Abstract
Individuals differ in the extent to which they attend to their physical and social environments, but little empirical work has measured these differences at a cognitive level. To address this gap, two studies explored the association between attentional processes and Person and Thing Orientations. The first study measured visual selective attention toward person- and thing-related image components. In the second study, participants provided written responses about a set of images; linguistic analyses were conducted to assess attentional bias toward interest-congruent content. The results from both studies support motivated attention as a process through which interests in physical and social environments operate. Implications for both the theory and applications of Person and Thing Orientations are discussed.
Disciplines
Cognitive Psychology | Personality and Social Contexts | Psychology | Social Psychology
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Psychological Sciences
First Advisor
William G. Graziano
Committee Chair
William G. Graziano
Committee Member 1
Kipling D. Williams
Committee Member 2
James Tyler
Date of Award
Spring 2015
Recommended Citation
McIntyre, Miranda May, "Seeing people, seeing things: Individual differences in selective attention" (2015). Open Access Theses. 579.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_theses/579
Included in
Cognitive Psychology Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Social Psychology Commons