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Ingroup bias, which refers to people???s tendency to evaluate and treat members of their ingroups better than members of outgroups, is a central feature of intergroup relations. Conceptually, ingroup bias can be comprised of ingroup positivity, outgroup negativity, or both. However, research has often confounded these components on the assumption that they are reciprocally related. The aim of this research project was to examine the relative dominance of ingroup positivity versus outgroup negativity in ingroup bias and the relationship between them. Two approaches were employed. First, a series of laboratory studies examined the effect of threat on implicit and explicit intergroup attitudes. In Study 1, ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity were assessed in the domains of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination in a context where threat appeared to be salient. Analyses within and across measures revealed that ingroup positivity was more dominant than outgroup negativity, and that ingroup and outgroup attitudes were unrelated or positively related. Experiments that manipulated the salience of realistic threat (Studies 2 and 3), symbolic threat, (Studies 6 and 7), or both (Studies 4 and 5) similarly produced nonsignificant or positive correlations between ingroup and outgroup attitudes. However, in Studies 4, 5, and 7, perceptions of symbolic threat significantly influenced intergroup attitudes. Overall, the findings of the laboratory studies suggest that although threat can shift outgroup attitudes, it does not necessarily lead to reciprocity between ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity. The second approach employed in this dissertation involved content analysis of messages posted on an Internet hate site. In contrast to the laboratory experiments, Studies 8 and 9 found that ingroup positivity significantly predicted outgroup negativity. Implications of these findings are discussed, including the possibility that ingroup positivity will be linked to outgroup hostility when people are highly identified with their ingroup and when the outgroup defines the ingroup. This dissertation contributes to the intergroup relations literature by providing a more detailed account of implicit and explicit ingroup bias, and by identifying potential conditions leading to a negative relationship between ingroup and outgroup attitudes.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether clothing influenced perceptions of personality characteristics often associated with success in business environments. Specifically, the study investigated the effect of clothing on (a) perceptions of task-oriented abilities of employees in a business setting, (b) perceptions of relationship-oriented abilities of employees in a business setting, and (c) perceptions of demographic-oriented qualities (education levels and income levels) of employees in a business setting. Seventy-six Speech Communication students were used as subjects for the study, 38 of whom were males and 38 of whom were females. Subjects included six freshmen, sixteen sophomores, seventeen juniors, 36 seniors, and one graduate student. Ages varied from nineteen to 48, with a mean of 22. Results indicated that formal clothing could be related to perceptions of task-oriented abilities in a business setting. However, neither formal clothing, nor casual clothing was related to perceptions of relationship-oriented abilities in a business setting. Finally, clothing could also be related to perceptions of education and income in a business setting. / Graduation date: 1995

Organizational mentoring is associated with positive events and experiences for protégés, mentors, and their organizations. Research on what makes those relationships successful – and potentially replicable with formal programs – has looked at the structure of the mentorship (e.g., formal vs. informal), the demographic make up of the mentoring dyad (e.g., race, gender), and attitudinal similarity between the mentor and protégé. Generally, results have been mixed and it appears that these factors do not account for a great deal of mentorship success. Cognitive prototypes of the mentor and protégé roles may be one as yet unexplored factor that might help us better understand successful mentorships. Since no research to date has been conducted in this area, the current study investigates the nature of those cognitive prototypes by identifying their content, examining the extent to which these prototypes may be gender-typed, and how prior mentoring experiences might be related to prototype gender-typing. Results suggest that strong performance and high potential are important aspects of the prototypical protégé, and that elements of organizational power and interpersonal skills are important aspects of the prototypical mentor. There was no evidence of prototype gender-typing. Implications for research and practice also are discussed.

The centrality of interpersonal relationships in both adaptive functioning and psychopathology is unmistaken. Across the lifespan, individuals are born into, develop within, and manifest their behaviors within a relational context. Within the clinical context, relationships in general and relational problems in particular are often key in defining and describing psychopathology and its etiology. Theory and research regarding the relationship between psychopathology and interpersonal functioning have yielded diverse conceptualizations and multitude of empirical findings, all indicative that psychopathology and interpersonal difficulties are inseparable. The current study represents an added step in the empirical and conceptual process of clarifying the multi-layered relationship between interpersonal functioning and psychopathology. Utilizing a multi-method and multi-level methodological approach, it was investigated whether individuals who seek psychotherapy experience different quantity and quality of interpersonal problems, compared with non-patients. The current study also investigated in what ways patients‟ unconscious representations of self and others (internalized object relations) differ in quality from non-patients. A clinical group of forty individuals who seek outpatient psychotherapy were compared to a non-patient group. Both groups were administered the SCL-90-R, IIP-32, Rorschach Inkblot Test, and the Mutuality of Autonomy Scale. The groups were compared across domains of psychopathology, interpersonal problems, and quality of object-relations functioning. The clinical group showed significantly higher levels of psychological distress and vulnerability to psychopathology than the non-patient group. Similarly, the clinical group showed greater magnitude of interpersonal problems, originating from excessive dependency and a significant sense of lacking agency in their relationships. Significant deficits in object-relations functioning were found in the clinical group when compared to the non-patient group. The clinical group tended to experience greater interpersonal preoccupation, maladaptive interpersonal behaviors, an increased likelihood to expect and act aggressively in relationships, and greater vulnerability for impaired and inaccurate understanding of others and their needs. Furthermore, the clinical group‟s overall degree of deficits in self-object differentiation and impairments in the capacity for mutual and empathic object-relatedness were significantly higher in comparison to non-patients. Conceptual and clinical meanings of the findings are discussed, along with their external validity in light of the current study's methodological and statistical limitations.

The purpose of the current study is to examine the influence of relational views on adolescents' subjective understanding of interactions in the context of their romantic relationships. Relational view is an attachment system construct comprised of three specific measures of attachment: attachment style, rejection sensitivity and self-silencing. To examine the influence of relational views on individual's subjective understanding, we are employing an innovative multimodal methodology: The video-recall system (Welsh & dickson, 2005). This system assesses adolescent participants' subjective understanding of their feelings and behaviors during a video-taped interaction with their romantic partner as well as trained observers' interpretations of the interaction. In order to isolate the pathway between relational views and the interpretation of the interaction, we control for the observer coding which provides a more objective and consistent interpretation of the interaction. This study is unique in our inclusion of both adolescent participants' perspectives of their interactions with their romantic partner as well as the perspectives of trained coders, 209 adolescent couple's were examine who completed the video-recall procedure as well as a series of questionnaires. We examine two outcomes: Power and Negative Affect. Our hypothesis that adolescents who hold more vulnerable relational views will interpret their interactions more negatively was supported. Structual Equation Modeling in AMOS, which allowed for the use of latent variables, indicated that relational views directly influence interpretations of Power and Negative Affect in adolescents above and beyone what was expected based on the observers' ratings. This finding has important implications because it supports the tenets of general attachment theory in that it shows that attachment not only influences the behaviors in an interaction but also the way those behaviors are interpreted. Possible explanations for the influence of relational views and their implications are discussed in further depth.

<p>An abstract of a dissertation that examines the effect of practicing different forms of self-control, inhibition and initiation, on the occurrence of subsequent behaviors reflecting one or both types of self-control. Previous work based on the limited strength model of self-control has demonstrated that practicing small acts of self-control can improve self-control over time. However, past research involving self-control practice has operationalized self-control primarily as the inhibition of impulses. The current set of studies distinguishes between two forms of self-control: self-control by inhibition and self-control by initiation. This work also contributes to the self-control literature by treating self-control as an idiosyncratic process. Study 1 tested whether fluctuations in each form of self-control, aggregated at the daily level, would predict the degree to which people reported engaging in other self-control behaviors. Study 1 was a two-week experience sampling study in which 101 undergraduates reported several times daily on their self-control behaviors. The results of Study 1 support a distinction between self-control by inhibition and initiation. Moreover, the finding that participants actually studied more on days when they reported exerting more self-control by initiation seems to support a possible practice effect on self-control that may be specific to form. Study 2 introduced a practice manipulation, testing whether practicing one form of self-control (either inhibition or initiation) leads to improvement in only that type of self-control (but across domains), or across both forms. Study 2 was four weeks in total: two weeks of a practice manipulation (either inhibition, initiation, or a no-practice control) and two weeks of experience sampling. Analyses were carried out using multilevel modeling in SAS Proc Mixed and SAS Proc Glimmix. However, results indicated that there was no main effect of practice on subsequent self-control behaviors. Follow-up analyses revealed that the effect of practice varied across dependent variables and as a function of reported exertion of inhibition and initiation. Several effects from Study 1, including the effect of within-person exertion of initiation on subsequent self-control behaviors, were replicated. Possible explanations for the unexpected findings, including the strength of the practice manipulation, are discussed. Ideas for future research, including tailoring self-control practice to specific demands on self-control, are presented. Implications for the effect of practice on future self-control pursuits and a distinction between inhibition and initiation are also discussed.</p> / Dissertation

Noncompliant behavior in children may be due to the developmental stage the child is going through, but persistent noncompliance can have long-term effects on the child ranging from academic problems to relationship problems (Forehand & Wierson, 1993; Kalb & Loeber, 2003). Parents' response to noncompliant behavior may be influenced by their parenting style. Parental tolerance is one factor that may differ among parenting styles. Parental tolerance can be defined by how annoyed the parent becomes by disruptive behavior displayed by children and the affect it has on the parent-child interaction (Brestan, Eyberg, Algina, Johnson, & Boggs, 2003). One new measure of parental tolerance is the Child Rearing Inventory (Brestan, et al., 2003). The present study examined the validity of the Child Rearing Inventory (CRI) and investigated whether or not tolerance differs based on type of parenting style. The participants of this study are 109 parents with children aged 1 to 5 years old. Individuals completed a series of questionnaires. The results of the present study illustrate that the CRI is a measure of parental tolerance. Parents who were less tolerant of the child behaviors as described in the case vignettes endorsed higher scores on the CRI. The study also found that parents' tolerance levels do not significantly differ based on the parenting styles they endorse.