Projects

Positive Affect, Cognitive Flexibility, and Moral Disengagement

Description: Being in a positive mood has been associated with cognitive flexibility - the ability to think creatively and flexibly about a situation. In addition, and perhaps surprisingly, positive mood has been associated with an increased tendency to engage in morally questionable behaviour. A paper by Vincent et al. (2013) proposed that positive affect increases the likelihood of people engaging in morally questionable behaviour BECAUSE their increased cognitive flexibility supports moral disengagement. However, at no point did Vincent et al. measure cognitive flexibility. This project attempted to remedy that problem by manipulating people's affective state (positive vs neutral) and then measuring cognitive flexibility and moral disengagement. The results were placed into a mathematical model in which cognitive flexibility was a mediator between affective state and moral disengagement (PSYC 22). In the process, we examined the factor structure of the moral disengagement scale (CURP 2022).

Student Lead Investigator: Jennifer Lohin

Project Status: Project fully complete.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Poster presented at Mount Royal Research and Scholarship Days, 2022 (not shown, next poster has updated results)

• Poster presented at PSYC 22, 2022 (click on top poster image to enlarge)

• Research presentation at World Class Day 5, 2022

• Poster presented at the Western Canadian Conference on Undergraduate Research in Psychology, 2022 (click on bottom poster image to enlarge).

Semantic Fluency and Individual Differences

Description: Semantic Fluency tasks require respondents to generate examples from semantic categories - e.g., State as many animals as you can for 60 seconds. The resulting response streams can be analyzed in terms of clusters. For example, if a participant states dog, cat, parrot, lion, giraffe, zebra they have switched between a cluster of pets and a cluster of African animals. Semantic fluency tasks are often used in clinical psychological assessments because the rate of switching between clusters is impaired in several clinical syndromes, likely due to impaired executive function. We were interested in clustering and switching differences between individuals and how those relate to two characteristics: anxiety and extraversion. Surprisingly, anxiety has not been examined as one of the conditions related to semantic fluency tasks, despite test anxiety being a clear correlate of impaired memory performance. We also wondered if extraversion might be related to semantic fluency performance because extraversion has been associated with increased spreading activation in memory (albeit weakly), which might affect the availability of different clusters. We examined these relationships in 185 introductory psychology students.

Student Lead Investigator: Katharine Elliott

Project Status: Data collection complete. Analysis is almost finished. We are contemplating an extension to the anxiety portion of the project before attempting to publish the results.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Extraversion: Poster presented at the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 2021 (click on top poster image to enlarge).

• Anxiety: Poster presented at the annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science , 2021 (click on bottom poster image to enlarge).

Self-Monitoring and Conflict Strategies in Romantic Relationships

Description: Self-monitoring is the act of attending to and regulating one's bevaiour and self-presentation, often to maintain social acceptability. In this study, we asked whether a person's tendency to self-monitor affects the way in which they handle conflict in their romantic relationships. Participants reported on their self-monitoring, conflict management strategies, and a few other measures we felt might affect those variables: attachment style, dark triad traits, and self- and other-interest. The results from a sample of ~250 Mount Royal University students are shown in the poster. We have just finished collection of a sample 250 married adults.

Student Lead Investigator: Brianna Davison

Project Status: Data collection complete. Analysis is almost finished. Write-up for publication has begun.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Poster presented at the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 2021 (click on poster image to enlarge)

• Research talk presented at Mount Royal Research and Scholarship Days, 2021

Math Anxiety, Perceived Math Competence, and Attitudes Toward Math

Description: There is a strong link between people's self-perceived competence at mathematics and their anxieties about mathematics. We hypothesized that this relationship would be diminished if a person chose to devalue or trivialize mathematics. If you believe that math is not important to you, then there's little reason to feel anxious about it, even when you believe you aren't any good at it. We are using two data sets to investigate this hypothesis. The first is a data set with ratings for math anxiety, perceived competence, and attitude toward math for 450 Canadian undergraduates. The second is a data set with similar variables for ~150,000 15-year-old school children collected as part of the PISA 2012 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Student Lead Investigator: Maria Ramirez

Project Status: Data collection complete. Analysis is partially finished. Write-up for presentation and publication will follow.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Poster presented at PSYC 20, 2020 (click on poster image to enlarge)

Attention Deficit Relationships With Alexithymia and Facial Emotion Recognition

Description: Evidence in existing literature suggests that people with ADHD have impaired recognition of emotional expressions on the faces of others, at least for some emotions. There is also evidence that alexithymia (difficulty thinking about or talking about one's emotions, and a tendency not to think about one's own internal state) is associated both with ADHD and with impaired facial emotion recognition. We speculated that the ADHD-to-emotion-recognition relationship may be a mediated one through alexithymia. That is, ADHD produces alexithymia, and alexithymia leads to impaired facial emotion recognition. After all, how can one understand the emotions of others if one has difficulty thinking about one's own emotions. To test this hypothesis, we have collected estimates of attention difficulties, alexithymia, and facial emotion recognition ability from 300 undergraduates.

Student Lead Investigator: Stephanie Bell

Project Status: Project fully complete.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Poster presented at Mount Royal Research Days, 2019 (click on poster image to enlarge)

Body Image Concerns and Perfectionism

Description: In this study, we were interested in understanding how dysmorphic concern - the concern that one's body is misshapen or flawed in appearance in some way - is related to perfectionism. There are studies that suggest a link between Body Dysmorphic Disorder (clinically-significant levels of unwarranted concern) and perfectionism, but the existing studies mostly treat perfectionism as a single entity. There are multiple studies in the general literature on perfectionism that show that it is a multi-faceted construct. So in this study we are trying to understand what aspects of perfectionism are most strongly associated with dysmorphic concern.

Student Lead Investigator: Carly Barton

Project Status: Data collection complete. Analysis is partially finished. Write-up for publication will follow.

Fidget-Spinner Effects on Attention and Memory

Description: In this study, we examined the claim that fidget spinners can help people with attention problems to sustain attention to a lecture. We randomly assigned some people to receive fidget spinners and others not to, and then had them watch a 40-minute recorded lecture. A measure of attention was taken at 10 minute intervals during the lecture, and memory for the lecture was assessed with a test afterward. We examined the impact of possessing a fidget spinner (or being seated near a person who possessed one) on memory and attention. We also checked to see whether the fidget spinner effects were different for people with high self-rated attention problems (vs low) or were different for people who normally fidget a lot (vs don't).

Student Lead Investigator: Julie Porter

Project Status: Data collection complete. Analysis largely complete. Write-up for publication is being worked on.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Talk presented at Mount Royal Research Days, 2019

• Poster presented at the Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science, 2019 (click on poster image to enlarge)

Daily Fluctuations in Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression

Description: Despite anxiety and depression being huge areas of research, almost no research has investigated the day-to-day variation in symptoms related to the two illnesses. In this study, participants from introductory psychology courses completed brief rating scales for the severity of 8 symptoms typically associated with depression, and 7 symptoms typically associated with anxiety. We wished to determine whether anxiety and depression moved independently of each other, and also whether anxiety on one day predicted depression on later days.

Student Lead Investigator: Hannah Storrs

Project Status: Data collection complete. Analysis of supplemental data being completed. Write-up for publication is in preliminary stages.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Multilevel factor analysis of the daily variations: poster presented at the Connecting Minds conference, Vancouver, 2018 (click on top poster image to enlarge)

• Predicting depression from prior anxiety and depression: poster presented at the International Congress of Applied Psychology, Montreal, 2018 (click on bottom poster image to enlarge)

Warmth and Perspective-Taking Effects on Helping Behaviour Toward Refugees

Description: In this study we looked at the influence of a perspective-taking task on people's willingness to help others. In this case, we weren't concerned about a single individual, but about a group that would traditionally be considered an out-group for most of our participants - Syrian refugees accepted into Canada. We investigated whether having participants engage in perspective-taking (an activity known to promote helping behaviour) toward a Syrian refugee would influence participants' expressed willingness to help Syrian refugees. We also wanted to know whether the impact of the perspective-taking task would depend on whether one perceives Syrian refugees as being warm and friendly or cool and distant.

Student Lead Investigator: Bailey McCafferty

Project Status: Project fully complete.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Talk presented at Research 18, Mount Royal University, 2018

• Poster presented at Research 18, Mount Royal University, 2018 (click on poster image to enlarge)

• Talk presented at the Connecting Minds conference, Vancouver, 2018

• Poster presented at the National Metropolis Conference, Calgary, 2018

Empathy, Burnout and Symptoms of PTSD in Canadian Paramedics

Description: Traumatic experiences are an occupational hazard for people who work as paramedics. Such experience can result in the development of PTSD, but can also cause burnout. Both burnout and PTSD are associated with decreased empathy in the individuals who experience them. Yet empathy is an important part of health care provision. In this study, we wanted to understand whether symptoms of PTSD are associated with decreases in empathy in paramedics, after controlling for the level of burnout symptoms.

Student Lead Investigator: Robyn Shields

Project Status: Two papers are being prepared for publication.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Latent structure of the measures: poster presented at the Canadian Institute of Military and Veteran Health Research Forum 2018, Regina, 2018 (click on the top image to enlarge)

• Comparison of older and newer version of PTSD checklist: poster presented at the Canadian Institute of Military and Veteran Health Research Forum 2018, Regina, 2018 (click on the middle image to enlarge)

• Empathy, Burnout and PTSD: poster presented at the International Congress of Applied Psychology, Montreal, 2018 (click on the bottom image to enlarge)

The Impact of Mindfulness Meditation on False Memory Susceptibility

Description: A couple of studies have documented an increase in false memory susceptibility for people who have engaged in mindfulness meditation. In this study, we wished to determine whether this effect arises because of changes in how people study, or because of changes in how people recall. We also wished to know whether the changes resulted from increased feelings of familiarity or from false experiences of recollection.

Student Lead Investigator: Bailey McCafferty

Project Status: Project fully complete.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Poster presented at the Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science, 2017 (click on poster image to enlarge)

Predictors of Client Distress at Intake to Counselling

Description: In this exploratory project, we investigated what demographic factors are associated with higher or lower levels of client distress when clients begin counselling. The project was completed as a part of a directed reading supervised by me.

Student Lead Investigator: Bailey McCafferty

Project Status: Project fully complete.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Poster presented at Mount Royal Research Days, 2017 (click on poster image to enlarge)

Eye-Tracking the Romantic Red Effect

Description: This project consisted of two studies examining the Romantic Red effect - the phenomenon that women are judged as being more attractive when wearing red than when wearing other colours. The first study used an eye tracker to examine the changes in how men look at pictures of women as a result of red vs green clothing colour. In addition, we measured how clothing colour affected memory for the faces of the women. In the second study, we repeated the measures of the first study, and also included measures of stress and personality.

Student Lead Investigator: Jenna Brazier

Project Status: Project fully complete.

Scholarly Dissemination:

• Poster for Study 1 presented at the Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science, 2016 (click on poster image to enlarge)