Previous research on anger and childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is largely cross-sectional and retrospective. In this study, we prospectively examined the consequences of expressing anger among sexually abused women in contexts of either voluntarily disclosing or not disclosing a previous abuse episode. All CSA survivors in the study had documented histories of CSA. These participants and a matched, nonabused sample were asked to describe their most distressing experience while being videotaped to allow coding of anger expression. Approximately two thirds of the CSA survivors voluntarily disclosed a previous abuse experience. Participants completed measures of internalizing symptoms and externalizing symptoms at the time of disclosure and again two years later. The expression of anger was associated with better long-term adjustment (decreased internalizing and externalizing symptoms) but only among CSA survivors who had expressed anger while not disclosing an abuse experience. For CSA survivors who disclosed an abuse experience, anger expression was unrelated to long-term outcome. These findings suggest that the benefits of anger expression for CSA survivors may be context specific.

One of the most thoroughly researched areas of mental illness in the context of its association with religiosity is depression. The thrust of studies published over the last century found religious/spiritual factors to be generally associated with lower rates of depression. The majority of studies on religion and depression have been cross-sectional. The primary aims of this study are to investigate the relationship between religiosity and depression longitudinally, utilizing a 10-year follow-up, and to explore the potential differential impact of religiosity on the prevalence of depression in those at high versus low risk for depression. Results suggest that 1) prospectively, a personal importance of religion is protective against MDD over a 10-year period; 2) prospectively, there exists a differential effect of religious belief on MDD in individuals at high versus low risk for depression; 3) prospectively, the protective effect of religious/spiritual importance against MDD is exclusive to individuals at high risk for depression based on parental MDD status; 4) Time 10 Catholicism is protective against MDD cross-sectionally 5) The protective effect of Catholicism may be more prevalent in individuals at low risk for depression than in individuals at high risk for depression; 5) cross-sectionally, there exists a differential impact of religious attendance on the prevalence of MDD in those at high risk versus those at low risk for depression at Time 10: for those at high risk for depression, religious attendance is associated with increased rates of MDD; 6) cross-sectionally, after controlling for social support there exists a differential impact of religious attendance on MDD in those at high versus low risk for depression: in individuals at high risk for depression, after controlling for social functioning, religious importance becomes a risk factor for MDD.

Across species and populations, encounters between neighboring social groups take a variety of forms. In particular, intergroup encounters (IGEs) may or may not be aggressive and may include the participation of males and/or females. The proximate causes of aggressive participation by each sex, particularly among primates, is generally thought to be the availability of mates and food. However, existing hypotheses of resource defense have rarely been explicitly tested through identification of the proximate causes of male and female aggression. In this dissertation, I sought to test the existing hypotheses by determining whether female food defense, male food defense, and male mate defense occur in grey-cheeked mangabeys (Lophocebus albigena) and redtail monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius). With a team of field assistants, I observed six mangabey groups for 15 months and four redtail groups for 12 months at the Ngogo site in Kibale National Park, Uganda. We observed naturally-occurring IGEs in both species, simulated IGEs among mangabey groups using playback experiments, and measured the availability of food resources in botanical plots. I evaluated multiple aspects of intergroup relations, including initiation of encounters, occurrence of intense aggression, encounter outcomes, overall encounter rates, and the effect of neighbors' long-distance calls on group movements. For each IGE aspect, I determined the effects of group size and resource value. I found strong evidence for female food defense by redtails and male food defense by both species, weak evidence of male mate defense by redtails and no evidence for mangabeys, and no evidence of female food defense by mangabeys. In addition, the specific conditions under which food defense is expected to occur in primates were appropriate for male mangabeys, but not for female or male redtails. This pattern of results indicates that existing hypotheses cannot accurately predict which populations will exhibit food or mate defense by males or females, or the specific social and ecological conditions that elicit defense. I also found that mangabeys exhibited two types of IGE: whole group encounters, where the majority of two groups were in visual contact, and subgroup encounters, where one or a few individuals left their group and interacted aggressively with a neighboring group. Whereas whole group IGEs appeared to function as defense of specific feeding sites, subgroup IGEs did not; instead, they appeared to be a means of defending the core of the home range. Compared to earlier studies, the mangabey groups in this study exhibited higher encounter rates and more pronounced aggression. Higher group densities and more intense feeding competition have given rise to a dramatically different pattern of mangabey intergroup relations. This study demonstrates the importance of considering multiple IGE aspects, hypotheses, and food characteristics when evaluating the role of intergroup relations in the lives of social animals.

Research on value has focused on the valence of stimuli (e.g. Thorndike, 1911) or on the way an actor engages with those stimuli (e.g. Kierkegaard, 1843). We use an approach to the study of value that understands value as an interaction between the actor and a value target, between the valence of a stimulus or activity, and a person's strength of engagement with that value target. In Experiment 1, we test the central prediction of Regulatory Engagement Theory (RET) (Higgins, 2006), that increased strength of engagement, as manipulated by inducing a situation of scarcity, intensifies the value experience associated with tasting a disliked yogurt, causing participants to feel more intensely negative about the yogurt when they perceive it as scarce. In Experiment 2, we extend this finding by testing whether manipulating the scarcity of one array of products at time 1 can create a psychological state that can transfer to intensify the value of an unrelated product presented later in the experiment. In Experiments 3 and 4 we work toward developing a measure of engagement as sustained attention in order to begin to establish strength of engagement as a mechanism for these effects. In these studies, we use Regulatory Fit (Higgins, 2000) to create conditions of strong and weak engagement within participants, and we measure engagement by recording the extent to which participants attend to a focal task at the expense of irrelevant distracting information presented during that task. By conceptualizing value as a motivational force experience, using RET to make new predictions about this experience, and developing a measure to test the mechanism itself, we hope this work contributes to the development of a new way of understanding value.

What makes an animal's life worth living? Animal welfare scientists have been investigating this question in captive animals for nearly half a century. It has also attracted the attention of academics in other fields because this line of inquiry may improve how we not only manage animals in our care but also think about our own well-being. Concurrently, theories of human well-being and behavior are beginning to play a greater role in animal welfare science. Thus, though the overlap is still limited, the fields of animal welfare and human well-being are converging. To facilitate this integration, I propose engaging in effectiveness as common ground from which to generate hypotheses regarding well-being/welfare patterns in human and other species. By engaging in effectiveness, I mean devoting one's resources to 1) obtaining desired results--value effectiveness, 2) establishing what is real--truth effectiveness, and 3) managing what happens--control effectiveness. In a series of experiments, I tested the ability of the engaging in effectiveness model to account for human and rat behavior. The first set of studies (in humans only) confirmed that self-reported effectiveness was strongly correlated to well-being and expectations of future effectiveness/success. The second set of studies found that the frequency of effective engagement was positively correlated to effectiveness (in humans) and negatively correlated to signs of poor welfare (in rats). The third set of studies (in humans and rats) explored the opposing roles that challenges may play in welfare. By providing opportunities to be effective, challenges may enhance welfare. Conversely, by their potential to cause ineffectiveness/failure on any one of the three domains (value, truth, or control), challenges may decrease welfare. In the final set of studies (in rats only), by manipulating engagement opportunities in the homecage, preliminary validity for a novel measure of welfare was demonstrated. These four sets of studies support the engaging in effectiveness model, highlight the role of challenge in welfare/well-being, and suggest new avenues of research in humans and other animals.

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first examines analytically as well as empirically the mental accounting principle that Thaler (1985) termed the “silver lining principle.” The second and third essays investigate the link between attention and preferences. In the first essay, loss aversion is an important antecedent and moderator of the principle’s effect on preferences, and in the latter two we hypothesize both antecedent (Essay Two) and consequent (Essay Three) roles for loss aversion with respect to attention. The silver lining effect predicts that segregating a small gain from a larger loss results in greater psychological value than does integrating the gain(s) into a smaller loss. Using a generic prospect theory value function, we formalize this effect and derive conditions under which it should occur. We show analytically that if the gain is smaller than a certain threshold, segregation is optimal. This threshold increases with the size of the loss and decreases with the degree of loss aversion on the part of the decision maker. Our formal analysis results in a set of predictions suggesting that the silver lining effect is more likely to occur when (i) the gain is smaller (for a given loss), (ii) the loss is larger (for a given gain), and (iii) the decision maker is less loss-averse. We test and confirm these predictions in three studies of preferences, in both monetary and non-monetary settings, analyzing the data in a hierarchical Bayesian framework. The second and third essays together examine the relation between allocation of attention and choice behavior—in particular the sensitivity of choices to gains and losses (and thus loss aversion). An initial empirical study suggests an association between decision makers’ increased attention to losses and decreased attention to gains, and increased degrees of loss aversion. We then examine this association in two further empirical studies in order to test a potential causal relationship. The first of these manipulates loss aversion and measures attention, while the second manipulates attention and measures loss aversion. We find no systematic evidence for a causal link between attention and loss aversion; our findings rather suggest a common influence accounting for their initially observed association. Some of the results point to a potential role of perceptual fluency, though this possibility awaits further research. We propose an additional empirical study using an alternative manipulation of attention previously utilized by Shimojo et al. (2003), among others. We find evidence for a direct influence of attention on preferences, however, such that increased attention to positive attributes is associated with greater preference for an alternative, and vice versa for negative attributes. This result supports and extends previous work on the link between preferences and attention (e.g. Rangel 2008). In addition, we observe a novel phenomenon that we term attentional loss aversion, by which the direct influence of attention on preference for an alternative is stronger for negative attributes than for positive attributes.

This study compared the anger ratings of traumatized youth with and without PTSD relative to the anger ratings of a non-traumatized control group. Participants consisted of youth aged 7-18 years were previously evaluated for a study at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City. In order to potentially increase the external validity of the study, youth with comorbid major depressive disorder and substance dependence were included in the sample. Diagnostic measures identified 31 youth with PTSD, 59 traumatized youth without PTSD, and 39 non-traumatized controls. Participants completed the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory, a self-report inventory that measures anger experience, anger expression, and anger control. Data analyses indicated significant group differences on the State Anger, Trait Anger, Angry Temperament, and Angry Reaction scales and subscales. Specifically, the PTSD group and traumatized PTSD negative group had significantly higher State Anger scores than the control group. State Anger scores for the PTSD and traumatized PTSD negative groups did not significantly differ. Regarding Trait Anger, the PTSD group had significantly higher scores than both the traumatized PTSD negative and control groups. Trait Anger scores for the traumatized PTSD negative group and the controls did not significantly differ. Angry Temperament scores of the PTSD group were significantly higher than scores of the traumatized PTSD negative and control groups. Angry Temperament scores of the traumatized PTSD negative and control groups did not differ. Angry Reaction scores of the PTSD group significantly exceeded scores of the control group only. Angry Reaction scores for the PTSD and traumatized PTSD negative groups did not differ, and the traumatized PTSD negative and control group scores also did not differ. Statistical analyses failed to identify significant group differences for the remaining scales (Anger Expression, Anger In, Anger Out, and Anger Control). Overall findings of this study indicate that the relationship between PTSD and anger varied depending on the anger domain that was examined, as significantly higher anger scores were not consistently related to diagnostic status. A discussion of the results including theoretical and clinical significance is presented. Finally, limitations of the study and possible directions for future research are addressed.

Note-taking is an effective and prevalent study strategy that has been widely examined in post-secondary settings. However, little is known about the underlying cognitive variables associated with note-taking. The current study set out to investigate the note-taking skills of high school students with and without Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), in order to extend previous studies on lecture note-taking (Peverly, Garner, & Vekaria, 2011; Peverly et al., 2007; Peverly et al, 2010) to this younger population and disability group. It additionally set out to investigate the utility of providing an outline as an intervention to improve the note-quality of these populations. Participants included 40 high school students with ADHD and 40 high school students without ADHD. Participants took notes on a videotaped lecture, and half were provided with an outline on which to take their notes. One week later, participants reviewed their notes and took a multiple choice test. The independent variables included ADHD status, outline status (yes/no), attention, transcription fluency, verbal working memory, and listening comprehension. The dependent variables were quality of notes and test performance. All measures were group administered. Results of this investigation indicated that ADHD status, attention, transcription speed, and listening comprehension all emerged as significant predictors of note-taking skill. Note-quality and listening comprehension were the only predictors of test performance. Students with ADHD produced lower quality notes when compared to non-ADHD peers. They additionally obtained lower scores on a multiple choice test as well a measure of listening comprehension, but did not significantly differ in terms of attention, verbal working memory, or transcription speed. The provision of an outline did not significantly impact the note quality of students with or without ADHD in the current study. Future research aimed at replicating these findings and expanding the results to include wider samples with more rigorously confirmed diagnoses is recommended.

Notetaking is viewed by high school and college students as a tool to help them record and organize information presented by their instructors in lecture format. Research has shown that students who take notes consistently outperform students who do not use this strategy on tests of their knowledge. Although previous studies have identified factors contributing to individual differences in notetaking, these works have largely focused on cognitive skills while neglecting to consider the role that a students' motivation may play in their notetaking habits. The current study is an extension of lecture notetaking research (Peverly et al, 2007; Peverly et al., 2010; Reddington, 2011) that applies principles of Elliot's trichotomous goal orientation theory to investigate the question of student motivation. Specifically, this dissertation's primary purpose was to determine if goal orientation and feedback affect students' notetaking habits or performance on measures of their knowledge. Hypotheses related to the established relationships between gender and notetaking and notetaking and performance were also explored. This dissertation is unique in that it is the only study to examine the effects of goal orientation on the specific strategy of notetaking through the use of an experimental design. A sample of 231 undergraduate students participated in the two-phase experiment. In phase I, participants were randomly assigned to one of three goal orientation groups, asked to listen to a videotaped lecture and to write a detailed summary of what they had learned. In phase II, participants were randomly assigned to receive contrived feedback stating that their phase I written summary was either above or below an arbitrary performance standard. After reviewing their feedback, participants were again asked to listen to a videotaped lecture and write a detailed summary of what they had learned. Independent variables included gender, goal orientation, and feedback. Dependent variables included quantity of idea units in students' notes and quantity of idea units in students' written summaries. Results indicated that factors related to goal orientation, feedback, and gender did impact students' notetaking quantity and performance. Note quantity was predicted by gender, goal orientation, the gender x goal orientation interaction, and the feedback x goal orientation interaction. Quantity of idea units in written summary was predicted by note quantity, the gender x goal orientation interaction, and the note quantity x goal orientation interaction. Future research should continue to examine the specific impact of goal orientation and feedback on notetaking habits.

In the face of identity threat, how do people who belong to devalued groups protect themselves from negative outcomes, like poor health and performance? This research focuses on how devalued identities can be harnessed and used to combat vulnerability to poor outcomes. Social identities are central to psychological functioning, but, due in part to a focus on identity's stable, trait-like features, past research on how devalued identities affect outcomes has produced mixed results. Conceptualizing identity as a dynamic, situation-responsive system, three studies test whether activating positive aspects of a threatened group protects against negative outcomes specifically in threatening situations. Study 1 establishes that affirming groups effectively buffers against underperformance resulting from stereotype threat and that some people choose to affirm the very group that is threatened. Study 2 tests whether affirming aspects of the threatened identity also allows one to maintain personal and collective self-esteem and whether effects depend on how one construes belonging to the group (i.e., unique group member, typical group member, unique individual). Whereas performance and personal self-esteem were equal across conditions, collective self-esteem was boosted after affirming oneself as a unique group member, suggesting that identity as defined and optimized by the individual confers benefits. Study 3 tests the situational-specificity of these protective effects and shows that highly-valued identity knowledge predicted lower levels of distress and higher performance only when activated in response to discrimination and not to other situations. Across all three studies, measures of stable identification did not consistently predict outcomes in threatening or non-threatening situations. At the core of the approach adopted in these three studies is an interplay between person and situation in defining identity. This approach presents a fuller picture of the multi-faceted functional role of identity and demonstrates the utility of studying identity in context.