Monthly Archives: January 2023

Thesis season is here at the FF-PTG Lab! Kaylie Williams, a Master’s student, defended her thesis on conspiracy beliefs and different thinking styles. Conspiracy beliefs are alternatives to widely believed explanations for an event. These conspiracy beliefs often assume that one explanation is staged and often is done to harm others. The ways in which people think would influence how they interpret and begin to believe, the information provided by a conspiracy belief. In Kaylie’s research, different thinking styles were used to attempt to change the way people think about conspiracies. These thinking styles were measured in order to observe which are consistent with conspiracy beliefs. Some of the thinking styles included In her experiment, abstract and concrete thinking were used in an attempt to influence an individual’s conspiracy beliefs. It was hypothesized that abstract thinking would show increased conspiracy beliefs. As for concrete thinking the opposite would be true. In general, as well individuals higher in the following were hypothesized to show higher conspiracy beliefs as well: symptoms of PTSD, antisocial behaviors, vaccine hesitancy, low medical trust, paranoia, and more openness to experience.

Of the many hypotheses, there were a couple that was either fully or partially supported. The first of which is medical trust and vaccine hesitancy. The medical trust had a significant negative correlation with conspiracy beliefs. Unfortunately, the same was not found for vaccine hesitancy. The rationale is that vaccine hesitancy may have measured individuals more cautious of the vaccine rather than outright believing conspiracies related to the vaccine. As seen in previous research, Kaylie was able to replicate the positive relationship between paranoia and conspiracy beliefs. The thinking styles did not influence individuals’ conspiracy beliefs with every thinking style intervention resulting in higher conspiracy beliefs. This may not have in fact been the fault of the experiment, but survey fatigue. With how many measures were used for the first portion of the experiment it may have caused participants to become tired and lose focus. This fatigue, rather than the experiment’s priming, may have had a stronger influence on the participant’s responses for the second portion. Kaylie plans to collect more data to address the issue with the priming used in this experiment. Other limitations include the sample being a college sample, and only with individuals in the USA, the fact that this was an online survey and potentially dishonest answers from the participants. Hopefully, by addressing this issue we can see if the priming is successful, and how the different thinking styles may affect believing in conspiracies. We are excited for your next round of collecting data and wish you the best Kaylie!

Second-semester undergraduate research assistant, Paxton Hicks, recently presented the article “I Cheated, but Only a Little: Partial Confessions to Unethical Behavior” (Peer et al., 2014).

Lying is described as the intentional act of conveying incorrect information to mislead another individual and may have several motivations. Confessions are viewed as either someone confessing or not, which can be problematic as some confessions are partial. They provide a grey area to confessions since they are hand-picking what to reveal. The authors of this article propose that partial confessions may minimize guilt and motivate providing part of the information. The purposes of the study include (1) examining the prevalence of partial confessions, (2) the antecedents of partial confessions, and (3) the consequences of partial confessions.

This article included five studies and each study had mean ages ranging from 28-34 recruited from Amazon MTurk. The hypotheses of each study are as followed: H1: Extent of cheating and the likelihood of confessing to all or some of the cheating, H2: Individuals partially confessing will be perceived as more trustworthy than both of those that fully confess or do not confess at all, H3: Do people feel better or worse when partially confessing?, H4: Individuals will perceive others who partially confess as more honest than those who do not confess at all, and H5: Do these results apply to daily life occurrences? How will people classify their confessions? In each of the five studies, participants were given a task and then a questionnaire measuring confession, mood and prospective mood, factors of individuals’ reasons for confessing, and the extent of the confession.

After reviewing the results of each study, Hicks revisited the hypotheses. For H1, it was found that of the 139 confessors, 40.44% were partial confessions, 59-56% were full confessions, and individuals who partially cheat were more likely to fully confess and vice versa. H2 was partially supported as partial confessions were more credible than non-confessions (t(492)= 4.93, p< .01), but not for full confessions. H3 results suggest that partial confessions led to higher levels of actual negative affect across all groups. H4 was supported as partial confessions were higher in credibility ratings than non-confessions (t(437) = 3.14, p < .01). H5 shows that full confessions were significantly higher than partial confessions in all motivation domains of confession except public shame. 

Limitations of the study include that the stakes of the experiment were low (.10-$1) despite the relatively high frequency of cheating/lying as higher stakes scenarios may produce better results. The study included small sample size and the use of parametric tests. Additionally, Hicks recognizes that there may be measurement errors in some of the studies which lead to the curiousness that there may be more human errors included in the data. 

While confessions were not manipulated, this study gives insight into the prevalence and some of the potential outcomes and perceptions. It showed that others’ partial confessions were viewed as more credible than no confession at all and led to many future research directions for Paxton. He will be conducting his own study based on his interest in confessions and lying. We are excited to see what he accomplishes!

Since 2008, the PTG lab led by Dr. Kanako Taku has conducted a series of social and clinical research on how people experience various changes as a result of highly stressful, potentially traumatic life events, centering around the construct of posttraumatic growth (PTG). PTG is what brought Dr. Taku to the US, to lead a lab with students at Oakland University and colleagues around the world, and this work continues to be inspired and motivated by the memory of Shelby.

In 2019, the lab changed its name to FF-PTG (Free Form PTG) Lab, challenging both established research and ourselves. We now study various content, meanings, and forms of changes, including crystallization of socio-emotional status, tipping point, non-linear changes, and continuity and discontinuity within the field of clinical, social, cross-cultural, and personality psychology.

In 2023, Dr. Taku agreed to serve as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Loss and Trauma (Taylor & Francis), aiming to foster more inclusive research topics, targets, and authors, especially people who have been stigmatized or have little resources, believing that the meanings and values of loss and trauma changed tremendously from mostly pathological to more holistic and they can change even more to be inclusive.

Our lab always recruits creative and motivated students and researchers from around the world to foster collaboration. Just so you know, we are still having fun with weekly themed two-slide presentations and step-backs at lab meetings. The lab keeps going, and the lab keeps growing, but in a non-linear way!

Kayla Benson, a Ph.D. student, presented her thesis defense titled Collective Action as Evidence for Posttraumatic Growth during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Kayla’s purpose for the thesis was to investigate collective action behaviors during COVID-19 and whether it could be an indicator of constructive PTG growth. Collective action is when people in a group work towards a common goal. Whether it was wearing a mask, avoiding large social gatherings, or remaining quarantined when sick, the pandemic presented an opportunity to investigate these preventative behaviors as collective actions.

Kayla gathered data from 354 participants, 302 of them were eligible for the analysis. These participants were recruited through Oakland University’s SONA system for credits. When it came to analyzing the data, it was found that there were no significant differences between those experiencing constructive PTG and engaging in more COVID-19 precautious behaviors. However, when exploring whether altruism could be different for those experiencing constructive PTG it was found to be different than those experiencing low PTG. Other interesting results include that while narcissism did not differ between the groups, optimism was different between constructive and low PTG; with the former being the higher of the two. Lastly, another analysis was run for participants who responded when there was no local mandate for wearing a mask. 204 participants were included in this analysis to see if wearing a mask would be more common for those experiencing constructive PTG despite the mandate being disbanded. The results unfortunately found no difference in mask-wearing behavior. Kayla is in the process of collecting more data related to this topic in order to conduct future analyses. There are several future directions for this field of study. One potential direction includes investigating the phenomenon of individual and collective trauma in stressful times. Utilizing a longitudinal design may also help to investigate other factors that would indicate constructive PTG growth. We cannot wait to see what you find next, Kayla!

Winter 2023 semester is here! We have exciting news to share. We are pleased to welcome Avery Machuk as the newest undergraduate research assistant.

Welcome, Avery! She is currently a Junior at Oakland University majoring in psychology with plans to continue her education and become a therapist. She decided to join the lab to gain a deeper understanding of posttraumatic growth and hopes to learn how to utilize posttraumatic growth to treat her future clients. Avery will begin working on her Honors College Thesis during this upcoming semester and in doing so she hopes to further explore psychological constructs in relation to young adults and adolescents, who she hopes to work with after becoming a licensed therapist. Avery can be reached at averymachuk@oakland.edu.

Additionally, Paxton Hicks (phicks2@oakland.edu) will be the upcoming lab manager! Be sure to follow for more updates within the FF-PTG Lab.