Lanning, Kevin

The pervasiveness of androcentric thinking in many Western societies is evident in language. A prime example of androcentric language has historically been English, especially formal writing. In recognition of this detrimental practice, the American Psychological Association (APA) began prohibiting use of the generic “he” in articles published in psychology journals during the 1970's. However, other forms of malecentered language remained unchallenged, and I argue that academic writings still favor masculine interests. In this study, articles published in academic journals were examined for four instances of possible androcentric expression: number of citations for female versus male authors within a journal; frequency of first name stated in citations of male versus female authors; first placement of female versus male data in correlation matrix tables; and attribution of difference to males versus females in comparison statements. Significant results were found in all studies. These instances have practical implications, including discrepancies in who is applying for positions and who is receiving them.

This study investigated the relationship between personality and measures of academic success and satisfaction. Person-Environment Fit (PE Fit) was assessed by correspondence
between students’individual personalities and the personalities of their same-gender peers.
Significant differences were found between genders in the correlates of success. The successful male student expressed more Agreeableness and lower Openness to Experience when compared to the typical male. Also, although both typical and successful female students reflected Conscientiousness, only typical females were higher in Agreeableness. Reverse factor analyses revealed that 66% of participants could be classified into three personality types: Intellectually open-minded undercontrollers, Organized, norm-reinforcing overcontrollers, and Socially skilled extraverts. Students in the first group reported lower grades and expressed more dissatisfaction with the HC when compared to other students. Finally, implications of these findings for the future of PE Fit are discussed.

In this study, I examined the structure of predictors of attitudes toward homosexuality in a sample of nearly 800 respondents. Predictors included measures of personality (Openness to Experience), emotion (Disgust), beliefs (Religiosity), other attitudes (Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism), as well as prior exposure to homosexuals (Contact). These variables were examined in a series of statistical analyses in the prediction of Homonegativity (anti-gay attitudes). I anticipated that Contact would serve as a mediator of relationships between the remaining predictors and anti-gay attitudes. As predicted, Contact did partially mediate the relationship between two of the antecedent variables (Openness and Religiosity) and attitudes toward homosexuality. These results help answer questions like whether people who are high in Openness are low in anti-gay attitudes (a) simply because they are open or (b) because their Openness drives them to interact with homosexuals.

Ego development is the conceptual framework an individual uses to interpret and react to everyday life. High levels of ego development are marked by an increase in tolerance of
individual differences, meaningful relationships with others, and a view of the world as complex.
Liberal arts colleges may help to increase ego level by exposing students to a variety of different
viewpoints, thereby broadening their worldview and expanding their ability for complex thought.
In studying the ego development of students at Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College (a liberal arts
college), it was found that total number of credits taken was significantly correlated with an
increase in ego development level. This correlation existed over and above the correlations found
between age and ego level as well as class year and ego level. Our results suggest that the unique
structure of the curriculum at Wilkes Honors College may be particularly effective in enhancing
ego development.

Women’s studies is an interdisciplinary field that had continued to evolve since it was introduced to academic spaces in the ‘70s. Feminist psychology unites the psychology of women and the psychological study of women’s social issues. Using community structure of the scholarship of the journals Psychology of Women Quarterly (PWQ) and Feminism & Psychology, we examine and seek to understand the empirical structure of feminist psychology. An analysis of these two journals by decade will help determine whether the scholarship of feminist psychology has changed as much as women’s studies. In doing so, one can also address the question of how psychological is women’s studies (and vice versa).

While online dating is very convenient, it causes an evolutionary mismatch, our ancestors did not have websites to search for partners. However, there are some similarities that can be seen between current and ancestral times in relation to societal perception, especially in relation to parental investment theory. Using an OkCupid dataset of 2620 questions, 166 were selected in order to evaluate how much of an influence societal perception ( the influence of family and friends, substance use, education, stigma, religion, appearance, and morals) has on searching for a romantic partner. The data was evaluated in four separate stages: Initially just 100 cases were examined to reduce computational burden, then an additional 2000 were used to look at the structure of key variables. Of the remaining cases, 60% were used to develop a prediction model and 40% to test this model. It was found that women tended to be more selective on six of the seven scales that were measured, this selectiveness can be attributed to parental investment theory.
significant influence in revolutionary politics through agricultural and industrial
collectivization, communes, militia resistance, and participation in government. Many
historians have explained anarchism through the lens of ideology, a doctrine based upon a
structure of authority. This thesis, however, explains anarchist power and unity during the
Spanish Civil War as a matter of identity, as a meaningful sense of self. Spanish
anarchists defined themselves through the process of negation – the act of defining who
you are by defining what you are not – by their opposition to authority, to religion, to
feudalism, to capitalism and fascism, to communism, and to anarchism. The anarchists
also affirmed who they were as individuals and as communities through three values:
yearning for absolute freedom, the capacity for absolute fraternity removed from
centralized authority, and absolute egalitarianism – the unreserved equality of all
individuals.

In this exploratory study, the responses of nearly 70,000 OKCupid users to a series of questions on the website are assessed to determine a relationship between romantic relationship preferences and attachment style. Specifically, the romantic relationship preferences were monogamy and long-term relationship preference. Four types of attachment styles are looked at in this study: secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful. Five scales are created from the original 2,600 questions to assess relationship preferences and attachment style, with scores ranging from 0 to 1. Users were then classified into one of the four attachment styles. Attachment style of users was predicted using a k-NN analysis, and ROC curves were plotted for monogamy and relationship scores for each attachment style. A relationship between attachment style and relationship preferences was found. The largest differences were found when comparing securely and fearfully attached individuals.

Life history theory (LHT) explains behavioral, motivational, and biological variations
among individuals as adaptive trade-offs between somatic and reproductive efforts.
Utilizing data containing OkCupid user responses (N = 68,371) to 2,620 compatibility
and demographic questions such as, “How clear to you are your goals in life?” 16 scales
were constructed to measure psychological and behavioral characteristics related to the
life history strategy (LHS) employed. The scales were initially examined within a
‘training’ subset of the data (n = 2,000) and factor-analyzed to determine whether they
form a common underlying life history (LH) factor. Preliminary factor analytic results
show support for a LH factor, as well as a second ecobiodevelopmental (EBD) factor
composed of developmental, biological, and psychological characteristics underlying
mental and physical health outcomes. Results, cross-validated with the remainder of the
sample (n = 66,271), showed support for both factors, LH and EBD, underlying distinct
developmental, biological, and psychological differences.

The purpose of this research is to create a visual representation of the relationships and interactions between the fields of personality, industrial/organizational, and human factors psychology. References were pulled from select chapters of two different handbooks, the forthcoming SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences and the Oxford Handbook of Organizational Psychology, in order to create a network structure that graphically illustrated the connections between the authors and their specific topics. This structure was then compared to a pre-prepared network that was created by hand of the expectations for what the network should look like based solely on the chapter readings. The software programs of R and Gephi were used for the creation of these network structures. From this research, the importance of these methods, namely, the creation a detailed map of a scientific field, was deduced and expanded upon.

Growing inequality over the past few decades has been a great problem for the
majority of Americans. Inequality is in part a reflection of privilege. The objective
of this research was to investigate the association between privilege (including
socioeconomic status or SES) and honesty (cheating behavior), along with
relationships between privilege and personality and finally personality and honesty.
This work furthered our knowledge of perceptions of social justice and the
mechanisms underlying unethical behavior. Participants completed a questionnaire
on Amazon MTurk that measured constructs of privilege (subjective SES, race,
education, occupation, gender) and unethical behavior (participants completed three
skill and chance-based tasks, each of which afforded the opportunity to report
scores honestly or dishonestly). Results did not show strong correlations between
privilege and cheating, but there was significant evidence that those high in
entitlement were most likely to cheat. Our conclusion provides further evidence of
personality’s influence on ethical behavior