UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal

According to the 2021 Worldwide Gambling Statistics website, more than a quarter of the population gambles, which means literally billions of people gamble at least once a year (Casino.org, 2021). However, despite the vast number of people gambling per year, there is a lack of research on how emotion regulation affects their perceptions and experiences of gambling. Thus, the aim of this study was to better understand the role of emotion regulation deficits in gambling. A survey was conducted to assess the relationship between frequency and type of gambling behavior and emotion regulation difficulties. The participants were gathered from the UCR Psychology Subject Pool (N = 195; after attention checks, N = 162). These participants were directed to a survey that assessed personal experiences and beliefs about gambling and their emotion regulation strategies and difficulties. Results from correlational analyses indicated that people who tend to use cognitive reappraisal (thinking differently to change their emotions), but not expressive suppression (hiding their emotions), gambled in a more controlled way. Suppression tendencies did not predict any gambling experience or belief. In addition, people who generally had greater difficulty regulating their emotions reported gambling less frequently and gambling in a more enjoyable and focused but also stressful way. The findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal may provide a benefit for individuals who gamble in moderation. Furthermore, those who struggle with regulating their emotions may experience gambling in different ways compared to those who struggle less with emotion regulation.

Plant viruses cause serious disease and losses in domesticated crops. However, we know little about plant viruses outside of agriculture. One reason for this is the lack of symptoms of virus infection in wild plants to promptly diagnose and identify with targeted methods. This is now changing with the availability of untargeted “next-generation” sequencing technologies to analyze the viromes of asymptomatic wild plants and study virus impacts on plant health. In this study, we determined whether key winter-growing perennials in local reserves are infected with crop-associated viruses. A previous study in the same locations found that summer-growing perennials host co-infections by multiple crop-associated viruses, but winter-growing plants have not been explored. To enrich for virus sequences, we extracted doubled-stranded RNA, a unique feature of virus replication. We sequenced this material using the Illumina NextSeq platform, then assembled and identified viruses using Galaxy software. In contrast to summer-growing plants, we detected just one crop-associated virus in winter plants: the generalist, Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV). Phylogenetic analysis shows this CMV is in subgroup IA, the most prevalent in the United States. Our results suggest that winter-growing plant viromes have minimal overlap with summer-growing plant viromes and that winter plants may be less exposed to crop-associated viruses.

In March of 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 an international public health emergency. In an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19, the CDC recommended implementing social distancing practices. In this study (N = 732), we examined self-reported indicators of social distancing (e.g., avoiding physical contact, declining social gatherings), duration of social distancing (in days), and the number of times participants went outside in the past week as simultaneous predictors of various measures of well-being (i.e., loneliness, emotional states). When controlling for overall satisfaction of life, findings suggested that individuals who reported higher levels of social distancing also reported more negative emotions, less positive emotions, and more anxiety symptoms. Surprisingly, individuals who reported higher levels of social distancing reported less loneliness. Individuals who reported going outside more often also indicated less loneliness, fewer depressive symptoms, and fewer anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that social distancing practices play a substantial but nuanced role in well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. higher education system hosts a wide range of international students with the majority from East Asian countries. East Asian international students may have particular difficulty with acculturating into a novel environment given their predominant interdependent self-construal, which contrasts with the largely independent cultural imperative of the West. The present study investigates the potential associations between international students’ acculturation, self-construal (SC), and their academic and psychological adjustment (e.g., achievement goals, academic achievement, subjective well-being) to shed light on how East Asian international students can best adapt to a new culture. Participants included a total of 48 East Asian international students (25 male, 23 female; age range: 18 to 23). Results from a series of correlation analyses indicated that there were no significant correlations between acculturation strategy and self-construal. However, there was a significant correlation between performance-avoidance goals and GPA. Additionally, the separation strategy was negatively associated with negative affect and positively associated with life satisfaction, and the marginalization strategy was positively associated with negative affect and negatively associated with life satisfaction. The findings suggest that acculturation strategy is not directly linked to academic achievement; instead, it has a more prominent influence on well-being among East Asian international students. Further longitudinal research may provide a more comprehensive understanding of the association between acculturation and achievement goals in this unique student population.

Our personalities color how we interpret others’ emotions. Some people have an increased tendency to identify others’ facial affect as negative or threatening, which may lead to the misinterpretation of social cues, poor responses in social settings, and could exacerbate feelings of stress or anxiety in social situations. Yet, studies linking personality traits on the Big Five Inventory (BFI), specifically neuroticism, to emotion recognition are mixed (Cunningham, 1977; Matsumoto et al., 2000). This study investigated the effect of neuroticism on people’s discriminability and speed when identifying others’ facial emotions. Participants (n = 37) judged the emotion of faces that were morphed along two emotion spectra: happiness to fear and happiness to anger. Responses determined participants’ negativity threshold, or the point on the spectrum where their judgment switched from happy to angry or fearful. We tested the hypothesis that people who scored high on the neuroticism scale of the BFI would detect negative emotions more readily than people scoring low on neuroticism. We also measured the influence of personality traits on response time. As expected, we observed that high neurotic people were more sensitive to negative facial affect than low neurotic people. This extends on the research finding that individuals high in neuroticism have high emotional reactivity to negative stimuli to include ambiguous facial expressions. However, contrary to our hypothesis, response time was not associated with neuroticism level. Together, our findings suggest that people high in neuroticism have an increased sensitivity to detect negative facial emotions. Future studies should test whether the misinterpretation of social cues leads to impoverished social connections.

This paper examines the relationship between students’ generational status (i.e., first-generation immigrant students compared to second and third-generation students) and academic achievement. Specifically, it explores the role of identity variables including self-concept clarity (an individual’s degree of awareness regarding their personal attributes) and academic identity (a student’s choice to adopt and commit to a set of academic values throughout their academic career). Self-concept clarity was investigated for mediation effects between the generational status of Latinx and Asian students and their GPA (both overall and major-specific). Lastly, generational status was examined as a moderator of the relationship between GPA and the four types of academic identity statuses (achieved, foreclosure, moratorium, and diffusion).  The participants were 857 undergraduate students from a southern California university. The results indicate that self-concept clarity did not mediate the relationship between generational status and either form GPA; additionally, generational status did not moderate the relationship between either form of GPA and the hypothesized academic identity sub-constructs. However, the results yield an important finding; there were two interaction effects between generation and each of the moratorium and diffusion identity statuses on overall GPA in both the full dataset and the Asian subsample. Additionally, there was an interaction effect between generation and the moratorium identity on major GPA in the full dataset and a second interaction effect between generation and the diffusion identity on major GPA in the Asian subsample. Lastly, there was a main effect of generational status on students’ overall GPA in the Asian subsample, but not in the Latinx subsample, which is indicative of differences between ethnic groups in terms of first-generation experience.  Limitations and future directions are also discussed.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune disease that does not have a cure. Therefore, it is important for patients to receive support, which would allow them to ask questions and express their feelings. This study examined online social networks for patients with rheumatoid arthritis to better understand the emotional valence of their initial posts and whether there was an association between posts with negative emotional valence and requesting support/information. We hypothesized that the majority (more than 50%) of the emotional valence of initial posts would be negative, and that there would be an association between negative emotional valence and support/information. Nine hundred eighty-six initial posts from a rheumatoid arthritis online social network via Reddit were coded as either positive, negative, neutral, or mixed. In addition, the initial posts were coded as either requesting support/information, offering support/information, neither requesting nor offering support/information, or both requesting and offering support/information. Negative was the most common emotional valence in the initial posts followed by mixed, neutral, and positive. There was also an association between initial posts that had a negative emotional valence and requested support/information, and initial posts that had a negative emotional valence but did not request support/information. As a result, the implications of this study indicate the need for additional information and support to be provided to patients with rheumatoid arthritis, so they can have a better experience and an easier way to cope with their illness.

Personality traits have unique abilities to shine through every action, thought, and belief that an individual engages in. These traits, in addition to other influential life experiences, shape all expressions of personality. Past publications in psychomusicology suggest that music listening preferences can be measured and predicted by personality traits. The present study expands on these discoveries by asking the question: What correlations exist between the Big Five personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Negative Emotionality) and musical instrument listening preferences? 202 participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk completed a survey on Qualtrics measuring personality traits through the Big Five Inventory-2, as well as musical instrument and genre preferences. First, results revealed that individuals who prefer to listen to traditionally melodic instruments (such as guitar and piano) tend to have higher Agreeableness and Openness to Experience personality scores than those who prefer rhythmic instruments (such as bass and drums). Second, this study found significantly different Extraversion scores among musical instrument preferences. Third, this study found significantly different Extraversion scores among different musical genre preferences. The findings of this study indicate that musical instruments may provide more personality correlations than other musical elements, such as genres.

Prior research has identified inconsistencies in relations between extroversion and paranormal beliefs, particularly in the context of a direct association between skepticism and paranormal beliefs. Thus, the current study investigates the role of skepticism and extroversion on the paranormal beliefs of individuals. Participants were 384 students from an accredited postsecondary minority institution enrolled in a Skepticism and Pseudoscience Psychology class. All participants completed a set of online questionnaires that examined their personality traits (i.e., extroversion and neuroticism), skepticism, and paranormal beliefs. A 2x2 analysis of variance indicated that extroverted individuals exhibited greater belief in the paranormal than their less extroverted counterparts. No association was found between skepticism and paranormal beliefs. However, for less extroverted individuals, belief in the paranormal was higher for those with high skepticism relative to those with low skepticism. The limitations and implications of these findings are discussed.