<p> This dissertation uses mythological studies, psychological ideas and sociological techniques to introduce the reader to the thesis that tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) characters are intricate, semi-independent personae of their players, who have the potential to be equal in influence to an individual&rsquo;s other expressions of personality (e.g. employee, parent, friend, etc). TRPG characters, like all aspects of personality, exist at the junction of mythical, psychological, and sociological forces. Unlike other personae, TRPG characters exist within alternative realities deliberately crafted from heroic mythology, which feature group-centered behavior at their core. </p><p> By examining differences between character and player perspectives, especially the group based norm of heroism common across many kinds of TRPGs, the importance of studying TRPG characters as personae in their own right is emphasized. The dissertation concludes with ways for TRPG scholars to increase emphasis on TRPG character studies, and with ways for non-TRPG studies to benefit from an increased emphasis on personae play as an important aspect of psychosocial growth, especially with regard to how heroism is understood in American culture. </p>

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<p> Occupations involving vigilance performance (i.e., sustained attention in monitoring for rare environmental threats) are known to experience vigilance decrement, a decline in performance over time. These occupations are known to be cognitively and emotionally challenging, giving rise to harmful effects for employees in them and presenting safety implications for the welfare of others. The current study investigated mindfulness as a potentially viable intervention to alleviate outcomes of vigilance demands: stress and mental demand. A mindfulness induction was compared to an unfocused control condition in which both were administered during a break from a vigilance task, specifically, a baggage screening task. Ultimately, findings did not reveal positive effects for the mindfulness intervention, leading to reservations about its viability in a vigilance context. Moderation analyses revealed that baseline levels of stress and mental demand may have impacted one&rsquo;s ability to derive benefits from the mindfulness intervention. Finally, though the intervention failed to take effect, promising findings emerged for general levels of trait and state mindfulness across participants, independent of condition. Implications and future research directions are discussed. `</p><p>

<p> The concept of attraction and couple satisfaction has been of great interest in the field of psychology. However, there is limited research in relation to the factors of marital happiness and opposite personalities, particularly in how these are expressed through after dating or their relationship when evaluation through a time-span approach. This study attempted to fill this gap. The research question for this study was: What is the experience of being happily married among couples who have been together for at least five years and consider themselves as opposite from each other? This study used a generic qualitative inquiry, purposive sampling, and thematic analysis of the data. The generic qualitative study focused on six opposite-in-personality, happily married couples, most of whom were African American. These couples provided a rich description of their experiences of being married to their spouse, whom they believed to be opposite in personality. The 12 participants had the average age of 46.83 years, and couples were married an average of 14.33 years. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to describe the experience of happily married couples who considered themselves opposites in terms of personalities. The major themes that emerged from the data were accepting the differences, complementary traits, foundation of the relationship, wanting a partner who is different, being around each other, conflict resolution, and communication is key. It is the hope of the researcher that this study will spark additional research that utilizes personality inventories and evaluate how personality differences impact marital satisfaction over time.</p><p>

A survey of some relevant researches showed that aesthetic appreciation has generally Been studied either in terms of individual psychology or in relation to a standard determined by so-called 'art experts'&dot; Neither of these approaches gave due consideration to the social aspect of aesthetic experience. It was concluded that in order to explore this aspect, the problem of literary preferences could profitably be studied in a social psychological context. The hypothesis which the present investigation proposed to test was that literary appreciation and preference, though highly individual in their nature, are influenced by two important social factors, namely, social background and political opinion, both being related to social values and attitudes&dot; An experiment was devised for this purpose, consisting of sixteen poems (most of which were selected by four groups of people, two with contrasting social backgrounds and the other two with contrasting political outlooks), a preference scale on which the poems were to be rated, and a questionnaire regarding the raters' social background and political opinion&dot; The raters were also to give their comments on each poem. Ratings and comments were obtained from a total number of 212 subjects, out of whom 164 completed the political opinion tests included in the questionnaire&dot; The subjects were classified into three social groups according to the types of their occupations and each group was again divided into political sub-groups on the basis of the subjects' political affiliations. Analysis of variance was applied to the ratings of the sixteen poems taken together as well as separately in order to see if the three social groups differed significantly in their preferences. To study the relation between political opinion and literary preferences, correlation coefficients between political opinion scores and the ratings of each poem were calculated and their statistical significance determined&dot; The mean ratings of different social groups and political sub-groups for the sixteen poems were compared and contrasted and were represented graphically&dot; To Interpret the differences among social groups as well as political sub-groups within them, a qualitative analysis of the comments was made with special reference to the social attitudes and literary values of the subjects in different groups on the one hand, and the theme and the style of each poem on the other. The results of the experiment suggest that social background and political opinion, which involve certain attitudes and values on the part of the subjects, influence their preferences for certain types of poems, mainly in relation to the ideas, attitudes and sentiments expressed in them.

In this enquiry an attempt has been made to assess the effect on the mother's social activities outside the family of caring for a child. A review has been made of previous work on social participation and of the aspects of studies of parent-child relations bearing on the subject of the enquiry. The results are presented of the study of 186 women who were interviewed in ante-natal and infant welfare clinics; 47 were expecting their first child, and 139 were the mothers of pre-school children. The first section deals with changes in social activities. The first pregnancy rather than marriage is increasingly becoming the occasion of retirement from work, thereby producing a change from working in a social context to greater solitude at home. Friendship, membership of organised groups and kinds of interests were found not to change after the birth of the first child, though the frequency of visits to entertainments decreased. The second section considers the influence on these social activities of the availability of a baby-sitter, attitude towards social activity, the social aspects of the husband-wife relation and willingness to spend short intervals away from the child. Thirdly the incidence of physiological and psychological disturbances during pregnancy were determined, and related to the findings on social activities and attitudes. Finally the findings are summarised and their implications for the personality development of children, family relations and sociability are discussed.

No description available.

<p> Cognitive aids have long been used by industries such as aviation, nuclear, and healthcare to support operator performance during nominal and out of the ordinary, or off-nominal, events. The aim of these aids is to support decision-making by providing users with critical information and procedures in complex environments. The Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) is exploring the concept of a cognitive aid for future Deep Space Network (DSN) operations to help manage operator workload and increase efficiency. The current study examines the effects of a cognitive aid on expert and novice operators in a simulated DSN environment. Results found that task completion times were significantly lower when cognitive aid assistance was available compared to when it was not. Furthermore, results indicate numerical trends that distinguish experts from novices in their system interactions and efficiency. Novice operators, on average, had higher acceptance ratings and greater agreement for a DSN cognitive aid when compared those of expert participants. Lastly, participant feedback identified the need for a reliable, robust, and transparent system.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to determine if getting personal information from a social media page, specifically Facebook, affects the final selection decision. This study aimed to examine the effect personal information, specifically race and sexual orientation, has on ratings of hirability and salary offers for male candidates. The study used the data of 105 Mechanical Turk participants who participated in a survey for a monetary incentive. It was hypothesized that homosexual candidates would receive lower hirability ratings and salary offers than heterosexual candidates. Additionally, it was hypothesized that African American candidates would receive lower hirability ratings and salary offers than Caucasian candidates. Finally, it was hypothesized that African American homosexual candidates would receive lower hirability ratings and salary offers than their counterparts. No significant main effects or interactions were found. Additional findings are discussed.</p><p>

abstract: Psychology of justice research has demonstrated that individuals are concerned with both the process and the outcomes of a decision-making event. While the literature has demonstrated the importance of formal and informal aspects of procedural justice and the relevancy of moral values, the present study focuses on introducing a new form of justice: Substantive justice. Substantive justice focuses on how the legal system uses laws to constrain and direct human behavior, specifically focusing on the function and the structure of a law. The psychology of justice literature is missing the vital distinction between laws whose function is to create social opportunities versus threats and between laws structured concretely versus abstractly. In the present experiment, we found that participant evaluations of the fairness of the law, the outcome, and the decision-maker all varied depending on the function and structure of the law used as well as the outcome produced. Specifically, when considering adverse outcomes, individuals perceived laws whose function is to create liability (threats) as being fairer when structured as standards (abstract guidelines) rather than rules (concrete guidelines); however, the opposite is true when considering laws whose function is to create eligibility (opportunities). In juxtaposition, when receiving a favorable outcome, individuals perceived laws whose function is to create liability (threats) as being fairer when defined as rules (concrete guidelines) rather than standards (abstract guidelines). / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2011