MacEwan Open Journals (MacEwan University)
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Comparing Public Perceptions of Narcissism and Anxiety
No full textNarcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) exhibits a relatively enduring character pathology of grandiosity, lack of empathy, and need for admiration, whereas General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is marked by excessive worry, restlessness, fear of the future, and irritability (Graspas et al. 2020; Skodol & Bender, 2013; Dugas et al. 2022). People stigmatize individuals with anxiety disorders; that is, they perceive them as being weak-not-sick (Curcio & Curboy, 2020). Individuals with personality disorders are stigmatized as being unpredictable and dangerous, though research on the stigmas surrounding individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is limited (Sheehan et al., 2016). Here, we compared the public stigma of narcissism and anxiety. We hypothesized that narcissism would be perceived more negatively than anxiety because narcissism is associated with aggressive and extroverted behaviors while anxious behaviors are more covert. To examine this, 297 participants completed measures of narcissism and generalized anxiety. We also measured participants\u27 stigma towards individuals with NPD and GAD. Last, participants read a vignette about a person who is narcissistic and a person who is anxious and rated their perceptions of each individual. Our results indicated that individuals high in narcissism perceived NPD and GAD, as a sign of personal weakness and a disorder that they could snap out of, if they wanted to, but not as a medical illness. They also reported preferring a relationship with someone who is narcissistic but not with someone who is anxious. Those high (vs. low) in anxiety feel personally stigmatized by others; in addition, they do not perceive NPD as a sign of personal weakness, laziness, and dangerousness, but think others view narcissism in this way. They would also welcome a relationship with another anxious individual but not with someone who is narcissistic.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Miranda Giacomin 
Language and Voice Effects on the Perception of Mixed Emotions in Children
No full textMixed emotions comprise opposing basic emotions, such as happiness and sadness, experienced simultaneously. Previous research examining children’s perception of mixed-happy and sad emotions revealed that young children have difficulty understanding that more than one emotion can be experienced at the same time but that this understanding increases with age. The current project extends this work by examining happy and disgusted mixed emotions conveyed in spoken sentences\u27 content and vocal expression. The present thesis examines the age-related change in the perception of mixed emotions in children ages 3-6 years and adults. Children listened to spoken sentences comprising of mixed emotions created by pairing incongruent sentence content and vocal expressions. In one condition, children rated the spoken sentences along a continuum of happy and sad emoticons on a Likert-type scale. In another condition, they rated sentences on happy and disgusted emotions. Three and four-year-old children showed difficulty distinguishing between emotions across sentence content and vocal expression combinations. However, similar to adult listeners, 5 and 6-year-olds demonstrate an increasing emphasis on vocal expression over sentence content in judging the emotion of the talker. The findings will help shed light on the cues that contribute to understanding emotions that enable children to succeed in social communication and relationships with others.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Tara Vongpaisal 
Evaluating the Effects of Infrasound Frequencies on Human Stress and Anxiety Behaviours
No full textAs technology develops, anthropogenic infrasound – Sub-20 Hz frequencies created by, but undetectable by humans – has become an area of interest in behavioural research. Previous studies have implicated infrasound in behavioural changes such as increased arousal, stress, fear, anxiety, and aversion in aquatic and terrestrial species, including humans. Developing infrastructure has been found to generate acoustic frequencies that peak in the infrasonic range, which raises concerns about what effects they may have on humans as they become more prevalent – particularly in urban areas. This study aims to evaluate this concern by exposing human participants to brief but safe periods of infrasound while listening to happy or scary music. The study will consist of two groups (one listening to happy music and the other to scary music) in which infrasound will be present during listening, and another two groups in identical conditions with no infrasound present. Salivary cortisol – an established biomarker of stress levels – as well as self reports will be collected throughout the study to obtain subjective and objective measures of emotional and behavioural change. Should infrasound be found to increase feelings of fear, anxiety, or stress in the scary music group and no inverse effect be found in the happy music group, this finding would support ongoing research suggesting that infrasound is anxiogenic. If infrasound increases negative as well as positive changes in both the scary music group and happy music group, respectively, then it may be more likely that infrasound elicits general arousal rather than anxiety.
Faculty Mentors: Dr. Rodney Schmaltz & Dr. Trevor Hamilto
The Effect of Russian Colonialism on Ukrainian cultural identity
No full textSince 2014, Russian aggression in Ukraine has exponentially increased, culminating in a war between the two nations. As Russian influences and colonial practices continue to dominate Ukraine, Ukrainian identity has come into question. As a nation, Ukraine, now more than ever, has been fighting to show its own cultural identity separate from Russia. However, one cannot downplay the impact Russian colonialist practices have had on Ukrainian identity and how influences it. We can better understand how this has affected Ukrainian identity by examining Russian-rooted corruption, food perception, and propaganda directed at Ukraine. This research aims to answer how Russian colonialist practices such as corruption, food control/perception, and propaganda have shaped Ukrainian cultural identity.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Michael Gulayets 
Effects on emergency department wait times due to Covid-19
No full textA qualitative study is being altered to a poster presentation format. This qualitative study explored the extent to which the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted Canadian hospitals and emergency department (ED) wait times. A purposive sampling procedure was used for this study to conduct a content analysis on a sample of 50 of the most recent and relevant comments that included reactions, personal experiences, and possible solutions towards ED wait times from a CBC News article. A coding procedure examined any frequent themes and subcategories in the comments. Results showed six consistently present categorical themes: Wait Times, Shortage of Workers, Underfunded Healthcare System, Unrelated Covid-19 Symptoms, Avoidance and Solutions. Furthermore, additional subcategories were determined from the themes. This study analyzes the intense backlogs of surgical cases and waiting rooms, resulting in adverse patient outcomes. Additionally, this study explores the underfunded and understaffed healthcare system, the stresses healthcare workers face daily, and possible solutions to mend this broken healthcare system.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Diane Symbaluk 
Covid-19 and its Impact on Hospitals: A Content Analysis of the Effects on Emergency Department Wait Times Due to Covid-19
No full textThis qualitative study explored the extent to which the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted Canadian hospitals and emergency department (ED) wait times. A purposive sampling procedure was used for this study to conduct a content analysis on a sample of 50 of the most recent and relevant comments that included reactions, personal experiences, and possible solutions towards ED wait times from a CBC News article. A coding procedure examined any frequent themes and subcategories in the comments. Results showed six consistently present categorical themes: Wait Times, Shortage of Workers, Underfunded Healthcare System, Unrelated Covid-19 Symptoms, Avoidance, and Solutions. Furthermore, additional subcategories were determined from the themes. This study analyzes the intense backlogs of surgical cases and waiting rooms, resulting in adverse patient outcomes. Additionally, this study explores the underfunded and understaffed healthcare system, the stresses healthcare workers face daily, and possible solutions to mend this broken healthcare system
Tarrying with Trauma While Improvising Gender in Who Do You Think You Are?
No full textAlice Munro’s 1978 collection of linked stories, Who Do You Think You Are? enacts what Lorraine York calls Munro’s theory of fiction as “tarrying with difficult emotions and knowledges.” Judith Butler’s seminal 1988 theory of gender performativity postulated that improvising gender incurs obvious and covert social punishments, but that performing gender includes the possibility of innovation. Rose, the protagonist, succumbs to and contests norms imposed on women in the southwestern Ontario township of Huron County during the 1940s to 1970s. This thesis explores Rose surviving punitive social conventions in her cultural context which are contiguous with trauma. For Rose, failure to conform is what Jack Halberstam defines as “queer failure”: it is a triumph of personal authenticity over gender essentialism and an acceptance of human imperfection. In the journey towards self-knowledge, Rose’s surviving trauma and defying gender scripts cause the “sticky affects” of shame and humiliation identified by Amelia DeFalco; the feeling that women are not afforded hope; and, in stressful situations, emotional dissociation and emotional economies, as identified by DeFalco and York. Rose’s marriage fails because of a sadomasochistic power struggle. Rose tarries with disconnection from others and from self; however, she innovates gender and subverts the intergenerational cycle of victimvictimizer by achieving a sense of community and strengthening personal authenticity, which Margaret Atwood says is, for “Munro’s women,” “an essential element, like air.
Arc Card Campaign: ETS
No full textA reimagined Arc Card campaign to help community partner goal of increasing ridership
Jeweled Skulls: Fantasy Meets Horror in Fritz Leiber’s Swords Against Death
No full textThe sometimes horrifying, sometimes funny, and all-times strange adventures of twentieth-century American speculative fiction author Fritz Leiber\u27s most enduring creations, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, have left an enduring influence on fantasy and popular culture from Dungeons & Dragons to Discworld to Game of Thrones. Leiber\u27s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories belong to a critically understudied genre known as sword-and-sorcery: a kind of heroic, swashbuckling, and brooding fantasy pioneered by Robert E. Howard\u27s Conan the Barbarian stories and later named by Leiber. One of Leiber’s most underappreciated achievements is his trailblazing fusion of horror and fantasy via sword-and-sorcery. With fundamentally vulnerable protagonists and a conscious, innovative engagement with contemporary horror tropes, horror becomes the focus of Leiber\u27s early sword-and-sorcery tales, allowing them to touch on profound themes like the inescapability of death, the power of the irrational, and the loss of agency in the face of overwhelming forces beyond comprehension. Analyzing three of Leiber\u27s earliest Fafhrd and the Gray stories collected in Swords Against Death, "The Jewels in the Forest," "The Bleak Shore," and "Thieves\u27 House," this article investigates the close relationship between fantasy and horror in Leiber\u27s sword-and-sorcery and proposes that Leiber\u27s early inclination toward horror marks his work as some of the most mature and fully-realized of its kind.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Mike Perschon 
Physiological Knowledge Retention in Second-Year Bachelor of Science & Psychiatric Nursing Students
No full textThere is growing concern that nursing, medical and allied health students do not retain enough bioscience knowledge to apply it confidently and successfully in future nursing years and clinical (Doomernik et al., 2017). Numerous evidence now shows that knowledge retention is impacted by many factors, including admission criteria, teaching hours (Narnaware, Y. 2021), age, sex, ethnicity, prior knowledge of science/biology, a gap between high school and university, and health care discipline (Narnaware, Y. 2021). Understanding that discipline choice potentially impacts knowledge retention, this study aimed to determine the overall difference in physiological knowledge retention between second-year BScN and psychiatric nursing program students. The mean score of questions from all organ systems in year one was 81.16 ± 10.6 (SD). Comparing that score to matched test items in year two, there is a significant decrease in the overall mean score from 81.17 + 10.6 (SD) to 57.86 ± 11.8 (SD) (P<0.01) in BScN students and 50.00 + 6.06 (SD) (P<0.001) in psychiatric nursing students. Compared to year 1, organ-specific knowledge retention levels in the second year varied between BScN and psychiatric nursing students and will be discussed in the poster. Overall, the second-year BScN students had better knowledge retention than psychiatric nursing students. This study will help to target more robust interventional strategies to improve knowledge retention in psychiatric nursing students.
Faculty Mentors: Dr. Raj Narnaware & Melanie Neumeie