Marriage Expectations

Media or fictional marriages may have an effect on our high divorce rate because it sets people up for false expectations.(Segrin, 2002) Unmarried college students are known to have perfect fantasies built in their heads and for most of them marriage is likely to happen in the next 5 to 10 years if not sooner. (Larson, 1988) Hypothesis: It is expected that those not in a relationship will have higher expectations for marriage than those that are in a relationship. Also participants that receive a media couple to discuss will have higher expectations

Intelligence and Attractiveness: Do Better Grades Cause and Assumption of Attractiveness?

A study in 1978 discovered that teachers tended to favor more attractive students when evaluating their academic work. (Demeis & Turner, 1978.). In the United States, attractiveness is positively correlated with intelligence. (r=.126) (Kanizawa, 2011) Another study indicated that the actual quality of academic work is not necessarily linked to the grade given on the assignment. (Begany, et al. 2008) Are college students likely to assume attractiveness based on the quality of academic work? Would a letter grade of varying quality on the paper affect this assumption? Our hypothesis was that participants would more frequently indicate an attractive student as the author of a high quality essay, regardless of letter grade, and vice versa with an unattractive student and an essay of lesser quality

Sizing Up the Competition: Influence of Weight on Intelligence Perception

Prejudice and discrimination is common for overweight individuals of both genders, and can sometimes come in the form of negative evaluations of intelligence. It has been shown that overweight people, especially women, are rated as less attractive than those of average weight or that are underweight (Wilson, Tripp, & Boland, 2005). Discrimination in employment settings is also common for people that are overweight, as they are often less likely to be hired compared to other applicants (Grant & Mizzi, 2014). Overweight women were more often the victims of discrimination in hiring situations, seen as less qualified than other candidates (Pingitore, Dugoni, Tindale,& Spring, 1994). When compared to average weight counterparts, overweight individuals are often assigned more negative attributions and treated more negatively (Puhl, Andreyeva, & Brownell, 2008). In the current study, we predict that the overweight applicants will be rated as less intelligent than the average weight applicants. We also predict that the female overweight applicant will be rated as less intelligent than the male overweight applicant and either of the average weight applicants

Effects of Facebook on Mood and Self-Esteem

Humans are alike in that all compare themselves to others in social settings. The use of social media is widespread in society, so it often has effects on self- esteem. There are increasing amounts of narcissistic behaviors exhibited on social media (MacDonald, 2010). Social comparisons made when viewing social media can have significant effects on self-esteem, through making upward and downward social comparisons (Vogel, et al., 2014). There is a positive correlation between social comparison on Facebook and having negative feelings from that comparison (Lee, 2014). How will thinking about one’s self while observing a Facebook post affect one’s self-esteem and mood? We predicted that when primed with their ideal self (who they aren’t but wish they were) and viewed narcissistic Facebook posts, participants would have low self- esteem and negative mood

Meta-Analysis as a Tool for Increasing Students\u27 Scientific Thinking

Many professors are familiar with students who come into their first statistics course with a pronounced lack of interest (Rajecki, Appleby, Williams, Johnson, & Jeschke, 2005), or even an intense fear of math. Often, when statistics is paired with a research course, the context of using math to answer a question about human behavior helps them understand what those numbers mean, and if we are lucky, their fear turns to interest or even excitement. But is the reverse true--can understanding statistics help students understand how science works and how to do better research? Incorporating a meta-analysis unit in introductory statistics is an excellent way to reinforce basic concepts, provide a rich context for understanding how statistics and research design fit together, think critically about how to interpret statistics, and encourage students to value psychology as a science. In this chapter, I discuss the benefits and challenges of incorporating a meta-analysis unit in the undergraduate classroom and provide suggestions for activities and lectures, whether you have one day or one week to spend on the topic. Meta-analysis is both a set of statistical techniques and a research method designed to estimate the overall strength of a relationship in the population by combining all of the existing data on that relationship in one analysis. Following the replication crisis, concerns about publication bias, and criticisms of null hypothesis significance testing, the way we conduct and evaluate psychological science is changing, and meta-analysis is at the forefront of those changes. The field is moving toward greater emphasis on effect sizes over NHST, increased reporting of confidence intervals and statistical power, publishing interesting null findings, and focusing on cumulative methods such as replication and meta-analysis (Cummin, 2014; Eich, 2014; Stanley & Spence, 2014; Vazire, 2016). In light of these changes, several researchers have highlighted the need for meta-analysis to be more widely taught at both the graduate and undergraduate level (e.g., Funder et al., 2014). However, according to a recent national survey of psychology programs, most introductory statistics courses only cover effect size and confidence intervals for two days or less, and the overwhelming majority--between 73 and 84 percent--do not cover meta-analysis at all (Friedrich, Childress, & Cheng, 2018). Why would we recommend that such an advanced technique be introduced at the undergraduate level? On a purely practical note, one reason we should introduce meta-analysis early on is that students will inevitably find meta-analyses in their literature searches. In my experience, most do not understand what they are, and thus discard them. But the benefits of this instruction go far beyond teaching students how to cite meta-analytic results. Besides training students in line with best practices in the field, a meta-analytic mindset prepares students to be better scientific thinkers by reframing their approach to research and data early in their academic careers. Below, I review a few of the specific ways meta-analytic instruction can benefit introductory statistics students.https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/mono/1066/thumbnail.jp

Physical and Psychological Balancing Act: Is Stability Desirable?

Recent studies have conveyed that the physical instability of a person would alter the way they thought about other people’s relationships and the traits people seek in romantic partners. These studies also show that cordial physical experiences can impact people’s views of relationship stability (Kille, Forest, & Wood, 2013). Confessing love for a significant other while seated in an unstable condition can alter how they truly feel if they were to be sitting in a stable condition (Forest, Kille, Wood, & Stehouwer, 2015). Similarly, one study showed that being in a position that makes someone feel uncomfortable can influence what people seek in relationships (Kille, Forest, & Wood, 2013). Even something such as physical temperature effects people’s perceptions of others (Williams & Bargh, 2008). We were interested to see if manipulating a chair and table to be unstable would change the participant’s views of whether or not the likelihood of famous couple’s relationships would dissolve within a range of years. We hypothesized that being physically unstable would cause the participant to perceive other people’s relationships as unstable. We also hypothesized that the qualities people are attracted to can be modified due to physical instability

The Effects of Exercise on Stress

Research has found that stress has the ability to affect the way a person may sleep, eat, and the possible development of certain diseases. Mullan B. A. (2014) found a major correlation between poor sleep and stress, which often had a negative effect on individual\u27s overall health. Penedo, F. J. & Dahn, J. R. (2005) found that exercise showed a positive correlation with overall health, both physically and mentally. Chin, X, Et al (2013) found that participants who were exposed to a “scary” sound clip were more likely to experience “excited” and “unpleasant” emotions, while those who were exposed only to music experiences “pleasant” and “calm” emotions. This shows that music has the ability to change a persons current state of being. Our study will seek to find the relationship between a physical stressor (sound) and exercise, along with its affects on an individuals physical (blood pressure) and their emotional health (PANAS (S)). We hypothesized that the participants who experience the stressful situation and exercise will have significantly lower blood pressure than those who experience a stressful situation and do not exercise

Does Gendered Language Have an Effect on You?

Our study tested the effects of gender exclusive and gender inclusive language on males’ and females’ feelings of ostracism, motivation, identification, and their emotions. Research has shown that being rejected or ignored can have negative psychological effects. (Stout & Dasgupta, 2011). Ostracism is both the act being ignored and excluded. It includes directly differing with the individual, indicating his or her failings, as well as actively denying being associated with this individual. (Cheung & Choi, 2000). Discrimination can be understood as a larger sociological component that includes ostracism. (Cheung & Choi, 2000). Research Question: Does the use of gender-inclusive and gender-exclusive language have an effect on those who receive it? We measured the extent to which participants perceived the language as sexist, their feelings of exclusion versus feelings of inclusion, motivation due to the language used, and identification with the language used We predicted that females would experience higher levels of ostracism, negative affect, and lower levels of motivation and identification

Effects of Sound Symbolism in Names on Personality Perception

We investigated effects of sound symbolism in names on personality perception. Participants were randomly assigned to a group that either had invented or non-invented round or sharp names. They were asked to fill out a BFI-10 and a BSRI-12 questionnaire for five different names followed by reading 10 descriptions of personality traits and circling either a round name or a sharp name that fit the description best. Results showed that sound type present in names affected perceptions of Extraversion and that name and sound type affected perceptions of Femininity. These results provide evidence of sound symbolic associations present in names