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Theses and Dissertations - Department of Psychology

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Browsing Theses and Dissertations - Department of Psychology by Subject "Behavioral psychology"

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    Blogging and self-disclosure: the role of anonymity, self-awareness, and perceived audience
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2011) Okdie, Bradley Michael; Guadagno, Rosanna E.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Research indicates that the self-disclosure of personal views may occur more often online but that the repercussions for such disclosure may have severely negative consequences (Bargh & McKenna, 2004;Bray, 2004; Nussbaum, 2004). The current study sought to obtain a better understanding of the effect of anonymity, self-awareness, and perceived audience on self-disclosure. The experimental design was a 2 (Anonymity: high vs. low) by 3 (Perceived audience: none vs. limited vs. everyone) between subjects design. Self-awareness--assessed using a measure of trait self-consciousness--was investigated as a mediator of the relation between self-disclosure and the independent variables. To examine this, participants visited the lab at two times. At time 1, they filled out individual difference measures. At time 2, participants were told that they were helping test new blogging software and were asked to write about the typical day of a student. Anonymity was manipulated by either asking participants to enter their full name as their userid (low anonymity) or were told their anonymous userid would be "green". Participants were then told that their blog entry would be deleted, visible to all participants in the study, or published to the Internet and visible to all. Results indicated that, while the manipulation check data revealed that the manipulations worked as intended, the analysis of the blog entries indicated that were no significant differences in self-disclosure. Thus, our results suggest that individuals who self-disclose online are not affected by anonymity or audience size.
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    Motivational orientation: manipulation through films of affective expression
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2016) Grant, Brett; Tullett, Alexa M.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    In two studies we examined whether people can “catch” the motivations and emotions expressed by another person. In the Study 1, participants viewed three videos of an individual demonstrating fear, excitement, and neutral reactions while electromyography (EMG) was recorded. After each video, they completed a manikin task where they approached or avoided positive or negative pictures. Participants showed less corrugator activity—associated with negative emotional stimuli and negative mood state—after viewing the excitement video condition. Participants were faster to approach positive pictures after the excitement video than after the fear video. In contrast, participants were faster to approach negative pictures after the fear video than after the excitement video. In study two, participants watched the same videos and then rated their response to the positive and negative pictures used in Study 1. Here, we found that the videos consistently affected the participants to respond complimentary to the pictures.