James A Shepperd
Biographic Data
| ID | 769745 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James A Shepperd |
| GIVEN NAMES | James A |
| FAMILY NAME | Shepperd |
| SIGNATURE | SHEPPERD J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Florida |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5329-6760 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 156 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Managing children’s asthma
Objective Pediatric asthma management is challenging for parents and guardians (hereafter caregivers). We examined (1) how caregivers mentally represent trigger and symptom management strategies, and (2) how those mental representations are associated with actual management behavior.Methods In an online survey, N = 431 caregivers of children with asthma rated 20 trigger management behaviors and 20 symptom management behaviors across 15 characteri…
How are mental representations of asthma triggers and symptoms related to interpersonal risk perceptions? A psychometric investigation of caregivers of children with asthma
Objective Parents and guardians (hereafter caregivers) make decisions for their children’s medical care. However, many caregivers of children with asthma struggle to understand their child’s illness. We used the psychometric paradigm to investigate how caregivers conceptualize, or mentally represent, asthma triggers and symptoms and how these representations are linked to perceived asthma exacerbation risk.Methods We asked 377 caregivers of child…
Examining the correspondence between political ideology and gun policy attitudes among Black and White people in the United States
The present research examined whether political ideology corresponded with gun attitudes among people disproportionately experiencing gun violence—Black people in the United States. Across four studies ( N = 25,847) we found that race (Black vs. White) interacted with political ideology to predict gun attitudes, safety perceptions, and policy preferences. Among White participants, being more conservative corresponded with more positive gun attitu…
Interpersonal comparison among caregivers of children with asthma
Objective: We examined the extent to which caregivers of children with asthma used interpersonal comparisons—a novel comparison process that parallels social comparison and temporal comparison—to form judgments about their child. Methods & Measures: Using semi-structured interviews adapted from the McGill Illness Narrative Interview, we examined the interpersonal comparisons that caregivers of a child with asthma (n = 41) made regarding their chi…
I don’t know my child’s asthma risk
Several studies suggest that "don't know" (DK) responses to risk perception items may represent meaningful expressions of uncertainty about disease risk. However, researchers are often discouraged from including a DK response option in survey items due to concerns about respondents overusing it to minimize cognitive effort-a phenomenon often referred to as satisficing . Our objective was to investigate whether patterns of DK responses to risk per…
Through the Zoom window
Virtual technologies gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic for use in research, including research with children. As scholarship from the field of science, technology and society (STS) suggests, technologies are never neutral, but embedded with social values and, as such, used by people to navigate identities and relationships. Building on childhood studies research that has shown how children appropriate and use research tools, this art…
Towards emplaced understandings of risk
Examining commonsense epidemiology
Commonsense epidemiology-how lay people think about diseases and their causes and consequences-can influence how people respond. We examined three lay epidemiological beliefs about 20 triggers and 19 symptoms among 349 caregivers of children with asthma. Our findings contradicted the prevalence-seriousness hypothesis (perceived prevalence and seriousness correlate negatively). The data partially supported the prevalence-control hypothesis (percei…
Waiting for medical test results
How do embodied experiences of asthma influence caregiver conceptual models
The link between religiousness and prejudice
Examining strategies to increase student evaluation of teaching completion rates
Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) can provide valuable assessment information. However, online administration of SETs has corresponded with lower SET completion rates. We examined perceptions of strategies for increasing SET completion rates and the effect of offering psychological prompts (completion goals, reminders, progress feedback) and micro-incentives (-extra credit that has a negligible effect on student grades) on SET completion rat…
Avoiding information about one's romantic partner
Research links open communication and self-disclosure to a host of beneficial outcomes in romantic relationships, including better relationship quality, relationship satisfaction, feelings of closeness and commitment, and relationship longevity. However, learning some information about a partner may evoke negative consequences. In two studies, we examined the types of information people may wish to avoid learning about their past or current roman…
Belief in a Loving Versus Punitive God and Behavior
We examined the extent to which beliefs in a loving God and punitive God correspond with self-reported behavior in an online, longitudinal survey involving three waves of data collection, each separated by 6 months. Adolescents (N = 760) reported the extent to which they believed in a loving God and a punitive God (Times 1 and 3) and reported their engagement in benevolent (helping and forgiveness) and aggressive behavior (Times 2 and 3). Partici…
The role of powerful audiences in health information avoidance
Powerful audiences are linked to health information avoidance
Assessing the consequences of unrealistic optimism
Hot or not? How self-view threat influences avoidance of attractiveness feedback
In two studies, we examined whether people’s decision to receive evaluations of their own attractiveness depended on whether the evaluations came from sources that might threaten their self-views. Participants believed that evaluators rated their attractiveness based on a photograph taken earlier and ostensibly uploaded to a website. Participants then received the opportunity to view the attractiveness ratings from the evaluators. In both studies…
Developing a scale to assess health regulatory focus
Perspective Taking Explains Gender Differences in Late Adolescents’ Attitudes Toward Disadvantaged Groups
Social exclusion, self-affirmation, and health information avoidance
The reliability of psychological instruments in community samples
Although researchers norm and validate measures of psychological constructs largely on educated samples, they often use these instruments more broadly, assuming generalizability. We examined whether the assumption of generalizability is warranted. We administered three commonly used psychological measures-the Behavioral Activation/Behavioral Inhibition Scale, the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire, and the Need for Cognition Scale-to a community samp…
A Primer on Unrealistic Optimism
People display unrealistic optimism in their predictions about countless events, believing that their personal future outcomes will be more desirable than can possibly be true. We summarize the vast literature on unrealistic optimism by focusing on four broad questions: What is unrealistic optimism, when does it occur, why does it occur, and what are its consequences? Unrealistic optimism can be operationalized in multiple ways; is commonplace ye…
Evaluating Tablet Computers as a Survey Tool in Rural Communities
PURPOSE: Although tablet computers offer advantages in data collection over traditional paper-and-pencil methods, little research has examined whether the 2 formats yield similar responses, especially with underserved populations. We compared the 2 survey formats and tested whether participants' responses to common health questionnaires or perceptions of usability differed by survey format. We also tested whether we could replicate established pa…
Religiousness and aggression in adolescents
Although people have used religion to justify aggression, evidence suggests that greater religiousness corresponds with less aggression. We explored two explanations for the religion-aggression link. First, most major religions teach self-control (e.g., delaying gratification, resisting temptation), which diminishes aggression. Second, most major religions emphasize compassionate beliefs and behavior (i.e., perspective taking, forgiveness, a broa…
Abandoning unrealistic optimism
Although evidence for unrealistic optimism is considerable, there is reason to believe that individuals will abandon their optimism and may even become pessimistic in anticipation of self-relevant feedback. The authors propose and provide preliminary test of a model of the temporal transition from o
Behavioral self-handicaps versus self-reported handicaps
Avoiding cancer risk information
Productivity loss in performance groups
This article presents a framework derived from expectancy theory for organizing the research on productivity loss among individuals combining their efforts into a common pool (i.e., the research on social loafing, free riding, and the sucker effect). Lost productivity is characterized as a problem of low motivation arising when individuals perceive no value to contributing, perceive no contingency between their contributions and achieving a desir…
Developing a scale to assess health regulatory focus
Social exclusion, self-affirmation, and health information avoidance
Dispositional Optimism as a Predictor of Health Changes among Cardiac Patients
The reliability of psychological instruments in community samples
Although researchers norm and validate measures of psychological constructs largely on educated samples, they often use these instruments more broadly, assuming generalizability. We examined whether the assumption of generalizability is warranted. We administered three commonly used psychological measures-the Behavioral Activation/Behavioral Inhibition Scale, the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire, and the Need for Cognition Scale-to a community samp…
Does lacking threat-management resources increase information avoidance? A multi-sample, multi-method investigation
Religiousness and aggression in adolescents
Although people have used religion to justify aggression, evidence suggests that greater religiousness corresponds with less aggression. We explored two explanations for the religion-aggression link. First, most major religions teach self-control (e.g., delaying gratification, resisting temptation), which diminishes aggression. Second, most major religions emphasize compassionate beliefs and behavior (i.e., perspective taking, forgiveness, a broa…
Bracing for loss
People find unexpected bad news aversive and often brace themselves by predicting the worst. Three experiments examined whether the pessimism is influenced by personal need. Students who differed in financial need learned that a billing error meant that some students would receive an additional bill from their university. Financially needy students were consistently pessimistic in predicting their likelihood of receiving a bill, whereas non-needy…
Belief in a Loving Versus Punitive God and Behavior
We examined the extent to which beliefs in a loving God and punitive God correspond with self-reported behavior in an online, longitudinal survey involving three waves of data collection, each separated by 6 months. Adolescents (N = 760) reported the extent to which they believed in a loving God and a punitive God (Times 1 and 3) and reported their engagement in benevolent (helping and forgiveness) and aggressive behavior (Times 2 and 3). Partici…
Perspective Taking Explains Gender Differences in Late Adolescents’ Attitudes Toward Disadvantaged Groups
Behavioral other-enhancement
A strategy related to self-handicapping in which individuals supply a comparison other with a performance advantage rather than handicap their own performance was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1 greater other-enhancement was found among men than among women. In addition, men engaged in the most other-enhancement when expecting that their performance would be compared with that of a coparticipant. In Experiment 2 the hypothesis th…
Avoiding information about one's romantic partner
Research links open communication and self-disclosure to a host of beneficial outcomes in romantic relationships, including better relationship quality, relationship satisfaction, feelings of closeness and commitment, and relationship longevity. However, learning some information about a partner may evoke negative consequences. In two studies, we examined the types of information people may wish to avoid learning about their past or current roman…
Through the Zoom window
Virtual technologies gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic for use in research, including research with children. As scholarship from the field of science, technology and society (STS) suggests, technologies are never neutral, but embedded with social values and, as such, used by people to navigate identities and relationships. Building on childhood studies research that has shown how children appropriate and use research tools, this art…
Waiting for medical test results
How do embodied experiences of asthma influence caregiver conceptual models
The role of powerful audiences in health information avoidance
Towards emplaced understandings of risk
Powerful audiences are linked to health information avoidance
On the manipulative behavior of low Machiavellians
Three decades of research has revealed that people scoring high in Machiavellianism (high Machs) are manipulative and domineering. However, the domineering style of high Machs may preclude them from using manipulations that require a display of weakness. The authors examined whether Machiavellianism moderates the use of sandbagging-a manipulative strategy in which people display low ability to induce an opponent to reduce effort or lower his or h…
Self-righteousness
Behavioral self-handicaps versus self-reported handicaps
The Relationship of Hardiness, Gender, and Stress to Health Outcomes in Adolescents
The present study examined the relationship between the hardiness components of commitment, control, and challenge, and the experience of physical and psychological symptoms in a sample of 150 (75 male, 75 female) adolescents. A measure of psychosocial stress was included to permit an examination of whether the hardiness components interact with stress in predicting health outcomes. Analyses revealed main effects of stress, gender, and the hardin…
"Cautions in assessing spurious "moderator effects
Lubinski and Humphreys (1990) illustrated how moderator effects uncovered using hierarchical multiple regression procedures may be spurious and that the predictor-criterion functional relationship may be better characterized by a nonlinear function. They recommended concurrently inspecting nonlinear functions when examining moderator effects. This article reviews the evidence presented by Lubinski and Humphreys to substantiate their argument and …
"Cautions in assessing spurious "moderator effects
Behavioral other-enhancement
A strategy related to self-handicapping in which individuals supply a comparison other with a performance advantage rather than handicap their own performance was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1 greater other-enhancement was found among men than among women. In addition, men engaged in the most other-enhancement when expecting that their performance would be compared with that of a coparticipant. In Experiment 2 the hypothesis th…
Productivity loss in performance groups
This article presents a framework derived from expectancy theory for organizing the research on productivity loss among individuals combining their efforts into a common pool (i.e., the research on social loafing, free riding, and the sucker effect). Lost productivity is characterized as a problem of low motivation arising when individuals perceive no value to contributing, perceive no contingency between their contributions and achieving a desir…
Dysphoria as a moderator of the relationship between perceived effort and perceived ability
Although Heiderian logic (F. Heider, 1958) proposes an inverse relationship between ability and effort, research has uncovered dramatic individual differences in the judged relationship between the two. Some view ability and effort as positively related; others view them as negatively related. Study 1 explored dysphoria as a moderator of this relationship by gathering dysphoric and nondysphoric individuals' perceptions of their effort and ability…
Probing suspicion among participants in deception research
Deception is a popular and useful technique for examining a variety of important social psychological phenomena. Indeed, deception has proved to be indispensable in studying and establishing causality within a variety of important human social phenomena (e.g., aggression, prejudice, obedience, conformity, impression management). Upwards of 81% of studies published in the top social psychological journals use deception in their procedures (Adair, …
Probing suspicion among participants in deception research
Dispositional Optimism as a Predictor of Health Changes among Cardiac Patients
Abandoning unrealistic optimism
Although evidence for unrealistic optimism is considerable, there is reason to believe that individuals will abandon their optimism and may even become pessimistic in anticipation of self-relevant feedback. The authors propose and provide preliminary test of a model of the temporal transition from o
On the manipulative behavior of low Machiavellians
Three decades of research has revealed that people scoring high in Machiavellianism (high Machs) are manipulative and domineering. However, the domineering style of high Machs may preclude them from using manipulations that require a display of weakness. The authors examined whether Machiavellianism moderates the use of sandbagging-a manipulative strategy in which people display low ability to induce an opponent to reduce effort or lower his or h…
Bracing for loss
People find unexpected bad news aversive and often brace themselves by predicting the worst. Three experiments examined whether the pessimism is influenced by personal need. Students who differed in financial need learned that a billing error meant that some students would receive an additional bill from their university. Financially needy students were consistently pessimistic in predicting their likelihood of receiving a bill, whereas non-needy…
Do Moderators of the Optimistic Bias Affect Personal or Target Risk Estimates? A Review of the Literature
The optimistic bias is defined as judging one's own risk as less than the risk of others. Researchers have identified numerous personal and situational factors that moderate the extent to which people display the bias. It is unclear, however, whether these moderators affect the bias by influencing people's personal risk estimates or their risk estimates for a target. A review of moderators of the optimistic bias reveals evidence for both influenc…
Is Self‐Complexity Linked to Better Coping? A Review of the Literature
Initial theorizing depicted self‐complexity as the number of nonoverlapping self‐aspects, such as traits, roles, and behaviors, and proposed that greater self‐complexity is linked to better coping in response to stress and negative events. A review of the literature, however, finds inconsistent results. The inconsistency apparently arises from variation in the measurement of self‐complexity. The different measures stem from disagreement over the …
Testing competence and acceptance explanations of self-esteem
Recent theorizing suggests that both competence and acceptance contribute to global self-esteem. However, relatively little empirical work has focused on the relative contributions of competence and acceptance. We tested in four studies (N = 332) two competing hypotheses about how competence and acceptance play a role in self-esteem. According to the acceptance hypothesis, acceptance should influence self-esteem more than competence should. Accor…
Exploring Causes of the Self‐serving Bias
The self‐serving bias refers to a tendency for people to take personal responsibility for their desirable outcomes yet externalize responsibility for their undesirable outcomes. We review a variety of explanations for this attribution bias. Although researchers have historically pitted cognitive and motivational explanations for the self‐serving bias against one another, cognitive and motivation processes often work in tandem to lead people to co…
College Smokers' Estimates of Their Probabilities of Remaining a Smoker in the Near Future
Community college and university smokers (N = 662) estimated their probability (0% to 100%) of remaining a smoker one and six months later and reported their confidence in their estimates. Smoking status was assessed at each time point. Analyses controlled for several correlates of both smoking status and probability estimates of remaining a smoker. Estimates of smoking status interacted with confidence to predict smoking status at one month, but…
Information Avoidance
Although acquiring information can provide numerous benefits, people often opt to remain ignorant. We define information avoidance as any behavior designed to prevent or delay the acquisition of available but potentially unwanted information. We review the various literatures that examine information avoidance and provide a unique framework to integrate the contributions of these disparate areas of research. We first define information avoidance …
The costs of optimism and the benefits of pessimism
Research suggests that optimism feels good. However, does it always feel good? We suggest that the benefits (and costs) of optimism and pessimism depend on their timing. A study of exam score estimates revealed that, after controlling for actual exam performance, optimistic expectations are unrelated to how people feel immediately before feedback, in contrast to the common wisdom that optimism "feels good." Furthermore, optimism has costs after f…
Young smokers’ views of genetic susceptibility testing for lung cancer risk
Self-regulation, identity-regulation and health
As investigators have worked to understand the psychological processes that guide how people manage their health and cope with illness, they have frequently turned to theoretical and methodological
Using self- and identity-regulation to promote health
Self/identity-regulation can have important consequences for a wide variety of health outcomes. In this paper, we review how self/identity-regulation can both promote and undermine health. We also discuss ways in which research and theory on self/identity-regulation can engage traditional models of health behavior, prompting new research questions as well as promising approaches to daunting health problems. Finally, we consider several challenges…
Motivations for genetic testing for lung cancer risk among young smokers
In addition to learning about health risks, young people may be motivated to seek genetic testing for reasons, such as gaining knowledge about new genetic technologies more broadly
Psychology (56 works) · Social Psychology (45 works) · Social Psychology (24 works) · Medicine (23 works) · Clinical Psychology (14 works) · Developmental psychology (14 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (13 works) · Optimism, Hope, and Well-being (12 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works)