Augustana College

Culver-Stockton College

Knox College

Monmouth College

St Ambrose University

Western Illinois University

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This study predicted that people in a happy mood were more likely to evaluate others favorably, and people in a sad mood were more likely to evaluate others unfavorably. Mood was induced through facial feedback and the effects were assessed through an evaluation form consisting of 16 bi-polar pairs of adjectives presented to 34 participating volunteers from Introductory Psychology classes. The hypothesis was not supported. There was a slight tendency for participants in the happy condition to evaluate more favorably, but only with someone of the same sex. The verification of happy mood was reported 64% of the time.

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Based on past research, it was hypothesized that if a person does not have a script for an event, he or she will experience more stress for the event.  Participants filled out a questionnaire to determine the extent of their experience with college and their levels of stress.  They also completed an ordering task to determine the existence of a script for registration.  The students who possessed a script for registration reported a higher level of stress for registration than the level reported by students without a script, indicating that stress increases with the development of a script for the registration process.

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The study explored the effect of prosody on the listening comprehension of  thirty-seven second grade students.   The stories were recorded and the reader was a  female adult reading stories from a second-grade reader.  Second grade students were randomly assigned to two groups.  In classroom  A the first story was read in high prosody and while the other was read in low prosody.  In  classroom B  the first story was read in low prosody while the other was read in high prosody.  After the reading of each story, students answered ten orally presented multiple choice questions.  The results showed that children showed greater comprehension for stories read in high prosody (speech higher in pitch and emotion) than for stories read in low prosody (speech lower in pitch and emotion).  The results converge with previous studies to suggest that changes in vocal intonation in orally read stories has an effect on the amount of detail children can recall from a story.

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This experiment tested the relationship between a college student's level of sociability, as measured by Cheek and Buss's (1981) shyness and sociability scale,  and the total amount of time and type of Internet use (for homework or entertainment) a student spends on the Internet during a typical academic week. One hundred and fifty-five students from two schools, one large university and one small college, were included in the study. The results showed that people measured as being more sociable spent significantly less time on the Internet during a typical academic week than people measured as being less sociable.  Additionally, the data suggests that students measured as being less sociable spend a greater portion of their weekly Internet time seeking entertainment than using it to do homework.  The data is exploratory in nature and additional statistical tests are still being conducted to test whether other factors, such as the amount of time spent in extracurricular activities, is related to the amount and type of on-campus Internet use.

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The present study used Sprague-Dawley rats to emulate parental abuse.  Rats were reared similarly to conditions in Fillion & Blass (1986). Mothers of experimental subjects (group CI) had their ventral surface painted with a citral (lemon) odor during postnatal days (3-21).  One control group (CB) had citral painting of the back & another female was painted with water (group W).  At day 10 & 50 subjects had citral aversion training, pairing the citral odor with foot shock.  Animals were then tested for spatial odor (free roam of a straight alley maze treated with peppermint & citral) & affiliational preference (presentation of a citral & normal female).  It was hypothesized that early experience predicted stimuli responsiveness.  Pups rearing condition did not affect odor aversion learning.  CI pups showed more attempts to nurse on the citral mother than controls.  No effect of rearing condition was found in adults.

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This study investigates possible relationships between group participation in music and or physical activity and cooperation levels of high school students.  A Prisoner's Dilemma Game provided the cooperation measure.  Students from choir (music only), marching band (music and physical activity), P. E. (physical activity, no music) and English Class (no music, no physical activity) played the game with others of their group.  When the group cooperation averages were compared, no significant relationships were found.  This finding is inconsistent with previous research and the popular assumption in group therapy that including music in group sessions increases cooperative behavior.

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Gender stereotypes are learned early in a child's life from environmental influences such as culture, parent roles, and television.  This study measures American and German children's tendencies to gender stereotype based on two measures, color and occupation.  Through parent questionnaires and child interviews, it was found that greater amounts of television viewing elicit higher levels of gender stereotyping, as expected.  This study shows that German children have a higher tendency to gender stereotype occupations than American children, although American children have more gender stereotypical career aspirations.  Supported by the study's results is a concept-learning theory explaining that a child's environment is responsible for gender stereotype acquisition.

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Ninety-one students (29 male, 62 female, 43 athletes, 48 non-athletes) from a small, Midwestern liberal arts college completed an eight page questionnaire assessing their attitudes toward homosexuality and their perceptions of stereotypes of the sexuality of male and female athletes. The results indicated that attitudes toward homosexuality, sex, and athletic status were related to a wide variety of attitudes and beliefs about the sexuality of male and female athletes.

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This study explored the relationship among jealousy, trust, and love in romantic relationships.  Forty-three participants from psychology courses at Knox College completed a questionnaire comprised of the Mathes Jealousy Scale, a portion of the Couch Trust Inventory, Rubin's Love Scale, and a series of vignettes which measured the subject's degree of disturbance toward a variety of scenarios.  Results obtained from this study demonstrated interesting sex differences.  For example, while men showed a significant positive correlation between jealousy and love, women did not and instead showed significant positive correlations between love and trust and trust and relationship length.  Also, a t-test revealed that men are overall the more jealous sex.  The implications and possible evolutionary basis for these differences will be discussed.

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Because jurors are influenced by expert testimony, it would be beneficial to determine how a juror is affected by the expert testimony. An Elaboration Likelihood Model was used to examine how the presentation of expert testimony affected juror's guilt rating. Participants listened to a mock trial in which the expert testimony was manipulated to be professional or unprofessional, and either strong or weak. Cognitive load was also altered through the use of a videotape. The participants then decided on the guilt rating of the defendant and the credibility of the witnesses.

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The following experiment hypothesizes that participants who view a violent film will rate ambiguous words as well as non-aggressive words as more aggressive in connotation than will participants exposed to a nonviolent film.  In the following experiment participants made free associations to homonyms, with one meaning more aggressive than the other, and to non-aggressive words after viewing a violent or nonviolent film clip.  To obtain the strongest association for each stimulus word, the word association task was disguised as a speed test.  The results that were obtained from this experiment were not statistically significant.

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Various researchers and educators have concluded that the academic failure of certain students can be adequately explained by predetermined characteristics of the students. This assumption was evaluated at a local elementary school through a longitudinal analysis of socioeconomic status and test scores. It was hypothesized that data from this school would not support this assumption. This preliminary analysis suggest that the characteristics of the students do not offer an adequate explanation for their declining academic performance. By use of school report cards, surveys and interviews, alternative explanations were explored.

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The present study investigated gender stereotypes in perceptions of another's likelihood of cheating.  It was hypothesized participants would perceive males as more likely to cheat, and that the greatest difference in perceptions of male and female behavior would be in an interpersonal situation, versus an academic situation.  193 participants received one of four scenarios, varying by target gender and situation, then rated their perception of the likelihood that cheating behavior would occur.  Contrary to the hypotheses, no significant main effects or interactions were found.  Consistent with recent research, results suggest gender stereotypes may not always be utilized when predicting behavior.

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One hundred thirty-two undergraduates participated in the present study measuring college students' realism towards multiple role planning and the extent of planning as a function of their gender, traditionality of the woman's career, and whether they had serious  marriage plans. The Attitudes Toward Multiple Role Planning Scale was employed to determine how realistic college students were in planning for future work and family roles.  Results found that women,  and their partners, who planned on entering female- nontraditional careers had made more plans for future roles than those who planned on entering female-traditional careers.  Also, those indicating serious marriage plans responded with a greater extent of multiple role planning and greater realism than those who did not have marriage plans.

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Buss, Larsen, Westen, and Semmelroth (1992) suggest that men are threatened by partner sexual infidelity and women are threatened by partner emotional infidelity because men fear being cuckolded, that is, tricked into raising another man's child.  A measure of desire for biological children was correlated with partner sexual infidelity jealousy for men and women.  Support was found for the hypothesis.

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Thirty-two females read a jealousy-evoking scenario and viewed a rival that was either attractive or average in appearance with a personality that was either restricted or unrestricted sexually.  Participants then completed measures of jealousy and negative affect. A significant interaction between rival personality and attractiveness  was found.  Specifically, when the rival was average-looking, the participants experienced more negative affect and jealousy when the personality description was unrestricted than restricted.  When the rival was attractive, personality did not appear to have an impact on jealousy or negative affect.  This may indicate that rival personality influences the jealousy reaction only when the rival is average in appearance.

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19 psychology 100 students were used to examine the effects of delay-produced anger on aggressive driving. An anger survey created by Perry and Buss (1992) along with a road rage survey were given to a control group without a wait.  The experimental group was asked to stay approximately six minutes and then asked to complete another survey.  The discussion centered on the implications of the results vis a vis the phenomenon of road rage.

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23 subjects from Psychology 100 courses were shown a sequential list of words.  They were instructed to either remember or forget specific words in the Roediger and McDermott (1995) lists. Analysis of the recall and recognition data suggests that directions to forget reduced false memory.

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The purpose of this study is to determine why college students procrastinate.  Our research involved examining the effects of interesting and uninteresting environmental distractions on decisions and reaction times.  Delaying decisions or slow reaction times indicated procrastination.  Our study involved 25 participants who were at least eighteen years old and enrolled in a psychology course.  The participants were asked to complete a computer task while a television displayed interesting or uninteresting programs as distractions.  We used a randomized two-groups design and analyzed the data with a independent groups t test.

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Attitudes about the division of household labor, according to participants' gender ideologies, were explored using a 2 X 3 X 2 factorial design.  One hundred and twenty participants were randomly assigned to six conditions.  They were asked to allocate household task and work hours to a target subject, either male or female, and according to a target role of either co-habitator, wife, or mother.  They were then given the Attitudes Toward Women scale to determine whether their ideology was egalitarian or traditional.  A significant gender main effect occurred in the allocation of household hours, with more being allocated to the target male than the target female.  A target gender X ideology interaction indicated that traditionals allocated more hours of male-traditional tasks (e.g., repairing automobiles) to the male target than to the female target, whereas egalitarians did not sex-type those tasks in such a manner.

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False memory was tested using a list of words that were highly pleasant and highly active.  33 participants, all from Introductory to Psychology class, were presented a list of 24 words; the first 5 were neutral, followed by 14 high pleasant, high active words, then ending with 5 more neutral words.  Participants were then asked to complete a questionnaire to test their memory of the words.  They were asked to mark either yes, they saw the word, or no, they did not.  If they responded yes, then they were asked to make remember-know judgments. If they responded no, they were to choose either: sure (certain the word is new) or guess (not certain the word is new).  The results were analyzed using a repeated measures ANOVA.

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Sixty-three married individuals (40 women and 23 men; mean age = 24) completed the Dimensions of Commitment Inventory, the Marital Satisfaction Scale, and the Passionate Love Scale in order to investigate differences between men's and women's experiences of marital relationships.  Correlations were computed between passionate love, marital satisfaction, and the three components of marital commitment (commitment to spouse, commitment to marriage, and barriers to leaving the relationship) for men and women separately.  Results indicated that women's passionate love was associated with higher commitment to both spouse and marriage, while men's passionate love was related to higher commitment to marriage and barriers.

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Fifty-five undergraduate students completed the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory and demographic information including their birth order.  It was hypothesized that later borns would be more sexually permissive than firstborns or only children.  Participants were placed into groups classifying firstborns and only children as one category and all later borns into another category.  Point-biserial correlations were computed separately for males and females between birth order and sociosexuality. A significant correlation between birth order and sociosexuality was found, but only for females.  Specifically, later borns were found to be more sexually permissive than firstborns and only children.

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Buss, Larsen, and Westen (1996) suggest that men are threatened by partner sexual infidelity and women are threatened by partner emotional infidelity because men prefer a promiscuous sexual strategy and women prefer a committed sexual strategy.  Measures of desire for promiscuous sex were correlated with partner sexual infidelity jealousy for men and women.  Support was found for the hypothesis.