Moral Matching: Strategic Messaging to Overcome Barriers to Persuasion

Persuasive messages are often met with resistance. Message fatigue is a unique motivational state caused by excessive exposure to redundant messages, which leads to active and passive resistance towards persuasive messages. The consequences of active and passive resistance are particularly harmful when directed towards messages intended to assist individuals in making health decisions. This dissertation investigated a message framing strategy, moral matching, to combat message fatigue resistance in the context of COVID-19. Guided by message fatigue and moral foundation theory literature, there were three main purposes of this dissertation. The first purpose was to identify what features of COVID-19 health messaging contribute to perceived message fatigue. The second purpose was to reframe this content using moral rhetoric and experimentally test the effects of morally framed messages that match or mismatch an individual’s moral foundation on active and passive resistance. The third purpose was to investigate the boundary conditions of moral frames on the message\u27s perceived effectiveness. Using a mixed-method approach, three studies were conducted to accomplish the aforementioned goals. In each study, participants were screened for political affiliation to implement moral matching techniques. Study One, 12 focus groups (N = 53) were conducted to uncover what type of COVID-19 health compliance message participants found most fatiguing and how repeated exposure to these messages evoked passive and active resistance. Results revealed four themes (i.e., overexposure to mask wearing COVID-19 messages, desensitization vs. reassurance, emotional exhaustion, and reactance) that further guided the development of morally framed messages. Study Two (N = 88), conducted a manipulation check to assess the efficacy of the messages. In Study Three, participants (N = 349) were randomly assigned to see a morally framed (i.e., loyalty or care) or a control COVID-19 health message promoting mask wearing. Results indicated morally matched messages may not combat fatigue, but that mismatched moral messages may lead to unintended consequences such as increased reactance to the message, for some people. In addition, results revealed that message fatigues active and passive resistance routes varied by political affiliation. The findings from this three-study dissertation have implications for developing personalized health campaign messages

Mirrors and Windows Ab 101 and the Feasibility of a Statewide Ethnic Studies Curriculum in California

This research examines the failure of AB 101 (Alejo) a bill that would have created a statewide ethnic studies curriculum in California. Through a qualitative analysis consisting primarily of interviews, the analysis challenges the validity of the main oppositional arguments against the bill. Then argues that misunderstandings regarding the implications of ethnic studies curriculum, leading to an unwillingness to fund such programs, has served as the main barrier in enacting a statewide curriculum. Lastly, the work identifies the social and political conditions needed to overcome such barriers. In conclusion, the research suggests that, through time, as local ethnic studies programs become more prominent, and research on the impact of ethnic studies becomes more robust, California will be in a place to be one of the first states to pass a statewide ethnic studies curriculum

Age, Gender, and Socioeconomic Status Differences in Explicit and Implicit Beliefs About Effortlessly Perfect Self-Presentation

Feeling pressure to project an image of effortless perfection -- always appearing to perform with self-confidence and ease --- has been portrayed in the media as an increasingly common mental health vulnerability with potentially serious implications for college women. Despite this, almost no empirical research exists on effortlessly perfect self–presentation (EPSP) or demographic differences in it. • Some recent research suggests that perfectionism is on the rise among young people (Curran & Hill, 2017), and that it is more associated with mental health problems among students with high rather than low socioeconomic status (Lyman & Luthar, 2014). However, these studies did not focus specifically on EPSP, which differs from more typical perfectionism in that it prohibits apparent effort or anxiety while striving for perfection. Of the two published studies on EPSP, one did not examine demographic differences (Flett et al., 2016) and the other found higher endorsement of EPSP among men than among women (Travers et al., 2016). • Anonymous interviews we conducted about EPSP in 40 college students (Glazer et al., in prep) yielded very complex, self-contradictory responses suggesting that beliefs about EPSP may be characterized by stigma and ambivalence. For this reason we decided to focus the current study on indirect and implicit measures of EPSP. • In this study, participants completed three new scales about EPSP, along with the two existing measures of this phenomenon, several mental health measures, and demographics questions. They also rated the perceived social status and self-esteem of two target individuals in a within-person experimental design

Predicting the whispering gallery mode spectra of microresonators

The whispering gallery modes (WGMs) of optical resonators have prompted intensive research efforts due to their usefulness in the field of biological sensing, and their employment in nonlinear optics. While much information is available in the literature on numerical modeling of WGMs in microspheres, it remains a challenging task to be able to predict the emitted spectra of spherical microresonators. Here, we establish a customizable Finite- Difference Time-Domain (FDTD)-based approach to investigate the WGM spectrum of microspheres. The simulations are carried out in the vicinity of a dipole source rather than a typical plane-wave beam excitation, thus providing an effective analogue of the fluorescent dye or nanoparticle coatings used in experiment. The analysis of a single dipole source at different positions on the surface or inside a microsphere, serves to assess the relative efficiency of nearby radiating TE and TM modes, characterizing the profile of the spectrum. By varying the number, positions and alignments of the dipole sources, different excitation scenarios can be compared to analytic models, and to experimental results. The energy flux is collected via a nearby disk-shaped region. The resultant spectral profile shows a dependence on the configuration of the dipole sources. The power outcoupling can then be optimized for specific modes and wavelength regions. The development of such a computational tool can aid the preparation of optical sensors prior to fabrication, by preselecting desired the optical properties of the resonator.Comment: Approved version for SPIE Photonics West, LASE, Laser Resonators, Microresonators and Beam Control XV

Method for predicting whispering gallery mode spectra of spherical microresonators

A full three-dimensional Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD)-based toolkit is developed to simulate the whispering gallery modes of a microsphere in the vicinity of a dipole source. This provides a guide for experiments that rely on efficient coupling to the modes of microspheres. The resultant spectra are compared to those of analytic models used in the field. In contrast to the analytic models, the FDTD method is able to collect flux from a variety of possible collection regions, such as a disk-shaped region. The customizability of the technique allows one to consider a variety of mode excitation scenarios, which are particularly useful for investigating novel properties of optical resonators, and are valuable in assessing the viability of a resonator for biosensing.Comment: Published 10 Apr 2015 in Opt. Express Vol. 23, Issue 8, pp. 9924-9937; The FDTD toolkit supercomputer scripts are hosted at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/npps/files/FDTD_WGM_Simulator

Moral Disengagement in Legal Judgments

We investigated the role of moral disengagement in a legally-relevant judgment in this theoretically-driven empirical analysis. Moral disengagement is a social-cognitive phenomenon through which people reason their way toward harming others, presenting a useful framework for investigating legal judgments that often result in harming individuals for the good of society. We tested the role of moral disengagement in forensic psychologists\u27 willingness to conduct the most ethically questionable clinical task in the criminal justice system: competence for execution evaluations. Our hypothesis that moral disengagement would function as mediator of participants\u27 existing attitudes and their judgmentsa theoretical bridge between attitudes and judgmentswas robustly supported. Moral disengagement was key to understanding how psychologists decide to engage in competence for execution evaluations. We describe in detail the moral disengagement measure we used, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses across two separate samples. The four-factor measure accounted for a total of 52.18 percent of the variance in the sample of forensic psychologists, and the model adequately fit the data in the entirely different sample of jurors in a confirmatory factor analysis. Despite the psychometric strengths of this moral disengagement measure, we describe the pros and cons of existing measures of moral disengagement. We outline future directions for moral disengagement research, especially in legal contexts

Association of serum neutrophil gelatinase associated lipocalin (NGAL) levels with preeclampsia

Background: Preeclampsia is a systemic disorder that affects multiple organs and is characterized by the new onset of hypertension and proteinuria or end-organ dysfunction or both in the second half of pregnancy. NGAL is a 25-KDa protein of the lipocalin family and is considered to be a novel biomarker for ischemic injury. The objective of this study is to compare the levels of serum NGAL in preeclamptic patients and gestational age matched normotensive controls.Methods: The study design is case control study in which pregnant women with preeclampsia (n=40) are selected as cases. Cases were selected from pregnant women attending OG-OPD and IP satisfying the inclusion criteria and not coming under exclusion criteria. 0.5ml of blood was collected in vacutainers and was centrifuged at 3500rpm for 10 minutes. The serum thus separated was aliquoted into smaller plain containers and stored at -20 degree Celsius for analysis. The urine sample was also collected. Controls were also selected from the OP patients.Results: In present study, the serum NGAL ranged from 40-900ng/ml in cases and from 110-795ng/ml in controls. There is no difference in NGAL between cases and control. The correlation coefficients between the NGAL levels and other parameters like maternal age, gestational age, systolic Blood pressure, diastolic Blood pressure, uric acid levels, urine PCR are also not statistically significant.Conclusions: Serum NGAL levels are not significantly elevated in patients with preeclampsia when compared with the normotensive controls and also there is no significant correlation between serum NGAL levels and other assessed parameters

Personality as a Predictor of Hitting and Pitching Performances Among Professional Baseball Players

Research regarding personality as predictors of objective physical performances has been limited and equivocal. We examined longitudinally whether personality predicted baseball pitchers’ (n = 119) or hitters’ (n = 115) performances after controlling for past performances. Through regression analyses, we determined that personality did not significantly predict the player’ performances during their first year in Minor League Baseball (MiLB). Our results indicate that, at least in the short-term, personality may be a poor predictor of such performances. Research is needed to determine if personality’s effects may occur over a longer period of time, such as through the development of psychological tools/strategies (e.g., motivation, coping) that are associated with improved performances