Augustana College

Culver-Stockton College

Eureka College

Knox College

Marycrest International College

Monmouth College

St Ambrose University

Western Illinois University

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Twenty-three participants were asked to complete an Implicit Association Test to measure attitudes toward women in traditionally masculine and feminine occupations. After completing the test, the individuals completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the McCauley and Thangavelu occupational stereotyping survey. Preliminary results indicate that subjects have implicit prejudice against women in traditionally masculine occupations and positive implicit reactions toward women in traditionally feminine occupations. This pattern was not moderated by participant masculinity/femininity as measured by the BSRI. However, correlations indicate that female participants with higher levels of masculinity exhibited less (though still a significant amount of) implicit prejudice.

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The present study aimed to evaluate the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) as a measure of implicit racial prejudice in comparison to Katz and Hass' (1988) explicit measure of Pro-Black and Anti-Black sentiment. Participants were evaluated on each prejudice measure, along with a measure of social desirability concerns (Reynolds, 1982). In addition, we presented some subjects with instructions about the purpose and design of the IAT before completing it, to determine whether implicit measures of prejudice are less vulnerable to self-presentation concerns and deliberate masking.  It was our prediction that participants who scored high in social desirability would be more likely to mask their true feelings of prejudice on the explicit prejudice measure, yet not be capable of hiding such feelings from the IAT. Results confirmed this prediction; subjects' IAT scores indicate strong levels of implicit prejudice, yet were not strongly correlated with their explicit prejudice measures.

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The consistency of implicit and explicit attitudes towards people in poverty was examined. Twenty-seven college students were given an Implicit Association Test to assess their implicit attitudes towards people in high and low status occupations. Overall, subjects demonstrated prejudice toward members of low status occupations and positive feelings towards members of high status jobs. Subjects also completed the Belief in a Just World scale which assessed, in part, explicit attitudes toward poverty and social injustice. The results from the two studies showed that the subjects' explicit attitudes were inconsistent with their implicit attitudes on poverty stereotypes.

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The effects of multiple risk factors (divorce and perfectionism) on suicidal ideation was examined in college students. A selection of Introduction to Psychology students were given questions from The Suicide Ideation Questionnaire (Hewitt & Flett, 1996) and The Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Reynolds, 1988). Results did not confirm a significant difference in suicidal ideation between students who had married parents versus divorced parents nor was a relation present between perfectionism and suicidal ideation. Thus, the multiplicative effects of divorce and perfectionism on suicidal ideation appeared not to be supported by the present study. However, depression did prove to be high among students with suicidal ideation. Significant differences were also present between self-oriented perfectionism and gender. Thus, depression can be found among the college population and males and females are more vulnerable to perfectionist tendencies at different levels of ideation.

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We attempted to show the relationship between different attributional styles and the Big Five Personality Traits. One hundred and fifty students took the NEO PI-R, a Big Five Personality Inventory, and filled out diaries of their social comparisons and attributions over a span of two weeks. In these diaries, they wrote down their thoughts and indicated their positive or negative mood every time they compared themselves to someone else. The results consistently showed that those who made more internal, global, controllable, and stable attributions for their successes had higher levels of Conscientiousness on the NEO PI-R. One possible conclusion is that Conscientiousness leads to an internalization of success.

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Thought suppression is a complex one process that requires a focused effort. Wegner et al. investigated this phenomenon in an experiment, which involved asking subjects to try not to think about a white bear; results indicated that subjects continually thought about a white bear although they were asked not to. In the present study, we extended Wegner's experiment by adding two additional conditions-in the first subjects were given a picture of a white bear, in the second subjects were told not to think about the abstract concept of pain. We propose that being shown a picture of a white bear will make the image more difficult to suppress and lead to more thought intrusions, while an abstract concept a subject is unable to picture will lead to fewer thought intrusions. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a Wegner Replication condition, a Picture condition, and an Abstract Concept condition. While being tape recorded, subjects in each of the three conditions were first instructed to think aloud in a "stream of consciousness" fashion, then given condition-specific instructions and told think aloud again, knocking once on the table whenever they experienced a thought intrusion. Results indicate that subject experienced more thought intrusions in the Wegner Replication, compared to the Abstract Concept conditions.

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This experiment tested recall of  material that was either from a graphically illustrated webpage or from a textual hardcopy.  Sixteen second grade students and seventeen sixth grade students from the Warren County, Missouri R-III School District participated in the experiment. Participants in each grade received two types of age appropriate stores in which half of the participants read a story in a graphically enhanced webpage and half of the participants read the same story presented in a text only hardcopy.  The presentation of the reading material was crossed so that the other half of the participants in each grade read the same story in a different format.  After each condition, the children were tested on recall comprehension by taking an age appropriate five question multiple choice test.  The results indicated that students who have been formally educated in the use of computers, particularly sixth graders, scored higher on recall comprehension when material was presented in a graphically illustrated webpage then in a textual hardcopy, whereas, students not formally educated in computers, particularly second graders, performed equally well on recall comprehension which was invariant with the format of the stimulus material.

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Many corporations create softball teams to increase team work and communication among co-workers, to enable them to get to know each other better, and to relieve stress.  But the question of interest in the present study was to see if the games achieved those goals.  This study examined the nature of feedback co-workers provided each other during batting.  Results will be presented on the success of both the individual player and the team as a whole in relation to the feedback.  Results could suggest recreational activities like softball could increase employee performance.

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Previous research by Skarlicki and Folger (1997) examined the roles of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice on the likelihood of retaliation in the workplace.  Using a self-generated questionnaire, forty-eight undergraduate students were required to respond to nine possible scenarios, which varied according to the type of injustice portrayed as well as the relationship between the target and actor.  The purpose of this study was to determine if the type of injustice and the relationship between the actor/target had an effect on rated appropriateness of responses to aggressive workplace behavior.  Results indicated a significant interaction across all scenarios. However, less aggressive responses were rated as more appropriate responses than the more aggressive ones.

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We were interested in what effect framing of assignments and ambiguity had on task preferences.  The design of the experiment was a 2 x 3 factorial.  Tasks were presented as either structured or unstructured.  The framing conditions were positive, negative, and non-framed.  It was hypothesized that all of the framing conditions would be rated higher than the non-framed conditions.  It was also hypothesized that structured tasks would be rated higher than non-structured tasks.  After evaluating the data of 72 participants it was found that framing and ambiguity had no significant effect on task preferences.

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Perfectionism in eating disordered and non-eating disordered women was investigated.  A sample of clinically diagnosed eating disordered women and a sample of undergraduate women completed questionnaires consisting of items related to eating disorder symptoms and perfectionism.  Eating disordered women scored higher on a measure of perfectionism than non-eating disordered women.  No significant correlation was found between the severity of the eating disorder and the duration of the eating disorder.  There was a significant relation between eating disorder symptoms and perfectionism.  The results suggest that perfectionism is prevalent in women with eating disorders.

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This study examined whether or not feelings of powerlessness and depression are significantly correlated in college students.  It was hypothesized that female college students would report greater depression than male college students and that the degree of depression would be significantly correlated with feelings of powerlessness or lack of personal mastery.  T-tests were performed to determine if there were sex differences in either feelings of control or depression; no statistically significant results were found. However, there was a correlation between control and depression.  People with high depression had a lack of control or personal mastery.  Thus, past work showing that females are more depressed than males was not replicated.

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The present study examined whether there was a relationship between a person's major and their personality.  It was hypothesized that psychology, computer science, and business majors would score higher than education, nursing, and graphic design majors on conscientiousness.  Sixty-three participants completed the NEO-PI-R personality inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992).  A 2(gender) X 6(Major) ANOVA showed no significant differences in conscientiousness.  However, there was a significant difference  on the "Basic dimensions of character" factor, F(5, 52) = 2.98, p < .05.  It was concluded that conscientious alone is not related to a person's major, but "Basic dimension of character" is.

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Forty subjects competed in five-person round-robin pool tournaments where they predicted the performance of each  competitor. The accuracy of judgments was measured by comparing predictions to actual performance. Predictions of wins were more correlated with actual wins more than predictions for specific components of pool playing were correlated with performance on specific pool shots. These results suggest that expertise is perceivable on a global scale, but the specific aspects of expertise are a more difficult construct to predict.

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This experiment was a 3 (at risk, not at risk, unknown) x 2 (poor performance, exceptional performance) x 2 (consistent, inconsistent) mixed subject design, examining whether stereotypes are used as judgment heuristics, or as a rule of thumb when making judgments about others. This experiment also analyzed the difference in the processing of stereotypically inconsistent versus stereotypically consistent information. Forty-eight college students participated in this experiment. This study suggests that stereotypes may very well be used as judgment heuristics in some cases, however it may vary based on the type of judgments being made. It is indicated by this study, on the other hand, that stereotypically-consistent information increases the likelihood that the heuristic hypothesis is supported.

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Helping opportunities are potentially embarrassing, however, little is known about how embarrassment affects helping. Embarrassment may increase empathy, thereby increasing altruistic behavior.  Participants were 44 undergraduates.  To manipulate embarrassment, participants read a passage on genital warts, believing they would give a presentation over the material.  Control participants were told that they would listen to a presentation.  On the way to the presentation, a confederate intercepted the participant and dropped an embarrassing (tampons) or non-embarrassing item (pencils), and recorded participant helping.  As predicted, people who felt embarrassed were more likely to help pick up the embarrassing item, compared to people who were not previously embarrassed.

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The present experiment investigated performance on an exam following different modes of exam presentation.  Our hypothesis was that participants who were instructed that an exam was difficult would perform worse on the exam than those who had been given no information on the difficulty of the exam, or those that were told that the exam was easy. No significant differences were found among the different methods of exam presentation.  However, females scored better than males on the exam.  Participant motivation may be an important factor when investigating exam performance.

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Because of the recent increase in the availability and use of dietary supplements, we investigated factors that might influence one's willingness to take a supplement.  Participants were presented with one of three descriptions of a fictitious supplement, and completed a questionnaire. Contrary to predictions, the wording of the description did not influence participants' willingness to try the product.  However, participants who were already taking supplements reported that they would be more likely to try the product, compared to participants not taking supplements. Furthermore, participants taking supplements reported that they would be more likely to take a supplement if they knew it was clinically proven, or endorsed by a famous athlete.  Males reported being more likely to be influenced by an athlete's endorsement than females.

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This study compared the long-term effects of different forms of child maltreatment (e.g., physical abuse, sexual abuse, witnessing domestic violence) among a college sample. Previous research (Rutter, 1978, 1980; Schaff & McCanne, 1998) has proposed a cumulative stress model, comparing single vs. multiple types of child abuse.  Findings from this study support this model with individuals who experienced any type of maltreatment reporting significantly more negative effects than the comparison group and individuals who experienced all three forms of maltreatment reporting the highest level of trauma effects as measured by the Trauma Symptom Checklist-40.

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Color as a predictor of optimism was studied.  50 subjects (39 females, 11 males) age 17 to 32 participated.  Subjects were shown three sets of two pictures each which varied only in color (either light colors or dark colors).  They were asked to indicate which one they preferred out of the set.  Finally, they completed the Revised Life Orientation Test, which is a measure of optimism.  Our hypothesis was that subjects who preferred the light colored pictures would score highly on the Revised Orientation Test. Results did not confirm this hypothesis.  However, there was a marginally significant sex difference in the picture preferred whereby women chose the lighter colored pictures more than the men did (p=.086).

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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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This study investigates the performance of solos and teams in negotiations. In past research, teams have been seen as effective vehicles for task performance.  Constructive conflict is also examined to see the effects on performance outcomes.  Task conflict has been found to facilitate better decision making in teams.  In a laboratory simulation of a dispute situation teams negotiating with other teams were the best performers on the task, whereas teams negotiating with solos resulted in lowest performance scores.  Further, the induction of a constructive conflict orientation resulted in high performance outcomes.

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A sample of 52 college students completed a measure of the self-serving bias.  They rated various positive and negative situations on a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being "action was exclusively due to me" and 5 being "the action was exclusively due to the situation."  The context of the situation was manipulated so that some situations pertained to the subject personally and some pertained to "a friend."  Further, the gender of the "friend" was manipulated so that the scenarios referred to the other person as a woman or as a man.  Results indicated that self-serving bias was operating for subjects rating themselves and that in-group bias was stronger for was stronger for men than for women.

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The effects of acceptance and rejection on hostility, anxiety, depression and state self-esteem were assessed. Thirty-six participants were randomly assigned to the experimental and control conditions.  In the experimental condition, 12 participants were "accepted" and 12 were "rejected". There was no significant effect of acceptance or rejection on state self-esteem or hostility.  Acceptance and rejection impacted ratings of depression and anxiety.  Significant differences in depression occurred between the experimental and control groups and between the rejected and accepted members of the experimental group.  There was also a significant difference in anxiety between those who were accepted and those that were rejected.  Finally, there was a high correlation between depression and anxiety for all conditions.

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A total of 48 undergraduate students participated in a study of social evaluation.  Participants were shown a picture of a man (attractive or  unattractive) and given a personality description of this target individual  (positive or negative).  Then they answered questions pertaining to the likelihood of hiring this person for a job, initiating a conversation with  this person, participating in a group project with this person, etc.  Results indicated that personality had larger effects on judgments than attractiveness across all evaluative categories.

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Sixty-four American, 11 Korean, and 25 Japanese subjects answered questionnaires concerning family type, parental warmth, sexual vs. emotional jealousy, commitment, desire for relationship maintenance after sexual and emotional infidelity, and desire for casual sex.  Positive correlations were found among parental warmth, commitment, and emotional jealousy.  These results suggest that the subjects who received more parental warmth were more committed to their romantic partners and more jealous of the partners' emotional infidelity than sexual infidelity.

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This study looked at the relationship between rape myth acceptance and enrollment in a rape prevention workshop and/or human sexuality course, exposure to pornography, and knowing someone who has been raped.  Eighty-six subjects were given the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance scale and  five questions pertaining to the aforementioned measured items. Results indicated that people who had taken a rape prevention workshop were less likely to believe in rape myths.

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Although female stereotypic word primes produce an increase in negative attitudes toward women (Blair & Banaji, 1996), the number of primes required to activate these stereotypes has never been investigated.  One group of 15 male students was given 30 scrambled sentences with five word primes.  Another group of 15 male students was given the same 30 sentences with 30 word primes.  All subjects were then shown 10 ads of women and were asked to rate the ads on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 was "unattractive" and 5 was "attractive."  Total attractiveness ratings were not significantly different as a result of exposure to five of the thirty female stereotypic words.

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The effect of context reinstatement in an eyewitness identification paradigm was examined.  Twenty-six participants observed a confederate (male or female) enter a room and take a bag.  They were later questioned about the confederate.  Music represented the context in this study.  Two-thirds of the participants heard music during the event (confederate taking the bag).  Half of these participants heard the same music when completing questions about the confederate and half heard no music when completing questions about the confederate.  The control group heard no music during the event or when completing the questions.  Participants who observed the female confederate in the consistent context condition were more accurate in recalling information in comparison to those in both the inconsistent condition and the control condition.

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The present study examined the effects of prenatal fluoxetine (Prozac) exposure, using an exposure regimen designed to resemble clinical use of antidepressants.  Long-Evans dams began receiving fluoxetine (FLX) via oral gavage (10mg/kg/day) 14 days prior to breeding. Group FLX1 continued receiving FLX through PND 10 (n = 11), whereas Group FLX2 only received the drug through GD 10 (n = 12). Two control groups were included: CON1 received an inert dose of the gavage solution beginning 14 days prior to breeding and continuing through PND 10 (n = 10), whereas CON2 served as a non-gavaged control (n = 10).  Pregnancy weight gain was reduced in both FLX groups during the drug exposure period; however, gestational length and litter size were not affected.  Body weights of FLX1 offspring were reduced (compared to all other groups) on PNDs 1 and 8; however, group FLX2 had increased body weights (compared to all other groups) on PNDs 1, 8, and 16.  No body weight differences were evident by PND 27.  Open field behavior tested on PND 16 indicated increased exploratory behavior in group FLX2 compared to group CON2.  On PND 60 a second cohort was tested in the open field apparatus, however, no treatment differences were found at this juncture.

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Twenty-four undergraduate students from Western Illinois University volunteered to participate in this study.  Subjects individually filled out a Helping  Personality Questionnaire.  When the subject was finished and was leaving the room, he/she encountered a confederate who had dropped a bag full of  items (either personal or non-personal).  Subjects were measured on the amount of time it took for them to help the confederate.  Although not quite attaining statistical significance, results indicated that people had a tendency to help pick up non-personal items rather than personal items.

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A sample of 24 college students completed a "helping personality" scale in a private room.  Subsequently, each participant was exposed to an actual situation where they could help a confederate who dropped the contents of a book bag.  Participants were timed on how long it took them to help (if at all).  Correlations were computed between helping personality and amount of time it took for the subjects to act.  No significant relationship was found.  Results will be discussed in terms of the discrepancy between self-reported helping and actual helping behavior.

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This experiment was done to look at romantic relationships and the friendships outside those relationships, and the possible jealousy that may result from those friendships.  Twenty-one couples filled out a questionnaire answering questions about time spent with their romantic partners, time spent with their friends, and the perceptions of the time their partners spent with friends.  The mean age of participants was 22(SD=7.85).  A sum was used to measure subject jealousy.  Subject jealousy was found to correlate with six items.  High jealousy was found to correlate with the idea that, in a romantic relationship, an individual should give up friendships of the opposite sex.  Correlations were also found with partner breaking plans to do something with friends, and partner having too many friends of the opposite sex.  A romantic partner spending too much time with friends, both of the same sex and of the opposite sex, was also found to be correlated with subject jealousy.

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David Buss became famous by asking college students: "Which would distress or upset you more, imagining your partner forming a deep emotional attachment or enjoying passionate sexual intercourse with another person?"  Students choosing "emotional attachment" are diagnosed as emotionally jealous and those choosing "sexual intercourse" are diagnosed as sexually jealous.  The only problem with this measure is that it does not measure the two kinds of jealousy, independently.  The purpose of this research was to construct independent emotional and sexual jealousy scales.

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Participants were 33 male and female college students who completed  questionnaires measuring their sport affiliation, self-concept clarity, and self-attributes. Correlations were computed among these variables. Results indicated that subjects who did report having high sport affiliation had a  tendency to have lower certainty of their self-attributes. The subjects that scored high on sports affiliation had a tendency to follow the team in some form of media almost every day.

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It was hypothesized that paintings rated as beautiful would be of recognizable objects, be complex, be emotion eliciting, "speak to your experience of the modern world," and "relate to your personal experience and perception of reality."  Beautiful paintings were found to be of recognizable objects, to elicit positive emotions but not negative, to speak to subjects' experience of the modern world, and to relate to personal experience.

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Work withdrawal is a serious problem facing the gaming industry.  The current research investigated three predictors (satisfaction, leader-member exchange, and perceived job alternatives) of the withdrawal criterion.  Employees of a Midwestern casino completed a survey containing established measures of the relevant constructs.  The results indicated that the three predictors were significantly related to job withdrawal.  A regression analysis identified leader-member exchange and perceived job alternatives as significant predictors of job withdrawal.