Across three studies, we demonstrate that attitudes toward gay men and lesbians are best conceptualized as two components – moral judgments and prejudiced attitudes. Whereas moral judgments concern the rightness or wrongness of gay/lesbian sexuality, prejudiced attitudes concern feelings of negativity toward gay/lesbian groups or individuals. In all three studies, we show that religiosity relates to increased moral condemnation of gay/lesbian sexuality, but not increased prejudice toward gay men/lesbians. In Study 2, moral judgments were more strongly related to desires to protect religious rights, whereas prejudiced attitudes were more strongly related to desires to restrict gay/lesbian rights. In Study 3, various factors other than religiosity related to moral judgments and prejudiced attitudes, including disgust, openness to experience, concerns about being misidentified as gay/lesbian, and adherence to traditional gender norms. Additionally, moral judgments related to negativity toward sexually active single individuals (regardless of sexual orientation), whereas prejudiced attitudes related to negativity toward gay men and lesbians (regardless of sexual activity). Taken together, these findings suggest that attitudes toward gay men and lesbians should not be treated unidimensionally, and that considering moral judgments and prejudiced attitudes separately clarifies important relationships. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the Master of Science. / Summer Semester 2017. / July 14, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / E. Ashby Plant, Professor Directing Thesis; James McNulty, Committee Member; Colleen Ganley, Committee Member.

Facial composites are traditionally created with the assistance of a sketch artist, and the resulting image is then circulated in the police force as well as the public community. However, with the advance of computer technologies and a better understanding of how facial composites are created, composite software systems have developed greatly. EvoFIT, an abbreviation for Evolutionary Facial Imaging Technique, is a computer program used to create composites based on the Darwinian concept. It allows a witness to select for global features of the face, that will in turn be combined together to create new faces that have a greater likeness to the offender. The EvoFIT program aims to boost the low recognition values of facial composite methods currently used. The purpose of this study is to evaluate production of two composites from the same person as a mechanism for improving performance. The use of a second composite, paired composites, and morphed composites is examined as mechanisms for boosting recognition. Ten sets of composites representing ten different volunteers (targets) were created using EvoFIT. The first composite in each set was named correctly 8.3% of the time, the second composites at 18.3%, the paired composites at 20%, and the morphed composites at 23.33%. The results support the theory that use of a second composite, a pair of composites, and morphed composites increases the number of instances in which namers correctly identify the target. This research suggests that it is valuable for a witness to construct a second composite using EvoFIT or similar software.

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Recent scholarship has challenged the long-held assumption in the social sciences that Conservatives were more biased than Liberals, contending that the predominance of Liberals in the social sciences might have caused social scientists to ignore liberal bias. Here, we argue that victims’ groups are one potent source of liberal bias. We contend that many Liberals are cosmic egalitarians, that is, they believe that demographic groups do not differ (genetically) on socially valued traits (e.g., math ability, IQ). This, coupled with a sacred narrative about protecting victims’ groups (e.g., Blacks, Muslims, women), leads to bias against any challenge to cosmic egalitarianism that portrays a perceived privileged group more favorably than a perceived victims’ group (Equalitarianism bias). Eight studies support this theory. Liberalism was associated with perceiving certain groups as victims (Studies 1a-1b). In Studies 2-7, Liberals evaluated the same study as less credible when the results concluded that a privileged group (men and Whites) had a superior quality relative to a victims’ group (women and Blacks) than vice versa. To rule out alternative explanations of Bayesian (or some other normative) reasoning, we used within-subjects designs in Studies 6 and 7. Significant order effects for Liberals suggest that Liberals think that they should not evaluate identical information differently depending on which group is said to have a superior quality, yet do so. In all studies, higher equalitarianism mediated the relationship between more liberal ideology and lower credibility ratings when privileged groups were said to score higher on a socially valuable trait. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / June 18, 2018. / egalitarianism, liberal bias, motivated cognition, political psychology / Includes bibliographical references. / Roy F. Baumeister, Professor Directing Dissertation; Kevin Beaver, University Representative; James K. McNulty, Committee Member; Jesse Cougle, Committee Member; Ashby Plant, Committee Member.

While Muslim Americans are one of the fastest growing communities in the United States, very little is known about their mental health needs or concerns. In an effort to better understand their mental health needs, this study explores the attitudes towards the diagnosis and treatment of depression among South Asian Muslim Americans, specifically examining how acculturation shapes these attitudes. A sample of 427 South Asian Muslim Americans (mean age 30.67 years, 73.8% female) completed an anonymous survey on the internet. Participants answered questions about how strongly they agreed with certain diagnostic and treatment recommendations after reading two clinical vignettes, and completed the Attitudes towards Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale and the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican-Americans II. Participants were also asked about their personal experiences with depression, religious identity; and demographic information. Results indicated that educated participants were more accepting of a clinical diagnosis of depression, while females and educated participants had more positive attitudes towards seeking professional psychological help for depression. Acculturation predicted more positive attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help for depression, but did not predict acceptance of a clinical diagnosis of depression, comfort level talking to people outside the family, likelihood of seeking professional help, or importance of ethnic match with mental health provider. Exploratory analyses were conducted to determine how personal history of depression shapes attitudes; however, this variable was not particularly salient in shaping attitudes in this sample. While the results suggest that acculturation did not play as strong a role in predicting attitudes as initially anticipated, several limitations, including the fact that the instrument used to measure acculturation and enculturation in this study has not been validated in this sample and that the sample may be more acculturated than the general South Asian Muslim American population, must be taken into consideration. The results of this study begin to shed light on the attitudes towards depression and its treatment in this community. Future studies should further explore the roles of acculturation and enculturation, while also collecting more personal qualitative information to more fully understand the experiences and needs of South Asian Muslim Americans.

This dissertation examined social persuasion's influence on leader efficacy. Hannah, Avolio, Luthans, and Harms (2008) proposed that the levels of leadership self-efficacy held by a leader are critical in promoting heightened levels of leader adaptability, positivity, and performance. Consequently, Hannah et al. proposed a framework for leader and leadership efficacy. Included in the model was a dyadic behaviors linkage between leader efficacy and follower efficacy. The linkage reflects Bandura's (1997) conception of self-efficacy being subject to influence by four methods, one of which is social persuasion. Scholars have conducted little empirical work to validate Hannah et al.'s framework for influencing leader efficacy. However, this dissertation empirically tested Hannah et al.'s framework by crafting an experiment designed to isolate social persuasion's influence on Generalized Leader Efficacy (GLE). GLE is conceptualized as a dynamic self-concept based structure representing leaders' (and followers') level of efficacy for self-regulation, action and means across a span of leader tasks. Drawing on self efficacy, leader efficacy and mentorship literatures, a model and methodology were proposed to examine the effect of social persuasion on GLE.

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Individuals with stigmatized identities have been shown to have more negative health outcomes and shorter life expectancy than individuals who don’t carry a stigmatized label. One factor that acts as a buffer to protect stigmatized individuals against negative outcomes is support. However, how an individual seeks support can have an impact on whether they receive it. This study attempted to discover if the anticipation of either acceptance or rejection affected the type of support-seeking present in letters written by college students with either concealable or visible stigmatized identities. Results indicated stigmatized individuals displayed significantly more indirect support seeking in their letters when they were in the rejection condition compared to those in the acceptance condition. No significant condition or stigma type differences were found when examining seeking behaviors with a quantitative survey. However, a posthoc analysis revealed a significant interaction between stigma type and condition for indirect support-seeking. Those with a visible stigma reported more indirect seeking in the acceptance condition.