<p> Relationship conflict in groups has been shown to be detrimental to group outcomes, and research notes that emotion or affect plays a significant part in its development. The Need for Affect (NFA) is a construct that reflects an individual&rsquo;s attitude toward emotion and their level of desire to either approach or avoid emotion-inducing situations This study examined the relationship between NFA and relationship conflict in groups, then sought to determine whether the neuroticism personality trait was a moderator to that relationship. Members of 14 small workgroups (N = 68) in various organizations were administered a 67-question survey designed to (1) measure their individual need for affect level, (2) score their Big Five personality traits, and (3) measure intragroup conflict in their respective groups. Neuroticism was one of the five personality traits of interest because it has been shown to have a negative correlation with NFA. Pearson&rsquo;s correlational analysis was run to test the neuroticism &ndash; NFA relationship, as well as the NFA &ndash; relationship conflict relationship. PROCESS moderation analysis was also conducted to test the moderation effect of neuroticism on the NFA &ndash; Conflict relationship. There was a significant negative correlation between neuroticism and NFA. However, no significant relationship existed between NFA and relationship conflict, and neuroticism did not significantly moderate that relationship.</p><p>

<p> Disabled students graduate from post-secondary education at a lower rate than non-disabled students. It is unknown if disabled and non-disabled students experience equal access to mental health services. This mixed methods study compared participants' reported psychological distress and willingness to utilize mental health services among disabled and non-disabled university students (N=96) and analyzed qualitative data regarding barriers and supports to utilizing mental health services. Disabled students reported more psychological distress and higher willingness to utilize mental health services than non-disabled students. These findings support the importance of promoting mental health care for disabled postsecondary students.</p><p>

<p> Quantitative reasoning is an important skill set that educators work tirelessly to develop, yet evidence is beginning to show a downward trend in performance among university students over the past few decades. The rise of technology in everyday life has undoubtedly affected the cognition of younger generations of students. Of particular interest is the increasing availability of calculators (e.g., on cell phones). In this experiment, we programmed a calculator to lie to students in certain conditions as well as alter the presentation of problems. We also collected numeracy scores. The effects of these variables on reports of suspicion towards the calculator and overall accuracy on problems were analyzed to see whether students tended to be disengaged from math problems while using a calculator (Disengagement Hypothesis) or whether calculators do not substantially affect how students engage in problems and variation in performance is more attributable to general numeracy (Engagement Hypothesis). The Engagement Hypothesis was supported.</p><p>

<p> Current literature suggests secure attachment and forgiveness are positively correlated. However, to date, the relationship of adult attachment, forgiveness, and generativity has not been explored. In this current study, middle-aged adults, ages 45-80 from the George Fox University Alumni were surveyed to explore attachment (anxious and avoidant), generativity, and forgiveness. Since generativity is a prosocial trait, synonymous with altruism, suggesting one&rsquo;s selfless service and concern for the well-being for others, it is predicted that generativity will have a positive relationship with forgiveness, and secure attachment. Further, multiple regression statistics were used to explore which of the independent variables (anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and generativity) has the greatest effect on the dependent variable of trait forgiveness.</p><p> Results indicated that there was a medium positive relationship between forgiveness and secure attachment, between generativity and secure attachment, and between forgiveness and generativity. Multiple regression found that each of the independent variables (anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and generativity) were significant predictors of forgiveness with anxious attachment being the strongest predictor of forgiveness</p><p>

<p> The history of intergroup research is built on groups that represent "endpoints" of a dimension of social identity, such as White, Black, heterosexual, and gay/lesbian. Social groups who fall between these more readily recognized advantaged and disadvantaged groups (e.g., biracial people, bisexual people) have received less attention. These intermediate social groups are increasingly visible and numerous in the United States, however, and a detailed account of the biases they face can contribute to a fuller understanding of intergroup relations. This dissertation examines attitudes and beliefs about intermediate social groups, focusing on bisexual people as the primary example at first, and then expanding the investigation to biracial people and novel groups to make the case that intermediate groups elicit a distinctive pattern of biases. Across studies, participants expressed beliefs that undermined the legitimacy of intermediate groups in a variety of ways. They endorsed the view that intermediate groups are low in social realness (conceptually invalid, meaningless, lacking a concrete social existence) and that intermediate group identities are unstable (provisional, lacking a genuine underlying truth, the result of confusion). These views of social realness and identity stability partially explained prejudice against intermediate groups.</p><p> The concept of social group intermediacy is abstract; actual intermediate groups (e.g., biracial and bisexual people) are different from each other because their defining types of intermediacy stem from different dimensions of social identity (race and sexual orientation). Therefore, focused research on each specific intermediate group is necessary to fully understand the types of attitudes they evoke due to their intermediate status. To demonstrate the value of attending to the details of a particular intermediate group, Chapters 2 through 5 focused on bisexual people. The observed patterns of attitudes and beliefs about bisexual people demonstrated the role of their perceived intermediate status in the context of sexual orientation.</p><p> Chapter 2 investigated attitudes toward sexual orientation groups in a large sample of heterosexual and gay/lesbian participants. Bisexuality was evaluated less favorably and perceived as less stable than heterosexuality and homosexuality. Stereotypes about bisexual people pertained to gender conformity, decisiveness, and monogamy; few positive traits were associated with bisexuality. Chapter 3 extended these findings, demonstrating that negative evaluation of sexual minorities was more closely associated with perceived identity instability than it was with the view that sexual orientation is a choice. This relationship was moderated by both participant and target sexual orientation.</p><p> Chapter 4 addressed one reason why bisexual people are evaluated more negatively than gay/lesbian people. A common explanation given for the discrepancy in evaluation is that bisexuality introduces ambiguity into a binary model of sexuality. In line with this explanation, we found that participants with a preference for simple ways of structuring information were especially likely to evaluate bisexual people more negatively than gay/lesbian people. Chapter 5 investigated how bisexual participants saw themselves as a group. Results suggested that bisexual people largely disagree with the prevailing stereotypes of their group; these stereotypes reflect non-bisexual people's impressions of the intermediate group rather than a consensus.</p><p> Chapter 6 shifted the focus from bisexual people as an example of an intermediate social group to intermediate social groups in general. Results from a set of studies involving novel groups demonstrated that perceiving a group as intermediate can cause negative evaluation and low ratings of social realness and identity stability. Similar results held for real-world intermediate groups (biracial people and bisexual people). The extent to which an intermediate group was perceived as less socially real than other groups predicted the extent to which it was evaluated less positively than those groups. Social realness seems to be a unique explanatory factor in the relative negative evaluation of these intermediate groups, working in conjunction with the more well-known processes of intergroup attitudes traditionally studied with respect to Black people and gay/lesbian people. The effects of social group intermediacy were amplified among participants who identified strongly with an advantaged ingroup. Acknowledging an intermediate group as legitimate may require one to acknowledge shared characteristics or overlapping boundaries between one's valued ingroup and the "opposite" outgroup, which can be threatening to highly identified group members.</p><p> Taken together, these chapters make the case that intermediate social groups incur particular biases due to their perceived intermediate status. The processes of intergroup bias that result in derogation of traditionally recognized disadvantaged groups may be insufficient to account for some forms of prejudice in the modern demographic landscape. As biracial people and bisexual people become more prevalent, researchers must address the conditions under which they are recognized or dismissed, included or excluded.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to assess how clinical supervisors' style of interaction, as described by SDT&rsquo;s concepts of perceived autonomy support versus perceived controlling style, predicts the counseling self-efficacy (CSE) of a mental health counseling intern placed in a field internship. An additional purpose of this study was to examine if this relationship between autonomy support and counseling self-efficacy was mediated by autonomous work motivation. Participants were approached during an internship class session to complete instruments related to their demographic characteristics, perceptions of supervisory interaction style &ndash; autonomy supportive versus controlled (<i>Perceived Autonomy Support Scale &ndash; Employee</i>), autonomous or controlled motivation (<i>Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale</i>) and counseling self-efficacy (<i>Counseling Self-Estimate Inventory</i>). In addition, a need for autonomy scale (<i>Autonomy and Homonomy Measure </i>) was also included in the questionnaire packet to perform an exploratory analysis on participants&rsquo; need for autonomy as it relates to perceived autonomy support. Participants consisted of master&rsquo;s level mental health counseling interns enrolled in their field internships. Regression analyses were conducted to assess the predictive relationship between perceived autonomy support from supervisor and participant&rsquo;s counseling self-efficacy. Path analyses were conducted to investigate if this relationship was mediated by autonomous work motivation.</p><p>

<p>ABSTRACT One of the basic tenets of mental health counseling is that assisting a client to change the way he thinks about aspects of the world results in a changed view of the world. When this is examined in therapy, typically the issue at hand is measured (a client may complete the Beck Depression Scale), an intervention with associated techniques is used for some amount of time (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy), and then outcome is measured using the original scale. Of course, if the concern is alleviation of signs and symptoms then a decrease in measured distress is an indicator of a successful intervention. However, despite this success, a number of cognitive questions remain. Due to the fact that it does not necessarily follow that an alleviation of signs and symptoms means that worldview has changed (i.e., a client may have learned additional coping mechanisms), the first question is whether there has there been a change in world view. A second question is what, if anything, about the intervention, resulted in a changed worldview. Kim and Ahn (1992, 1996) developed a methodology for their research which permitted an examination of the impact of manipulations of narratives through the lens of mental health disorders. I investigated how supporting or challenging primary or peripheral features of four mental health disorders impacted the conceptualization of those disorders. Results for the Conceptual Centrality task, a ratings task that focused on supporting or challenging the symptom of interest, revealed that participants used a theory-based approach (compared to a prototype-based approach) for this task. This indicated that people consider the nature of causal chains when rating the centrality or primary and peripheral symptoms. Results for the more complex Causal Centrality Task, in which participants constructed multiple iterations of mental health disorders by identifying symptoms from a list and indicating causal relationships, indicated that constructing individual models, focused on a specific manifestation of a mental health disorder, later influenced general models, focused on the same disorder in general. The addition of a discursive partner revealed that although both partners influenced the later model of the other, they did so differentially. In general, the partner who was more anxious constructed a later model that was smaller (i.e., used fewer unique symptoms) whereas their partner utilized more unique symptoms (in line with construction of a general model). The patterns observed in this research indicate that manipulating mental health narratives does influence conceptualizations of their respective disorders. This research has ramifications for research involving categorization as well as mental health issues.

<p> Loneliness &ndash; the feeling that manifests when one perceives one&rsquo;s social needs are not being met by the quantity or especially the quality of one&rsquo;s social relationships &ndash; is a common but typically short-lived and fairly harmless experience. However, recent research continues to uncover a variety of alarming health effects associated with longterm loneliness. The present study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying how persons scoring high in trait loneliness perceive their social environments. Evaluations of transient facial expression morphs are analyzed in R using dynamical systems methods. We hypothesize that, consistent with Cacioppo and Hawkley&rsquo;s socio-cognitive model, subjects scoring high in loneliness will exhibit <i>hypervigilance</i> in their evaluations of cold and neutral emotions and <i>hypovigilance</i> in their evaluations of warm emotions. Results partially support the socio-cognitive model but point to a relationship between loneliness and a global dampening in evaluations of emotions.</p>

<p> As care for the elderly continues to be a significant social concern, this study examines the experiences, gratifications, and frustrations of adult children suffering from a mental illness and become the primary caregivers of their aging parent within the home. In addition, the study explored the role of trauma as part of the adult children's decision to become the primary caregivers of their aging parent. Adult children and their aging parents were of Jewish descent and currently residing in a large metropolitan area. A total of 9 adult Jewish children, 6 males and 3 females, were recruited from a non-profit, community-funded social service agency for this qualitative study. The nine participants were asked to complete a short demographic questionnaire, asked general background information, and were administered a semi-structured caregiving interview. The interviews were audiotaped, transcribed and analyzed using grounded theory methodology.</p><p> The major themes that emerged from this qualitative study provide insight into the adult child's experience as a caregiver with respect to their caregiving responsibilities, additional assistance from outside agencies or individuals, issues related to mental health and wellness, positive and negative aspects of the caregiving role, religion, and loss. Minor themes that emerged in the data were developmental task achievement and the impact of legal difficulties on the experience of caregiving. The results indicate that the adult child's role as the primary caregiver likely fulfills a purpose in this mentally ill adult child's life. There seems to be a relationship between the adult child's lack of normative development within the life cycle and adopting the role of caregiver. This role is also influenced by other factors such as trauma/stress, social constriction, parenting style, lack of support, and co-dependency between adult and child. Therefore, this study was able to provide a greater understanding of the factors that contribute to the trend of mentally ill adult Jewish children taking on the caregiver role for their aging parents.</p>

The current research integrates social cognitive theories of psychological construals and information processing with theories of social identity to identify the conditions under which multiculturalism helps versus hinders positive intergroup relations. Three experiments investigated how abstract vs. concrete construals of multiculturalism impact majority group members' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward ethnic minorities in the US. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that construing multiculturalism in abstract terms by highlighting its broad goals reduced majority group members' prejudice toward ethnic minorities by decreasing the extent to which diversity is seen as threatening the national group. However, construing multiculturalism in concrete terms by highlighting specific ways in which its goals can be achieved increased majority group members' prejudice toward minorities by amplifying the extent to which diversity is seen as threatening the national group. Experiment 3 then revealed that a different concrete construal that incorporates values and practices of both majority and minority groups reduced perceived threats to the national group and in turn attenuated prejudice and increased desire for contact with ethnic minorities. Collectively, these experiments demonstrate when and why multiculturalism leads to positive versus negative intergroup outcomes, while identifying new ways in which multiculturalism can be successfully implemented in pluralistic nations.