28. Floramorphosis

Floramorphosisis inspired by the feminine experience. Women are programmed from a young age to fixate on their appearance. Their perception of themselves becomes skewed growing up in this haze of beauty propaganda. Further inspiration came in the form of a flower. I created the term “floramorphosis” to refer to the life cycle of a flower, the transformation from a single seed into a beautiful flower. This is significant because the idea of transformation is central to this artwork. I have seen many friends who struggle with body image and I wanted to create an artwork that addresses the subject. Through consultation with female friends and family, I was able to draw from their stories and represent their experiences. I have always enjoyed working with found objects, and this artwork is loosely based off of Leo Sewell’s Female Torso. Through the process of reimagining and repurposing objects, I embed them with new meaning, reinforcing the overall idea of transformation. This sculpture is also inspired by Georgia O’Keefe’s series of floral works. The faceless mannequin forms representing the reflection of any and all women are plastic and cold emphasizing the artificiality of the beauty industry. The empty mirror frame shows the reflection of the woman as she blooms from foliage to flower. The foliage is how she sees herself, whereas the flowers are how the world sees her. I created this artwork because I feel that every woman can blossom in her own way and see her beauty, inside and out

The Incremental Value of Controlling for Covert Insufficient Effort Responding

Insufficient effort responding (IER) is a common concern of survey researchers especially those who collect data through crowdsourcing. Methods of controlling for IER may be overt (identifiable by respondents) or covert. This study examines the relative impact of controlling for covert IER when overt-IER methods are in the survey design. Using data from an experiment on performance feedback reactions where overt IER controls were in place, we examine the scale reliabilities and convergent and discriminant validity, both of which change negligibly by controlling for covert IER. Findings suggest controlling for covert IER lacks incremental value beyond controlling for overt IER

Bright or dark, or virtues and vices? A reexamination of the big five and job performance

Personality research in industrial/organizational psychology has been dominated by the description of personality traits and outcomes as either bright or dark. Unfortunately, research has shown that bright traits have dark outcomes and vice versa, suggesting that a paradox is plaguing the literature. To resolve this paradox, I propose that a different heuristic stemming from positive psychology be utilized: virtues and vices. Virtues refer to exercises of human excellence while vices refer to actions of human failure. Drawing on the virtue ethics concept of the Aristotelian mean, dark traits are viewed as extreme or elevated levels of bright personality traits, allowing both to be described by a common set of dimensions. Further, I posit that under certain circumstances, even extreme trait standings might result in acts of human excellence. Importantly, this resolution implies that nonlinear relationships may accurately describe the functional form of relationships linking personality dimensions to valued outcomes. To test this model, I applied the virtues and vices heuristic to five basic personality dimensions (the Big Five) described by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality in order to construct a measurement model that views extreme levels of these dimensions as dark. To develop this measurement model, trained item writers generated nine hundred fifty-eight items according to these specifications (approximately 30 items per each of the 30 narrow traits of the FFM). Two subject-matter experts rated these items on extremity for the purposes of reducing this initial item pool to a smaller set of usable resulted in a set of three hundred items that were administered to a sample of 728 working employees obtained through Amazon\u27s Mechanical Turk along with self-descriptions of task performance, organizational citizenship, and deviant work behavior (outcomes widely accepted as either virtuous or vice-like). Ideal-point item-response theory was used to estimate person parameters for the five personality dimensions. Small nonlinear effects were detected linking several traits and outcomes. Small-n employee selection scenarios were simulated to demonstrate the practical importance of these small effects. Implications for theory and practice are discussed

Why people share news about vaccinations on Facebook : a uses and gratifications approach

Facebook, the world's largest social network, is now a significant source of news and information for U.S. adults. The primary way users access news on Facebook is via links to stories shared by others in their network, including friends, family and even media organizations. Users share links about stories on myriad topics, but one topic that is of particular interest to public health researchers is the focus of this study -- childhood vaccinations. This research employs a uses and gratifications theoretical framework to understand why people share links to news stories about vaccinations on Facebook, and how such needs are related to an individual's vaccine hesitancy. A survey of 202 Facebook users who have shared such links found that respondents gratified needs for agency-seeking, status-seeking, socialization/entertainment and information storage. Users who reported low vaccine hesitancy were more likely to experience agency-seeking gratifications; essentially, Facebook users who were strongly supportive of childhood vaccines were found to share news stories to feel empowered to have their say