Abstract and poster

Instruction.docx

Link to an example of poster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXuIfyN7A34

These are two different assignments but for the same research paper.

I have included all prior reports that are needed to complete these last two assignments.

I have included all rubrics and examples for the last two assignments. I also need to submit a copy of the Copyleaks report for each assignment to show I didn’t use AI.

Please don’t exceed 250 words in the Abstract and follow all rubrics.

For the poster assignment, please prepare a 3- to 5-minute presentation in a Word document so I can add my recording to it.

Discussion.docx

1

Generalized Anxiety and Shyness in College Students

The Relationship Between Anxiety and Shyness in College Students

Candi Jackson

Northwestern State University

PSYC 4490 Senior Research Seminar

Dr. Jennifer Hodges-Crowder

November 4, 2026

Discussion

The current study examined whether generalized anxiety, as measured by the GAD-7, is related to shyness as measured by the Expanded Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale among college students. The hypothesis was confirmed, as there was a significant and positive correlation between GAD-7 scores and shyness scores (r (143) = .290, p <.001). The results revealed that there was a positive correlation between generalized anxiety and shyness among the college students. The correlations were small to moderate and indicated that anxiety and shyness were related but not synonymous variables.

Support of Past Research

This is consistent with previous studies that have found that shyness is associated with anxiety-related outcomes in college students. Wang and Zhao (2026) reported that shyness was positively related to social anxiety in Chinese college students and that regulatory emotional self-efficacy and resilience stood in between the two. The current study assessed generalized anxiety, not social anxiety, but the positive relationship found in the current study was similar to the overall finding that shy individuals had higher levels of anxiety in both social and non-social situations. First-year students’ interpersonal communication anxiety was found to be strongly predicted by shyness by Ramadhani et al. (2024). The present results corroborate this by showing that the relationship between shyness and anxiety is also seen with generalized symptoms of anxiety.

Implications

The finding shows a significant relationship between anxiety and shyness that may be important for providing mental health services to college students. When screening students for generalized anxiety, it may also help to identify those who experience difficulties in social situations. Helping students manage their anxiety may also improve their confidence when interacting with others. The relationship found in this study doesn’t mean that shyness can be used to diagnose anxiety. Students can be shy or uncomfortable in social situations without having high levels of anxiety.

Limitations

There were a few limitations to consider in this study. First, the sample included 143 college students from one university in the South, so the results may not represent students at other colleges or different locations. Another limitation is that the study used self-report questionnaires, which means some students may not have answered every question completely honestly. Also, the study looked at anxiety and shyness at one point in time. The study can’t show that one causes the other. The study also did not examine other factors such as resilience or emotional self-confidence, which may help explain the relationship between anxiety and shyness.

Future Directions

Future research should include larger groups of students from different colleges to see if similar results are found. Researchers could also follow students over a longer period of time to better understand how anxiety and shyness are related. It would also be helpful to study whether factors such as resilience and the ability to manage emotions affect this relationship. Overall, this study adds to previous research by showing that generalized anxiety and shyness have a significant positive relationship among college students. Although they are related, they are still two separate aspects of emotional and social functioning.

References

Ramadhani, A., Widyastuti, & Ridfah, A. (2024). The influence of shyness on interpersonal communication anxiety among first-year psychology students from outside Makassar. Socius: Jurnal Penelitian Ilmu-Ilmu Sosial, 2(1), 173–182. https://www.ojs.daarulhuda.or.id/index.php/Socius/article/view/757

Wang, Y., & Zhao, Y. (2026). The impact of shyness on social anxiety among college students: Mediating role of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and resilience. PLOS One, 21(3), e0344809. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344809

Method.docx

1

Generalized Anxiety and Shyness in College Students

The Relationship Between Anxiety and Shyness in College Students

Candi Jackson

Northwestern State University

PSYC 4490 Senior Research Seminar

Dr. Jennifer Hodges-Crowder

October 29, 2026

Method

Sample/Participants

The current research will be an archival study that is part of a larger research project. The study will be about 200 college students in attendance at Northwestern University (NSU). Participants will be male and female, at least 18 years old. Each participant will be provided with a demographic questionnaire and informed consent before participating in the study.

Instrumentation

The Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) will be used to assess generalized anxiety, and the Expanded Revised Scale will be used to assess shyness. These instruments are chosen because previous research supports their reliability and validity.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7)

GAD-7 is a self-report 7-item questionnaire that assesses the severity of anxiety symptoms. Responses are indicated on a four-point scale from 0 (Not at all) to 3 (Nearly every day); scores are totaled to provide a total score from 0 to 21, with higher scores representing higher levels of anxiety (White & Karr, 2023). In 582 undergraduate students, White and Karr (2023) found the GAD-7 to have higher reliability (α = .91; ω = .91), high convergent validity with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Trait subscale (r = .70, p < .001), and high discriminant validity with the Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Scale-Reward subscale (r = −.04, p = .350). White and Karr (2023) found a cutoff score of 10 to have acceptable sensitivity and specificity in identifying GAD.

Expanded Revised Shyness Scale

The Expanded Revision of the Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale is a self-report measure of shyness. In adults aged 18 to 74 years (N = 801), Brooks and Willoughby (2019) examined the relationship between the measures of shyness and social anxiety, and found high correlations, loading on a common factor, and scores that were statistically independent of sociability. The results of the current study lend support to the construct validity of the Expanded Revised Shyness Scale for research in the area of shyness as a psychological construct (Brooks & Willoughby, 2019).

Design & Procedures

The present study will form part of a greater, archival study which will be submitted to the NSU Institutional Review Board (IRB) before data collection. Participants will be informed about participation and give their consent. Data will be collected anonymously via a survey link on SurveyMonkey. A debriefing form will be given after the survey is completed. Results will be available in total, and participants can receive their results via email from the principal investigator.

Proposed Analysis

The quantitative research design for the current investigation will use SPSS Version 30 for data analysis. Descriptive statistics will be calculated for the demographic characteristics of 200 participants, including age, gender, and race/ethnicity. All participants will be 18 years and older. The proposed analysis will be a Pearson correlation to investigate the relationship between generalized anxiety, as measured by the GAD-7 total score, and shyness, as measured by the Expanded Revised Shyness Scale total score, among college students. The Pearson correlation will determine whether there is a statistically significant relationship between the two variables and whether that relationship is positive or negative. There is no independent or dependent variable in this analysis because the purpose is to examine the association between two continuous variables. If the correlation is positive, it will indicate that higher levels of generalized anxiety are associated with higher levels of shyness. The results of the Pearson correlation will be used to determine whether the hypothesis is confirmed or not.

References

Brook, C. A., & Willoughby, T. (2019). Shyness and social anxiety assessed through self-report: What are we measuring? Journal of Personality Assessment, 101(1), 54–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2017.1388808

White, A. E., & Karr, J. E. (2023). Psychometric properties of the GAD-7 among college students: Reliability, validity, factor structure, and measurement invariance. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 11(3), 321–333. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000382

Abstract.zip

Abstract /abstract-apa-7th-ed.png

__MACOSX/Abstract /._abstract-apa-7th-ed.png

Abstract /.DS_Store

__MACOSX/Abstract /._.DS_Store

Abstract /AbstractExample 1 .docx

Abstract

A total of 6 billion people worldwide will use smartphones in 2020 (Jonsson et al., 2017). The devices pose convenient solutions for leisure and work-related activities (Kuss, 2017). However, psychometric and addiction-based guidelines increasingly align smartphone overuse with technological addictions (Billieux et al., 2015). A more holistic exploration of smartphone use might help to highlight how everyday use interacts with or underpins more addictive forms of behaviors. This study aimed to explore in-depth experiences of smartphone use to understand from a holistic perspective what the perceptions and experiences of the devices are to smartphone users using a qualitative focus group study ( n = 21; 11 women). Data were analyzed using the constructivist grounded theory. Results indicated that smartphones were entwined with users’ lives, as they formed an extension of the self. Subcategories highlighted that the devices hold value by externalizing identity, providing constant connectivity, mediating intimacy, authenticating experiences, and forfeiting agency. In conclusion, the usability of the smartphone may create an interactive relationship with the sense of self. Close relationships with smartphones appear to shape interpersonal relationships. In addition, participants held an expectation that the user has agency over their actions, which is at odds with evidence of nonautonomous, compulsive behaviors. Regarding the study’s public significance, this false perception of control may pose challenges for interventions that aim to reduce problematic smartphone use. Further research should contrast user perceptions using real-time smartphone data to understand the degree of true insight users have over their own behaviors.

Keywords: interpersonal communication, social media, smartphone, social identity, qualitative

__MACOSX/Abstract /._AbstractExample 1 .docx

Abstract /Abstract Example 2 .docx

Abstract

What role does deliberation play in susceptibility to political misinformation and “fake news”? The Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R) account posits that deliberation causes people to fall for fake news because reasoning facilitates identity-protective cognition and is therefore used to rationalize content that is consistent with one’s political ideology (Charness & Dave, 2017). The classical account of reasoning instead posits that people ineffectively discern between true and false news headlines when they fail to deliberate (and instead rely on intuition) (Evans, 2010). To distinguish between these competing accounts, we investigated the causal effect of reasoning on media truth discernment using a two-response paradigm. Participants ( N = 1,635 Mechanical Turkers) were presented with a series of headlines. For each paradigm, participants were first asked to give an initial, intuitive response under time pressure and concurrent working memory load. They were then given an opportunity to rethink their response with no constraints, thereby permitting more deliberation. We also compared these responses to a (deliberative) one-response baseline condition where participants made a single choice with no constraints. Consistent with the classical account, we found that deliberation corrected intuitive mistakes: Participants believed false headlines (but not true headlines) more in initial responses than in either final responses or the unconstrained one-response baseline. In contrast—and inconsistent with the MS2R account—we found that political polarization was equivalent across responses. Our data suggest that, in the context of fake news, deliberation facilitates accurate belief formation and not partisan bias.

Keywords: fake news, misinformation, dual-process theory, two-response paradigm

__MACOSX/Abstract /._Abstract Example 2 .docx

Abstract /ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx

ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC

· 1 topic sentence (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your literature review (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your purpose paragraph (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your Method section (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your Results section (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your Discussion section (Worth 2 points)

· APA format (Worth 2 points)

· Grammar (Worth 2 points)

· Keywords (Worth 2 points)

· Include all of the above, but do not exceed 250 words (Worth 2 points

__MACOSX/Abstract /._ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx

Instruction.docx

Link to an example of poster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXuIfyN7A34

These are two different assignments but for the same research paper.

I have included all prior reports that are needed to complete these last two assignments.

I have included all rubrics and examples for the last two assignments. I also need to submit a copy of the Copyleaks report for each assignment to show I didn’t use AI.

Please don’t exceed 250 words in the Abstract and follow all rubrics.

For the poster assignment, please prepare a 3- to 5-minute presentation in a Word document so I can add my recording to it.

Discussion.docx

1

Generalized Anxiety and Shyness in College Students

The Relationship Between Anxiety and Shyness in College Students

Candi Jackson

Northwestern State University

PSYC 4490 Senior Research Seminar

Dr. Jennifer Hodges-Crowder

November 4, 2026

Discussion

The current study examined whether generalized anxiety, as measured by the GAD-7, is related to shyness as measured by the Expanded Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale among college students. The hypothesis was confirmed, as there was a significant and positive correlation between GAD-7 scores and shyness scores (r (143) = .290, p <.001). The results revealed that there was a positive correlation between generalized anxiety and shyness among the college students. The correlations were small to moderate and indicated that anxiety and shyness were related but not synonymous variables.

Support of Past Research

This is consistent with previous studies that have found that shyness is associated with anxiety-related outcomes in college students. Wang and Zhao (2026) reported that shyness was positively related to social anxiety in Chinese college students and that regulatory emotional self-efficacy and resilience stood in between the two. The current study assessed generalized anxiety, not social anxiety, but the positive relationship found in the current study was similar to the overall finding that shy individuals had higher levels of anxiety in both social and non-social situations. First-year students’ interpersonal communication anxiety was found to be strongly predicted by shyness by Ramadhani et al. (2024). The present results corroborate this by showing that the relationship between shyness and anxiety is also seen with generalized symptoms of anxiety.

Implications

The finding shows a significant relationship between anxiety and shyness that may be important for providing mental health services to college students. When screening students for generalized anxiety, it may also help to identify those who experience difficulties in social situations. Helping students manage their anxiety may also improve their confidence when interacting with others. The relationship found in this study doesn’t mean that shyness can be used to diagnose anxiety. Students can be shy or uncomfortable in social situations without having high levels of anxiety.

Limitations

There were a few limitations to consider in this study. First, the sample included 143 college students from one university in the South, so the results may not represent students at other colleges or different locations. Another limitation is that the study used self-report questionnaires, which means some students may not have answered every question completely honestly. Also, the study looked at anxiety and shyness at one point in time. The study can’t show that one causes the other. The study also did not examine other factors such as resilience or emotional self-confidence, which may help explain the relationship between anxiety and shyness.

Future Directions

Future research should include larger groups of students from different colleges to see if similar results are found. Researchers could also follow students over a longer period of time to better understand how anxiety and shyness are related. It would also be helpful to study whether factors such as resilience and the ability to manage emotions affect this relationship. Overall, this study adds to previous research by showing that generalized anxiety and shyness have a significant positive relationship among college students. Although they are related, they are still two separate aspects of emotional and social functioning.

References

Ramadhani, A., Widyastuti, & Ridfah, A. (2024). The influence of shyness on interpersonal communication anxiety among first-year psychology students from outside Makassar. Socius: Jurnal Penelitian Ilmu-Ilmu Sosial, 2(1), 173–182. https://www.ojs.daarulhuda.or.id/index.php/Socius/article/view/757

Wang, Y., & Zhao, Y. (2026). The impact of shyness on social anxiety among college students: Mediating role of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and resilience. PLOS One, 21(3), e0344809. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344809

Method.docx

1

Generalized Anxiety and Shyness in College Students

The Relationship Between Anxiety and Shyness in College Students

Candi Jackson

Northwestern State University

PSYC 4490 Senior Research Seminar

Dr. Jennifer Hodges-Crowder

October 29, 2026

Method

Sample/Participants

The current research will be an archival study that is part of a larger research project. The study will be about 200 college students in attendance at Northwestern University (NSU). Participants will be male and female, at least 18 years old. Each participant will be provided with a demographic questionnaire and informed consent before participating in the study.

Instrumentation

The Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) will be used to assess generalized anxiety, and the Expanded Revised Scale will be used to assess shyness. These instruments are chosen because previous research supports their reliability and validity.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7)

GAD-7 is a self-report 7-item questionnaire that assesses the severity of anxiety symptoms. Responses are indicated on a four-point scale from 0 (Not at all) to 3 (Nearly every day); scores are totaled to provide a total score from 0 to 21, with higher scores representing higher levels of anxiety (White & Karr, 2023). In 582 undergraduate students, White and Karr (2023) found the GAD-7 to have higher reliability (α = .91; ω = .91), high convergent validity with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Trait subscale (r = .70, p < .001), and high discriminant validity with the Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Scale-Reward subscale (r = −.04, p = .350). White and Karr (2023) found a cutoff score of 10 to have acceptable sensitivity and specificity in identifying GAD.

Expanded Revised Shyness Scale

The Expanded Revision of the Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale is a self-report measure of shyness. In adults aged 18 to 74 years (N = 801), Brooks and Willoughby (2019) examined the relationship between the measures of shyness and social anxiety, and found high correlations, loading on a common factor, and scores that were statistically independent of sociability. The results of the current study lend support to the construct validity of the Expanded Revised Shyness Scale for research in the area of shyness as a psychological construct (Brooks & Willoughby, 2019).

Design & Procedures

The present study will form part of a greater, archival study which will be submitted to the NSU Institutional Review Board (IRB) before data collection. Participants will be informed about participation and give their consent. Data will be collected anonymously via a survey link on SurveyMonkey. A debriefing form will be given after the survey is completed. Results will be available in total, and participants can receive their results via email from the principal investigator.

Proposed Analysis

The quantitative research design for the current investigation will use SPSS Version 30 for data analysis. Descriptive statistics will be calculated for the demographic characteristics of 200 participants, including age, gender, and race/ethnicity. All participants will be 18 years and older. The proposed analysis will be a Pearson correlation to investigate the relationship between generalized anxiety, as measured by the GAD-7 total score, and shyness, as measured by the Expanded Revised Shyness Scale total score, among college students. The Pearson correlation will determine whether there is a statistically significant relationship between the two variables and whether that relationship is positive or negative. There is no independent or dependent variable in this analysis because the purpose is to examine the association between two continuous variables. If the correlation is positive, it will indicate that higher levels of generalized anxiety are associated with higher levels of shyness. The results of the Pearson correlation will be used to determine whether the hypothesis is confirmed or not.

References

Brook, C. A., & Willoughby, T. (2019). Shyness and social anxiety assessed through self-report: What are we measuring? Journal of Personality Assessment, 101(1), 54–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2017.1388808

White, A. E., & Karr, J. E. (2023). Psychometric properties of the GAD-7 among college students: Reliability, validity, factor structure, and measurement invariance. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 11(3), 321–333. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000382

Abstract.zip

Abstract /abstract-apa-7th-ed.png

__MACOSX/Abstract /._abstract-apa-7th-ed.png

Abstract /.DS_Store

__MACOSX/Abstract /._.DS_Store

Abstract /AbstractExample 1 .docx

Abstract

A total of 6 billion people worldwide will use smartphones in 2020 (Jonsson et al., 2017). The devices pose convenient solutions for leisure and work-related activities (Kuss, 2017). However, psychometric and addiction-based guidelines increasingly align smartphone overuse with technological addictions (Billieux et al., 2015). A more holistic exploration of smartphone use might help to highlight how everyday use interacts with or underpins more addictive forms of behaviors. This study aimed to explore in-depth experiences of smartphone use to understand from a holistic perspective what the perceptions and experiences of the devices are to smartphone users using a qualitative focus group study ( n = 21; 11 women). Data were analyzed using the constructivist grounded theory. Results indicated that smartphones were entwined with users’ lives, as they formed an extension of the self. Subcategories highlighted that the devices hold value by externalizing identity, providing constant connectivity, mediating intimacy, authenticating experiences, and forfeiting agency. In conclusion, the usability of the smartphone may create an interactive relationship with the sense of self. Close relationships with smartphones appear to shape interpersonal relationships. In addition, participants held an expectation that the user has agency over their actions, which is at odds with evidence of nonautonomous, compulsive behaviors. Regarding the study’s public significance, this false perception of control may pose challenges for interventions that aim to reduce problematic smartphone use. Further research should contrast user perceptions using real-time smartphone data to understand the degree of true insight users have over their own behaviors.

Keywords: interpersonal communication, social media, smartphone, social identity, qualitative

__MACOSX/Abstract /._AbstractExample 1 .docx

Abstract /Abstract Example 2 .docx

Abstract

What role does deliberation play in susceptibility to political misinformation and “fake news”? The Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R) account posits that deliberation causes people to fall for fake news because reasoning facilitates identity-protective cognition and is therefore used to rationalize content that is consistent with one’s political ideology (Charness & Dave, 2017). The classical account of reasoning instead posits that people ineffectively discern between true and false news headlines when they fail to deliberate (and instead rely on intuition) (Evans, 2010). To distinguish between these competing accounts, we investigated the causal effect of reasoning on media truth discernment using a two-response paradigm. Participants ( N = 1,635 Mechanical Turkers) were presented with a series of headlines. For each paradigm, participants were first asked to give an initial, intuitive response under time pressure and concurrent working memory load. They were then given an opportunity to rethink their response with no constraints, thereby permitting more deliberation. We also compared these responses to a (deliberative) one-response baseline condition where participants made a single choice with no constraints. Consistent with the classical account, we found that deliberation corrected intuitive mistakes: Participants believed false headlines (but not true headlines) more in initial responses than in either final responses or the unconstrained one-response baseline. In contrast—and inconsistent with the MS2R account—we found that political polarization was equivalent across responses. Our data suggest that, in the context of fake news, deliberation facilitates accurate belief formation and not partisan bias.

Keywords: fake news, misinformation, dual-process theory, two-response paradigm

__MACOSX/Abstract /._Abstract Example 2 .docx

Abstract /ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx

ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC

· 1 topic sentence (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your literature review (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your purpose paragraph (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your Method section (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your Results section (Worth 2 points)

· 1 or 2 sentences about your Discussion section (Worth 2 points)

· APA format (Worth 2 points)

· Grammar (Worth 2 points)

· Keywords (Worth 2 points)

· Include all of the above, but do not exceed 250 words (Worth 2 points

Instruction.docx

Results.docx

Discussion.docx

Method.docx

Abstract.zip

Instruction.docx

Results.docx

image1.tiff

Discussion.docx

Method.docx

References

Abstract.zip

Abstract /abstract-apa-7th-ed.png

__MACOSX/Abstract /._abstract-apa-7th-ed.png

Abstract /.DS_Store

__MACOSX/Abstract /._.DS_Store

Abstract /AbstractExample 1 .docx

Abstract

__MACOSX/Abstract /._AbstractExample 1 .docx

Abstract /Abstract Example 2 .docx

Abstract

__MACOSX/Abstract /._Abstract Example 2 .docx

Abstract /ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx

__MACOSX/Abstract /._ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx

Instruction.docx

__MACOSX/Abstract /._Abstract Example 2 .docx

Abstract /ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx

__MACOSX/Abstract /._ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx

__MACOSX/Abstract /._Abstract Example 2 .docx

Abstract /ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx

__MACOSX/Abstract /._ABSTRACT GRADING RUBRIC.docx