Digital Commons Network^™

Communicating Indirect Feelings: American Stories Of Indirect Experiences, Susan Hess Lawson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The words people use to describe indirect human experiences and how narratives play a role are examined within qualitative research. The problem is that some people have difficulty communicating indirect experiences, and few studies have examined the issue. The purpose of this qualitative narrative research study was to examine how people who encountered indirect communication in their lived experiences can communicate the indirect experiences and messages they received. The theory guiding this study is the indirect communication theory as it relates to Communicating Indirect Feelings (CIF). The definition of CIF is how people attempt to communicate indirect feelings for shared …

The Power Of A Profound Experience With Nature: Living With Meaning, Becky Mathers, Eric Brymer

School of Education Faculty Work

Nature based experiences have been linked to significant positive outcomes for people and the planet. Significant life experience research investigates the associations between formative experiences in nature and resulting environmental concern and action, including both singular events and repeated experiences. However, little is known about the long-term impacts of singular profound experiences with nature. This research sought to better understand how a singular, meaningful experience defines an individual’s self-awareness of his or her relationship with nature, changes social relationships, and directs environmental decisions and behaviors. Twenty-one adults who had a profound experience with nature participated in a semi-structured interview exploring …

Challenges To Career As A Source Of Meaning And Satisfaction Among Certified Athletic Trainers In The United States Of America, Nicole Marie Glasgow

Dissertations and Theses

There is a high prevalence of burnout in the athletic training profession. Similar to what has been found in other healthcare professions, burnout is correlated with lack of job satisfaction, high turnover, and decreased productivity. In phase one of this study, the purpose was to investigate whether there was a relationship between perceived career meaning and burnout among certified athletic trainers. In phase two, the purpose of the study was to explore the lived experiences of meaningfulness and purposefulness by certified athletic trainers. The overall objective of the research was to generate an understanding of factors associated with burnout in …

A Phenomenological Exploration Of Young Adults Who Self-Identify With Primary Complex Motor Stereotypies, Vanja Maria Popovic

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Primary complex motor stereotypies (p-CMS) are repetitive, rhythmic, and predictable involuntary movements which occur in typically developing individuals. To date, research has focused on observational data involving parents, leaving a lack of first-hand information about the effect of p-CMS on experiencers’ quality of life and wellbeing in adulthood. This phenomenological study, grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory, explored lived experiences of six young adults, ages 21 to 29 years, who self-identified with p-CMS, through in-depth telephone and Zoom interviews. I aimed to answer how p-CMS affected participants in academic, work, and social settings, what meaning participants assigned to their p-CMS, and …

The Meaning Of Words: For Richer Or For Poorer, Susan Lutfallah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study operationally defined semantic richness as the depth and breadth of meaning associated with words. It also examined the relationship between known language variables and their relative contribution to semantic richness as a construct. A total of 60,000 subjective word ratings were explicitly collected from adult participants across 39 different countries who identified as speaking English as a first language. These ratings were compared to other known language variables to investigate the individual and collective relationships among them and determined their predictive influence on the collected ratings. It was found that although most variables were significantly related to …

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

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

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

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Structure, State, And Stream Of Mary Consciousness In The Quest For The Knowing Body, Christine Dennis

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The science of consciousness has traditionally situated knowledge creation in the mind, and thus, marginalizes the knowing body. Returning to the body requires a decolonization of consciousness in Euro-Western research paradigms and in our bodies. This research is grounded in the spirituality indigenous to my Latinx matrilineage known as Mary consciousness, which frames the body as an epistemic pillar of knowledge creation. A feminist fleshing of the knowing body displaces the centrality of the mind by elevating indigenous ways of knowing. Material feminist worldviews contribute by expressing the degree to which the body has been marginalized as a valid source …

Clinicians’ Perspectives On Distinguishing Between Religious/Spiritual And Psychotic Phenomena, Jessica K. Parker

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Psychosis is a central concept in mental health, yet the concept is unclear. Clinicians are challenged with the task to be able to distinguish psychotic phenomena; however, little is known about how clinicians are able to distinguish religious/spiritual phenomena from psychotic phenomena, as both may be similar in presentation. The focus of this dissertation was on understanding the perspectives and distinguishing processes of mental health professionals when distinguishing between religious/spiritual and psychotic phenomena. Taking a generic qualitative framework approach, the study included face-to-face and telephone interviews with 10 licensed mental health professionals recruited through social media and snowball sampling. Interviews …

Situational Factors Influencing Receptivity To Bullshit, Mitch Brown, Lucas A. Keefer, Shelby J. Mcgrew

Faculty Publications

Individuals are motivated to maintain a sense of meaning, and enact cognitive processes to do so (e.g., perceiving structure in the environment). This motivation to find meaning may ultimately impact humans’ interpretation of "bullshit", statements intended to convey profundity without any meaning. Conversely, subtle cues threatening the meaningfulness of bullshit may elicit greater skepticism. Three studies tested situational factors predicted to heighten or diminish susceptibility to bullshit by changing motivations to seek meaning. We employed diverse methods including symbolic meaning threat (Study 1), social exclusion (Cyberball; Study 2), and manipulating cognitive fluency (Study 3). Taken together, the results indicate basic …

Enhancing The Emotional Impact Of Prospections Via Personal Values, Bethany Grace Gorter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Prospection involves imagining future events using mental representations. When people engage in positive, vivid, prospections they report “boosts” of mood, and higher rates of well-being. This study sought to cultivate positive affect in response to prospections by incorporating values into future imagery. Two groups imagined everyday future events in detail. One group additionally learned about values and linked these values to the everyday future events. We hypothesized that the values-based prospection would result in greater increases in mood, and that this increase would be mediated by additional access to details and phenomenological features. Contrary to hypotheses, there was no positive …

Perceptions Of Leaders, Heroes And Villains: Mystery Resolution And Meaning-Making, George R. Goethals, Scott T. Allison

Scott T. Allison

Toddlers Activate Lexical Semantic Knowledge In The Absence Of Visual Referents: Evidence From Auditory Priming, Jon A. Willits, Erica H. Wojcik, Mark S. Seidenberg, Jenny R. Saffran

Erica Wojcik

Language learners rapidly acquire extensive semantic knowledge, but the development of this knowledge is difficult to study, in part because it is difficult to assess young children's lexical semantic representations. In our studies, we solved this problem by investigating lexical semantic knowledge in 24-month-olds using the Head-turn Preference Procedure. In Experiment 1, looking times to a repeating spoken word stimulus (e.g., kitty-kitty-kitty) were shorter for trials preceded by a semantically related word (e.g., dog-dog-dog) than trials preceded by an unrelated word (e.g., juice-juice-juice). Experiment 2 yielded similar results using a method in which pairs of words were presented on the …

A Closer Look At The Hedonics Of Everyday Meaning And Satisfaction, William Tov, Huey Woon Lee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Contrasts between eudaimonic well-being and hedonic well-being often compare meaning and happiness. Less work has examined the extent to which meaning and satisfaction can be distinguished. Across five diary studies (N = 923) and a large cross-sectional survey (N = 1471), we examined the affective profile of meaning and satisfaction in everyday life. Using response surface methodology, both judgments were modeled as a joint function of positive (PA) and negative (NA) affect. Affective discrepancy (preponderance of PA over NA) was more strongly associated with satisfaction than meaning. In general, meaning correlated less with affect than satisfaction, but the …

A Change Of Heart: Understanding Spirituality Following A Shift In Values Or Beliefs In Young Adults, Aaron Boggs

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

As a counselor, how does one sit with others who have experienced a dramatic change in their belief system and values? This paper seeks to identify the effects of a significant change in values or beliefs on young adults and the recovery of the spiritual dimension of their lives. Spirituality, defined as an individual's inner process to define their purpose, meaning, and values through a connection to others (which may include God) and themselves, is an increasingly important component to consider in assessment and therapy. The case study of Angela and the personal journey of the author illustrate the psychological …

Exploring The Self-Referent Meaning Mechanisms Of Terror Management Theory And Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, Joseph A. Galluzzo

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Two theories of mortality threat management propose distinct psychological mechanisms to cope with mortality concerns. Terror management theory suggests death prompts existential concern whereas socioemotional selectivity theory suggests a limited lifetime prompts hedonic concerns. Both reminders of the finality of life threaten self-existence, yet only terror management theory research has investigated the capacity for art to reaffirm self-referent meaning compromised by death awareness. In two studies, we explored the potential existential nature within death and limited-lifetime awareness and then examined self-referent meaning reaffirmation through naturalistic and surrealistic art in response to death awareness and limited-lifetime awareness. We found that limited-lifetime …

Harnessing The Placebo Effect: A New Model For Mind-Body Healing Mechanisms, Gabriel Crane

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The placebo effect is a phenomenon that has confounded Western medicine and research for over sixty years. While the field has historically and continues to be rife with misconceptions and confusion, recent research aims to reignite the art of medicine by turning the effect's underlying mechanisms to therapeutic benefit. However, researchers may not have the appropriate theoretical framework to do so. While significant progress has been made in identifying a number of the placebo effect's underlying mechanisms, conceptual deficiencies hinder application of advances in the field. In part, this is because the placebo effect unearths a number of problematic philosophical …

The Geometry Of Preposition Meanings, Peter Gärdenfors

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication

This article presents a unified approach to the semantics of prepositions based on the theory of conceptual spaces. Following the themes of my recent book The Geometry of Meaning, I focus on the convexity of their meanings and on which semantic domains are expressed by prepositions. As regards convexity, using polar coordinates turns out to provide the most natural representation. In addition to the spatial domain, I argue that for many prepositions, the force domain is central. In contrast to many other analyses, I also defend the position that prepositions have a central meaning and that other meanings can …

Meaning As A Buffer Against Adolescent Psychopathology, Ellen Shaina Dulaney

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the function of meaning in life in adolescence to ascertain whether specific psychological resources may protect youths against threats to subjective well-being. Meaning in life and the search for the meaning in stressful occurrences were independently examined for their influence on stress impact and depression symptomatology. 201 American middle-school and high-school students between 12 and 19 years of age were recruited for this study. Participants reported on questionnaires targeting frequency of negative life events; depressive symptoms; sense of meaning; and tendency to reframe stressors in terms of their meaning, termed “stressor meaning seeking”. It was expected that …

Morality Provides Meaning, Geoffrey Alexander Wetherell

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Previous separate models of meaning in life have suggested that meaning is composed of several components operating across levels of construal. For example, sometimes people might look to a component of meaning in a state of concrete construal to gain a sense of consistency or predictability, and at other times they may look to a component of meaning to create feelings of higher purpose in life. These models of meaning have the potential to shed light not only on the various facets of life that make people feel life is meaningful, but to discover the ways in which these components …

How To Grow Your Rural Business With Purpose And Meaning, Connie I. Reimers-Hild, Alyssa Dye

Community Vitality Initiative Collections

No one can predict the future; however, rural entrepreneurs and business owners can use a future-focused leadership approach, which includes examining megatrends, to shape the future of their businesses. Megatrends are global shifts that influence society, the economy and the environment. The purpose of this article is to help rural entrepreneurs discover ways to grow their businesses with Living with Purpose and Meaning Megatrend.

Become A Future-Focused Leader: Use Three Megatrends To Grow Your Rural Business, Connie Reimers-Hild, Alyssa Dye

Community Vitality Initiative Collections

No one can predict the future; however, rural entrepreneurs and business owners can use a future-focused leadership approach, which includes examining megatrends, to shape the future of their businesses. Megatrends are global shifts that influence society, the economy and the environment. This article discusses three megatrends shaping the future of rural businesses:

1) The Rise of the #GigEconomy

2) Living with Purpose and Meaning

3) The Decentralized Marketplace

The article also provides coaching tips for rural entrepreneurs on how to use megatrends to grow their businesses.

While many companies are struggling to keep up with the rapid rate of change, …

What Is Your Purpose In Life?, Scott T. Allison

Scott T. Allison

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Conditional Discriminative Functions Of Meaningful Stimuli And Enhanced Equivalence Class Formation, Roxana I. Nedelcu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two experiments explored how the formation of two 3-node, 5- member equivalence classes by college students was influenced by the prior acquisition of conditional discriminative functions by one of the abstract stimuli, designated as C, in the class. In Experiment 1, participants in the GR-0, GR-1, and GR-5 groups attempted to form classes after mastering 0, 1 or 5 conditional relations between C and abstract stimuli that were not included in the to-be-formed classes. Participants in the GR-many group attempted to form classes that contained four abstract stimuli and one meaningful, familiar picture that served as the C stimulus. In …

The Bridge Drawing With Path Art-Based Assessment: Measuring Meaningful Life Pathways In Higher Education Students, Olena Darewych

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This cross-sectional study investigated the relationships among the Bridge Drawing with Path (BDP) art-based assessment and two positive psychology instruments: the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ; Steger et al., 2006) and the Adult State Hope Scale (ASHS; Snyder et al., 1996). All three assessments (BDP, MLQ and ASHS) are intended to test for an individual’s goal-related pursuits. Forty-four higher education students studying in Britain and Canada participated in the study. Results indicated that an association exists between BDP written associations and MLQ-presence of meaning sub-scores. Participants who scored high on MLQ – presence of meaning generated more sources of life …