Individuals with a minority sexual identity, such as lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGB) face increased risk for stigmatization surrounding their sexual identities and subsequent psychological distress. Sexual minorities of color (SMOC) face the same difficulties faced by White sexual minorities, often compounded with stigma and discrimination linked to their racial/ethnic identities. However, because SMOC remain underrepresented in research on LGB issues, empirically-driven knowledge about these groups is lacking, even among outcomes where noted disparities exist, such as depression. Emerging adulthood may be a particularly important period for understanding effects of intersectional identities and discrimination among SMOC, who often navigate identity-related milestones and experiences independently for the first time within this developmental period. This study examined the relationships between discrimination based upon racial/ethnic and sexual intersecting identities and depression symptoms among emerging adults, as well as ways that group identity factors (ethnic identity, sexual identity, conflicts in identity allegiances) moderated this relationship. Findings indicated that experience of intersectional discrimination was strongly, positively related to depression symptoms. Ethnic identity negatively related to depression independently, but not in the regression model accounting for other variables. Identity factors were not found to statistically significantly moderate the relationship between discrimination and depression symptoms. Discussion …

Agtarap, Wright, Mlynski, Hammad, and Blackledge took an initial step in providing support for the predictive validity of a new conceptual analysis concerned with behavioral restraint - defined as active resistance against a behavioral impulse or urge. The current study was designed to partially replicate and extend findings from their study, employing a common film clip protocol and a procedure for inducing low- and high levels of fatigue. Analyses indicated that key cardiovascular (CV) responses rose with the evocativeness of the film clip among low fatigue participants but fell with the evocativeness of the film clip among high fatigue participants. This is consistent with the prediction that high fatigue participants would put forth more restrain intensity than low fatigue participants when confronted with the less evocative clip, but less restraint intensity than low fatigue participants when confronted with the more evocative clip. Behavioral restraint performance - quantified as duration of facial non-neutrality - was also consistent with predictions, being impaired by fatigue under high- but not low evocativeness conditions. Findings support the broad theoretical suggestion that fatigue influence on behavioral restraint is multifaceted, dependent on the perceived magnitude of the impulse or urge experienced and the importance of resisting it.

Marijuana is the second most commonly used substance in the US. A growing literature suggests that socially anxious individuals use marijuana to manage their symptoms in social situations, which may explain why they are also more likely to experience problems. Unfortunately, the majority of the literature is based on research conducted with adult samples or the co-occurrence of diagnoses in adolescent samples. The proposed study sought to test the link between social anxiety (SA) and proxies for ‘real-time' marijuana use behaviors (i.e., use willingness) as well as use-related problems among adolescents. Participants were 69 adolescents (15-17; 55% female) recruited from the community reporting any lifetime marijuana use. Participants were randomly assigned to a novel social rejection or neutral laboratory task and completed measures of SA, marijuana use frequency, and related problems. Consistent with adult findings, main effects of SA and experimental condition on marijuana use willingness were expected to be qualified by an interaction in which the greatest marijuana use willingness would occur among high SA youth post-rejection (H1), SA would be positively related to marijuana use problems (H2), and among adolescents in the rejection condition, marijuana use willingness would be positively correlated with use problems (H3). Only H2 was …

The proposed study examined whether negative urgency and positive urgency are dynamic traits that hold bi-directional relationships with binge and prolonged alcohol use across time. Individuals between the ages of 18-30 were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk; n = 179) and university student (n = 66) pools. Participants completed three batteries of self-report assessments approximately 30 days apart, each containing measures assessing negative and positive urgency, as well as drinking frequency and binge behavior during the prior month. Latent variable cross-lagged panel models examined the effects of alcohol use from the previous month on negative and positive urgency while controlling for concurrent and autoregressive effects. Results of the current study indicated that for the full sample, there was not an effect for the influence of binge/prolonged drinking on either negative or positive urgency during the subsequent month. However, when examined separately by sample (Turkers vs. university) and gender (male vs. female), significant effects were found more for individuals who were Turkers, male, and/or heavy drinkers, suggesting that increases in positive and negative urgency at Time 2 could be partially explained by variance in drinking patterns at Time 1 for these individuals. However, these relationships were not replicated again between …

The purpose of the present study was to assess if combining the two frameworks would account for more variance in PTSS than could be accounted for using the frameworks separately. An online community sample from Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (N = 437), who reported experiencing a prior traumatic event, completed measures that reflected the constructs of narrative centrality, negative affectivity, and death concerns, along with a measure of PTSS. PTSS was regressed on the latent variables of death concerns, narrative centrality, and negative affectivity, along with the latent variable interactions between narrative centrality*death concerns and narrative centrality*negative affectivity. Death concerns was not be predictive of PTSS, whereas narrative centrality and negative affectivity were found to uniquely and interactively account for 77% of the variance in PTSS. Death concerns was found to be a separate construct from negative affectivity. The implications of these findings for the two frameworks are discussed along with future directions. By considering aspects of narrative centrality and negative affectivity, substantial portions of PTSS can be accounted for.

Recent estimates suggest that a large percentage of the population experiences some type of traumatic event over the course of the lifetime, but a relatively small proportion of individuals develop severe, long-lasting problems (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder; PTSD). One major goal for trauma researchers is to understand what factors contribute to these differential outcomes, and much of this research has examined correlates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. An important next step in this line of research is the development of conceptual frameworks to foster a deeper understanding of the relationships among these diverse predictors of PTSD and their predictive power in relation to each other. A framework proposed by Rubin, Boals, and Hoyle centers on the influence of narrative centrality (construal of a traumatic experience as central to one's identity and to the life story) and negative affectivity (the tendency to experience negative emotion and to interpret situations and experiences in a negative light), suggesting many variables may correlate with PTSD symptoms via shared variance with these two factors. With a sample of 477 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk, this dissertation project extended the work of Rubin and colleagues by a) utilizing structural equation modeling techniques to …

The current case involves a female rape victim. Research has shown the level of victim blaming can be elevated if the victim is a lesbian woman compared to a heterosexual woman. Mock jurors’ responses to personality trait questionnaires (e.g., Belief in a Just World, Attitudes Toward Women, Attitudes Toward Lesbians) and amount of contact they have with homosexual people were employed as predictors of how they would decide victim blaming and perpetrator guilt. Personality trait findings were not good predictors; however, greater contact with homosexuals did decrease negative attitudes toward lesbian victims. Limitations and implications for future research are addressed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the neuropsychological outcomes of pediatric subjects undergoing temporal lobe surgery, and then compare the outcomes between subjects in the iMRI and the standard operating suites. This study involved 77 children ages one to 21 years (M = 11.98) at time of surgery for intractable epilepsy. Forty-seven returned for repeat neuropsychological assessment. At baseline, subjects with early onset of epilepsy (≤ 7 years) scored worse on a measure of attention (p = .02), FSIQ (p < .01), perceptual reasoning (p < .01), and processing speed (p = .06). At one-year follow-up, interactions were observed for the response style domain of the attention measure (p = .03), FSIQ (p = .06) and working memory (p = .08). Follow-up at one year, for the group as a whole, revealed decline in verbal memory (p = .04) and reading comprehension (p = .02); and improvement for word reading (p = .05). No significant differences were observed between the iMRI and standard operating suite. Though, hemisphere, duration of epilepsy, preoperative seizure frequency, lesional disease, seizure type, presence of epileptogenic focus, and number of lobes involved accounted for variance in neuropsychological outcomes. These results provide further support for …

Flashbulb memories are highly vivid and long-lasting memories for events that are emotionally significant and personally important. These memories are held in very high confidence in accuracy over an extended period. In particular, individuals believe that they can remember the personal details surrounding the event such as where they were and what they were doing at the time the event occurred. Evidence from research, however, indicates that this may not be the case. The study of flashbulb memories has typically been confined to negative events such as September 11, 2001. In the current study, we employ the methods of Talarico and Rubin (2003) to investigate flashbulb memory formation to a positive event. The event is the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which resonated as a highly positive event for many Americans evidenced by the thousands of people flooding the streets of Washington, D.C. and New York City to celebrate. We examined various memory properties over a one-year period, including vividness, rehearsal, belief in accuracy, and consistency. Results confirm the formation of flashbulb memories to the assassination event, but results did not support many of the proposed hypotheses. Some differences were found for different testing groups (i.e., immediate versus one week …

This study examined the potentially differing emotional consequences of sexual versus non-sexual traumas in both a student and a community residing treatment seeking sample of women. The extent to which a trauma survivor considers the traumatic event central to her identity (CES) was examined as a potential mediator between traumatic events and PTSD. Additionally, the extent to which a women views herself and her body as a sexual object, to be valued based on her appearance and sexual usefulness to others (sexual self-objectification: OBCS), was examined as a potential mediator between traumatic event and event centrality. Study results showed survivors of sexual assault reported greater CES and PTSD symptoms (PCL-S) than non-sexual trauma survivors in the student population. Mediation results showed sexual self-objectification (OBCS-Shame) significantly mediated the relationship between trauma type and CES, and CES significantly mediated the relationship between type of trauma and PTSD symptoms in the student population only. Data from the community sample did not support these conclusions as women from this sample reported higher PCL-S, CES, and OBCS-Shame scores across categories of trauma.

The 2010 National HIV/AIDS Strategy outlined three important goals for managing the current HIV pandemic in the U.S.: (1) reduce the number of people who become infected with HIV; (2) improve access to health care and health-related outcomes for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLH/A); and (3) reduce HIV-related health disparities. Each of these goals tacitly depends upon reducing HIV-related stigma, and this study examined how HIV+ individuals evaluate coping efforts to overcome stigma’s impact on quality of life (QOL). a structural regression model was developed to instantiate the reappraisal process described by Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional theory of stress and coping, and this model indicated that maladaptive coping fully mediated the relationship between dispositional forgiveness and perceived stigma, which supports the prediction that coping efficacy is related to stress reduction. Additionally, maladaptive coping fully mediated the relationship between dispositional forgiveness and QOL, supporting the contention that forgiveness is a critical aspect to the evaluative process that influences how PLH/A cope with stigma. Lastly, the model showed that when PLH/A engaged in maladaptive coping to mitigate stress-related stigma, these individuals experienced increased stigmatization and reported significantly lower levels of health-related QOL. in contrast, PLH/A that reported higher levels of dispositional forgiveness …

Research has not explicitly examined the link between key components of terror management theory (TMT) and body image without the use of mortality salience. This project explored the link between cultural worldview, self-esteem, body image, and death anxiety. Multiple measures were used to create a structural equation model examining relationships between body image and death anxiety as mediated by body image in the context of TMT. The proposed model did not fit the data. Minor modifications were made to the model keeping within the proposed theoretical perspective. In the modified model the relationships between cultural worldview and death anxiety as mediated by body image were either non-existent or weak. Hierarchical regression analyses did suggest that some aspects of body image indeed did predict some, but not all dimension of death anxiety in this sample of young adults.

The relationship between life stress and working memory capacity (WMC) has been documented in college students and older adults. It has been proposed that intrusive thoughts about life stress are the mechanism responsible for the impairments seen in WMC. To examine the mechanism responsible for these impairments the current study attempted to induce intrusive thoughts about personal events. The current study allowed for a test of predictions made by two theories of mind wandering regarding the impact of these intrusive thoughts on WMC task performance. One hundred fifty undergraduates were assigned to a control group, positive event group, or negative event group. Participants in the positive and negative event groups completed a short emotional disclosure about an imagined future positive or negative event, respectively, to induce positive or negative intrusive thoughts. WMC measures were completed prior to and following the emotional writing. Results indicated a significant relationship between WMC and mind wandering, however the writing manipulation did not result in any consistent changes in intrusive thoughts or WMC. The results suggest a causal relationship between WMC and mind wandering. The emotional valence of the intrusive thought altered the impact on WMC. No relationship was seen between the measures of stress …

Longitudinal data (N = 263) was used to investigate the bidirectional relationship between engagement (engaged lifestyle activities) and cognition (crystallized & fluid intelligence). Extroversion and openness to experience were also tested as moderators of the relationship between engagement and cognition. Results showed that the relationship between engagement at Wave 1 and cognition at Wave 2 did not differ from the relationship between cognition at Wave 1 and engagement at Wave 2. Testing for moderation with regression indicated that neither extroversion nor openness was moderating the relationship between engagement and cognition in either direction. Structural equation models provided further summary evidence that the relationships among engagement at Wave 1, extroversion, openness, and cognition at Wave 2 were not strong. However, a strong limitation to these results was the measurement error associated with a new measure of engagement.

The purpose of this study was to explore the following relationships: (a) how moderating factors (gender, age, ethnicity, social support, marital status, reason for role assumption and number of grandchildren in the home) can influence the mediating role of resiliency, and (b) how resiliency may mediate the negative effects of raising grandchildren (role demands, life disruptions, and difficulties with grandchildren) on grandparent adjustment over time. Resiliency was hypothesized to have the greatest effect on custodial grandparents who experienced the most stress (i.e., older, single, Caucasian males lacking social support and raising more than one grandchild). Mediation was assessed using structural equation modeling. Results indicated resilience mediated the relationship between role assumptions (i.e., role demands and life disruptions) and grandparent adjustment; however, resilience did not mediate the relationship between grandchild characteristics and grandparent adjustment. Due to the small number of custodial grandfathers (n = 14), non-married grandparents (n = 29), non-Caucasian grandparents (n = 10), the small number of grandparents who assumed the custodial role for less ambiguous reasons (n = 24), and the number of custodial grandparents with more than one grandchild residing in the home (n = 29) participating within the study, hierarchical multiple regressions were only conducted to …

The occurrence of custodial grandparents is increasing greatly. These grandparents face added stress and many adversities that arise from caregiving. Findings of current research tends to be mixed on the effects of grandparents raising grandchildren experience. Much research concludes that grandparent caregivers experience negative declines in overall health and well-being, while other research points out that the caregiving role may actually be a positive experience for the grandparent. The current study hypothesizes that mixed research may be a result of varying levels of resilience in the custodial grandparent population. The model proposed in this study looks at resilience as a mediator between several variables that effect custodial grandparenting. The current sample consisted of 239 custodial grandparents. A regression/correlation analysis was conducted on the data, and it was found that resilience levels were significant in mediating the effects of grandparent caregiving.

In the increasingly competitive world of retail banking, organizations are focusing their attention on customer service as a means of increasing customer loyalty and retention. With this goal of increasing customer retention, the link between the attitudes of the service provider (employee satisfaction), the customer interaction behaviors that those attitudes lead to (customer service quality), and the attitudes that those behaviors generate in the customer (customer satisfaction) has become an increasingly important area of investigation. The goal of this research is to analyze the relationships that exist between these three variables: employee satisfaction, customer service quality, and customer satisfaction in a mid-sized retail bank. Data from three separate surveys collected during the same time period in 137 branches of a regional bank are analyzed using multiple regression analysis to determine whether relationships and interactions exist at a banking center level. While results of the analyses did not show a significant relationship between the variables, issues relevant to this determination are discussed and conclusions drawn regarding the nature of these constructs.

Longitudinal methods have become an improved and essential means of measuring intra-individual change over time. Yet one of the greatest and most hazardous drawbacks studying participants over multiple sessions can be the loss of participants over time. This study attempts to illuminate the problem of attrition in longitudinal research by estimating the mean effect sizes for participant loss across 57 studies published in 13 prestigious journals which regularly use older participants. Results estimate overall attrition to be around 34% of the original sample. The subsequent break down of attrition into its subtypes yield mean effect sizes for attrition due to Refusal (8%), Loss of contact (10%), Illness (6%), and Death (14%) in studies sampling from adults 50 years or older. Analyses were then conducted via meta-analytic one-way ANOVA and weighted regression to identify possible moderators of overall attrition and their four subtypes.

The primary interest of this investigation concerned working memory functioning and cue/act discrimination during encoding of intentions. The study included manipulations of working memory and intention load to investigate the encoding processes related to prospective memory (PM). Three experiments are presented that involve working memory distraction tasks at the time of encoding the PM intentions, as well as varying numbers of cues and actions. In the first experiment three cues were paired with one action, in the second, one cue with three actions, and in the third, three cues with three actions. Results suggest that the central executive is involved in binding a cue to an action, and that this operation is key to PM success. Furthermore, the phonological loop seems primarily involved with processing of cues and the visuospatial sketchpad with actions. It is further proposed that the processes of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad must be successful before the central executive can bind the cues and acts together, which is possibly the most important part in the encoding of intentions. By directly examining PM at the time of encoding, information was gained that allows for a more complete understanding of the nature of how we form and …

The single task condition of the Urbanczyk and Kennelly (1991) study was conducted while recording a continuous electroencephalographic (EEG) record. Attention was allocated by instructed lateral head orienting and eye gaze either congruently or incongruently with lateralized cognitive tasks. Thirty university subjects retained a digit span or a spatial location span for a 20 second retention interval. EEG data were extracted from the 20 second retention intervals and interhemispheric coherence was calculated for homologous sites in the temporal, parietal and occipital regions of the brain. There was a main effect for group, with congruent orienting producing greater coherence values than incongruent orienting. This effect of attention on alpha coherence values was found in the low alpha (8-10 Hz) frequency band. This provides evidence that the lower alpha frequency band is reflective of manipulations of attention. The higher coherence measures for the congruent orienting group indicates that homologous regions of the two hemispheres are more coupled into a single system when lateralized attention activates the same hemisphere performing the cognitive task. In the higher alpha frequency band (11-13 Hz) group, sex, site and task interacted. This provides evidence that the higher alpha band is more affected by cognitive processing of the …

This research explores the relationship of self-monitoring with team leader behavior and work environment preference. Those who are high on self-monitoring demonstrate flexibility in their actions with others and are socially perceptive. They perform well in a variety of leadership positions and are viewed as leaders by group members. High self-monitoring types choose "socially" based careers, including teacher and psychologist, in which they adapt their interaction styles to effectively meet the demands of clients. The demands placed on a team leader appear to require similar characteristics to those that high self-monitoring individuals possess. As a team matures through different stages of development, the role of the leader ranges from director to facilitator to consultant. In order to effectively meet team needs, a leader must be socially sensitive to interpersonal cues and have the ability to assume various roles. In addition, given the fact that the position of team leader is a highly social type of career that requires behaviors similar to careers chosen by high self-monitoring individuals, it is likely that high self-monitors would prefer working in a team work environment over a traditional one. A survey methodology was used to assess the characteristics of 100 team members. No relationship …

Within the last decade, more organizations are utilizing a non-traditional workforce. Specifically, these organizations are utilizing contract workers as resources to provide services and manufacture products. While this change in workforce provides benefits to organizations, the change also presents numerous challenges such as turnover. The turnover involved in such a relationship along with the addition of newcomers translates into an organizational socialization and knowledge transfer (KT) issue, because contract workers as well as employees need to be efficiently brought into a new organization, and knowledge needs to be shared with these new individuals so that they can effectively contribute to the work process. It is contended that organizations follow a typical, informal organizational socialization "policy" which involves KT in getting new contract workers and employees up to speed. This study addressed the typical organizational socialization policy as it is represented by formal knowledge transfer (FKT) via instructor-led/classroom training (ILT) and computer-based training (CBT) and by informal knowledge transfer (IKT) via a social network. The study focused on IKT, because companies understand this type of KT the least. In order to evaluate the organizational socialization of contract workers for this study, the contract worker population was compared to a baseline population …

Little research has addressed the degree to which domestic violence is mutual and whether patterns are stable across women's relationships. Studies that exist have conflicting results. This study addressed these issues and the effects of sustaining past violence on women's expressions of violence in their current relationship. Archival data from a sample of severely psychologically abused community women (N = 92) and a sample of low-income community women (N = 836) were analyzed. Results showed the presence of mutual violence in women's current relationships which was not related to past partners' violence. Results regarding the stability of violence are weak, but indicate that the frequency and severity of violence across relationships sustained by women does not decrease across relationships. Overall, results supported the hypothesis that violence is mutual in the relationships of community women, although specific patterns may differ by ethnicity.

Recently, multi-source feedback has been a popular way of providing performance-related feedback to individuals in many organizations. Many who use multi-source feedback consider Rating Convergence, others seeing target individuals as they see themselves, to be a positive outcome of this process. However, the variables that account for Rating Convergence are not known. This study investigated whether the personality factor Extroversion and Behavioral Consistency, acting as a moderator variable, could account for Self-other Rating Convergence, particularly the Convergence between self and peer Ratings. The sample consisted of 235 mid-level managers from a variety of industries who were participants in individual career development workshops. Using structural equation modeling, the results indicated that a model consisting of a single Extroversion factor could account for the convergence of self-peer ratings. This finding calls into question the significance of Rating Convergence when using multi-source rating instruments that provide feedback on trait characteristics since it may be heavily influenced by a single personality factor rather than observers' comprehensive understanding of the ratee's performance.