This collection contains some of the theses and dissertations produced by students in the University of Oregon Psychology Graduate Program. Paper copies of these and other dissertations and theses are available through the UO Libraries.
Interpersonal perceptions of socioeconomic status (SES), those formed in face-to-face interactions, can perpetuate inequality if they influence interpersonal interactions in ways that disadvantage people with low SES. There ...
The adolescent period of development is associated with a significant increase in the occurrence of mental illness. In addition, death by suicide is one of the leading causes of death amongst adolescents. Identity formation ...
From quarks to galaxies, the natural world is organized with fractal geometry. Fractal fluency theory suggests that due to their omnipresence in our visual world, fractals are more fluently processed by the visual system ...
Despite being the focus of extensive research over the past two decades, the structure of the “Dark Triad”—or, as I will refer to it here, the “Aversive Triad”—is still shrouded in confusion. Much of this confusion stems ...
While the lateral parietal cortex (LPC) in the human brain is traditionally investigated for its functions in visual perception, more recent evidence has highlighted its substantial contribution to supporting human episodic ...
Having effective emotion regulation skills is critical to socioemotional well-being, and parents play a key role in the development of children’s emotion regulation through emotion socialization behaviors. However, since ...
Political polarization has visibly increased in the last few years. A sense of divisiveness has been exacerbated by a surge in social media communication about contentious issues which has been replacing face-to-face ...
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has posited unique challenges for families and significantly disrupted several aspects of children’s environments. The pandemic is an ongoing risk experience, with young children being ...
The purpose of the current project was to investigate how a social psychology approach could be used to develop an effective climate-change mitigation tool. A commonly used technique in the social psychology literature for ...
In cultural accounts and scholarly writings about anger, we see conceptualizations that reflect the existence of two variants: an anger perceived as moral, appropriate, and justified; and an anger considered wrong and ...
Drascher, Maxwell(University of Oregon, 2023-07-06)
When memories share similar features, this can lead to interference, and ultimately forgetting. At the same time, many highly similar memories are remembered vividly for years to come. Understanding what causes interference ...
Individuals routinely execute complex tasks that involve multiple, dependent levels of information, such as driving a car or cooking dinner. It is amazing that our cognitive system is able to represent such complex, ...
The United States holds alarming records for highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the developed world. The US infant mortality rate is on par with many low and middle income countries, and despite the decline in ...
Rose, David William(University of Oregon, 1969-06)
The ultimate goal of all mental hospital analyses is to provide information which by direct implication or through analysis might act as a guide in restructuring environment in which the mental patient lives. The goal of ...
Bedford-Petersen, Cianna(University of Oregon, 2023-03-24)
As social media occupies an increasingly important place in people’s lives, new opportunities are presented for people to select and modify their online environments. On many platforms, users have significant control over ...
Gluck, Stephanie(University of Oregon, 2023-03-24)
Parental mind-mindedness refers to caregivers’ propensity to attribute mind-like and intentional qualities in their interactions with or representation of their young children. It is proposed to be associated with positive ...
Donaldson, Sarah(University of Oregon, 2022-10-26)
Puberty marks the physical transition towards sexual maturity, culminating in the ability to reproduce. It follows that maturing cognitive, affective, and social skills develop concurrently to support reproductive competence, ...
The hippocampus plays an important role in many aspects of learning and memory. It is most known for its role in episodic memory and spatial navigation, though it has also been shown to contribute to other processes like ...
Racialized and gendered police violence is a pernicious problem for Black communities. For my dissertation, I empirically tested a novel theoretical concept, Collective Ongoing Betrayal Trauma (COBT). COBT integrates the ...
O'Brien, Jacqueline(University of Oregon, 2022-10-26)
Children of mothers with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are at heightened risk for developing mental health difficulties but the pathway through which this risk is conferred is unclear. Developmental psychopathology ...