Date of Award

Spring 2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Scott T. Allison

Abstract

First impressions can impact our opinions and behaviors towards another person. The act of priming, though, can work to alter a person’s perceptions, and subsequent behaviors. Embodiment, the idea that the body is closely tied to the processing of social and emotional information, can result from priming. The current research seeks to answer several questions related to the importance of first impressions, judgments of sympathy and resilience, deep role categorizations, and the power of priming to prompt the embodied cognition of resilience. The results of the current research partially support the initial hypotheses that—when presented with information about a target individual from beginning to end, participants will be more sympathetic and categorize the target into both more good and bad deep roles. And, that when primed with resilience-words, participants will be more sympathetic towards a target individual, rate the target as being more resilient, and categorize the target into more good than bad deep roles. And lastly, that participants primed with resilience-words will embody the cognition of resilience and act more resiliently themselves, as measured by a 5 lb. hand weight task.

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