Teses / dissertações sobre o tema "Social sciences -> psychology -> abnormal psychology"

This dissertation developed and tested a role-based framework drawing from role theory to understand how external factors contribute to the spread of bias in organizations. Using experimental social psychological methods, the twelve studies in this dissertation investigated why other people's prejudices can sometimes influence individuals' decisions and behaviors due to the demands of the decision maker role. Role theory posits that there are certain expectations associated with specific roles, and the roles that people occupy can determine their attitudes and behaviors. Across studies, participants placed in a decision-making role in charge of hiring selections accommodated the prejudices of relevant third parties in their decisions (i.e., the "third-party prejudice effect''). Specifically, consistent with the proposed model, in the studies described in Chapter 2, individuals in charge of selection decisions were significantly less likely to select a woman when a relevant third party was prejudiced against women. Chapter 3 extended this inquiry to novel, fictional groups, generalizing the third-party prejudice effect beyond the context of gender bias.

According to a role-based framework, concerns relevant to the decision maker role become highly salient in contexts of third-party prejudice, motivating those in charge of hiring selections to accommodate this prejudice in order to accomplish role-relevant goals. In particular, in the context of hiring selections, decision makers accommodate third-party prejudice without coercion because they engage in two types of considerations, focused (a) on maximizing performance (i.e.. task-focused concerns). and (b) on avoiding conflict or facilitating relations among the parties involved (i.e., interpersonal concerns). These task-focused and interpersonal concerns are relevant to the decision maker role and reflect well-established distinctions between instrumental and socioemotional dimensions of group processes. This proposed mechanism was experimentally supported. revealing that task-focused and interpersonal concerns significantly mediated the effect both in the context of gender prejudice (Chapter 2) as well as in a novel groups context (Chapter 3). Furthermore, in Chapter 2, experimentally reducing role-relevant concerns by manipulating task-focused considerations significantly reduced the accommodation of third-party prejudice against women.

In line with the notion that roles impact behavior above and beyond individual-level attitudes and beliefs, participants in two studies accommodated prejudice against women in their selections regardless of their personal endorsement of modern sexism and traditional gender stereotypes (Chapter 2). Participants similarly accommodated third-party prejudice against groups about which they knew very little, in contexts in which pre-existing biases or the endorsement of cultural stereotypes had little bearing on their selections (Chapter 3). Moreover, consistent with the proposition that roles shape behavior more strongly than social identity, participants across studies accommodated third-party prejudice in their decisions even when such prejudice was directed toward a social category in-group. A role-based framework can illuminate the institutional factors that produce social disparities, and can contribute to a growing understanding of the reasons why members of underrepresented groups sometimes appear to treat each other poorly in organizational contexts.

Studies show many college students are sexually active and do not use condoms consistently (American College Health Association, 2014); however, interventions aimed at increasing condom procurement and reported condom use have been successful (Wells & Alano, 2013; Olenick, 1999). This study compared students’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward obtaining condoms on campus according to the University’s current condom administration policy to a group of hypothetical alternative policies. We were interested in determining if an alternative policy that provides condoms to students in unattended machines inside or outside of restrooms, as opposed to the student health center, would increase students’ intentions to obtain condoms on campus.

In accordance with the theory of planned behavior (TPB), students’ attitudes (ATB), perceived social norms (SN), perceived behavioral control (PBC), and behavioral intentions (BI) to obtain condoms were measured, after reading a description of the current policy and again after reading one of eight alternative policies, which varied on location (inside, outside of restrooms), cost (free, two condoms for $0.25), and brand (Trojan, generic). The four components of TPB were compared between the current and alternative policies and amongst the eight alternative policies.

Results suggest that there may be minor differences in preference when comparing certain alternative policies to the current, especially alternative policies that provide condoms outside of restrooms; however, students overall showed significantly greater intentions to use any alternative policy over the current policy offered at student health services. This was without regard to gender, proximity to campus, relationship status, and sexual activity within the past year, which suggests that providing condoms to students in unattended machines could increase condom procurement amongst students. Limitations and future directions for this study are discussed.

Objective: The primary goal of the current study was to characterize perceived social support (PSS) and isolation longitudinally among people with chronic pain (CP) who were and were not receiving group psychosocial interventions for CP. The second goal of the study was to describe how PSS and isolation variables are associated with quality-of-life (QOL) variables over time for those same participants.

Background: Previous research has demonstrated that positive social support can predict better outcomes for people with CP and negative social support can predict poorer outcomes. Furthermore, CP is associated with decreased social support and greater isolation. Despite the knowledge that PSS can be an important coping resource for people with CP, research on the longitudinal patterns of PSS and isolation and their relationships to QOL variables over time is lacking, especially among people with CP.

Method: Social health and QOL data from 290 participants from the Learning About My Pain study (Eyer & Thorn, 2015) were used to examine longitudinal PSS and isolation with piecewise linear growth models using multilevel modeling. Participants were randomly assigned to participate in group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), group pain psychoeducation (EDU), or medical treatment-as-usual (TAU) for 10 weeks followed by a 6-month post-treatment follow-up period. Participants were assessed pre-, mid-, and post-treatment, as well as at follow-up.

Results: PSS was relatively stable over the treatment and follow-up periods except for small decreases in emotional and informational support among TAU and social isolation among EDU during the follow-up period. Companionship was associated with decreasing pain interference, disability, and depression, and emotional support was associated with decreasing pain interference and depression, whereas instrumental support and isolation were associated with worsening QOL. The Buffering Hypothesis of PSS was not supported in the current sample.

Conclusions: A potential benefit of participating in psychosocial group treatments for CP appears to be the lack of deterioration of emotional and informational support for CBT and EDU and decreasing isolation for EDU participants. Social health was predictive of QOL. Future research and treatment of CP should account for PSS and isolation and the ways in which they interact with pain and QOL.

Social class has become increasingly popular in the organizational sciences. Recent studies have found that one’s social class influences phenomena ranging from decision-making, to pro-social behavior, and interpersonal interactions. Despite the burgeoning interest in this topic, there remains a great deal of ambiguity concerning the conceptualization and operationalization of social class. For instance, scholars have used income, education, as well as subjective ratings to measures one’s social class. In order to improve the conceptual clarity of social class, I develop and present a model that draws on the dominant theories of social class from both sociology and psychology, while organizing their key principles to explain how social class influences an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. By using this model as a framework, this dissertation attempts to refine the conceptualization of social class by testing core research questions pertaining to the construct validity of this construct. Based on a comprehensive, interdisciplinary literature search, which yielded nearly 4,000 effect sizes, I used meta-analytical structural equation modeling to test the proposed research questions and hypotheses. The findings offer clear support for two distinct components of social class (i.e., objective and subjective) that are both highly related to one another and associated with other micro-level constructs (i.e., job attitudes). Given the timeliness and importance of social class, the findings of this conceptual review and empirical meta-analysis offer a means of summarizing this large, interdisciplinary literature while guiding future management research on this critical topic.

The purpose of this study is to examine the differences between counselor supervisors’ and supervisees’ perceptions of the impact of multicultural supervision on client outcome. Counselor supervisors and supervisees may have differences in how much they believe multicultural factors affect client outcome and this study aims to determine what differences exist. These differences are important in understanding how supervisors might better serve supervisees and in turn clients. There were 61 participants in the study that consisted of faculty, counselor supervisors, counselors, and graduate students in counseling-related fields. The current study found that multicultural supervision/competence alone predicted supervisor client outcome. The findings suggest that training in supervision and multicultural supervision is vital to the professional development of counselors and trainees in counseling-related fields. This training is also necessary because of the impact it has on clients. The implications of this study are to be able to improve the knowledge of those in counseling-related fields as to the importance of multicultural counseling and competence in training. Further research on what supervisees consider as important contributions to client outcome should be considered. One recommendation is to explore further what subscales of both the independent variables of supervision satisfaction, counselor self-efficacy, the supervisory working alliance, multicultural supervision/competence and the dependent variable of perceived client outcome to provide more specific information about what aspects are important contributions to perceived client outcome by supervisors and supervisees.