Forced displacement is the crises of our time as it has reached an unprecedented magnitude and rate, which exceeds the capacity of the international relief system and required efforts from global citizens, institutions, governments and communities. Social psychology has an important role in this needed mass response, to provide a better understanding of how the forcibly displaced people deal with their situation and how they are affected by it. Taking into consideration the sharp gap of resources available to the international relief system, it is especially important to understand the natural mechanisms of support the affected communities have, which can be an effective tool to build more efficient interventions and to empower marginalised communities and individuals. This research project aims to explore one possible mechanism underlining social support among refugees of conflict in developing countries, and sought to answer three main questions: how refugees help each other? Does sharing an emergent identity of being a “refugee” facilitate support among them, similar to people affected by disasters? Does this shared identity-based support impact their health? After conducting a systematic literature review (Paper 1) of psychosocial support among refugees of conflict in developing countries, we identified that the main challenge was the stressors arising from the exile environment (secondary stressors) and found indications of shared identity-based support among them. To do further exploration with social identity in mind, we conducted an 8-month ethnography (Paper 2) with Syrian refugees in Jordan that revealed an emergent shared “refugee” identity which seems to stem from a sense of common fate and motivates providing help to other refugees in addition to creating new social networks in exile that facilitates support efficiently. To better understand the secondary stressors (Paper 3), we conducted a survey (N = 305) and combined it with ethnographic data to find that Syrian refugees in Jordan suffer the most from financial stressors, due to loss of income and high living expenses; environmental stressors arise from exile and are either circumstantial (e.g., services and legal requirements) or created by this environment (e.g., instability and lack of familiarity); social stressors, directly related to social relations (e.g., discrimination & exploitation). In order to explore the process of support and the exact role of shared identity, we conducted two surveys (Paper 4) among Syrian refugees in Jordan (N = 156) and Turkey (N = 234) and used path analysis to build a model, which suggested that shared social identity is an important predictor of providing support and collective efficacy, which in turn has a positive association with general health of the refugees. We found indications that such positive associations could have a buffering effect in counter to the negative effect of stressors and stress on the health of refugees. We do acknowledge the stigmatic nature of a “refugee” identity and that there are other sources of support among the refugees. Nevertheless, we suggest that shared social identity can be a valuable resource in the field of psychosocial support among refugees of conflict in developing countries, especially if incorporated in the design of community level intervention.

Markus and Kitayama (1991) developed self-construal theory, and proposed that independent and interdependent self-construals would account for cultural variations in cognition, emotion and motivation. Based on this theory and Vignoles and colleagues' (2016) reconsideration of self-construal measurement, this thesis investigates if a multi-dimensional model of self-construal helps explain cultural differences better than previous studies using the conventional two-dimensional model, as well as reporting the development of a scale that unpacks eight different ways of being independent and interdependent in multiple cultures. The thesis includes three studies. Focusing on the cultures of China and the UK, Study 1 explores if a seven-dimensional self-construal model (Vignoles et al., 2016) helps provide previously missing evidence for the predicted mediation effects of selfconstrual on cultural differences in cognition, emotion and motivation. The results show that Chinese and British participants are significantly different in six dimensions of self-construal, and explicit self-construal significantly mediated cultural differences in certain aspects of cognition, emotion and motivation. In the same two cultures, Study 2 examines individualism and collectivism priming techniques, using the seven-dimensional self-construal model to detect what two commonly used selfconstrual primes actually manipulate. The results indicate that Similarities vs. Differences with Family and Friends task (SDFF) and Sumerian Warrior Story (SWS) cue different aspects of self-construal. Effects of SWS show a similar profile across the two cultures, whereas SDFF has a much stronger effect on Chinese participants than British participants. Study 3 reports the development of a new self-construal scale. By introducing a new factor and extending the participants to 13 countries, the final version is a 48-item eight-dimensional self-construal scale. The importance of the multidimensional model and the new measure are discussed.

We can easily and reliably identify the gender of an unfamiliar interlocutor over the telephone. This is because our voice is “sexually dimorphic”: men typically speak with a lower fundamental frequency (F0 - lower pitch) and lower vocal tract resonances (ΔF – “deeper” timbre) than women. While the biological bases of these differences are well understood, and mostly down to size differences between men and women, very little is known about the extent to which we can play with these differences to accentuate or de-emphasise our perceived gender, masculinity and femininity in a range of social roles and contexts. The general aim of this thesis is to investigate the behavioural basis of gender expression in the human voice in both children and adults. More specifically, I hypothesise that, on top of the biologically determined sexual dimorphism, humans use a “gender code” consisting of vocal gestures (global F0 and ΔF adjustments) aimed at altering the gender attributes conveyed by their voice. In order to test this hypothesis, I first explore how acoustic variation of sexually dimorphic acoustic cues (F0 and ΔF) relates to physiological differences in pre-pubertal speakers (vocal tract length) and adult speakers (body height and salivary testosterone levels), and show that voice gender variation cannot be solely explained by static, biologically determined differences in vocal apparatus and body size of speakers. Subsequently, I show that both children and adult speakers can spontaneously modify their voice gender by lowering (raising) F0 and ΔF to masculinise (feminise) their voice, a key ability for the hypothesised control of voice gender. Finally, I investigate the interplay between voice gender expression and social context in relation to cultural stereotypes. I report that listeners spontaneously integrate stereotypical information in the auditory and visual domain to make stereotypical judgments about children's gender and that adult actors manipulate their gender expression in line with stereotypical gendered notions of homosexuality. Overall, this corpus of data supports the existence of a “gender code” in human nonverbal vocal communication. This “gender code” provides not only a methodological framework with which to empirically investigate variation in voice gender and its role in expressing gender identity, but also a unifying theoretical structure to understand the origins of such variation from both evolutionary and social perspectives.

Individuals who suffer from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have a loss of motor control and possibly the loss of speech. A brain-computer interface (BCI) provides a means for communication through nonmuscular control. Visual BCIs have shown the highest potential when compared to other modalities; nonetheless, visual attention concepts are largely ignored during the development of BCI paradigms. Additionally, individual performance differences and personal preference are not considered in paradigm development. The traditional method to discover the best paradigm for the individual user is trial and error. Visual attention research and personal preference provide the building blocks and guidelines to develop a successful paradigm. This study is an examination of a BCI-based visual attention assessment in an ALS sample. This assessment takes into account the individual’s visual attention characteristics, performance, and personal preference to select a paradigm. The resulting paradigm is optimized to the individual and then tested online against the traditional row-column paradigm. The optimal paradigm had superior performance and preference scores over row-column. These results show that the BCI needs to be calibrated to individual differences in order to obtain the best paradigm for an end user.

Given the sad state of obesity and lifestyle-related illnesses in the US, nurses, as the largest and most trusted health profession, must take the cause of health promotion seriously and personally. This study seeks to close the gap in knowledge of nurses’ perception of self as a role model of health and personal healthy lifestyle behaviors. This study focuses on four specific behaviors that lead to a healthy lifestyle: limit alcohol, avoid tobacco, improve nutrition, and engage in physical activity. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between nurses’ health practices and their perceptions of self as role models for health promotion using constructs of the Social Cognitive Theory. The final sample consisted of 804 registered nurses in the state of Tennessee. In this study, 4% report smoking, 24.9% drink alcohol, 34% are overweight and 30% obese. Approximately 70% do not meet the weekly physical activity recommendations of 150-minutes and 32.8% follow guidelines for a healthy diet only 50% of the time or less. There was a significant correlation between following a healthy diet or physical activity and the Self as a Role Model of Health Promotion (SARMHEP) scores. Based on the regression analysis, working in an acute care or ambulatory setting negatively affected the SARMHEP, as opposed to age and gender having a positive effect on the SARMHEP score. This study has the potential to provide key information that can be used to promote health among nurses.

The corpus callosum, the major interhemispheric fiber tract, mediates communication between homotopic regions within the primary somatosensory cortex (S1). Recently, in 1- to 6-day-old neonatal rats, brief bursts of high-frequency, oscillatory activity - called spindle-bursts (SBs) - were described in S1 following sensory feedback from endogenously generated sleep-related myoclonic twitch movements and exogenously generated peripheral stimulation. To determine whether interhemispheric communication via the corpus callosum modulates the expression of SBs during this early period of development and contributes to cortical organization and plasticity, we investigated the endogenous (spontaneous) expression and exogenous (evoked) activity of SBs in neonatal rats with intact or surgically severed callosal fibers (i.e., callosotomy; CCx). We used Ag/AgCl cortical surface electrodes in the S1-forelimb region of the cortex to measure neurophysiological and behavioral activity in both intact and CCx subjects across the sleep-wake cycle during the first two postnatal weeks of development. Our results demonstrate, for the first time, that the corpus callosum modulates spontaneous and evoked activity between homotopic regions in S1 as early as 24-hours after birth. In addition, CCx disinhibits cortical activity, nearly doubling the rate of spontaneous SBs through, but not after, postnatal day 6 (P6). CCx also significantly and reliably disrupts the evoked response to peripheral stimulation of the forepaw. To examine the role of sleep-related twitches and their associated sensory feedback (SBs in S1) - modulated by the corpus callosum - in cortical development and plasticity, we performed CCx or sham surgeries at P1, P6, or P8, and tested subjects the day of surgery or over the ensuing week of recovery. Regardless of age, CCx immediately disrupted SBs evoked by forepaw stimulation. The P1 and P6 CCx groups exhibited full recovery after one week; in contrast, the P8 group did not exhibit recovery of function, thus indicating an abrupt decrease in cortical plasticity between P6 and P8. Together, these results provide the first evidence that sleep-related myoclonic twitches and the associated sensory feedback in S1 (SBs) contribute to cortical development, plasticity, and recovery of function after interhemispheric communication is disrupted by callosotomy. CCx-induced disinhibition of spontaneous SBs is a transient phenomenon whose disappearance coincides with the onset of increased intrinsic connectivity, establishment of excitatory-inhibitory balance, and diminished plasticity in S1. Our findings indicate that CCx-induced disinhibition of spontaneous twitch-related SBs and disruption of evoked response to peripheral stimulation serve as a bioassay of somatosensory cortical plasticity during the early postnatal period.

The aperture problem describes an effect by which a contoured stimulus, moving behind an aperture with both ends occluded, appears to move in a direction perpendicular to its own orientation. Mechanisms within the human visual system allow us to overcome this problem and integrate many of these locally ambiguous signals into the perception of globally coherent motion. In the current experiment, younger and older observers viewed displays composed of either 64 or 9 straight contours, arranged in varying orientations and moving behind circular apertures. Because these lines moved behind apertures, their individual local motions were ambiguous with respect to direction (i.e., subject to the aperture problem). On each trial, motion patterns were displayed for 2.4 seconds, and observers estimated the coherent direction of motion (true motion directions ranged from 0 to 360 degrees). There was a significant effect of direction, such that cardinal directions of pattern motion were judged more accurately than oblique directions. In addition, there was a large effect of aging upon accuracy (the average errors of older observers were 46 and 30.4 percent higher in magnitude than those exhibited by the younger observers for the 64 and 9 aperture conditions, respectively). Additionally, the observers’ precision deteriorated markedly as the number of apertures was reduced from 64 to 9. Finally, a statistically significant, albeit negligible relationship was found between orientation discrimination threshold (a behavioral measure of resting gamma amino butyric acid neurotransmitter levels) and ability to accurately estimate coherent direction of motion.

The recognition accuracy of emotion in faces varies depending on the discrete emotion being expressed and the location of the stimulus. More specifically, emotion detection performance declines as facial stimuli are presented further out in the periphery. Interestingly, this is not always true for faces depicting happy emotional expressions, which can be associated with maintained levels of detection. The current study examined neurophysiological responses to emotional face discrimination in the periphery. Two event-related potentials (ERPs) that can be sensitive to the perception of emotion in faces, P1 and N170, were examined using EEG data recorded from electrodes at occipitotemporal sites on the scalp. Participants saw a face presented at a 0° angle of eccentricity, at a 10° angle of eccentricity, or at a 20° angle of eccentricity, and responded whether the face was a specific emotion or neutral. Results showed that emotion detection was higher when faces were presented at the center of the display than at 10° or 20° for both happy and angry expressions. Likewise, the voltage amplitude of the N170 component was greater when faces were presented at the center of the display than at 10° or 20°. Further exploration of the data revealed that high intensity expressions were more easily detected at each location and elicited a larger amplitude N170 than low intensity expressions for both emotions. For a peripheral emotion discrimination task like that which was employed in the current study, emotion cues seem to enhance face processing at peripheral locations.

Public opinions of climate change are not consistent with the reality that climate change is occurring. Effective persuasive messages must be created to ensure that irreparable damage to the environment is prevented. This study investigated the cognitive processes that occur when an individual is exposed to a persuasive message regarding environmental concerns that is matched to an individual’s personality characteristics like right wing authoritarianism and purity. Messages on two environmental topics (solar panels and the Environmental Protection Agency) were created. Each topic was framed in multiple ways to test hypotheses about personality-based message matching. Participants completed a thought listing task after reading about each of the topics, and then indicated their attitudes toward the message topics. Participants were also asked to complete several individual difference scales. Reported attitudes were regressed on individual differences and message frame type in order to determine the effects of message matching on attitudes. While the results do not support a matching effect for purity, an effect of right wing authoritarianism was found after controlling for environmental apathy. This suggests that individual difference matching effects do exist, although they may be more complex than initially hypothesized.

This study examined how younger and older adults differ in their ability to discriminate between pairs of emotions of varying degrees of similarity when presented with an averted or direct gaze in either a neutral, congruent, or incongruent emotional context. For Task 1, participants were presented with three blocks of emotion pairs (i.e., anger/disgust, sadness/disgust, and fear/disgust) and were asked to indicate which emotion was being expressed. The actors’ gaze direction was manipulated such that emotional facial expressions were depicted with a direct gaze or an averted gaze. For Task 2, the same stimuli were placed into emotional contexts (e.g., evocative backgrounds and expressive body posture) that were either congruent or incongruent with the emotional facial expression. Participants made emotion discrimination judgments for two emotion pairings: anger/disgust (High Similarity condition) and fear/disgust (Low Similarity condition). Discrimination performance varied as a function of age, gaze direction, degree of similarity of emotion pairs, and the congruence of the context. Across task, performance was best when evaluating less similar emotion pairs and worst when evaluating more similar emotion pairs. In addition, evaluating emotion in stimuli with averted eye gaze generally led to poorer performance than when evaluating stimuli communicating emotion with a direct eye gaze. These outcomes held for both age groups. When participants observed emotion facial expressions in the presence of congruent or incongruent emotional contexts, age differences in discrimination performance were most pronounced when the context did not support one’s estimation of the emotion expressed by the actors.