Digital Commons Network^™

Deliberate Self-Persuasion And Forgiveness, Irene Cheung

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

After being hurt by a romantic partner, individuals may feel ambivalent towards their partner. Specifically, individuals’ feelings about their partner after a transgression (current attitudes) may be discrepant from how they want to feel about their partner (desired attitudes). When individuals are aware of such a discrepancy, they may be motivated to resolve it by using mental strategies (e.g., focusing on the positive characteristics of the partner or focusing on events that are not related to the transgression) that bring their current attitudes more in line with their desired attitudes, a process that has been labeled deliberate self-persuasion (Maio & …

Profiles Of Children And Youth Displaying Inappropriate Sexual Behaviours: Relevance For Assessment For Sexual Offending Patterns, Julia M. L. Rick

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a specialized assessment program with a sample of children/youth (n = 80) who were seeking intervention for inappropriate sexual behaviour (ISB) at a tertiary mental health facility in London, Ontario. The primary goal was to identify predictive factors in participants with offending behaviour—both sexual and non-sexual—in order to prioritize treatment needs and to address strategies for reducing the risk of sexual offending against others. As participant ages increased by 1 year, their odds of sexually offending someone increased by approximately 27%. Also, males were found six times more likely to sexually …

Hearing Women’S Voices: Understanding Women's Stories Of Violence From The Perspective Of Strength, Kayla M. Janes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to understand women's experiences of violence from the perspective of strength. Women who had experienced woman abuse participated, identifying common themes that emerged relating to their strengths and resilience that helped them survive their traumatic experiences, as well as their posttraumatic growth. Interviews were conducted with women who were involved in an adult education program for women who had experienced woman abuse. All of the women in this study were suffering distress and mental health concerns related to their experiences of violence; however all of them showed resilience and posttraumatic growth in areas of …

Coping Experiences Of 911 Communication Workers, Sarah G. Horsford

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research explored coping experiences among emergency communications personnel. Ten individuals from a communication centre of a policing unit in Ontario participated in semi-structured interviews. Seven themes emerged to form the content analysis including Meaning-Focused Coping, Emotion-Focused Coping, Problem-Focused Coping, Reappraisal, Comm Centre Culture, Occupational Dimensions and Organizational Structure. Themes were compared to workplace stress, coping and burnout literature in addition to literature regarding organizational interventions and emergency responders. Implications were presented for counselors working with communications personnel and emergency responders.

Cultural Connectedness As Personal Wellness In First Nations Youth, Ben Davis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Adolescent development involves changes in self-concept and identification with different groups or cultural norms. Many First Nations adolescents have additional difficulties due to disconnections with family, schooling and cultural background, as a legacy of colonisation and social marginalisation. The present study used data from the First Nations Regional Longitudinal Health Survey, Youth, Phase 2 to test the hypothesis that connectedness to social and cultural factors would predict lower rates of reported depression in First Nations youth, using a logistic regression analysis. The findings indicated that connectedness to family and school, as well as having a sense of control over one's …

Motivation In Goal Orientation And Motivational Climate In Elite Wheelchair Tennis Players, Laurence M. Zalmanowitz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research explored motivation in relation to goal orientation and motivational climate among elite wheelchair tennis players in Canada who were asked to recall their experiences from early development to the highest levels of competition. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three Canadian wheelchair tennis players via Skype. Each represented Canada in international competition during their career. An ethnographic collective case study method was followed. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed by the researcher. Four themes emerged from the data, including involvement, process, impact/support of others and measures of success. Results were compared with existing research. Similarities and differences were discussed. …

The Aftermath Of Intergenerational Trauma: Substance Use Risk And Resiliency, Laurel E. Pickel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present study explored resilience factors to substance use within Canada’s First Nations adults. This was explored through a lens of historical trauma experienced as a group through the Residential School establishments. Secondary data from phase II (2008/10) of the Regional Health Survey were analyzed in coming to determine the effects of resiliency factors in the lives of abstainers/low substance users, moderate users and heavy users. Analysis of variance tests revealed some significant differences in experience with resilience factors in the lives of abstainers/low users versus heavy users; no significant observations were had for the moderate group. Logistic regression analysis …

The Relative Influences Of Knowledge, Beliefs And Preferences On Adherence To Asthma Medication, Naomi J. Gryfe Saperia

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Purpose: Patients’ decisions about whether or not to adhere to their prescribed regimens are shaped not only by their knowledge and beliefs about their condition and its treatment options, but also by what they value in these domains. This study represents an integration of theory and methods from nursing/public health, psychology and economics to explore the additive effects of knowledge, beliefs and preferences on adherence to preventer medication in a sample of patients with asthma. It was hypothesized that knowledge, beliefs and preferences pertaining to long term outcomes would independently predict improved adherence. Method: 140 patients with asthma were asked …

Psychological Contracts In The Workplace: A Mixed Methods Design Project, Kate J. Mcinnis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Employee perceptions of psychological contracts were explored in a mixed methods design project. Although psychological contract research has been popular since its inception over 50 years ago, the field makes a number of assumptions about how employees truly experience psychological contracts (Conway & Briner, 2009). The primary goal of the present research was to identify how psychological contracts should be measured and theorized to reflect the natural experiences and language of employees. In Study 1, I examined a number of the theory’s assumptions by asking employees in interviews about their psychological contract experiences. A descriptive phenomenological approach allowed me to …

Investigating The Necessary Components Of A Sarcastic Context, John D. Campbell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research is designed to investigate the contextual components utilized to convey sarcastic verbal irony, testing whether theoretical components deemed as necessary for creating a sense of irony are, in fact, necessary. A novel task was employed: Given a set of statements that out-of-context were not rated as sarcastic, participants were instructed to either generate discourse context that would make the statements sarcastic or meaningful (without further specification). In a series of studies these generated contexts were shown to differ from one another along the dimensions presumed as necessary (failed expectation, pragmatic insincerity, negative tension and presence of a victim) …

A Self-Regulation Model Of Depression: Content Of Cognitive Representations And Prediction Of Treatment Seeking, Catherine Leite

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Leventhal's self-regulation model (SRM) was applied as a conceptual framework from which to examine individuals' cognitive representations of depressive symptoms. This thesis explored the nature of these representations, as well as factors that may impact on these representations and, in turn, influence coping strategies and professional help seeking. In particular, Study 1 examined the effect of symptom severity and the label used to identify the symptoms on the cognitive representations of depressive symptoms and coping, whereas Study 2 examined the effect of symptom duration in this regard. This thesis also considered the extent to which the various SRM domains are …

Flexibility In Parent-Child Interactions: The Application Of Dynamic Systems Methodology To Dyadic Processes In Children With Behaviour Problems, Vivien Lee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Dynamic systems theory (DST) can provide a comprehensive account for how parent-child interactions evolve over time to produce stable patterns of interacting and can result in seemingly divergent trajectories. Recent methodological advances using state space grids (SSGs) have provided a graphical means to examine real-time dyadic processes, as well as measures of dyadic flexibility, or the ability to adapt emotional and behavioural responding in response to contextual demands. Higher levels of dyadic flexibility have been associated with improvements in child behaviour problems after treatment (Granic et al., 2007), while its converse, rigidity, has been associated with increases in behaviour …

The Expression Of Religious Bias In The Evaluation Of Foreign-Trained Job Applicants, Caroline Bennett-Abuayyash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation compromises 2 experiments that investigated religious discrimination as it particularly affects foreign-trained job applicants. Study 1 consisted of a 3 (Applicant’s religion: Christian, Muslim, or No Affiliation) X 2 (Applicant’s location of training: Canada or Cyprus) between-subjects design. After viewing an advertisement for a health-care position, Canadian participants reviewed a male applicant’s CV and watched his taped interview, in which a briefly visible pendant indicated his religious affiliation. The job applicant was then evaluated on two sets of skills: hard (technical) skills and soft (non-technical) skills. As predicted based on the justification suppression model of prejudice (Crandall & …

Development Of A Cohesion Inventory For Children's Sport Teams, Luc J. Martin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The general purpose of this dissertation was to develop an inventory designed to measure cohesion in children’s (ages 9-12) sport teams. To this end, three studies were conducted. In Study 1, children became active agents in the process of test construction. More specifically, children (N = 167) participated in focus groups and completed open-ended questionnaires in order to provide information on their perceptions of cohesion as well as motives for participating, continuing, and ceasing involvement on sport teams. Study 2 involved the use of the information obtained from Study 1 to develop potential items for the questionnaire. In addition, the …

The Moderating Effect Of Reciprocity Beliefs On Work Outcomes, Stephanie Hastings

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Researchers have long assumed that employees’ reactions to treatment by their organization are guided by reciprocity norms. Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, and Sowa (1986) developed a measure to assess how sensitive employees were to reciprocity obligations, focusing in particular on their beliefs that work effort should depend on treatment by the organization. Since then, research has found that this Exchange Ideology (EI) predicts variables such as organizational citizenship but cannot predict negative outcomes such as workplace deviance. Insight into why this is the case can be found by examining the related construct of reciprocity orientation. Positive (PRO) and Negative Reciprocity Orientation …

Workplace Commitment And Employee Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis And Study Of Commitment Profiles, Elyse R. Maltin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Employee commitments have been connected to a multitude of organizationally- relevant variables, including turnover, absenteeism, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviours (e.g., Meyer, Stanley, Herscovtich, & Topolnytsky, 2002). Research has repeatedly demonstrated that the form these commitments take matters; that is, research has shown that commitment based on a mindset of affective attachment has the strongest positive relations with desired outcomes, while commitment based on mindsets of social or economic costs has much weaker and sometimes even negative relations with these same outcomes.

Far less research exists on the connection between workplace commitments and their implications for employees themselves, although …

The Power Of Dialogue: Understanding Developmental Origins And Processes Underlying Mother-Child Conversations About Past Emotional Events, Celia Hsiao

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Mother-child emotion dialogues represent an integral medium through which children’s autobiography develops. This study sought to understand the developmental origins and processes underlying this co-construction process by examining the inter-relations between: mother-infant attachment relationships, maternal attachment representations, maternal sensitivity during interactions in infancy, maternal affective mindset during toddlerhood, and mother-child emotion dialogues.

Our findings are consistent with past research on the links between the three organized categories of mother-infant attachment relationships and later mother-child emotion dialogues. Children in disorganized attachment relationships displayed a lack of consistent and coherent strategy during emotion communication. Our results emphasize the important role of maternal …

Do I Feel Dissonance Over You? Sex Differences In The Experience Of Dissonance For Romantic Partners, Sandra D. Lackenbauer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present research investigated sex differences in the experience of cognitive dissonance after decisions made for oneself or for one’s romantic partner. Guided by theory and research suggesting that women and men possess divergent self-construals, I predicted that women would experience more dissonance when making a difficult decision for their partner relative to men. Both men and women were predicted to experience dissonance after decisions made for themselves, although possibly to a lesser degree for women. In two studies, a modified free-choice dissonance paradigm was utilized to test sex differences in the experience of cognitive dissonance, as determined by the …

The Use Of Capacity As An Indicator Of Automatic Processing: Is Smoking Automatic?, Agnes A. Massak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It has been suggested that substance use transitions from a controlled to an automatic process (Tiffany, 1990). In particular, smoking has been found to appear automatic (Baxter & Hinson, 2001). Experienced smokers were able to attend to a reaction time task with minimal interference while smoking. Novice smokers’ performances were impaired when smoking. These results were based on differences in mean reaction times using analysis of variance. Another analytic approach to test the hypothesis that smoking is an automatic process is through the use of capacity coefficients and ratios. These mathematical tools allow for the direct testing of mental processing. …

Contributions Of Signal-Detection Mechanisms And Semantic Memory Representations To Famous Name Recognition, Ben P. Bowles

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In past research, investigators have often used the recognition memory paradigm to study the cognitive and neural processes that permit the ability to accurately assess whether or not stimuli are familiar. This paradigm involves presenting stimuli to participants in a study phase, and examining their later recognition of them when these stimuli are subsequently presented again in a later test phase. It is not well understood, however, whether the same mechanisms that support familiarity assessment in recognition memory also support familiarity based on general life experience (e.g., recognizing a famous celebrity in daily life). To address this, I implemented modified …

A Model, Leah K. Hamilton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

to be released at conclusion of embargo.

An Investigation Of Masked Priming Mechanisms In Binary Classification Tasks, Jason Perry

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of the present research was to examine the nature of masked priming with an emphasis on the influence of stimulus-response (S-R) associations. In Chapter 2, both the magnitude of the category congruence (priming) effect and the nature of the priming distance effect were assessed in two number classification tasks. Participants made either magnitude (i.e., is the target larger or smaller than ‘5’?) or identification judgments (i.e., press one button if the target is a ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ or ‘4’ or the other button if the target is a ‘6’, ‘7’, ‘8’ or ‘9’). Priming distance effects in …

The Prejudice Paradox (Or Discrimination Is Not Dead): Systematic Discrimination In Forced Choice Employment Decisions, Paula M. Brochu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research examined discriminatory responding in a forced choice employment decision paradigm, using a justification-suppression perspective to interpret the findings. In this paradigm, participants play the role of employers and make employment choices between two excellent and similarly qualified individuals that differ only on one dimension. In the first three studies, participants chose between two individuals who were described as differing only in ethnicity (European vs. Middle Eastern), gender (Male vs. Female), religion (Christian vs. Muslim), age (Young vs. Old), height (Tall vs. Short), weight (Average Weight vs. Overweight), nationality (Canadian vs. Immigrant), or sexual orientation (Heterosexual vs. Homosexual). Patterns …

Judging Covers By Their Books: Malleable Attractiveness Appraisals In Response To Belongingness Feedback, Christopher J. Wilbur

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present research examined biases in appraisals of target attractiveness in response to belongingness feedback. Specifically, I hypothesized that individuals would provide favorable attractiveness appraisals of targets who accept them, and would provide unfavorable attractiveness appraisals of targets who reject them. I hypothesized further that biased appraisals would be most pronounced when people received feedback from opposite-sex targets. Two literatures guided the development of the present research. The first literature underscores the power of reciprocal liking – people like those who like them. In mirror fashion, people are highly critical of targets who deny opportunities for social affiliation. The second …

Mechanisms Behind The Success Of Exercise As An Adjunct Quit Smoking Aid, Therese M. Harper

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It is well documented that temporarily abstinent smokers who undergo an acute bout of moderate intensity exercise experience a reduction in nicotine craving and withdrawal. Conversely, available research in chronic exercise and smoking cessation does not reliably demonstrate that combining exercise with well established treatments increases smoking abstinence rates. The overall aim of this dissertation was to investigate mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of exercise in a group of female smokers taking part in a 14 week exercise plus nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) patch programme. Determining how smokers may benefit from exercise has important implications for designing effective interventions. Three …

The Importance Of Self-Efficacy And Basic Psychological Needs In Children’S Physical Activity: Measurement, Prediction And Intervention, Casey E. Gray

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The importance of physical activity in the overall health promotion and primary prevention of cardiovascular disease risk factors and metabolic diseases in children is well established. Nonetheless, interventions to increase physical activity among this population have been largely unsuccessful. The main objective of the research in this dissertation was to explore the suitability of self-efficacy and basic psychological needs for physical activity prediction and intervention in children. Item generation and psychometric evaluation of psychological questionnaires occurred in study 1 (Chapter 2). Using a prospective design, study 2 (Chapter 3) established task efficacy, barriers efficacy, competence, and autonomy as significant predictors …

Carving Cognition At Its Joints: Insights From The Interaction Between Explicit And Implicit Social Cognition, Kurt R. Peters

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The distinction of cognition into kinds of cognitive process has proven theoretically fruitful and empirically compelling, but there remain significant challenges in deciding how best to carve cognition. First, it is unclear how to design measurement procedures that select distinct kinds of cognitive processing as exclusively as possible and, conversely, how to interpret the results of different kinds of measurement procedure. Second, the distinction between kinds of cognition must be specified with enough precision to derive empirically testable and falsifiable predictions. Third, there must be a reasonable explanation, ultimately compatible with phylogenetic evidence, for the existence of the specified distinction …

The Utility And Feasibility Of Metric Calibration For Basic Psychological Research, Etienne Lebel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Inspired by the history of the development of instruments in the physical sciences, and by past psychology giants, the following dissertation aimed to advance basic psychological science by investigating the metric calibration of psychological instruments. The over-arching goal of the dissertation was to demonstrate that it is both useful and feasible to calibrate the metric of psychological instruments so as to render their metrics non-arbitrary. Concerning utility, a conceptual analysis was executed delineating four categories of proposed benefits of non-arbitrary metrics including (a) help in the interpretation of data, (b) facilitation of construct validity research, (c) contribution to theory development, …

A Social Relations Analysis Of Transactive Memory In Groups, Sarah J. Ross

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Transactive memory is the knowledge of what others in a group know and the exchange of that knowledge. In groups with effective transactive memory systems, members know “who knows what”, send knowledge to the appropriate individuals, and develop strategies for retrieving that information (Mohammed & Dumville, 2001; Wegner, 1995). Transactive memory studies tend to focus on the group as a whole, but useful information might be gathered by investigating transactive memory in dyads within groups. The purpose of this research was to use the social relations model (Kenny & LaVoie, 1984) as the basis for operationalizing transactive memory and …

An Observational Assessment Of Peer Group Contributions To Adolescent Identity Development, Tara M. Dumas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that interaction-based peer groups play an important role in adolescents’ identity development. Peer group members’ current identity development and peer group interaction processes were examined as predictors of teens’ later identity exploration and commitment. Participants (n = 1070; 522 girls; M_age = 15.45 years) reported on their identity development and a subset of participants took part in an interactive group decision task within peer triads (n = 258; 86 triads). Task-related interactions were coded for support (openness to opinions) or discouragement (teasing of opinions and controlling behaviours) of …