morrison, & Hewlin, 2003), which can have a variety of detrimental effects on individuals and organizations. This choice of silence is partially due to self-protective implicit voice theories that employees have internalized from interactions with authority over time. In this research, I investigate self-protective implicit voice theories (abbreviated as IVTs throughout), defined as taken-for-granted beliefs about when and why speaking up at work is risky or inappropriate (Detert & Edmondson, 2011). I present three studies employing lab and field research methods to further understand various aspects of IVTs. In the first study, I explored activation and suppression of IVTs from anger and fear primes. I found that IVTs were generally stable and not susceptible to emotional primes, suggesting that they are well-developed beliefs that are strong enough to remain constant in varied emotional states. In the second study, I investigated the extent to which IVTs and evolutionarily significant facial cues of dominance predicted voice in a vignette-based study. IVTs did not predict voice, but further analysis revealed that the dependent variable was more appropriately categorized as helping. There was a significant interaction between gender and face type on helping. Broadly, the results of this study suggest that people may help others after subconsciously calculating their power and predicted reciprocity from the person being helped. Finally, in a third study, I explored the degree to which personality and demographics affect IVTs and how IVTs are related to withholding in four organizations. I found that IVT scores did not cluster in teams, suggesting that they are best analyzed at the individual level and that workplace context has minimal effect on IVTs. Second, I found that IVTs explain withholding above and beyond contextual and personality variables. Last, I found that IVTs mediate the effect of conflict aversion on withholding. The stability and significance of IVTs is further supported from this research, providing additional research opportunities and possibilities to reduce withholding in organizations.

Previous research has shown that information encoded self-referentially often promotes superior recall than that encoded relative to others, semantically, or perceptually. This finding has been labeled the Self-Reference Effect (SRE). However, prior investigations have only used explicit (i.e., conscious) tests of memory, neglecting the possibility that these results could be mediated by implicit (i.e., unconscious) memory processes. Moreover, there is minimal information on the neuropsychological processes that may be involved in self-referential memory, whether explicit or implicit. This study examined subjects' implicit and explicit memory for adjectives that had been encoded self-referentially, relative to an unknown other, and structurally. Furthermore, neuropsychological measures were given.The results suggest a complex relationship between levels of self-reference, self-awareness, memory, and the general neurological areas that may support these processes. Subsequent investigations should take into account the fact that implicit memory is likely to influence self-referential encoding and retrieval. Should these findings be replicated, it could potentially influence a broad base of theoretical work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, as well as clinical work in the areas of: traumatic brain injury, certain psychiatric disorders, amnesia, age-related memory deficits, and anosognosia (unawareness of deficits).

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a computer-based psychological test that measures implicit attitudes, stereotypes and beliefs. In an effort to better understand the applicability and limitations of the IAT researchers have investigated the effects of manipulating a variety of procedural variables that comprise the IAT, not least the IAT categories and the exemplars that are instances of those categories. This study investigated the effects of manipulating the IAT's target categories that define the attitudinal domain that the IAT measures. Experiments were devised to determine the IAT's sensitivity to minor and major semantic manipulations to its target categories while keeping exemplars and attribute categories constant. It was found that the IAT was sensitive to major semantic differences in its target categories, but was apparently insensitive to minor semantic category differences, implying that it is unable to discriminate between subtle distinctions in attitude. It was hypothesised that this latter finding could have been partly due to a temporary cognitive re-definition of the categories in accordance with the salient characteristics of the exemplars. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

Although explicit attitudes have traditionally been used in predictive models of health behaviour, recent theorizing suggests that implicit attitudes might be more useful in predicting socially undesirable or addictive behaviours. In Studies 1 through 3, smokers’ explicit and implicit attitudes were examined to compare the predictive utility of each. Results confirmed that implicit attitudes are better at predicting impulse-driven behaviours, such as smoking consumption. Consequently, implicit attitudes also predict whether a quit attempt will be successful. In contrast, explicit attitudes are better at predicting deliberative outcomes, such as having intentions to quit, and making planned quit attempts. Extending these findings, in Studies 4 and 5, the effectiveness of a novel affirmation intervention designed to break the association between smoking and stress-reduction is evaluated. Preliminary results demonstrate that an affirmation intervention designed to break the smokers’ reliance on smoking as a means of coping with stress can have beneficial and sustainable effects in cessation outcomes. The impact on smokers’ implicit attitudes as a possible mediating role is discussed. Implications for more effective health interventions are also discussed.

Schema violation has been shown to have an impact on cognition. Previous research using reading tasks has shown that the impact is not the same across male and female characters, and research has shown that men and women hold different view of schemas. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) has been used as a method to investigate schema violation, but no study has effectively investigated gender differences. Therefore, this study specifically investigates the factors of participant and character gender on schema violation during the IAT. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the cognitive impact of schema violation while participants completed gender and sexuality IATs. Significant effects were found for participant gender and character gender in several ERP components (N100, P200, N400, and LPP), but only for the gender-career IAT. This suggests that on a basic cognitive level ERP activity is influenced by gender.

The error choice (EC) technique was among the earliest indirect attitude measures developed and was originally designed to overcome social desirability concerns (Hammond, 1948). This programme of research set out to advance EC research in several ways. First, an exploratory factor analysis examined whether participants’ responses to the EC target items produced a systematic pattern of responding. The factor analysis indicated that a single underlying factor best accounted for the data. Additionally, the EC measure demonstrated good reliability across the 3 studies. Second, these studies provided evidence that the EC measure is, at least in part, attitudinal. The EC measure showed a modest positive correlation with the direct measure of attitude in all 3 studies. This suggested that participants’ responses to the EC target items were, at least partially, attitudinal. Additionally, across the studies participant’s EC scores did not change between the high and low social desirability conditions, while participants’ scores on the direct measure were significantly more positive in the high social desirability condition. These findings suggest that the EC measure is, to some degree, resistant to socially desirable responding. Studies 2 and 3 also represent the first time that recommendations made by early EC researchers to improve the EC technique were systematically examined. In these studies the amount of time participants had to complete the EC measure was restricted. The time restriction did not improve the performance of the EC measure. The other optimal condition examined in Study 3 was the presence and absence of filler items in the EC measure. Indeed, removing filler items from the EC measure did not negatively impact its performance. Finally, this programme of research compared the EC measure with more contemporary indirect measures of attitude. In Study 2, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was compared with the EC and direct measure. In Study 3, the Personalized IAT was compared to the EC and direct measure. The results revealed that neither the IAT nor PIAT correlated with the EC measure. In summary, these results suggest the EC technique holds some promise as an approach to attitude measurement and is well worth resurrecting. / Thesis (Ph.D, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-21 09:32:11.904

It is important that the language in textbooks for foreign language learners reflects the language that the learners would encounter in real life. For this reason, the presence of the thousand most common nouns in two Swedish textbooks in Spanish for upper secondary school is observed in this study. Furthermore, this study aims to examine how these nouns occur in order to determine if their pattern of occurence favours the learning and consolidation of words. The main materials that have been used are A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish by Davies (2006) and the word search program available in the digital versions of the textbooks. The results show that the presence of the thousand most common Spanish nouns does reflect the frequency information presented in the frequency dictionary but not all thousand nouns are included. It has been concluded that the frequency information that Davies (2006) presents should only be one of many variables to bear in mind when it comes to what words to include in the textbooks since the frequency dictionary is based on a corpus that does not always reflect the type of language a beginner student in Spanish would need. The studied nouns are to a large extent repeated implicitly in the two textbooks. In order for the students to obtain more profound knowledge of words the textbooks would probably need to offer more possibilities for explicit repetition.

Individuals have different implicit theories. They may hold an incremental theory and believe traits are malleable or an entity theory and believe traits are fixed. In past research implicit theories have been linked to achievement goals. The present study extends this research by investigating the relationship between implicit theories and personal goals. An experimental design was used to examine if priming individuals with a specific implicit theory impacts their goal prioritization. It was expected that individuals primed with an entity theory would place greater importance on intrinsic goals while individuals primed with an incremental theory would place greater importance on extrinsic goals. It was found that female participants rated the importance of financial success higher in the Entity condition compared to the Incremental condition and rated the importance of community feeling higher in the Incremental condition compared to the Entity condition. No significant differences were found with male participants. / Graduate