Emotional valence and arousal contribute to enhanced memory encoding and recognition. We aim to investigate how traumatic depictions of violence and how the context they are embedded in, realistic or mythological, can affect memory recognition. To investigate this, we sequentially showed participants (n=50) two television episodes: one that depicts terrorism, kidnapping, and torture, and a second one that depicts fantasy-drama and action scenes replete with sword fights and distressed characters. Then, a series of clips from the watched episode (target) and a different episode of the same series (foil) were shown to participants and they were asked to identify clips from the original episode they watched. These clips were assigned a trauma score based on DSM-5 criteria and a generalized linear model (GLM) will be used to assess the relationship between the trauma score and recognition accuracy in both conditions. We predict that memory recognition accuracy will be greater for realistic traumatic scenes with real life concordance compared to traumatic scenes situated in mythological or fantasy contexts due to enhanced encoding. Such findings would support the theory that vicarious trauma with contextual and cultural significance is encoded with greater clarity and priority in memory. This gap is critical in an era where people are frequently exposed to traumatic content through media, which may have unique and possibly negative cognitive effects depending on the underlying context and motifs.

With the increasing popularity of social media platforms, particularly TikTok, food content such as “What I Eat in a Day” videos and diet trends have become widespread. These often include language that assigns moral value to food - terms such as “clean,” “junk,” “healthy,” or “bad”; which may contribute to users' perceptions of food as either virtuous or shameful. Thus, this study investigated the influence of TikTok’s food-related discourse on university students’ eating behaviors and emotional relationships with food. This research employed a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design with four key variables: sociodemographic background, patterns of TikTok usage, perceived personal impact of food content, and the role of campus-provided nutrition education. Participants (n=166) responded to a series of Likert-scale items evaluating emotional reactions, trust in TikTok-based nutrition advice, and engagement with food-related trends. Using descriptive statistics and frequency distributions, we examined associations between frequent exposure to food discourse with food moralization and altered dietary decision-making. Preliminary analyses revealed a possible correlation between college students’ exposure to food content on TikTok and stronger moral opinions about food. Thus, our findings contribute to a better understanding of how social media impacts eating attitudes and may inform educational interventions promoting media literacy and healthy relationships with food among university students.

Cognitive reappraisal, a form of emotion regulation, involves reinterpreting events to reduce negative emotions like fear, sadness, or anger, and can benefit psychological health. Research suggests that reappraisal not only regulates emotions but also affects memory processes, particularly how negative stimuli are encoded into long-term memory. By influencing the emotional salience of an event, reappraisal may impact memory consolidation. Understanding its effects on memory is crucial for improving psychological treatments targeting both emotional regulation and memory. In this study, we analyze data from a longitudinal study on early life development. Participants engage in an emotion regulation task where they rate emotions after passively viewing or cognitively reappraising negative and neutral stimuli. Two weeks later, they complete two follow-up tasks: a memory task, where they rate whether they recognize the stimuli from the initial session, and an appraisal task, where they rate how negative the stimuli make them feel. We predict that cognitive reappraisal will lead to lower initial emotional ratings and decreased familiarity ratings during the follow-up task compared to non-reappraised stimuli. This suggests that reappraisal not only alters immediate emotional responses but also affects the long-term memory encoding of negative events.

Recent literature suggests that the cultural values people hold are an adaptation to their present sociodemographic conditions (Greenfield, 2009, 2016). Collectivism emerges with low SES, while individualism emerges with high SES (Zhou et al., 2017). Previous studies have found evidence in several populations (Cohen & Varnum, 2016; Holtzman et al., 1975; Hooker et al., 2023), but none have examined the U.S. Mexican Immigrant population. To explore the relationship between social class and cultural values in this population, we are conducting a mixed-method study that integrates both quantitative and qualitative data. Using purposive sampling, we are recruiting and interviewing two groups of participants: high-SES and low-SES Mexican immigrants. Participants are being given 14 scenarios with 3 responses to choose from. Each response is coded to represent either adaptation to a high-SES environment (e.g., individualism), adaptation to a low-SES environment (e.g., collectivism), or an intermediate response. After selecting each response, participants explain the reasoning behind their choice. Four pilot participants, two from each group, were used to finalize the procedure and survey instrument. Pilot data were also used to initiate the development of a coding system for the qualitative reasoning behind each participant’s choices. Data collection for the main study has begun, and 9 participants have currently been interviewed. Additional interview data will be available for presentation at Undergraduate Research Week.

This abstract has been withheld from publication.