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The Need For Purpose: The Desire For Meaningful Direction As A Fundamental Human Motivation, Jose A. Espinoza Mogollon Dec 2021

The Need For Purpose: The Desire For Meaningful Direction As A Fundamental Human Motivation, Jose A. Espinoza Mogollon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present research investigated the hypothesis that humans have an innate and fundamental need for purpose. This need is defined as a pervasive drive for a sense of meaningful direction and the experience of progress toward associated objectives. First, theoretical development of the need for purpose is presented, along with a review of the existing research literature covering evidence for the need for purpose’s fulfillment of well-established criteria for evaluating needs. This review is followed by three empirical studies developing a measure assessing satisfaction and frustration of purpose, examining an initial nomological network of the construct, and testing whether purpose …


Narrative Communication: How Sending And Receiving Impact Statements On Past Ingroup Suffering Influences Conflict Attitudes, Brooke Burrows Oct 2021

Narrative Communication: How Sending And Receiving Impact Statements On Past Ingroup Suffering Influences Conflict Attitudes, Brooke Burrows

Masters Theses

In the aftermath of mass violence or harm perpetrated against one group by another, commemoration or memorialization processes held by the victim group are often a space in which narratives of impact and suffering are expressed and shared. While there may be no formal or direct calls for justice or policy during these commemoration processes, prior research indicates that such public forums, ranging from truth commissions to museum exhibits, may have diverse impacts on individual emotions as well as attitudes towards the broader conflict implicated (Humphrey, 2000; Reeves & Heath-Kelly, 2020). The current work proposes a closer examination of such …


True Self In Threat Resilience: Using Essentialist Self-Views To Neutralize Personal Morality Threats, Ellen S. Dulaney Aug 2021

True Self In Threat Resilience: Using Essentialist Self-Views To Neutralize Personal Morality Threats, Ellen S. Dulaney

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

course of this dissertation, I introduce the idea of the true self construct as a personalized route to individual meaning and stability at a time in history when external direction regarding values and purpose is in decline. Setting aside the question of the ontological status of the true self, I emphasize that beliefs about and representations of the true self have distinctive psychological impact and cite research supporting this assertion. I then review evidence of the aptness of such true self-orientations in supporting well-being, fulfillment of basic psychological needs, and resilience against threat. Across two studies, I investigated the effectiveness …


Remembering Postpartum Depression In Later Life: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Walker Ladd Phd Apr 2021

Remembering Postpartum Depression In Later Life: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Walker Ladd Phd

The Qualitative Report

Postpartum depression (PPD) occurs in as many as 1 in 7 women (Gavin et al., 2005). PPD remains underdiagnosed and largely untreated, contributing to high societal costs and increased maternal mortality. Despite the wealth of research reporting the adverse effects of PPD on childbearing women and their offspring, little is known about how women who have experienced PPD describe or interpret the meaning of the experience in later life. I conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 10 women self-identifying as having had PPD a minimum of 13 years in the past. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) I identified …


The Facets Of Meaningful Experiences: An Examination Of Purpose And Coherence In Meaningful And Meaningless Events, William Tov, Weiting Ng, Soon-Hock Kang Jan 2021

The Facets Of Meaningful Experiences: An Examination Of Purpose And Coherence In Meaningful And Meaningless Events, William Tov, Weiting Ng, Soon-Hock Kang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Research on meaning has begun to assess the specific facets of meaning in life. Few studies have examined the extent to which these facets distinguish meaning at the level of individual events. In the present study, participants from Singapore and the U.S. wrote about meaningful and meaningless events and rated the extent to which they experienced purpose, coherence, positive and negative implications for self and others, positive affect, and negative affect. In both samples, meaningful and meaningless events differed most in their levels of positive affect, purpose, and positive implications for the self. When entered as predictors of overall event …


Making Emotions Meaningful: The Power Of Mindfulness During Leader Developmental Trigger Events, Jason Beck Jan 2021

Making Emotions Meaningful: The Power Of Mindfulness During Leader Developmental Trigger Events, Jason Beck

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Successful leaders act with a sense of inner meaningfulness that contagiously influences followers to perform at their best. Leaders who purposely engage with emotionally intense developmental experiences (e.g., trigger events) cultivate greater meaningfulness in their work. Negative trigger events may be more impactful than positive trigger events because negative emotions shock beliefs and assumptions about reality. Additionally, due to the emotional intensity, leaders often fail to learn from trigger events that could develop leader meaningfulness. Mindfulness may help leaders appropriately use the emotional intensity of trigger events to produce meaningfulness. The purpose of this study was to empirically test the …