Diss. / From the Amer. journal of psychology. v. 10, no. 1.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Glasgow, 2002. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, 2002. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

Diss. / From the Amer. journal of psychology. v. 10, no. 1.

This thesis contains a set of empirical investigations, which explore a fundamental issue in human communication, namely the functional significance of iconic hand gestures that accompany speech. Some researchers argue that these iconic gestures function for the speaker to facilitate lexical retrieval from the mental lexicon (e.g. Butterworth and Hadar, 1989; 1997). An alternative theory is that these iconic gestures are to do with the communication of information from a speaker to a listener (e.g. McNeill, 1985; 1992). This important debate forms the basis of the current research. The research reported in this thesis was found to provide little evidence for the lexical access theoretical position but provide important supporting evidence for the argument that iconic gestures are essentially communicative. It has shown convincingly that information about the world out there is encoded into speech and gesture and seems to provide a substantial body of evidence that iconic gestures do indeed convey semantic information to respondents. It has also shown that some iconic gestures are more communicative than others and that the occurrence of these gestures is affected by certain identifiable properties of talk. One of the strengths of the current research is that it is now more precisely known what semantic information is actually received by respondents from gesture and hence this research provides a much better insight into how the linguistic and gestural codes interact in the communication of meaning. The research reported in this thesis suggests that those researchers who neglect iconic gesture in their study of how language is used in eveiyday life are missing a major component of the process of human communication.

<p> This study will help to clarify how interactions with dolphins affect people. It examines human well-being and experiential responses to scuba diving with bottlenose dolphins, <i>Tursiops truncatus</i>, and compares this to participation in a scuba dive without this interaction. Ninety-nine adults were split between an intervention and a control group in a mixed methods convergent parallel quasi-experimental design. Before and after the activity participants completed an emotional well-being scale (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; PANAS) and only afterward received a researcher-designed qualitative questionnaire targeting peak experiences. For the PANAS, a <i> t</i>-test found a significant difference in negative affect change scores between groups, <i>t</i>(97) = &ndash;2.135, <i>p</i> = .035, <i>d</i> = 0.43. The intervention group experienced a larger decrease in negative affect than the control group at a small-medium effect size. Qualitative themes endorsed more by the control group are self-confidence; level of difficulty; novelty; transformation or overcoming; nature; and physical, mental, or emotional stress or discomfort. For the intervention group, more participants expressed tranquility; numinosity; and connection to nature, themselves, or the Divine. Themes mentioned approximately equally include ineffability, presence in the moment, comfort and safety, desiring to continue, good or extraordinary experience, and freedom. Twelve intervention and 9 control group participants appeared to have a peak experience, as defined by Maslow. This indicates that a peak experience during a scuba dive, with and without dolphins, is a relatively common occurrence. This study demonstrates the importance of rigorous studies in human-dolphin interaction research. Studies on human-dolphin interaction published to date have neglected to impose appropriate controls, which has led to the misattribution of all pre- to postintervention differences to dolphin interaction. Both groups have intriguing results; the presence of dolphins led to a larger decrease in negative affect and greater likelihood of tranquility, numinosity, connection, and peak experiences.</p><p>

<p> The history of intergroup research is built on groups that represent "endpoints" of a dimension of social identity, such as White, Black, heterosexual, and gay/lesbian. Social groups who fall between these more readily recognized advantaged and disadvantaged groups (e.g., biracial people, bisexual people) have received less attention. These intermediate social groups are increasingly visible and numerous in the United States, however, and a detailed account of the biases they face can contribute to a fuller understanding of intergroup relations. This dissertation examines attitudes and beliefs about intermediate social groups, focusing on bisexual people as the primary example at first, and then expanding the investigation to biracial people and novel groups to make the case that intermediate groups elicit a distinctive pattern of biases. Across studies, participants expressed beliefs that undermined the legitimacy of intermediate groups in a variety of ways. They endorsed the view that intermediate groups are low in social realness (conceptually invalid, meaningless, lacking a concrete social existence) and that intermediate group identities are unstable (provisional, lacking a genuine underlying truth, the result of confusion). These views of social realness and identity stability partially explained prejudice against intermediate groups.</p><p> The concept of social group intermediacy is abstract; actual intermediate groups (e.g., biracial and bisexual people) are different from each other because their defining types of intermediacy stem from different dimensions of social identity (race and sexual orientation). Therefore, focused research on each specific intermediate group is necessary to fully understand the types of attitudes they evoke due to their intermediate status. To demonstrate the value of attending to the details of a particular intermediate group, Chapters 2 through 5 focused on bisexual people. The observed patterns of attitudes and beliefs about bisexual people demonstrated the role of their perceived intermediate status in the context of sexual orientation.</p><p> Chapter 2 investigated attitudes toward sexual orientation groups in a large sample of heterosexual and gay/lesbian participants. Bisexuality was evaluated less favorably and perceived as less stable than heterosexuality and homosexuality. Stereotypes about bisexual people pertained to gender conformity, decisiveness, and monogamy; few positive traits were associated with bisexuality. Chapter 3 extended these findings, demonstrating that negative evaluation of sexual minorities was more closely associated with perceived identity instability than it was with the view that sexual orientation is a choice. This relationship was moderated by both participant and target sexual orientation.</p><p> Chapter 4 addressed one reason why bisexual people are evaluated more negatively than gay/lesbian people. A common explanation given for the discrepancy in evaluation is that bisexuality introduces ambiguity into a binary model of sexuality. In line with this explanation, we found that participants with a preference for simple ways of structuring information were especially likely to evaluate bisexual people more negatively than gay/lesbian people. Chapter 5 investigated how bisexual participants saw themselves as a group. Results suggested that bisexual people largely disagree with the prevailing stereotypes of their group; these stereotypes reflect non-bisexual people's impressions of the intermediate group rather than a consensus.</p><p> Chapter 6 shifted the focus from bisexual people as an example of an intermediate social group to intermediate social groups in general. Results from a set of studies involving novel groups demonstrated that perceiving a group as intermediate can cause negative evaluation and low ratings of social realness and identity stability. Similar results held for real-world intermediate groups (biracial people and bisexual people). The extent to which an intermediate group was perceived as less socially real than other groups predicted the extent to which it was evaluated less positively than those groups. Social realness seems to be a unique explanatory factor in the relative negative evaluation of these intermediate groups, working in conjunction with the more well-known processes of intergroup attitudes traditionally studied with respect to Black people and gay/lesbian people. The effects of social group intermediacy were amplified among participants who identified strongly with an advantaged ingroup. Acknowledging an intermediate group as legitimate may require one to acknowledge shared characteristics or overlapping boundaries between one's valued ingroup and the "opposite" outgroup, which can be threatening to highly identified group members.</p><p> Taken together, these chapters make the case that intermediate social groups incur particular biases due to their perceived intermediate status. The processes of intergroup bias that result in derogation of traditionally recognized disadvantaged groups may be insufficient to account for some forms of prejudice in the modern demographic landscape. As biracial people and bisexual people become more prevalent, researchers must address the conditions under which they are recognized or dismissed, included or excluded.</p>

Abstract not available.

<p> Loneliness &ndash; the feeling that manifests when one perceives one&rsquo;s social needs are not being met by the quantity or especially the quality of one&rsquo;s social relationships &ndash; is a common but typically short-lived and fairly harmless experience. However, recent research continues to uncover a variety of alarming health effects associated with longterm loneliness. The present study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying how persons scoring high in trait loneliness perceive their social environments. Evaluations of transient facial expression morphs are analyzed in R using dynamical systems methods. We hypothesize that, consistent with Cacioppo and Hawkley&rsquo;s socio-cognitive model, subjects scoring high in loneliness will exhibit <i>hypervigilance</i> in their evaluations of cold and neutral emotions and <i>hypovigilance</i> in their evaluations of warm emotions. Results partially support the socio-cognitive model but point to a relationship between loneliness and a global dampening in evaluations of emotions.</p>

acase@tulane.edu

No description available.