Schedule of Events

A myriad of abrupt changes in society have taken place globally in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent research over the past year indicates young adults are experiencing lower levels of mental health and health-promoting behaviors upon stay-at-home orders related to the pandemic. The purpose of this study sought to examine how stress perception and self-compassion serve as predictors of self-care behaviors in American young adults 1 year after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, to further understand how young adults may or may not be maintaining their health and wellbeing during uncertain times. 
Young adults within the ages 18-25 were recruited (n = 100) via campus sign-ups from California Lutheran University students and through outside snowball sampling via social media. Participants who provided consent completed a few indices online to assess their levels of stress perception, negative beliefs of self-compassion, and self-compassion. They then completed the 33-item Mindful Self-care Scale (Cook-Cottone & Guyker, 2018) to measure the frequency of self-care behaviors they had been engaging in recently. A simple mediation analysis was tested using PROCESS (Hayes, 2012). It was hypothesized that higher levels of stress perception and negative self-compassion beliefs will predict a lower frequency of self-care behaviors with self-compassion as a mediator and participants with higher levels of self-compassion will engage in a higher frequency of self-care behaviors. Therefore, there would be an indirect effect of stress perception and negative self-compassion beliefs on self-care frequency through young adult’s levels of self-compassion.

This study examined how nighttime-specific social media usage and feelings toward social media relate to sleep quality in an individual. This topic is important to survey due to social media usage before bedtime being associated with negative attributes. Past research has found that the timing of social media usage is a predominant negative predictor of an individual's sleep quality and overall well-being (Woods et al., 2016). Other studies have concluded that usage of social media before bedtime is not damaging to an individual's sleep quality (Das-Friebel et al., 2020) and that usage may even serve as an aid to help one fall asleep (Batten et al., 2020). Through an online study, 100 adult participants were sampled from the California Lutheran University student sign-up system and accessed through the researcher's social media post. The researcher used a multiple regression design. Participants reported the typical number of minutes of social media use before bedtime and completed a scale to assess addiction to social media use (Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale) as well as a scale to measure average quality of sleep over the week (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index). I hypothesized that addiction to social media and usage before bedtime will predict poor sleep quality, with the impact of usage before bedtime mediated through addiction to social media usage.

Understanding ways to build resilience during a pandemic in a multicultural society is of urgent concern. Past research found that social support was not important for resilience, but that a sense of purpose and healthy pride were (Gerson, 2018). These findings were based on pre-pandemic assessments of predominantly White adults and did not account for the possible impact of subculture or such factors as collectivism. The present study explored the roles of purpose, pride, and perceived social support during the pandemic for a national multicultural sample of US adults who varied on collectivism. Adults (n = 706) from Amazon’s crowd-sourcing platform Mechanical Turk (MTurk) completed online questionnaires in fall 2020 to assess purpose, pride, perceived social support, collectivism, and resilience. A path analysis using Hayes’ (2018) PROCESS 3.2 tool showed that collectivism moderated the impact of social support on resilience, such that social support predicted resilience more strongly for those high in collectivism than for those low in collectivism. There was a moderated mediation for social support’s impact on resilience, through its impact on pride. Adults low on collectivism were less impaired by low perceived social support than adults high on collectivism. Subcultures vary in their valuing of such factors as collectivism, social support, and pride. More research is needed to address the predictors of resilience for all members of a multicultural society.

Providing culturally competent care to Native American clients requires an understanding of Native American Historical Trauma. Boarding schools are implicated as a major influence in the destruction of indigenous cultures and the transmission of intergenerational trauma. The current study seeks an understanding of the Native American boarding school experience within the contemporary historical period of 1945 to present, as this information is lacking in the literature. This study used a qualitative phenomenological approach to discover and provide a rich description of the emotional, social, and psychological effects of attending Native American boarding school. The participants were five Native Americans who attended the Seneca Indian boarding school from 1948 to 1972. They completed a semi-structured interview and demographic questionnaire. Results showed that attending Seneca Indian boarding school from 1948 to 1972 appeared to have a positive impact on attendees’ sense of self, their capacity for resilience, and their ability and desire to maintain family connections and tribal culture. The results contradict the available research on the quality of boarding school experience, and have added valuable information to the literature of Native American Historical Trauma.

The tendency for individuals to lean toward completing tasks in accordance with their circadian rhythms is a common practice.  The research was done in hopes to provide a better understanding of the interaction between circadian rhythms and task completion.  The researcher hopes to use this research as a tool to aid an organization’s ability to have a more productive working environment. A one-time, 15-minute study was designed to understand the interaction between self-identified time preference, the timing of a task, and task completion. A 2 x 2 mixed independent groups factorial design with two independent variables, self-identified time preference (early bird or night owl) and time of day of the task (morning or night), was utilized. Participants were obtained through social media as well as California Lutheran Psychology classes prompted for the study through the Sona System. The study was conducted entirely online and was in accordance with IRB standards. I hypothesized that there will be a significant interaction between the self-identified time preference (early or night) and the time of day of the task (morning or night) in relation to speed and quality of task completion. Participants who identify as the early birds will perform better in both speed and quality during morning tasks than night tasks, whereas participants who identify as night owls will perform poorly during morning tasks than night tasks. 

The aim of this study was to examine the internal and external factors affecting online work motivation. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, many people had shifted to an online work environment and worked from home for over a year. A multiple regression design was conducted to gain a better understanding of the changes in motivational levels due to working online, by analyzing a person’s job satisfaction, their passion for their work, and the social interaction they have with their coworkers. Approximately 100 individuals who were primarily working online, whether as a worker or student, were invited to participate in an online survey. The participants were either students from California Lutheran University that accessed the study through campus sign ups or adults accessed through the researcher’s social media. The participants completed the survey by self-reporting their job satisfaction, passion for their work, and social interaction while working online. The participants were then asked how motivated they felt at work recently. The participants reported their surveys by rating these factors using a series of scales from items on the Work-related Basic Need Satisfaction Scale (Van den Broeck et al., 2010), the Work Passion Scale (Johri et al., 2016), and the Multidimensional Work Motivational Scale (Gagné et al., 2015). It was predicted that satisfaction, passion, and social interaction will positively and significantly predict motivation for online work. Social interaction was predicted to be the strongest predictor for work motivation.

I explored the relationship between fear of crime and gender and how they affect memory recall of a crime. The significance of the study is that it may inform an understanding of how reliable memory recall is when an individual is under stress. Approximately 100 men and women participated in an online study to assess the relationship between gender, fear of crime, and memory of a mock crime scene. Participants included CLU students and adults obtained through the researcher’s social media platforms. Participants answered questions about different types of crimes they may or may not have encountered and then viewed a picture of a mock crime scene for 15 seconds. They then answered questions to assess their memory for visual details presented in the scene. This was a 2 x 2 independent groups factorial design, with participant gender (male, female) and fear of crime (high, low) as the factors. Memory of crime details was the dependent variable. I hypothesized that participant gender and fear of crime would interact such that when fear of crime was high, men would score higher on memory recall than women, but when fear of crime was low, women would score higher than men.

In recent years, publishing houses have adopted innovations like e-books and audiobooks to cater to the changing needs of their consumers in the digital age. This study applies Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovations model to understand the factors the affect individuals to shift from the traditional print format to e-books and audiobooks. It examines what variables cause individuals to shift to e-books or audiobooks as their preferred reading format and whether the reader’s age affects an individual’s choice of e-books, audiobooks, or print books as their preferred reading format. Preliminary results indicate that most participants prefer e-books, especially those aged 30-39 years old. In addition,  most participants cite e-books’ immediate access after purchase, use of minimal storage, and portability as the primary reasons for their preference.

Many factors have been studied to understand variables that may impact memory recall. Findings have been mixed regarding the impact of background music. The purpose of this study was to examine whether a person’s personality may interact with the type of background music present while taking a memory recall test. This online study utilized a 2 x 2 independent groups mixed factorial design. Participants included undergraduate students enrolled in psychology courses and adults known to the researcher (n = approximately 100). They provided demographic information, whether they identified as a morning-type or evening-type person, and completed a short memory task. The memory task involved viewing 25 different words for 15 seconds and then listing as many words as they could remember within 30 seconds. They were randomly assigned to hear either fast-paced or slow-paced background music while they recalled the words. I predicted that there would be a significant interaction between the pace of background music (slow or fast) and type of person (morning-type or evening-type), such that participants who are morning-type people will score highest on memory recall with the presence of fast-paced background music, whereas participants who are evening-type people will score highest on memory recall with the presence of low-paced background music.

Many different factors have been assessed to determine which variables play a significant role in one’s eating habits. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of goal setting and parenting style on healthy eating habits. I predicted that there would be a significant interaction between the parenting style of one’s mother (authoritarian or authoritative) and exposure to an eating goal exercise (present or not) in their impact on plans for healthy eating. Students with authoritarian mothers will score low on plans for healthy eating unless they are exposed to the eating goal exercise, whereas students with authoritative mothers will score high regardless of whether they are exposed to the exercise. This online study employed a 2 x 2 mixed factorial design. Undergraduate students enrolled in psychology courses (n = approximately 100) provided background information regarding their age, gender, education level, ethnicity, number of dependents in the family, and the number of days per week in which they participated in some form of exercise. Participants completed the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ; Buri, 1991), which assesses parenting styles, and the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT; Garner & Garfinkel, 1979), which assesses eating behaviors. Once randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group, those in the experimental group constructed a list of goals regarding their eating habits, relationships at home, activity levels, and relationships with friends, while those in the control group constructed a list of the activities that were completed on the day prior to completing the study.

Abstract: The social response of countries whose citizens exhibit stronger social norms were more successful in controlling the COVID-19 outbreak than countries whose citizens tended not to adhere as closely to social norms. These countries, also categorized as collectivist countries, are not only more empathetic to the other members of their community but they are also more likely to adhere to health guidelines/laws. Additionally, their governments have historically distributed resources that benefit the whole community and continue to uphold this methodology throughout the pandemic.  Purpose: By understanding which social responses are more successful than others, it is not only easier to appreciate the diversity of different countries' cultures but it also gives insight into how countries could minimize damage from viruses in the future. Method: Literature review 

A vast amount of literature exists on the relations between personality traits and athletic performance outcomes; however, research on this topic has declined over the years due to methodological challenges and inconsistent findings. The purpose of the current study was to explore the relations between personality traits and athletic performance in college athletes.  This investigation is important to better understand what psychological factors are related to collegiate athletic success and achievement. Eighty athletes from four different team sports from a small, private NCAA Division-III university were voluntarily recruited to participate. The participants completed the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (6th ed.) at the beginning of their athletic season. Athletic performance was assessed through multiple coach ratings and a performance statistic collected at the conclusion of the athletic season. It was hypothesized that athletes higher in the personality factors of Emotional Stability (C), Rule-Consciousness (G), and the global factor of Tough-mindedness (TM), would have higher coach ratings and performance statistics. Additionally, the same personality factors are hypothesized to predict athletic performance when athletic ability is controlled for. Emotional Stability showed significant positive correlations to coachability and composite coach ratings and approached significance with all other coach rating domains. Post-hoc analyses showed that Rule-Consciousness displayed significant negative correlations to coachability, work ethic, and composite coach ratings. Hierarchal regression analyses revealed that athletic ability was consistently the strongest predictor of athletic performance outcomes and the addition of personality factors did not statistically change the prediction. Limitations, implications, and future directions are discussed.  

Many adolescents on the autism spectrum entering college are less likely to graduate than their neurotypical peers. Prior research has suggested students on the spectrum may struggle with organization, socializing with peers, communication with faculty and staff, self-advocacy, and coping with emotions. The Introduction to College Life Program is a two-week online college transition workshop consisting of six classes designed to increase participants’ college self-efficacy by developing social and communication skills related to various aspects of university life (e.g., time-management, utilizing academic support services, communicating with students and faculty, classroom/online etiquette, and self-care.) This research will investigate the effectiveness of the program in increasing participant college self-efficacy and their growth mindset, in addition to gathering feedback about their program experience. Participants will be approximately 10 high school students between the ages of 17 to 19 years old and who self-report an autism spectrum diagnosis. To measure changes to college self-efficacy and growth mindset, participants will complete the abbreviated College Self-Efficacy Scale (CSEI) and the Growth Mindset Scale before and after the program. After completing the workshop, the participants and program assistants will be interviewed for feedback about the program.  Interviews will be transcribed, coded, and analyzed for themes. We anticipate participants will report increased self-efficacy and growth mindset scores and will share feeling more prepared and less anxious about college.  Finally, recommendations for changes to the program, limitations of the study, and future research will be discussed.

Attachment theories can provide a framework for clinicians and clients to understand the role that early life relationships play in the adult relationships created later in life.  For this reason, an attachment perspective has been employed to look more closely at parenting behaviors within the Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) population with hopes of contributing valuable knowledge to the IPV, attachment, and parenting literature. The current study examines the adult attachment patterns reported by individuals within the intimate partner violence (IPV) population to observe whether a particular attachment style is more commonly reported within that population than in the non-IPV population. The current study utilized quantitative methods for data collection through the use of self-report measures on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were 88 mothers from the US, who had and had not experienced an IPV relationship. Results showed that participants from the IPV group reported anxious attachment style at a significantly higher rate than the participants from the non- IPV group. Given that women with an anxious attachment may be more at risk of participating in a relationship in which IPV behaviors are displayed, the results of the current study support past findings on attachment styles within the IPV population.

This study explored the role that gender plays on the perception of credibility of sports announcers. Although the field of sports media is heavily dominated by men, more women are entering this domain and are being met with opposition. Some women in sports broadcasting have experienced sexism and harassment and are seen as less credible than their male coworkers. As women obtain more opportunities in this area, it is important to examine the public perceptions of female sports announcers. Approximately 100 California Lutheran University students accessed through the SONA system and adults recruited through social media participated in this study. A 2 x 2 independent groups factorial design was conducted online, in which participants were randomly assigned one of four videos from either a professional softball game or a professional baseball game. Each of the two sports had one video with a male sports announcer and one video with a female sports announcer. Participants answered the credibility scale created by Berlo et al. (1969). Participants also answered questions on their demographics and background regarding their knowledge and experience with the sport in the video they watched. I hypothesized that female sports announcers will be perceived as more credible than male sports announcers when commentating on sports typically played by women, and that male sports announcers will be seen as more credible than female sports announcers when commentating on sports typically played by men. 

On July 21, 2020, the Latino Caucus of the Los Angeles Times Guild published a letter asking Los Angeles Times management to stop treating Hispanics as a minority and to have the paper “center around [their] stories.” The letter asked for a newsroom that reflected the demographics in L.A. County. Hispanic representation in the news is important, because the identities represented can affect the way the community is perceived by others and how they view themselves. A literature review of eight articles was done to understand the effects news media representation can have on individuals. Then, this study analyzed 17 articles from the Entertainment section of the paper from the month of February 2020 and then again from February 2021, to see if there were any key changes in the kinds of stories told and the representation of the Hispanic/Latinx community. The L.A. Times Entertainment articles were read and thematically coded to see if the content reflected the changes asked for in the letter. Preliminary results show that the amount of content has not changed and that a majority of Hispanic/Latinx coverage is still focused on the community as a minority or diversity aspect in mainstream media.

This study explored the relationship between participation in sports and both problem-solving and interpersonal skills. The present study, a 3-group design (no sport participation, individual sport participation, team sport participation), was conducted entirely online. Participants (n = 50) consisted of both college students from California Lutheran University and individuals over the age of 18 that signed up through Facebook and Twitter. Participants were asked basic demographic questions followed by questions about their participation, if any, in extracurricular activities. Participants were then asked questions taken from the Teamwork Scale for Youth and the Problem-Solving Analysis Protocol (P-SAP), rated based on complexity of response. I hypothesized that there will be a significant effect for sport participation such that individuals who did not participate in sports will have a lower P-SAP score than individuals who played in either an individual or a team sport. I also hypothesized that individuals who participated in an individual sport will have a lower P-SAP score than individuals who played in a team sport. 

An online multiple regression study was conducted to analyze the relationship between gender and stress and working memory. It is important to understand how stress and gender relate to working memory since past research has shown that stress can interfere with memory, but that women under high stress tend to perform better than men under high stress. The study included approximately 100 participants, with California Lutheran University students accessed through campus sign ups and adults from the researcher’s social media posts. Participants answered several questionnaires, including the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al., 1983), which asked multiple questions regarding thoughts and feelings within the past month, and demographic questions on gender, age, and race/ethnicity. Participants also completed a working memory task which consisted of looking at a grid of 10 randomly numbered objects for 30 seconds and then listing how many they could recall. I hypothesized that women with high stress levels would perform significantly better than men with high stress levels, but that overall high stress levels would hinder performance compared to those with lower stress levels.

This study examined the relationship between personality and the ability to imagine aromas portrayed in visual images. A 2 x 2 mixed factorial design was performed to assess the relationship between sensitivity (high, low), type of image (pleasant, disgusting), and olfactory imaginability. Previous studies have found that disgusting images affect participants’ attention longer than non-disturbing images (Hooff et al., 2013). It has been theorized that, because of an early human survival instinct, disturbing elements usually have a higher impact on participants’ senses than non-disturbing images. Approximately 100 male and female adults participated in the present online study. Participants included both CLU students and others accessed through the researcher’s social media sites. Participants completed a measure of sensitivity (Highly Sensitive Person Test) and viewed 14 images that portrayed either pleasant (e.g., a flower) or unpleasant (e.g., garbage) smells. Participants rated the images in terms ofhow well they could imagine the smell being portrayed. I predicted that participants scoring high on sensitivity would report being able to imagine the aroma of the disgusting images more strongly than the non-disgusting images, whereas participants scoring low on sensitivity would score low on ability to imagine the scents of both types of images.
 

This study investigated differences in mock juror’s perceptions of a Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity (NGRI) case based on a defendant’s religious affiliation and motive. Participants evaluated the NGRI case of a defendant (Christian/Muslim/Agnostic/unstated) after having committed murder by a certain motive (voice of: God/devil/unidentified) and evaluated the NGRI’s believability.  There was a significant religious affiliation by motive interaction on NGRI believability, F(6, 632) = 2.75, p = .012, ηp2 = .025. When the motive was the devil’s voice, mock jurors felt a defendant who was Christian (M = 5.02, SD = 1.40) and had their religion unstated (M = 5.21, SD = 1.56) were significantly more believable than an Agnostic (M = 4.28, SD = 1.86). When the motive was an unidentified voice, the Agnostic (M = 5.02, SD = 1.53) was more believable than the Christian (M = 4.26, SD = 1.97) or Muslim (M = 4.32, SD = 1.83). A Christian was more believable when they heard the devil (M = 5.02, SD =1.40) versus an unidentified (M = 4.26, SD = 1.97) voice.  An Agnostic defendant was more believable when they heard an unidentified (M = 5.02, SD = 1.53) voice versus the devil (M = 4.28, SD = 1.86). This has implications for future NGRI definitions and cases. 

Understanding ways to build resilience during a pandemic is of urgent concern. Pre-pandemic assessments of predominantly White adults found that a sense of purpose and healthy pride are important for resilience (Gerson, 2018); other studies with ethnically diverse samples found ethnic identity to predict well-being (Roberts et al., 1999). The present study explored the roles of purpose, pride, and ethnic identity as predictors of resilience for a multiracial sample of US adults; relationships were explored separately for BIPOC and White respondents. BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or Latinx) (n=99) and White US adults (n=489) from Amazon's crowd-sourcingplatform Mechanical Turk (MTurk) completed online questionnaires assessing purpose, pride, ethnic identity, and resilience. A path analysis showed that, for BIPOC respondents, purpose positively predicted ethnic identity, both purpose and ethnic identity positively predicted pride, and both purpose and pride positively predicted resilience. There was a significant indirect effect on resilience for purpose, mediated through ethnic identity and then through pride. For White respondents, purpose again positively predicted ethnic identity, but only purpose predicted pride. Both purpose and pride positively predicted resilience. Ethnic identity also predicted resilience, but negatively. Ethnic identity impacted resilience differently for BIPOC and White respondents. While a strong ethnic identity predicted pride, thereby positively impacting resilience for BIPOC adults, it was a negative predictor of resilience for White adults. More research is needed to understand the roles played by such factors as ethnic identity, pride, and purpose and to identify predictors of resilience for all members of our multicultural society.

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in the Simi Hills has a complex and conflicting environmental history. Serving as the home to many sacred sites for the Indigenous Chumash people, the landscape also holds the potential to connect the Santa Monica Mountains and the Los Padres National Forest, in aid of ecologically critical habitat linkage for the region’s imperiled mountain lion population. Established by Rocketdye as an engine-testing facility, its partial nuclear meltdown in 1959 has poisoned the environment and has caused a cleanup controversy, yet to be resolved. As a result of these overlapping, contradictory, and ongoing histories of the human relationship to land, SSFL offers a unique opportunity to apply environmental storytelling techniques with Indigenous histories to promote remediation of land. While the focus of the project was split into three parts; the Indigenous perspective, the environmental perspective, and the community perspective; the goal is to record the stories of SSFL, with special emphasis on Indigenous history and people. The exclusion of Indigneous voices is common within conversations surrounding environmentalism, as they typically focus on the ecological and community impact, making this an important step towards raising community awareness of environmental justice. By conducting interviews with individuals closely related to each perspective, a story map of the history of SSFL highlighting the intersections of each topic was created. Environmental storytelling presents a unique relationship between environmentalism and culture, and can act as a guide for humanity as we come to integrate changes to the holocene.