Motivation (Psychology)

The current research investigated the effects of competition on empathy and
prosociality in two studies. Study 1 aimed to explore associations between competition
and prosociality by asking participants to play a computer puzzle game that was either
high or low on competitiveness, and then to complete measures of empathy, perspective
taking, compassionate love and willingness to sacrifice for a romantic partner. Study 1
found a marginally significant difference across conditions for perspective taking, a
marginally significant gender interaction for perspective taking, and a significant gender
by condition interaction for compassionate love, in support of hypotheses that
competition reduces prosocial responses in men. Study 2 addressed methodological
limitations from Study 1 and examined the effect across a broader range of relationship
contexts, including close friends. Results for Study 2 did not replicate the marginally significant effect for perspective taking seen in Study 1, but found a significant
interaction between gender and condition predicting perspective taking. Significant
findings in line with prior research emerged for dominance and commitment, indicating
that higher dominance and lower commitment were associated with less empathy and
prosociality. Overall, results do not consistently support the hypothesized effect of
competitive situations on prosocial and empathic behavior, although results of
exploratory analyses suggest potential moderated or conditional effects.

Psychologists have studied the relationship between personality and academic
performance for over a century, and more recently the relationship between personality
and situations, but no connection between academic performance and situation
characteristics has been researched. The current study examines this relationship using
the DIAMONDS dimensions and undergraduate GPA. Participants wore a life logging
camera to capture pictures of their surroundings for 24 hours and then self-sorted and
rated the photos into meaningful situations. Results found support for previous findings
of the relationships for personality with GPA and situations. Significant correlations
were found between GPA and Adversity, Deception, and Mating situations, though none
were significant unique predictors. There was also no correlation between GPA and
percentage of situations which took place in a classroom setting, though there was a significant correlation with time spent in a classroom. Limitations and future research
ideas are discussed.

The term profession is found throughout the scholarly literature; despite frequent
use of the term, there exists little or no means of providing a common conception of the
term. Consequently, calls for increasing professionalization of public administration
appear to be premature. Therefore, this dissertation utilizes inductive research to generate
theory, which synthesizes the inchoate concept of the professional public administrator.
The motivation to pursue this line of inquiry stems from a personal need to weigh
in on the perennial debate about what skills, knowledge, and information should be
communicated to future generations of public administration thinkers and practitioners.
To that end, this research will provide a theoretical framework grounded in the literature,
which federates the term professional and the professional concept in such a way that
purposeful debates can be had. It is, as will be shown, an attempt to link understanding
and interpretation.

How one behaves after interacting with a friend may not be the same as before
the interaction began What factors a ect the formation of social interactions
between people and, once formed, how do social interactions leave lasting changes on
individual behavior? In this dissertation, a thorough review and conceptual synthesis
is provided Major features of coordination dynamics are demonstrated with
examples from both the intrapersonal and interpersonal coordination literature that
are interpreted via a conceptual scheme, the causal loops of coordination dynamics
An empirical, behavioral study of interpersonal coordination was conducted to
determine which spontaneous patterns of coordination formed and whether a remnant
of the interaction ensued ("social memory") To assess social memory in dyads, the
behavior preceding and following episodes of interaction was compared In the
experiment, pairs of people sat facing one another and made continuous flexion-extension finger movements while a window acted as a shutter to control
whether partners saw each other's movements Thus, vision ("social contact") allowed
spontaneous information exchange between partners through observation Each trial consisted of three successive intervals lasting twenty seconds: without social contact
("me and you"), with social contact ("us"), and again without ("me and you")
During social contact, a variety of patterns was observed ranging from phase coupling
to transient or absent collective behavior Individuals also entered and exited social
coordination differently In support of social memory, compared to before social
contact, after contact ended participants tended to remain near each other's
movement frequency Furthermore, the greater the stability of coupling, the more
similar the partners' post-interactional frequencies were Proposing that the
persistence of behavior in the absence of information exchange was the result of prior
frequency adaptation, a mathematical model of human movement was implemented
with Haken-Kelso-Bunz oscillators that reproduced the experimental findings, even
individual dyadic patterns Parametric manipulations revealed multiple routes to
persistence of behavior via the interplay of adaptation and other HKB model
parameters The experimental results, the model, and their interpretation form the
basis of a proposal for future research and possible therapeutic applications

The growing Haitian population in the United States is directly affecting all
institutions of higher education As institutions continue to diversify across the
country, HBCUs are also responding to this trend According to Ricard and
Brown (2008), HBCUs are changing in order to keep up with the growing demand
of institutional diversity, and they recognize that having a diversified student body
will make the institutions more competitive
Although their historic mission focuses on educating Black students, there
remains a gap in the literature on HBCUs on one of the largest Black groups in
the United States: the Haitian immigrant In the literature, the Haitian population
constitutes approximately 15% of the total US foreign-born population, and
15% of the total Black immigrant population in the US, behind Jamaicans at
18%, respectively Moreover, Haitians make up the fourth largest immigrant population from the Caribbean behind Cubans, Dominicans, and Jamaicans
(Anderson, 2015) However, these numbers do not include the hundreds of
thousands of Haitians who fled the Country after the devastating earthquake of
2010 nor the thousands of undocumented Haitian immigrants currently living in
the US
This qualitative phenomenological study sought to explore the college
choice process of ten Haitian students who chose to attend a highly selective
HBCU located in the Northeast region of the United States Moreover, this study
sought to explore how these ten Haitian students developed a sense of
belonging to the HBCU campus The primary methods for data collection
included semi-structured one-on-one interviews, a demographic questionnaire,
and artifact analysis Using the theoretical frameworks of Chapman’s (1981)
Model of College Choice and Sense of Belonging, this study discovered the
factors that influence Haitian students’ decision to attend a highly selective
HBCU centers around family Moreover, this study discovered that Haitian
students at a highly selective HBCU described their sense of belonging through
various forms of relationships

Throughout the course of a day, individuals experience a number of different situations that affect how they think, feel, and behave. However, until recently, there was little research aimed at describing what factors may be related to the psychological properties of situations in individuals' everyday lives. Recent theoretical (e.g., the Situational Eight DIAMONDS) and methodological (e.g., experience sampling, Day Reconstruction Method) advances make the present research tractable. Based on the extant literature, three studies, employing different methodologies, were designed to explore whether three specific factors are related to the experience of situations: time of day, gender, and employment status. Study 1 employs data from 835 participants recruited on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT). Participants reported a recent situation (single time-point method) and completed a 290-item measure of situations, the Comprehensive Situations Item Pool (CSIP). The results demonstrated consistent daily patterns in the experience of situations. For example, the situational characteristic Duty tends to increase throughout the day, peak at noon, decreasing thereafter. Study 2 uses an experience sampling method to further investigate the daily and weekly temporal patterns in the situational characteristics from a within-person perspective. University participants (N = 210) were contacted via smartphone and rated their situation up to 8 times per day for 7 days. The results showed that there are some similarities and differences in the temporal pattern of situations at the within-person level. Duty, for instance, exhibits a different pattern depending on the day of the week (e.g., negative and linear on weekends, but quadratic on weekdays). Overall, Study 2 demonstrates that there are clear within- and between-day patterns in situation characteristics. Lastly, Study 3 employs a full-day method using archival data from the 2013 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Participants drawn from a representative sample of Americans (N = 11,384) reported all of their situations for a recent day using the Day Reconstruction Method. The results found that, in addition to consistent daily and weekly trends, patterns for situation characteristics are related to individual differences such as gender and employment status.

Prosocial behavior can be defined as any behavior that an individual engages in to
benefit another (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006). Prosociality is not one homogenous trait, however, but is made up of three specific types of behavior: helping, cooperating, and sharing (or, more accurately, donating) (Tomasello, 2009). Although helping and cooperating are important to understanding prosocial development, giving behaviors might be particularly informative when trying to understand prosociality in young children as it poses a distinct problem for younger children (Tomasello, 1998). Research on proximate causes of prosocial behavior state that these behaviors are influenced by emotions of empathy (Batson, 1991), theory of mind, or understanding of social norms of ownership (Blake & Rand, 2010). Research on more ultimate causes of prosociality suggest that these behaviors evolved due to mechanisms or kin selection (Hamilton, 1964) and inclusive fitness (Trivers, 1971), and is evident by the effect of social category and relatedness on donations in resource- allocation games (Gummerum et al., 2009). Research with children using resource- allocations games, such as the dictator game, are sparse, but typically find that children donate more as they get older, and that out-group receive fewer allocations than in-group members (Moore, 2009). This research also highlight the importance of anonymity and its effect on prosociality. When tested using an anonymous design, children donate less and some children don’t donate at all (Benenson et al., 2007).
Using an anonymous dictator game, children’s giving behaviors were examined
across in- group, out-group, and family members. Thirty-five children (12 3-year-olds (7
male), 13 4-year-olds (8 male), and 10 5-year-olds (7 male) completed the experiment.
Each child participated in each condition, as well as measures of theory of mind and
ownership understanding. Children’s empathy scores were attained from a parent questionnaire regarding children’s empathic behaviors. Results revealed that some children did not donate any stickers at all; seven in total, and that these children differed significantly from those that gave on measures of empathy. Of those that donated, 3-year-old children donated significantly more than 5-year-old children (F(1,3) =3.64, p < .05). This is contrary to previous findings which find that giving increases across age., The was no main effect for Recipient, and no significant interaction between Age and Recipient. Five-year-olds scored significantly higher on measures of ownership understanding (F(2, 25) = 4.36, p< .05), suggesting that understanding of social norms of ownership may be partially responsible for their decrease in overall giving.

Two studies tested the optimality hypothesis of action identification theory (Vallacher & Wegner, 1985). This model predicts that personally difficult activities are enjoyed when they are identified in relatively low-level, "how-to" terms, whereas personally easy activities are enjoyed when they are identified in higher level, comprehensive terms. In Study 1, participants (N = 172) attempted to solve either high- or low-difficulty anagrams under various identities for their behavior. In Study 2, expert and novice artists (N = 55) drew a picture under either a high or low identity for the act of drawing. In both studies, results provided support for action identification theory's model of task enjoyment.

This study explored the lived experience of choosing a healthier lifestyle. Using van Manen's methodology for researching lived experience, five participants described their experiences of the phenomenon. Four essential thematic structures were identified: (a) Conscious Choice; (b) Self Discovery; (c) Goals, Expectations, and Benefits; and (d) Validation and Motivation. Three incidental thematic structures were identified: (a) Resources, (b) Events, and (c) Addiction. A descriptive paragraph was written from the significant statements and a metatheme emerged for the phenomenon. The metatheme for the experience of choosing a healthier lifestyle was written as the phenomenological statement: The lived experience of choosing a healthier lifestyle is a conscious choosing of how to be in the world, and the actions taken to fulfill and sustain that desire.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of subordinate feedback on supervisory performance. Specifically, the study was designed to answer three questions: (1) Would supervisors improve their performance if they were provided with feedback from subordinates? (2) Would supervisors improve their performance if they were provided with self-study materials to develop supervisory skills in addition to survey feedback from subordinates? (3) Would supervisors improve their performance if they were provided with self-study materials only and not survey feedback from subordinates? In order to answer these questions a study was conducted at Valencia Community College in Orlando, Florida, during the 1984-85 academic year. Forty-five career service supervisors at the college were the subjects of the study. These individuals were the immediate supervisors of employees who were engaged in technical, clerical, skilled craft, or service/maintenance work. A pretest-posttest experimental control group design was used in the study. The 45 supervisors were divided into four groups. Supervisors assigned to experimental group E1 received survey feedback from subordinates and self-study materials to develop supervisory skills. Supervisors in experimental group E2 received only survey feedback. Supervisors in experimental group E3 received only the self-study materials. Supervisors in control group C received neither feedback nor the self-study materials. The Survey of Management Practices was used by employees to rate supervisory performance on both the pretest and the posttest. Posttest surveys were completed by subordinates approximately 16 weeks after treatment began. Analysis of covariance was used to adjust posttest scores for pretest differences between the groups and to analyze the significance of the results. No significant differences were found between the four groups. The major implications of the study are that subordinate feedback, or a combination of self-study materials and subordinate feedback, are not sufficient to improve supervisory performance and that most supervisors do not expend the necessary effort to improve performance without positive pressure being applied. Based upon the data from the study and previous research cited, the researcher believes that three elements are needed to change supervisory behavior: (1) feedback from subordinates, (2) training, and (3) positive pressure.