College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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Item EFFECTS OF GROUP STATUS AND IDENTITY ALIGNMENT ON SOCIAL INFLUENCE(2024) Beavan, Kelly Ann; Lucas, Jeffrey W; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A series of three studies examine effects of social identity alignment versus social status on influence within task groups. Status Characteristics Theory (SCT) predicts that deference will be given to high-status members, and Social Identity Theory (SIT) predicts deference to in-group members. This dissertation investigates conditions under which social status or identity alignment might be more predictive of deference by examining status characteristics that also constitute significant identities or memberships to a social in-group (e.g., race, gender). By discerning when social identity or status holds greater sway in task groups, results of three experimental studies shed light on influence dynamics and the interplay of status and social identity. The studies tested three mechanisms—degree of in-group identification, identity threat, and task importance—expected to be impactful in affecting the influence of high-/low-status, in-/out-group partners under varying conditions. Study 1 examines these processes in a minimal group setting (based on abstract groups based on “cognitive association styles”), and Studies 2 and 3 use more naturally-occurring social groups (e.g., home state in Study 2), such as those attached to an overarching status hierarchy (e.g., gender and race in Study 3). Each experiment had participants work with two (simulated) partners to complete a series of trials on an uncertain group task. This setting met the scope conditions for the theories I am applying to establish group structures: Participants were task and collectively oriented (SCT), were working on a task with no immediate feedback about performance and were explicitly told of categorical group differences between themselves and their partners (SIT). The instructions for Study 1 assigned participants to minimal groups based on bogus cognitive association styles. Study 2 used self-reported home state as a group-differentiating characteristic, and finally, Study 3 tested theorized processes with gender and race. Hypothesis 1 predicted that high-status partners would exert more influence than low-status partners and found partial support in Studies 2 and 3, primarily driven by the influence of high-status (in-group) partners over subjects. Hypothesis 2 predicted that in-group partners would have more influence than out-group partners, and results generally supported this by revealing strong influence from in-group partners, regardless of status (although in-group high-status partners were most influential in Studies 2 and 3). Hypothesis 3, which expected heightened task importance to increase deference to high-status others, did not receive strong empirical or theoretical support and was only directly manipulated in Study 1. Hypothesis 4 predicted that under threat to group identity, the effects of group membership on influence would increase relative to that of status. Contrary to expectations, results revealed that identity threat significantly increased the influence levels of high-status partners, even when that high-status meant out-group membership. These findings suggested that identity threat did not heighten the SIT-based effects on social influence (i.e., in-group influence), as predicted, and in some ways point to an SCT-based explanation (i.e., high-status influence) under threat. Hypothesis 5, predicting that identification to the in-group would increase the impact of group membership, relative to that of status, on outcomes of social influence, was strongly supported in Studies 1 and 3. Participants who more highly identified with their in-group accepted greater influence from their in-group (compared to out-group) partners, regardless of that in-group’s relative (high- or low-) status. An SIT interpretation of this finding suggests that low-status in-group members who more highly identify with their (e.g., racial, gender) in-group may not necessarily be more influenced by similar in-group others simply because of their shared group membership. They do, however, appear to be significantly less influenced by out-group others (even when that out-group is higher-status), a finding consistent with my predictions on in-group identification. Finally, Hypothesis 6, predicting in-group identification to moderate the relationships between task importance (6a) and identity threat (6b) on social influence, found mixed support. More highly-identified participants were more influenced by in-group partners (compared to their out-group counterparts), and in-group identification significantly and directly predicted influence above and beyond effects from experimental manipulations. Results from the three studies show that subtle features of the group context (identity threat and heightened in-group identification) affect how much influence (high- and low-status) group members exert over individuals. Findings from this research highlight the complex interplay between status, group membership, identification and threat in shaping social influence dynamics, and I conclude by using these results to evaluate the relative strength of status-based (SCT) versus identity-based (SIT) processes in driving outcomes of social influence.Item THERAPIST-CLIENT RACIAL MATCHING VS. NON-MATCHING AND THERAPISTS’ COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: EXPLORING THEIR RELATION AND TESTING MODERATORS.(2016) Palma Orellana, Beatriz Isabel; Gelso, Charles J.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study assessed the influence of clients’ race (i.e., Black/African American or White/European American), therapists’ universal-diverse orientation (UDO), and therapists’ anger discomfort on countertransference reactions. Countertransference was operationalized as therapists’ self-reported state anxiety, their verbal avoidant responses (as manifestation of behavioral countertransference), and their self-reported countertransference. Data were gathered from 63 White, European American therapists and therapists-in-training. Participants completed online measures pertaining to universal-diverse orientation, anger discomfort, trait anxiety, social desirability, and a demographic questionnaire. A week after completing such measures, the participants completed a Lab session. The therapists and therapists-in-training were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: An angry White/European American client or an angry Black/African American client. Participants watched and verbally responded to a video of the assigned scripted analogue client. Right afterward, the therapists and therapists-in-training completed a measure of state anxiety and three single items assessing the influence of the participant’s countertransference in his or her behaviors, thoughts, and feelings while responding to the videotaped client. Additionally, the participants’ verbal responses were transcribed verbatim and coded as approach or avoidant responses, which ultimately provided an index of behavioral countertransference. Results showed that therapists’ anger discomfort, their universal-diverse orientation, clients’ race, and interaction terms (clients’ race X UDO and clients’ race X anger discomfort) predicted state anxiety. However, in this model, only anger discomfort was statistically significant. No significant effects were found on the other countertransference measures. Additionally, only anger discomfort significantly and uniquely accounted for variance in state anxiety. Contrary to expectations, neither clients’ race nor universal-diverse orientation uniquely accounted for variance in the dependent variables. Results were not significant for the interaction of clients’ race and UDO on therapists’ countertransference reactions. Results were also non-significant for the interaction of clients’ race and anger discomfort on the participants’ countertransference reactions. Implications of the findings are further discussed.Item Culture-Training Match: Testing the Interaction between Trainee Cultural Background and Training Design on Stress Reactions and Transfer of Training(2014) Salmon, Elizabeth; Gelfand, Michele J.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigates how trainee cultural background interacts with training structure and error instructions to predict transfer of training. Previous research on training interventions relies largely on Western theories of learning, and few training techniques have been tested with samples outside of North America or Western Europe. The current research seeks to expand these perspectives to investigate the impact of different training interventions in face and dignity cultures, with a particular focus on how cultural differences in stress reactions affect training outcomes. Building on this foundation, I hypothesize that the match between trainee cultural background and training design elements will predict training effectiveness, as measured by training transfer. Specifically, trainees from dignity cultures are expected to benefit from training interventions with low structure and error encouragement instructions. In contrast, the same training design may be ineffective or even counterproductive for trainees from face cultures, who are hypothesized to benefit more from high structure training and error avoidant instructions. Further, I link culture-training match to physiological stress to suggest that this may be one mechanism through which the interaction between culture and training dimensions impacts training transfer. One study was conducted in which participants from dignity and face cultures (N = 212) were randomly assigned to training conditions varying on structure and error framing instructions. Participants were trained to perform a computer-based simulation, with heart rate and cortisol collected throughout the training intervention. Participants returned seven to 15 days after the training to complete transfer measures. The results showed the expected interactions between culture and training structure and between culture and error instructions for training transfer. Stress reactions did not mediate this effect as expected; in contrast, emotional control was the key explanatory mechanism. Implications for training design and implementation across cultures are discussed, along with possible extensions of this research.Item The use of acoustic cues in phonetic perception: Effects of spectral degradation, limited bandwidth and background noise(2011) Winn, Matthew Brandon; Chatterjee, Monita; Idsardi, William J; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Hearing impairment, cochlear implantation, background noise and other auditory degradations result in the loss or distortion of sound information thought to be critical to speech perception. In many cases, listeners can still identify speech sounds despite degradations, but understanding of how this is accomplished is incomplete. Experiments presented here tested the hypothesis that listeners would utilize acoustic-phonetic cues differently if one or more cues were degraded by hearing impairment or simulated hearing impairment. Results supported this hypothesis for various listening conditions that are directly relevant for clinical populations. Analysis included mixed-effects logistic modeling of contributions of individual acoustic cues for various contrasts. Listeners with cochlear implants (CIs) or normal-hearing (NH) listeners in CI simulations showed increased use of acoustic cues in the temporal domain and decreased use of cues in the spectral domain for the tense/lax vowel contrast and the word-final fricative voicing contrast. For the word-initial stop voicing contrast, NH listeners made less use of voice-onset time and greater use of voice pitch in conditions that simulated high-frequency hearing impairment and/or masking noise; influence of these cues was further modulated by consonant place of articulation. A pair of experiments measured phonetic context effects for the "s/sh" contrast, replicating previously observed effects for NH listeners and generalizing them to CI listeners as well, despite known deficiencies in spectral resolution for CI listeners. For NH listeners in CI simulations, these context effects were absent or negligible. Audio-visual delivery of this experiment revealed enhanced influence of visual lip-rounding cues for CI listeners and NH listeners in CI simulations. Additionally, CI listeners demonstrated that visual cues to gender influence phonetic perception in a manner consistent with gender-related voice acoustics. All of these results suggest that listeners are able to accommodate challenging listening situations by capitalizing on the natural (multimodal) covariance in speech signals. Additionally, these results imply that there are potential differences in speech perception by NH listeners and listeners with hearing impairment that would be overlooked by traditional word recognition or consonant confusion matrix analysis.