College life is a unique experience in the life of many young adults that presents many challenges for which they might not be prepared, including living away from home and adapting to a new social and academic environment. In particular, these experiences may be particularly adverse for students with social phobia and may be predictors of academic and social problems, and may even predict dropout. The purpose of the present research is to identify possible connections between socially phobic tendencies and the social, emotional, and overall well-being of college students. Social phobia itself is an unnecessary and overwhelming fear of being scrutinized by others (National Institute of Mental Health 2009). By implementing the use of four psychological tests: the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, College Affiliation Questionnaire, and Life Orientation Test, this research sought to investigate the correlations existing between college students' self-reports on these measures through the use of the UCF Sona system. Students' personal characteristics and demographics were also examined correlationally along with their self-reports on all four measures. A total of 165 participants were used in this study. After gathering descriptive statistics from each test and their demographics, correlations were run between the four tests and then between demographic information and tests. The results showed social phobia having a positive correlation with negative affect and a negative relationship with positive affect. In turn, negative emotion was correlated with a lowered overall life orientation and a more pessimistic mindset. No strong correlations were identified between psychological tests and student characteristics as was previously thought. Overall, there are definite indicators that social anxiety has a negative impact on one's quality of life and emotions, however, more research needs to be done with more diverse sampling and different methodology to see if there is a link between particular student characteristics and prevalence rates of social anxiety within those characteristic subsets.

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Few studies have examined whether performance feedback on a given task can have implications for motivational processes on an altogether distinct task. The present study proposes and tests a model for motivational spillover in a goal-setting context. Participants (N = 201) were provided with goal-performance discrepancy feedback (GPD) on a creativity task (CT) and were subsequently asked to complete an unrelated stock-predicting task (SPT). Results indicate that GPD feedback on the CTs was positively associated with positive affect such that negative GPDs resulted in low levels of positive affect and positive GPDs resulted in high levels of positive affect. This positive affect was in turn positively related to self-efficacy for the SPT. Self-efficacy was positively associated with personal goals, and goals were positively related to performance on the SPT. These findings provide initial evidence for the occurrence of positive and negative motivational spillover in a natural performance setting. / Ph. D.

This study employed an experimental design intended to be an analog to the workplace to simultaneously examine the affect orientation and equity theory explanations of OCBs, which were evaluated as prosocial behaviors. Participants were 188 undergraduates. Participants' dispositional variables were measured at time 1, and at time 2, participants experienced an equity manipulation and were given the opportunity to perform prosocial behaviors. Results indicated a distinction between the decision to help and helping effort, which has not been thoroughly examined in literature on OCBs. Results revealed that the threshold for the decision to help was raised by inequity, yet once the decision had been made, affect and personality variables affected effort of helping. Implications for research and practice are discussed. / Master of Science

Given the ubiquity of media use, especially among young children, the current study examines the impact of problematic media use (PMU) on children's (N = 418, M age = 53.62 months, SD = 3.38 months, M and SD are taken from the full sample of 418 children) physiological functioning. With previous studies reporting relations between media use, temperament, and physiological regulation, it was hypothesized that children with greater levels of PMU would have lower levels of baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; a measure of physiological regulatory capacity). It is further hypothesized that, higher levels of negative affect, and lower levels of effortful control (two distinct domains of temperament) would be linked to both PMU and RSA and that temperament might mediate the associations between PMU and physiological regulation (RSA) (i.e., higher negative affect, lower effortful control linked to higher PMU and lower RSA). Data were drawn from Wave 5 of Project M.E.D.I.A, a longitudinal study of the effects of media on children's development. Findings revealed that PMU was significantly linked to lower baseline RSA for girls, but not for boys. Both boys' and girls' PMU was linked to higher levels of negative affect. Girls' PMU was linked to lower effortful control. The hypothesis that temperament would meditate links between PMU and RSA was not supported. The sex difference in the relation between PMU and baseline RSA are discussed, including potential differences in content of media girls are using as well as potential developmental differences for girls' reactivity compared to boys. Overall, PMU may lead to diminished physiological regulation, especially for girls, and appears to be linked to higher levels of negative affect in children. It is important for parents to be aware of the potential impact media use may have on their children's development.

Background. Decades of research have found alcohol and negative affect (NA) are global and proximal risk factors for psychological and physical intimate partner violence (IPV), especially among college students. Despite recognition as the most common form of IPV, bidirectional psychological and physical IPV (i.e., instances where both partners are perpetrating and experiencing victimization) remains an understudied topic. Clarifying alcohol and NA’s influences on bidirectional IPV may inform the development of intervention programs. We hypothesized that the association between alcohol use (number of daily drinks and Heavy Episodic Drinking [HED]) and IPV would vary as a function of NA. Methods. Dating college students (N = 232; 67.7% women; 83.89% white) who drink alcohol completed daily surveys for 60 consecutive days assessing daily alcohol use, NA, and IPV perpetration and victimization. Generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) tested the within- and between-person associations and interactions between alcohol use, NA, and psychological and physical unidirectional and bidirectional IPV. Results. A significant interaction between NA and the number of drinks before unidirectional psychological IPV perpetration emerged, such that the alcohol-IPV association was weaker at lower levels of NA. A main effect of NA emerged as a proximal antecedent of unidirectional psychological victimization and bidirectional psychological IPV. Main effects of within- and between-person alcohol use were insignificant across other models. Conclusion. On days of low NA, college students were less likely to perpetrate psychological IPV after drinking. Future research should clarify whether positive affect weakens the alcohol-IPV association and assess additional moderators of this link. / These data were collected by the author’s advisor (Dr. Meagan J. Brem) and was supported by a Visionary Grant from the American Psychological Foundation (APF) and by grant F31AA026489 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) awarded to Dr. Brem. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the APF, NIAAA, or the National Institutes of Health. / Master of Science

<p dir="ltr">Timing and time perception is essential to humans, whose lives and biology are organized around clocks. From the simple give-and-take of conversation to understanding cause and effect, individuals rely on accurate time perception to successfully complete tasks and organize their lives. However, accurate time perception is vulnerable to all manner of influence, from both internal and external sources, including affect. A robust body of literature suggests that negative affect is positively associated with time dilation, or subjective lengthening of time, whereas positive affect is positively associated with time constriction, or subjective shortening of time. Collectively, these are known as time distortion, which has been preliminarily linked to increased impairment in anxiety, depression, and BPD. However, this literature features two key limitations. First, researchers have mostly examined time perception as an objective measure, through the use of measures such as the temporal bisection tasks, which limits our understanding of the subjective experience of time distortion and how it may contribute to psychopathology. Second, across studies, time perception is most often studied as an outcome, rather than examining the role of time perception in predicting affective change, i.e., contextualizing the role of time distortion in clinically-relevant research questions. The current project aimed to address these gaps in the literature through two studies which examined (1) the roles of brief affect and time perception manipulations on affective change and subjective time perception in an online study (Study 1) and (2) the effect of a longer time perception manipulation on affective change during an in-person experimental protocol (Study 2).</p><p dir="ltr">Across studies, participants included a community-based sample of U.S. adults over age 18 and two separate undergraduate samples recruited from introductory psychology courses at Purdue University. In Study 1, the final sample size exceeded 750 and was comprised of community-based and undergraduate participants. Online participants reported on dispositional levels of clinical measures [e.g., rumination, borderline personality disorder (BPD) features] and then completed an experimental protocol with brief mood and time perception manipulations while repeatedly reporting on their negative affect. Results suggested that the time perception manipulation was not effective, but that across the protocol, negative affect rose and positive affect decreased. Further, participants reported overall that time seemed to be passing by slower than usual during the protocol. These findings informed the design of Study 2, which lengthened the time perception manipulation and eliminated the mood induction component in order to address the more basic question of whether time perception manipulation influences mood, particularly during neutral cognitive tasks.</p><p dir="ltr">One hundred and twenty-seven undergraduate participants completed Study 2. As in Study 1, participants filled out self-report surveys about dispositional symptoms of psychopathology (e.g., rumination, emotion dysregulation, and symptoms associated with BPD, depression, and anxiety) before completing an experimental protocol which included a manipulated clock (accelerated or control clock), three runs of a modified Erkisen flanker task, and repeated measures of negative and positive affect. Primary results suggested that the time perception manipulation was successful but that the influence of time distortion was more nuanced than hypothesized. Specifically, individuals with elevated clinical symptoms exhibited lower rating of negative and positive affect levels in the accelerated clock condition, compared to individuals endorsing low symptoms, who reported higher positive affect and higher negative affect in the accelerated clock condition.</p><p dir="ltr">Altogether, the results across studies highlight the complexity of time perception in influencing affect and help provide foundational information regarding the empirical convergence between cognitive and clinical phenomena.</p>