Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 9. Source pages: 1, 8, 9, 10.
Researchers from around the state will present their work in poster sessions at the Association for Psychological Science 25th Annual Convention, to be held May 23 to 26, in Washington, DC. Undergraduates, graduate students, and professors in psychology from Centenary, LaTech, Loyola, Tulane, U. of Louisiana–Lafayette, U. of New Orleans, and Xavier University will demonstrate their research skill and contributions for what is becoming the premier scientific organization for those in psychology.
The Times talked with Dr. Donna Thomas, Chair at Louisiana Tech about the many presentations the department has this year at APS. “I am thrilled to see the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences making such a strong showing at APS,” she said. “We usually have a number of researchers who present there and this year we have more than held our own. We appreciate their strong emphasis on science that does not necessarily have to inform clinical practice.”
“Although our department has applied psychology graduate programs, we recognize the need to do research for research's sake. On a more practical note, APS is at a very accessible location this year!”
This year’s APS presentations include a variety of topics. Below we outline the work and include some comments from a number of the researchers.
Centenary College
Jonathan Westfall from Centenary College teamed up with researchers from Columbia University to look at the how activating the concept of a choice mindset leads people to search for relevant information for making their decisions. The presentation, “On What Basis Should I Make a Choice?” Influence of a Choice Mindset on Decision Making,” includes four studies showing that priming the issue of “choice” causes people to look longer at various pieces of information and to base their decisions on this information.
Louisiana Tech University
A team of seven researchers from LaTech will present their findings in “Attitudes Towards Same-Sex Marriage and Religiosity.” LaTech researchers Jay Middleton, Deborah Simpson, Rose Niles, Laura Harris, John Tracy, Sean Lajaunie, and Alicia Ford explored attitudes toward same- sex marriage and motivations for religiosity, finding that gender differences emerged only when exploring the influence of extrinsic motivations. Those who are intrinsically motivated are more likely to hold negative attitudes towards same-sex marriage.
LaTech’s Jordan O’Briant, Mary M. Livingston, and Alice Carter (now retired) will present “Career Interest as Related to Perception of Math Involvement and Math Anxiety.”
Professor Livingston told the Times, “The purpose of this study was to explore relationships between math anxiety, perception of math in careers, level of career interest, beliefs on the nature of intelligence –a malleable property or a static entity–, and academic subject identification as related to a predisposition to a career,” she said.
As expected, “ … careers which were perceived to involve less math had higher interest ratings. Math anxiety correlated with less interest in technical fields. While math anxiety and beliefs of math involvement in a career played a large role in level of interest expressed in various careers, the pattern of results indicated that seeking occupations that do not involve math may be related to factors beyond math anxiety.”
Professors Mary M. Livingston and Alice Carter teamed up with Margaret Hindman (now at LSU) to compare the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) and the widely used International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) using an ethnically diverse sample of college students. For this presentation, “Comparing Two Personality Measures, the TIPI and the IPIP,” they will show that results where the shorter TIPI compares favorably with the much longer IPIP, and that the online survey results were consistent with previous paper and pencil results.
Livingston explained, “As researchers we all know that generally speaking lengthier instruments tend to be psychometrically more sound, However, limits of time space and research participant perseverance lead on a quest to find acceptable brief instruments.”
“Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann developed their Ten Item version of the IPIP to solve this problem. As a result it is the most downloaded/cited from the Journal of Research in Personality. Researchers such as Buchanan have questioned the automatic assumption that paper and pencil measures can be automatically translated to an online environment,” she noted. “Our paper confirms that when a short instrument is needed TIPI can work as an adequate substitute for the IPIP, and functions as well online as a shorter substitute as it does in the paper and pencil format.”
For their presentation, “Emotional Labor and Counseling Professionals,” LaTech researchers Kevin Mahoney, Brandon Dennis, Victoria Smoak, Ida Chauvin, and Walter Buboltz studied emotional labor, emotional exhaustion, and work engagement in an overlooked population of counselors. They will explain that emotional labor is a form of emotional regulation where workers are expected to display certain emotions as part of their jobs. This and previous research by this LaTech group has found that emotional labor impacts both emotional exhaustion and work engagement.
“Exploring Employee Well- Being: Combining the Job Demand-Control and Job Demand-Resource Models,” will examine employees who must deal with heavy work demands but have little control and few resources, leading to greater job strain and decreased well- being. In there work, researchers John Buckner, Gwendylen Dykstra-Long, and James DeLeon, the team examines controls and resources as distinct predictors of employee well-being. While most research looks at controls and resources in separate studies or in combined concepts under the same umbrella, this study looked at the issue from both models.
The research team of Devin Merritt, Victoria Felix, Rebecca Granda, Walter Buboltz, and Janelle McDaniel will present “Morningness – Eveningness Preferences and Academic Factors as Predictors of Healthy Sleep Practices.” The group’s goal was to examine morning and evening type preferences and other academic factors that impact healthy sleep practices in college students. The researches found that that a number of factors, including morning-evening attitudes, self- efficacy, emotional exhaustion, and sleep hygiene, are significant predictors.
“Personal Living Space Attributes and Personality,” is by researchers Margaret Hindman (now at LSU), Mary M. Livingston, and Alice Carter (now retired).
Dr. Livingston explained, “We are interested in the relationship between personality and perception of living spaces.” Using Gosling’s Personal Living Space Cue Inventory (PLSCI) the team looked at people and their living spaces (PLS).
“Our study employs PLSCI ratings, but in a different way than in Gosling’s work,” noted Livingston. “Gosling had three raters evaluate living spaces of various student participants and indicate whether they thought the rooms’ inhabitant possessed the psychological quality of openness. In the current study participants rated their own PLS using the PLSCI, and their openness score on the IPIP big-five personality measure was correlated with the various PLS ratings. The raters’ personality influence their ratings,” she said. “Our findings were clearly different from Gosling’s and seem to reflect the inhabitants’ rather disparaging view of their rooms.”
“My presentations are with a 2nd year Counseling Psychology doctoral student, Rosie Niles, and an alumnus, Dr. Matthew Hand,” Dr. Donna Thomas told the Times. “We are interested in what motivates people's use of social networking sites, specifically Facebook and Twitter. Preliminary results indicate that emotional connectedness to both sites was perhaps intrinsically motivated. Hopefully, our follow-up work can tell us more about that.”
LaTech’s Rose Niles and Matthew Hand from Texas Wesleyan University, teamed up with La Tech Psychology Chair Donna Thomas for two interesting and related studies. In the APS presentation, “Relationships among situational motivation and Facebook usage,” first author Niles and colleagues looked at the relationships among aspects of situational motivation and Facebook usage. The results indicated that emotional connection to Facebook was positively related to intrinsic motivation, and that online social networking is related to higher levels of self- determination.
The same research team, this time with Hand as first author, examined the relationships among situational motivation and Twitter usage, to be presented in “Relationships among situational motivation and Twitter usage.” The team found that emotional connectedness to Twitter was related to intrinsic motivation, and that time spent on Twitter was related to external regulation.
Loyola Univeristy
Samaneh Khoshini from Loyola University in New Orleans teamed up with professor Kendall Eskine to look at how bodily experiences affect psychological process in “Enclothed Cognition: Effects of Clothing Style on Creativity and Sexual Attitude.” The team studied the influence of different clothing on both cognitive and sexual attitudes. They found that higher body coverage correlated with sexually conservative attitudes and will present information on the possible links between clothing, cognition, and sexual attitudes.
Dr. Kendall Eskine, along with researchers Ashley Novreske and Michelle Richards, all representing Loyola, will present the social psychology topic, “Moral Contagion is Significantly Influenced by Disgust Sensitivity.” The findings from two experiments show that after participants came into physical contact with a transgressor, they experienced more state guilt. This effect was moderated by disgust sensitivity. That is, the researchers found that individuals with high-disgust sensitivity indicated more guilt that those with low-disgust sensitivity.
Tulane University
Stefanie Simon and Laurie O’Brien will present their research, “Increasing Perceptions of Institution Sexism,” at the upcoming APS convention. In two studies, the researchers explored perceptions of individual and institutional sexism, finding that men and women did not differ in their perceptions of individual sexism, but women perceived more institutional sexism that men. In the second study, the researchers found that perspective-taking and education strategies successfully increased perceptions of institutional sexism.
Simon explained to the Times that she has been working on this research in collaboration with Dr. Laurie O’Brien, who is her PhD advisor, and also professor Dr. Carrie Wyland, as well as a former Tulane undergraduate student, Melanie Soilleux.
“Past research has shown that most people are relatively worse at recognizing more institutional forms of discrimination,” Simon noted, “meaning practices and policies that put certain groups at a disadvantage, compared to individual forms of discrimination that are perpetrated by a specific person.” This lack of recognition may be a serious issue, she explained.
“Thus, in this line of research, we've been looking at strategies to help increase people's perceptions of institutional sexism. The two strategies we’ve looked at are perspective-taking and education about institutional sexism in the US. What we’ve found thus far is that when we ask participants to take the perspective of someone who has been a target of institutional sexism and put themselves in her shoes, both men and women are better able to recognize institutional sexism compared to participants who are not asked to take the target’s perspective.”
“Interestingly, when participants are educated about institutional sexism and then are asked to take the target’s perspective, female participants recognize even more institutional sexism. For male participants on the other hand, the strategy that seems the most helpful for increasing perceptions of institutional sexism is perspective-taking. These findings have important implications for helping to remove some of the institutional barriers in the US that serve to perpetuate inequality between men and women,” Simon noted.
University of Louisiana – Lafayette
Assistant Professor Hung-Chu Lin leads a team of researchers from University of Louisiana– Lafayette for the presentation, “Changes in Empathic Concern and Personal Distress as a Function of Time: A Time Course Study of Adults’ Responses to Infant Crying.” The team includes Jessica Manuel, Joshua Landry, Claude Cech, Lauren Ashy, and Stinne Soendergaard.
Dr. Lin, explained to the Times, “We are interested in how caregivers respond to infant crying––a display of infant's distress yet sometimes an unpleasant and even aversive stimulus.”
“Under normal circumstances caregivers respond to a crying infant with empathic emotions, with concerns organized around infant's well-being. However, infant crying may also elicit distress arousal, which is often associated with egoistic concerns for caregiver's own benefits and possible consequences of neglect or mistreatment of the infant,” she said. “We attempted to describe the relations between cry perception and the two qualitatively different response emotions as a function of time. We hope to gain a better understanding of cry responding and foster sensitive parenting.”
In, “Enrichment in Parents of Children with Autism,” Dr. Hung-Chu Lin and researchers Valanne MacGyyers, Robert McFatter, and Janna Bourque will present their findings regarding both positive and negative aspects of the experience in parenting a child with autism spectrum disorder, and relate these experiences to child symptom severity and parenting competence.
“We examined not only negative aspects, as in previous research,” said Dr. Lin, “but also positive aspects of experience in parenting a child with autism and related them to child symptom severity and parenting competence,” Dr. Lin explained. “The findings indicated that experience of enrichment did not relate to child symptom severity and might potentially strengthen the negative relation between parenting efficacy and stress.”
University of New Orleans
Brandon Scott leads a group of researchers in their work, “Developmental Variation in Amygdala Volumes among Children with Posttraumatic Stress.” The research team includes Justin Russell, Ashley Sanders, and Carl Weems from UNO, and Allan Reis and Victor Carrion from Standford University School of Medicine.
“Findings point to the possibility that traumatic stress may delay structural maturation of the amygdala,” Dr. Weems told the Times. The presentation will review how theory points to links between maturation and amygdala volumes in trauma- exposed youth. In this study, results indicated a positive association between age and right-amygdala volumes for 24 young people with PTSD, while a negative association for matched controls.
UNO Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, Dr. Monica Marsee guides two groups for upcoming APS poster presentations. Marsee’s lab is the Youth Social and Emotional Development Lab. Molly Miller and Maria Kireeva, who recently graduated with B.S. degrees in psychology, stayed on at the lab to gain experience for graduate school. Kelli Thompson and Genevieve Lapre are Dr. Marcee’s doctoral students.
In, “Group Differences in the Prediction of Psychopathy on a Dimensional Level,” UNO researchers Molly Miller, Kelli Thompson, Maria Kireeva, Monica Marsee, and Barry Burkhart from Auburn University, will present results about youth psychopathy. Their study explored the relationship between psychopathy and internalizing and exernalizing psychopathology in two different groups. The looked at juvenile sex offenders and juvenile non-sexual offenders. The researchers found evidence for significant group differences on the Affective dimension using the four-factor model of psychopathy.
Dr. Marcee explained, “This study contributes to the existing body of literature indicating that juvenile sex offenders are behaviorally and psychologically distinct from their non-sexual offending peers.” And, “Juvenile sex offenders and juvenile non- sexual offenders represent two distinct group of juvenile offenders with different treatment needs, treatment responses, and outcomes.”
This poster also recently won the Best Overall Poster Award at the InnovateUNO: Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Showcase.
Maria Kireeva, Genevieve Lapre, Molly Miller, and Monica Marsee will also present, “Parental Psychological Control as Mediator between Parental Psychopathology and Youth Internalizing Problems.”
The purpose of this study was to examine various parental factors and how they may interact to influence youth internalizing problems, explained Dr. Marcee. “The results support the hypothesis that psychological control mediates the association between parental psychopathology and youth internalizing problems,” explained Marcee. “… parental psychopathology may be associated with youth internalizing problems, but it is the parents’ psychologically controlling strategies that partially explain this association. The results support the broader theory that dysfunctional parenting strategies may serve as a mechanism through which parental psychopathology relates to youth psychopathology.”
UNO researchers Ashley Sanders, Angelle Pizzitolo, Brandon Scott, Rebecca Graham, Donice Banks, Justin Russell, and Carl Weems, will present “Posttraumatic Stress Exacerbates the Link between Identity and Internalizing Problems in Adolescents.” Previous research indicates that heightened levels of identity distress are linked with internalizing symptoms in adolescents. However, not much is known about what factors, such as PTSD symptoms, may exacerbate this relationship. “Results indicated that PTSD symptoms moderate this relationship and that it was only significant for youth with more self-reported PTSD symptoms.”
Brandon Scott, noted, “This research idea was part of a collaborative effort with two of our undergraduate/post-baccalaureate research assistants in the lab, Ashley Sanders and Angelle Pizzitolo. The findings suggest that the experience of greater PTSD symptoms may disrupt normative identity development in adolescence by exacerbating normal levels of identity distress and promoting increased internalizing symptoms. However, it will be important to test whether PTSD symptoms actually interfere with normal developmental processes by expanding the age of the sample to include younger children and adults and using a longitudinal design.”
Xavier University
David Wheatley of Xavier University teamed up with Troy Bitson of Glen Oaks College to study “Aspects of Competitiveness Associated with Masculine and Feminine Characteristics.”
The researchers had people rate themselves on measures of masculine and feminine characteristics and also goal and interpersonal competitiveness. Male masculine ratings positively correlated with both forms of competitiveness while female feminine ratings negatively correlated with interpersonal competitiveness. The presenters suggest that results relate to the psychoanalytic theory of sex role development and identification with the same sex parent.
Xavier U. researcher, Christian End, along with co-authors form Shippensburg University, will present “Die-hard Fans? CORFing Behavior in Newspaper Obituaries.” End and his colleagues analyzed the frequency with which obituaries mentioned Penn State University both before and after the Sandusky scandal. They found that the scandal it not impact the proportion of obits that noted Penn State connections.
Xaiver researchers Katherine Eskine, Tyler Hunter, and Gabrielle Gloston will present, “Making emotive music: The association of emotional intellege and musical production via sexual selection.” To investigate if music is, or has recently been, sexually selected because it is an honest signal of emotional intelligence, the research team studied 120 undergraduates. They looked at the effects of sexual and romantic arousal on the production, aptitude, and subjective ratings of music.
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