<p> The current study was conducted to examine the relationship between personal, internal variables, and various measures of video game ratings. Individual differences equated in the present study included trait aggression, video game preferences, sex, and gender identity. These measures were experimentally manipulated to evaluate various game ratings including ratings of violence, enjoyment, and age recommendations. Comparisons of ratings were made across E10+, T, and M rated video game conditions. Participants completed a demographic profile, the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, and a video game questionnaire, which was administered after viewing video game clips. Correlational analyses revealed that trait aggression was not significantly related to video game ratings. However, video game preference was correlated with higher enjoyment ratings in all game conditions and lower violence and age recommendation ratings in the M game condition. The results further revealed that sex was a significant factor for enjoyment and age recommendation ratings, but not ratings of violence in the offered video games. Regarding gender identity differences, masculinity was found to be correlated with higher violence ratings for the violent video game conditions; femininity was correlated with lower enjoyment ratings and higher age ratings in the most violent game condition. Implications for the ESRB video game ratings process and media portrayal of violent video game players are discussed in the context of the present study.</p>

<p> This study attempted to replicate and expand the Confluence Model of Sexual Aggression (Malamuth et al., 1991) in an online survey of national (<i></i>n = 512) and university (<i>n</i> = 100) men. Overall, 28.8% of men (national = 29.5%; university = 25%) reported perpetrating sexual aggression against a woman at least once. In the sexually aggressive group, 81.2% reported perpetrating sexual violence more than once, and 40.3% reported six or more acts. It was hypothesized the Confluence Model would be improved by adding everyday sadism, parental attachment, and the Personality Inventory for the <i>DSM-5</i> (PID-5). In a structural equation model, hostile masculinity (&beta; = .44), childhood sexual abuse (&beta; = .26), juvenile delinquency (&beta; = .28), and physical everyday sadism (&beta; = .20) had significant direct effects on sexual aggression. Physical everyday sadism (&beta; = .26), juvenile delinquency (&beta; = .14), PID-5 callousness (&beta; = .30), and anxious attachment (&beta; = .26) had significant indirect effects on sexual aggression, mediated by hostile masculinity. These predictors accounted for 79% of the variance in the sexual aggression latent variable, which represented considerable model improvement. Unrestricted sociosexuality, misperception of women&rsquo;s sexual intent, and heavy alcohol use were not significant predictors of sexual aggression in this model.</p>

<p>The current study examined the relationship between psychopathic personality traits and various forms of deception. Through the use of the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment to measure psychopathy, and several different assessment tools to measure deception, including the Multidimensional Deception Inventory (MDI), the relationship between psychopathic personality traits and deception was examined. Using an undergraduate sample of 261 participants at a large research university in the Southeastern United States, the relationship between the aforementioned constructs was explored. Results indicated that the overarching personality traits of Antagonism and Disinhibition were positively related to multiple dimensions of lying behavior. Frequency of lies told, Duping Delight (lies told for enjoyment), and lies told for personal gain/impression management and to avoid disclosing pertinent information were positively related to both Antagonism and Disinhibition. Results point to the need for future study in this area, as limited previous research has looked at the overlap between psychopathic personality traits and deception. </p>

<p> The dark triad created by Paulhus and Williams (2002) is relatively new to research and requires a more thorough investigation. One area of expansion is considering the addition of everyday sadism to the dark triad thus making the dark tetrad. Investigating the relationship between the dark tetrad and the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 (PID-5) could greatly add to the existing understanding as well. Lastly, there is a need for further clarification of the relationship between the dark tetrad and sexual tactics. The current study investigated each of these areas. From this examination, it was found that sadism could be validly added to the dark triad. Furthermore, the PID-5 antagonism domain and facets correlated moderately to strongly with the dark tetrad traits. Lastly, most of the dark tetrad traits were found to have a statistically significant relationship with sexual coercion and psychopathy alone had a significant relationship with sexual coaxing. Overall, the current study adds promising information to existing research by defining the dark tetrad using maladaptive traits and examining their relations with sexually deviant behaviors.</p>

<p> Psychology graduate trainees are exposed to a variety of stressors during their education, such as costly tuition, long hours of study, and demanding clinical work. There is a need for graduate institutions to help trainees build self-care skills; however, there is little agreement about the best approach for boosting these skills. The present study proposes that self-care training may benefit from helping students to build self-compassion (an attitude of warmth directed inward). To explore the possibility that self-compassion promotes student wellbeing, a sample of 122 mental health trainees was recruited from a large Midwestern training institution. Most participants were female (82.8%) and the mean age was 30.2 years. The sample was ethnically diverse. Over half identified as Caucasian (56.6%), with the reminder identifying as African American, Latino/a, Asian, Filipino, or American Indian or Alaska Native. All participants completed measures of three variables: self-compassion, self-care behavior, and perceived stress. The results showed that students with greater levels of self-compassion experience significantly lower levels of perceived stress (r = -.57, p &lt; .001) and engaged in significantly more self-care behavior (r = .64, p &lt; .001). Furthermore, self-care behavior partially mediated the effect of self-compassion on perceived stress, and this partial mediation effect was statistically significant (z = -3.42, p &lt; .001). These findings indicate that greater self-compassion is associated with more self-care behavior, which, in turn, is associated with reduced stress levels. Therefore, graduate institutions that wish to promote student wellbeing can benefit from teaching students ways to build self-compassion.</p>

<p> Willingness to expend effort has received increased attention over the past decade, and for good reason &ndash; effort is crucial to life's successes, and many of us wish we could harness and control it more optimally. In particular, cognitive effort is central to academic and vocational achievements. Though effort is important, it is also costly. If it were not, no projects would be left unfinished, and no treadmills would be abandoned early. Because it is costly, self-control is often required to exert and maintain effort. Reduced willingness to expend effort has also come into focus as a clinically relevant variable related to amotivation, most notably in schizophrenia. Additionally, both incentive motivation (immediate monetary reward availability) and effort have been linked with cognitive performance, suggesting that our measures of cognitive ability are inexorably linked to and to some degree confounded by cognitive effort.</p><p> In this dissertation, I present a novel paradigm developed for the assessment of perseverant cognitive effort in the absence of monetary incentive. The Cognitive Effort and DisEngagement (CEDE) task is a cognitive test that increases in difficulty and measures perseverant effort disengagement in a simple but novel way: participants are permitted to skip trials without penalty. The present work introduces the task, situates it within a framework of self-control divided into inhibitory and actuating mechanisms, and provides evidence of its association with stable traits, context, and psychosis.</p><p> The first set of studies (Chapter 1) tests the reliability and validity of the CEDE task in an undergraduate sample and a community sample. We find evidence of high internal consistency using a split-half method. We also find that skips on the CEDE show convergent validity in terms of correlation with self-reported perseverance and work ethic, as well as discriminant validity, showing lack of significant relationships with several theoretically distinct aspects of self-control. We also show evidence of tolerability of the paradigm and of face validity of skipping as an index of effort disengagement.</p><p> In Chapter 2, we test the effect of observation on perseverant effort on the CEDE task. We find that participants skip significantly more trials when they are observed by an experimenter with access to information about their performance via sound effects, compared with than when they have privacy (when the experimenter leaves the room, or when the participant wears headphones). We also find that self-reported internal motivational style predicts more perseverant effort when in private, whereas external motivational style predicts more effort when observed, suggesting that motivational styles exert influence differentially depending on features of the context. We also show that self-reported stress during the task negatively predicts performance, and that this relationship is fully mediated by skips. These results suggest that observation has a potent effect on cognitive task effort, affecting people differently according to motivational style, and that test anxiety also promotes effort disengagement. </p><p> In Chapter 3, we test for group differences in skips between individuals with first episode psychosis (FEP) and community controls, as schizophrenia is associated with both a cognitive and a motivational impairment. We show reduced perseverant cognitive effort on the CEDE in FEP. We find that this group difference specifically emerges during difficult trials, suggesting specifically a deficit in perseverance in reaction to difficulty rather than continuous attention throughout the test. We also show that reduction of effort in the form of skips is correlated with self-reported amotivation among patients. These results suggest clinical relevance of perseverant cognitive effort in schizophrenia as a component or reflection of motivational impairments.</p><p> Together, these findings provide novel insight into cognitive effort perseverance, its relationship to non-monetary motivations in terms of motivational style and observational context, and its reduction in psychosis. Our findings also highlight the relevance of cognitive effort perseverance to cognitive testing. Willingness to expend cognitive effort appears to be sensitive to numerous factors in the context of difficulty, when the demands on effort are higher, whereas it is relatively steadfast during easier tasks.</p><p>

<p> Restricted by the dogma of many forms of Western religion and plagued by the spiritual emptiness of materialism pervading the current age, many seek direct, personal experience of the sacred. Following a hermeneutic methodology, this dissertation explores the relevance of the writings of Jung and others on synchronicity, as both phenomenon and principle, as a foundation for an alternative path promising an authentic spiritual life. Through an exploration of the principle of synchronicity, the study reveals the possibility of a cosmos permeated with meaning, of a path to the spiritualization of matter, and of a bridge between the disparate realms of the sacred and profane. The study finds that synchronicity as a spiritual path naturally leads to direct, authentic experience of the divine, supports the major tenets of the progressive spirituality movement, and reflects the synchronistic principles undergirding the Chinese tradition of Taoism. The principle of synchronicity is found to be a possible psychophysical law supporting the experience of consciousness as well as the process of individuation. The study concludes that Jung's synchronistic model of his psychology of religion dispels the charge of psychologism levied against analytical psychology. In the theory of synchronicity Jung has given depth psychology the means to potentially unite all of humanity in a common purpose: the creation of consciousness. In particular, synchronicity as a spiritual path can draw attention to the value of depth psychology for offering a resolution to the spiritual vacuum in the West. </p><p>

Despite a wealth of studies, no consistent personality predictors of scholastic cheating have been identified. However, several highly-relevant variables have been overlooked. I address this void with a series of three studies. Study 1 was a large-scale survey of a broad range of personality predictors of self-reported scholastic cheating. The significant predictors were psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, low Agreeableness and low Conscientiousness. However, only psychopathy remained significant in a multiple regression. Study 2 replicated this pattern using a naturalistic, behavioural indicator of cheating -- plagiarism as indexed by the internet service Turn-It-In. The psychopathy association still held up after controlling for intelligence. Finally, Study 3 examined possible motivational mediators of the association between psychopathy and cheating. Unmitigated achievement and moral inhibition were successful mediators whereas fear of punishment was not. Implications for researchers and educators are discussed.

<p> The purpose of this project is to create a career planning guidebook for undergraduate hospitality management students. This guidebook will allow students to determine what their interests are in various hospitality careers. Students&rsquo; interests will be determined by performing a self assessment via the web based O*Net Interest Profiler&trade; instrument. The Interest Profiler report will identify students&rsquo; interests based on the six personality types adapted from John Holland&rsquo;s typology of personality types and work environments.</p>

<p> This paper is an integral inquiry that serves as an introduction into motivation and creativity from a transpersonal perspective. By focusing on intrinsic motivation, which can be defined as the enjoyment of and interest in an activity for its own sake, this paper posits that engaging in creative expression can act as a transcendent function that facilitates individualization and a progressive unfolding towards self-actualization. Supporting evidence shows that fully intrinsic-motivated immersion into non-objective tasks, such as engaging in creative expression, can result in a peak or flow experience. In turn, this experience can be a transcendent function that facilitates the processes involved with individualization and self- actualization.</p>