This year, six students presented research at WPUPC hosted by Westminster College. Two additional students conducted research with Dr. William E. Kelly (see below).
For those interested in seeing RMU students "in action" at a conference, please take a peek at the PHOTO GALLERY!
The links below are to the pdf versions of the poster or paper handouts (if available). You will need a pdf viewer (e.g., Adobe Acrobat) in order to view these files.
Krista Anders: This study examined the relationship between stress and the family relationships of college
students. One hundred thirty 18-23 year old students at Robert Morris University were surveyed on their levels of school stress and their family relationships, as well as
demographic questions. Findings indicated there was a significant negative correlation between stress and family relationships among freshmen, but not among upperclassmen. This
may be due to a stronger family connection among freshmen that decays each year in college as students learn to depend less on family. Higher GPA’s were also associated with
lower levels of stress. However, GPA and family relationships were not correlated. This suggests that the stress and GPA relationship may be due to an unmeasured
factor. Katherine Fox: Alexithymia is the inability or diminished ability to understand and express emotions or
feelings in the self and/or of others. This paper addressed the relationship between alexithymia and emotional intensity in response to the perceived reality of information (a
video) presented. Students were tested for degree of alexithymia and subsequently divided into one of two groups. Students were shown a disturbing but staged (false) video filmed
in a documentary style designed to be perceived as depicting a real event. Half were told it was not real prior to viewing, while the other half were told it was not real
immediately after viewing. All groups then responded to a brief survey. Correlations between emotional intensity and levels of alexithymia were
performed. Abbie Leverich: In this study, the effect of loss of sleep on short-term memory among college students was
examined. Specifically, a multiple baseline design was used to assess the potential benefits of napping on memory following sleep disruptions. Participants were four college
seniors from a small college in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It was expected that taking a nap for up to 90-minutes would reverse negative effects on memory of being tired. The
participants were given a short-term memory test the morning after a night of sleep loss. One of the participants was then randomly selected to nap for no more than 90-minutes.
All participants were then retested to compare whether napping had the only effect or if passing of time also played a role in the second test
results. Catherine M. McGee: Undergraduates enrolled in psychology courses at Robert Morris University reported their
personal memories surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. These memories were collected within two days of the incident and then re-collected again approximately ten years
later. The present study examined three accuracy factors that have not been examined previously in the flashbulb memory literature: facts, feelings, and flow. Results
demonstrated typical accuracy distortions (facts), as well as an expected increase in emotional memories (feelings), while evidence for changes in organizational memory for
events (flow) was mixed. Bryon Montgomery: The present study focused on perceptions of procrastination and how they relate to
stereotypes of procrastination according to academic major; specifically, how students viewed procrastination of psychology majors versus non-psychology majors. Psychology and
non-psychology students from a small college in Western Pennsylvania volunteered to respond to the survey. Participants rated themselves and people outside their major on levels
of procrastination. It was predicted that psychology majors, who should be more knowledgeable about human behavior, would rate procrastination equally regardless of major.
Non-psychology majors who are likely to lack the same insights into human nature should show the typical in-group/out-group effect. Tana Sanchez: People lie. Age, gender, and a variety of other traits do not by themselves facilitate lie
detection; so most people do not have an ability to consistently know when others lie. However, it seems that a select few are able to detect falsehoods. Examination of the
literature reveals characteristics that correlate with lie detection accuracy as well as personality. The present study examined personality type (Myers-Briggs) to determine if
the predicted ENTP personality would be best at detecting lies. Participants viewed nine videos of storytellers sharing true or false emotional stories and assessed truthfulness.
A Signal Detection analysis of results supported the prediction that the closer to ENTP, the better a lie detector a person was. Implications of these findings are
discussed.
| Dan Esterly: This study examined the relationship between negative stereotypes of adopted individuals and status of relationships with adopted individuals. A 10-item questionnaire was completed by 88 students from a private university in the Northeast United States. The results indicated that participants who had distanced relationships with adopted individuals held significantly more negative stereotypes than participants who had close relationships with adopted individuals. The findings supported the hypothesis and were consistent with previous research. |
| Katie O'Dowd: This study examined the relationship between depression and the discrepancy between real and ideal extracurricular engagement. To examine this, 123 university students completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (Brief) and an extracurricular engagement scale. It was found that students categorized as low depressed had a higher discrepancy between real and ideal hours spent in organizations compared to those who were categorized as high depressed. The results and areas for future research were discussed. |