Date of Award

Spring 5-2017

Degree Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Daniel Capron

Advisor Department

Psychology

Abstract

Previous research in the psychology of language has found that first- and second-person pronouns have different uses beyond simply referring to different subjects. First-person pronouns are thought to forge a stronger association between self-concept and emotion (Meissener, 2008), while second-person pronouns are inherently self-distancing (Park, Adyuk & Kross, 2015). The present study sought to apply this knowledge to self-report questionnaires to determine whether pronoun usage influenced self-report scores of anxiety sensitivity. Both the ASI-3 and a second-person revised version were given to participants during prescreening, baseline, and post-anxiety-intervention measures and assessed for differences. Prescreen analysis revealed that the revised ASI-3 produced lower scores for anxiety sensitivity than the original ASI-3, keeping in line with predicted results. Baseline and post-intervention analysis, however, showed lower instances of statistical differences between the measures at different times. This study begins to establish a relationship between the pronoun structure of questionnaires and self-report ratings, though further study is needed.

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