Robert Agnew’s (1992) General Strain Theory significantly revitalized traditional scholarship in the anomie/strain tradition by offering a general theory of crime; purported to account for both criminal and analogous behaviors. GST specifically extends anomie/strain theory by introducing new sources of strain (i.e. loss of positively valued stimuli, presentation of noxious stimuli) into the theoretical framework, as well as elucidating the causal pathways (including mediating and moderating effects) leading from the experience of strain to deviant coping mechanisms. An emerging trend within GST is the identification of previously untapped sources of strain (e.g. victimization, discrimination) that ostensibly have deviancegenerating properties. Concerning the latter trend, recent empirical iterations of GST have also introduced internal (e.g. self-esteem) and external conditioning factors (e.g. social control) that have been found to exert a mediating effect on the relationship between strain-generated negative emotions and deviant coping responses. Jang and Johnson-in a recent series of studies (2003, 2005)-offered a crucial extension to the General Strain Theory (GST) literature by finding that religiosity at least partially moderates the deviance-generating effects of strain-induced negative affect among a sample of African Americans. The current study offers a key extension to the Jang and Johnson thesis by offering the most comprehensive examination of the central tenets of their research to a nationally-representative, longitudinal sample of adolescents. Results from Waves I and II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health reveal support for GST in general, and qualified support for the Jang/Johnson thesis in particular. Strain was found to be a significant, positive predictor of depression and anger. With regard to the fundamental hypothesis of the current research, partial support was garnered for the Jang and Johnson hypothesis. In particular, religiosity only offered direct protective effects when predicting drug use, and failed to condition the relationship of strain on deviance across any of the deviance measures. Consequently, religiosity failed to moderate the effects of strain on deviant coping strategies among the full sample, although significant conditioning effects were observed for female deviance. Consequently, these results largely attribute the Jang and Johnson findings to elevated levels of religiosity in their sample.

My research examines how different organizational phenomena function under psychological and cognitive constraints. My first study examines how audiences evaluate an established or taken-for-granted category in negative moods. Categories facilitate exchange by serving as mental models or schemas that substitute for an organization’s attributes to help audiences make sense of what they see. Established categories are further postulated to be legitimized and taken for granted by audiences. Both organizations and audiences are thought to place a high value on category membership, preferring the schema-based category to the individual attributes underlying the category. Considering the preferences of a broad audience segment about an established category, I examine the boundary conditions that can cause the schemas of a legitimized category to fail. I propose that negative mood or affect will blur the category boundary causing it to no longer be preferred to the individual attributes. I further hypothesize that negative affect will induce a reversal of preferences, and offer a unified theory as to why negative affect can cause audiences to prefer the attributes underlying the category over the category itself in their evaluations. Results from data on a representative sample of individuals support these hypotheses. In my second study, I examine how social capital accrues to individuals who were part of a group from which a member achieved prominence only after the dismantlement of the group. I employ a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to identify endogenous social effects in the context of the Hollywood film industry and find significant positive results for egos who worked with ex-post Oscar winning alters within four to six years prior to the alters’ Oscar win. Social capital effects break down, however, for length of prior years in either the too recent or too distant past. I attribute these findings to individuals’ incorrect recall of past events.

My research examines how different organizational phenomena function under psychological and cognitive constraints. My first study examines how audiences evaluate an established or taken-for-granted category in negative moods. Categories facilitate exchange by serving as mental models or schemas that substitute for an organization’s attributes to help audiences make sense of what they see. Established categories are further postulated to be legitimized and taken for granted by audiences. Both organizations and audiences are thought to place a high value on category membership, preferring the schema-based category to the individual attributes underlying the category. Considering the preferences of a broad audience segment about an established category, I examine the boundary conditions that can cause the schemas of a legitimized category to fail. I propose that negative mood or affect will blur the category boundary causing it to no longer be preferred to the individual attributes. I further hypothesize that negative affect will induce a reversal of preferences, and offer a unified theory as to why negative affect can cause audiences to prefer the attributes underlying the category over the category itself in their evaluations. Results from data on a representative sample of individuals support these hypotheses. In my second study, I examine how social capital accrues to individuals who were part of a group from which a member achieved prominence only after the dismantlement of the group. I employ a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to identify endogenous social effects in the context of the Hollywood film industry and find significant positive results for egos who worked with ex-post Oscar winning alters within four to six years prior to the alters’ Oscar win. Social capital effects break down, however, for length of prior years in either the too recent or too distant past. I attribute these findings to individuals’ incorrect recall of past events.

Although comorbidity is common between internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression and externalizing symptoms such as aggression, the reason for this co-occurrence remains unclear. High negative affect is one factor that has been proposed to explain the connection between anxiety and depression, as well as between these internalizing symptoms and externalizing symptoms including aggression; however, on its own, it may not explain the common association between symptoms. Research on anxiety suggests that effortful control moderates the relationship between negative affect and anxiety. Low levels of effortful control have also been tied to symptoms of depression and aggression. It was hypothesized that effortful control would moderate the impact of negative affect in associations between internalizing symptoms (anxiety and depression) and aggression such that individuals who have both high levels of negative affect and low levels of effortful control will be more likely to experience both internalizing symptoms and aggression. It was further proposed that, among the functional subtypes of aggression, this relationship would hold only for reactive aggression, and not for proactive aggression. These predictions were tested via hierarchical regression analyses of self-report data from a large sample of undergraduate students. Findings suggest that effortful control moderates the relationship between negative affect and depression; however, it functions as an additive predictor for both anxiety and reactive aggression. These findings and their implications are discussed. / Master of Science

This study investigated the roles of negative affect and cardiovascular reactivity on the attributional responding of hostile males. College males were screened with the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (Cook & Medley, 1954). High and low hostile males were assigned to an arousal inducing (serial subtraction by 7's) or a non-arousal inducing condition (serial subtraction by 1's). Cardiovascular reactivity and self-report of affect were measured to the serial subtraction task. After the task was completed, the participant listened to a vignette (provocative or neutral) which depicted an interpersonal situation. The participant answered questions about the scene to assess attributional responding. The arousal-inducing condition was associated with significantly greater changes in systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate and a higher level of self-reported negative affect than the non-arousal inducing condition. More negative attributions were reported for provocative than neutral scenes. Males in the arousal inducing condition made more negative attributions to neutral scenes than males in the non-arousal condition. There was no significant effect of arousal condition on the negative attributions to provocative scenes. Hostility did not influence the relationship between arousal condition and self-reported affect or arousal condition and attributional responding. This study showed that inducing cardiovascular reactivity prior to a neutral encounter with a partner can affect the males' perception of the potentially neutral encounter. / Master of Science

Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating without the use of compensatory behaviors. Functional accounts of BED propose that negative affect is an antecedent to binge eating because binge eating serves to alleviate negative affect. However, previous studies investigating the association between negative affect and binge eating have yielded inconsistent findings, perhaps due to individual vulnerability factors that moderate the effects of negative affect on binge eating behavior. As one candidate, the current study investigated emotion regulation strategies that may be implicated in the maintenance of binge eating in BED, particularly under conditions of negative affect: brooding rumination, distress tolerance, and mood-related expectancies for eating. These emotion regulation strategies were: a) compared in 38 women with BED vs. 36 non-eating disordered female controls, b) examined in relation to markers of current binge eating severity among BED women, and c) used as predictors of caloric intake and urge to eat in response to a personally-relevant dysphoric mood induction upon presentation of snack foods in a "taste task." Results revealed that women with BED endorsed higher brooding rumination, more positive expectancies that eating serves to ameliorate negative affect, and lower distress tolerance than controls. Among women with BED, higher brooding rumination was associated with greater binge eating severity, and stronger expectancies that eating reduces negative affect were associated with more frequent binge eating episodes and greater urge to eat in response to depression. Surprisingly, better distress tolerance was associated with more frequent binge eating episodes. Women with BED consumed more calories and reported greater loss of control as well as a greater sense of guilt in response to the taste task relative to control participants. Contrary to hypothesis, there were no direct or indirect effects of any of the three emotion regulation strategies on change in urge to eat or calories consumed on the taste task following sad mood induction in BED women. In controls, better distress tolerance and stronger expectancies that eating alleviates negative affect were associated with decreased caloric intake on the taste task after mood induction. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of considering trans-diagnostic processes in BED as well as the need to identify other theoretically-relevant factors that contribute to the cognitive and behavioral features of BED. Limitations and directions for future studies are discussed.

Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating without the use of compensatory behaviors. Functional accounts of BED propose that negative affect is an antecedent to binge eating because binge eating serves to alleviate negative affect. However, previous studies investigating the association between negative affect and binge eating have yielded inconsistent findings, perhaps due to individual vulnerability factors that moderate the effects of negative affect on binge eating behavior. As one candidate, the current study investigated emotion regulation strategies that may be implicated in the maintenance of binge eating in BED, particularly under conditions of negative affect: brooding rumination, distress tolerance, and mood-related expectancies for eating. These emotion regulation strategies were: a) compared in 38 women with BED vs. 36 non-eating disordered female controls, b) examined in relation to markers of current binge eating severity among BED women, and c) used as predictors of caloric intake and urge to eat in response to a personally-relevant dysphoric mood induction upon presentation of snack foods in a "taste task." Results revealed that women with BED endorsed higher brooding rumination, more positive expectancies that eating serves to ameliorate negative affect, and lower distress tolerance than controls. Among women with BED, higher brooding rumination was associated with greater binge eating severity, and stronger expectancies that eating reduces negative affect were associated with more frequent binge eating episodes and greater urge to eat in response to depression. Surprisingly, better distress tolerance was associated with more frequent binge eating episodes. Women with BED consumed more calories and reported greater loss of control as well as a greater sense of guilt in response to the taste task relative to control participants. Contrary to hypothesis, there were no direct or indirect effects of any of the three emotion regulation strategies on change in urge to eat or calories consumed on the taste task following sad mood induction in BED women. In controls, better distress tolerance and stronger expectancies that eating alleviates negative affect were associated with decreased caloric intake on the taste task after mood induction. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of considering trans-diagnostic processes in BED as well as the need to identify other theoretically-relevant factors that contribute to the cognitive and behavioral features of BED. Limitations and directions for future studies are discussed.

This study aimed to demonstrate how negative affect is linked with stereotypic thinking in hiring decisions made in everyday situations. Participants (n = 788) will be randomly assigned to each condition. Each participant will be given a neutral emotion inducing picture or an anger emotion inducing picture, followed by either a white or black candidate resume with the same qualifications, and then asked how likely they are to hire the candidate. Results would most likely suggest that anger leads to increased stereotypic thinking in hiring decisions. Future studies may decide to investigate 1) a wider array of negative emotions and 2) a more diverse set of candidates (e.g. examining effects of gender or race).

Poor sleep is known to contribute to increased levels of pain. Preliminary findings suggest that negative and positive affect may mediate this relationship. Given that older adults are prone to both sleep disturbance and pain, the main objectives of the present study were to: 1) examine the relationship between sleep and pain in a non-clinical pain sample of community-dwelling older adults and 2) to examine whether negative and positive affect mediate the relationship between sleep and pain. Baseline measures from 82 older adults participating in the Active Adult Mentoring Project (AAMP) were used for secondary data analysis. A daily sleep diary was used to assess sleep efficiency (SE), total wake time (TWT), total sleep time (TST), and sleep quality (SQ). Affect was measured using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), while pain was assessed on an 11-point Likert-scale. Findings only partially corroborated past research; SE, SQ, and TWT each predicted pain, while TST did not. In addition, neither positive nor negative affect was found to mediate the relationship between sleep and pain. Methodological and theoretical explanation for the lack of significant mediation are discussed. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that the assessment and treatment of poor sleep among older adults with pain may be clinically relevant.

Infant health care use has rarely been examined empirically. A growing literature links maternal health and psychosocial variables to broadly defined pediatric health care use. The Common Sense Model of health and illness behaviors (CSM) provides a framework from which to view the role of the maternal psychosocial variables examined (i.e. maternal negative affect, lay consultation and parenting self-efficacy) in infant health care decision-making. Findings for infant health care use are reported specific to referral source (i.e. mother versus physician initiated infant health care). Physician initiated visits were not significantly predicted by the models tested, consistent with the independence of predictor variables from initiation source (i.e. mothers versus physicians). Mother initiated visits were significantly predicted by the model containing the Lay Consultation worry item, which was also the only variable that significantly predicted infant health care use in the model. The main dissertation study finding is the independence of infant health care use decision-making from most of the maternal psychosocial, demographic and enabling variables examined. The finding is positive for the health care system as it suggests that mothers generally do not seek infant health care for their own emotional regulation and/or reassurance in their parenting competency. The contextual component of the CSM, as measured by lay consultation, received support from the findings, suggesting that mothers' perceived worry of her lay consults results in greater infant health care use. Implications for mothers and infants include community psychoeducation programs and home visiting programs focusing on infant health and development psychoeducation.