Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Character Strength And Character Disorder : An Investigation Into How Personality Disorder Diagnosis Intersects With Character Strength Measurements, Joshua T. Tecu

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

On the eve of the release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5, with major revisions planned in its diagnostic approach to personality disorder (PD), qualitative research was conducted via face-to-face interviews to explore the perspective of seasoned mental health clinicians regarding their experience working with personality disordered individuals, and how that experience squared with current debates within personality science and positive psychology. Eight experienced clinicians were asked how they saw PD in regard to character strength, what relationship they imagined existed between the two, and whether they saw them as existing on the same dimensional axis. Participants chose from …

Parent Education Para Mi? : The Relevance And Usefulness Of Mainstream Parent Education For Latino Parents, Gabriela Bustamante

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This study involved the development of a parent education curriculum derived from the evidence-based parenting literature, and the pilot testing a single intervention from this curriculum to compare responses of Latino and non-Latino parents to interventions originally designed for the mainstream culture. Parents also received and responded to an overview of the curriculum as a whole. It was expected that Latino parents would rate the curriculum content and the single intervention as less relevant and useful than their non-Latino counterparts; and would rate instructor modeling, and opportunities for support as more relevant and useful than non-Latinos. The pilot test was …

Development And Validation Of A Measure Of Perceived Life Significance, Rachel Hibberd

Dissertations

Theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of meaning in bereavement suggest a distinction between meaning as sense-making, or the integration of the loss into a coherent and positive set of beliefs about world and self, and meaning as life significance, or the perception that some aspect of one's life experience “matters” in the wake of loss. Although several authors have pointed to the importance of life significance in grief recovery, currently no psychometrically valid measure exists. The present study examined the reliability and validity of a new measure: the Perceived Life Significance Scale (PLSS). The PLSS total score, as …

Positive Psychology And Attachment: Positive Affect As A Mediator Of Developmental Outcomes, Holly H. Schiffrin

Psychological Science

Fredrickson’s (1998) broaden-and-build model and Bowlby’s (1969) attachment theory provide alternate explanations for positive cognitive, social, physical, and psychological outcomes, positive affect and secure attachments, respectively. This study examined whether affect mediates the relationship between attachment and positive outcomes. The sample consisted of 99 undergraduate students from a small, public liberal arts college in the mid-Atlantic region. For people high in attachment anxiety, but not those high in attachment avoidance, affect partially mediated social and psychological outcomes and fully mediated health outcomes. People who scored high in attachment anxiety reported less positive affect and more negative affect, which results in …

A Unified Approach To Well-Being: The Development And Impact Of An Undergraduate Course, Kimbelry Erica Kleinman

Dissertations, 2014-2019

With the rise of positive psychology, there has been a burgeoning literature on the construct of well-being. Unfortunately, as is the case with much psychological research, the literature is not assimilated and integrated into a broad model for understanding psychology and human nature writ large. Connecting such research to a deep theoretical and philosophical model is particularly important with a construct like well-being because it both is a complicated and central construct for the field. There were two main objectives to the study. First, the goal was to develop a college student course on well-being that was conceptually grounded in …

Four Virtues: Interventions For Goodness' Sake, Caroline Lavelock

Theses and Dissertations

Empirical interest in promoting virtues has dramatically increased over the last decade. The present study will focus primarily on the warmth-based virtues of forgiveness and humility, and the conscientiousness-based virtues of patience and self-control. I introduced participants (N = 135) to a workbook intended to promote one of these four virtues, or to promote general positivity for participants in a workbook control condition. I hypothesized that virtue workbooks would produce higher levels of the target virtue, more so than in both a non-action control condition (n = 33) and in a control condition that completes a workbook that promotes general …

Research Brief: "Battlefield Compassion And Post-Traumatic Growth In Combat Servicepersons", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief is about the compassionate acts that come out of post-traumatic growth among veterans after serving. For policy and practice, the research shows that military values, bonding experiences, and maturation through military service allows for positive personal growth and that the VA should provide programs for discussing this growth. Suggestions for future research include taking into account variations in specific experiences when analyzing post-traumatic growth and including a representative random sample.

Effect Of Religiosity And Combat Exposure To Predict Combat Service Member Posttraumatic Growth, Kurt C. Webb

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

The purpose of this study is to investigate 2 research questions: Do pre-deployment religiosity among combat military service members and level of combat exposure predict posttraumatic growth? And, do the level of combat exposure and changes in religiosity predict posttraumatic growth in combat military service members? The sample was obtained from an archival data set (Orton, 2012) was a group of male National Guard infantry deployed to the war in Iraq (N = 75). Participants were given pre- and post-deployment measures 1 month before and 6 months after returning from the Iraq war. Four regression equations were used to predict …

Comparing Integrative Complexity Of Holocaust Rescuers And Perpetrators, Fernando Alberto Ospina

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To contribute to the social psychological literature on Holocaust rescue, this thesis seeks to explore possible connections between open-mindedness and rescuing during the Holocaust, a previously unexplored intersection in the social science literature. Open-mindedness is the ability and/or willingness to adopt alternative points of view (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), while rescuing entails helping others in high-risk circumstances without expectation of reward or compensation.

While most of the scientific study of psychology has focused on how human beings are flawed and damaged. People are seen as sick or damaged and the scientific study of psychology tends toward trying to alleviate these …

Resilience Education, Jane Gillham, R. M. Abenavoli, S. M. Brunwasser, M. Linkins, K. J. Reivich, M. E. P. Seligman

Psychology Faculty Works

As a primary learning and social environment for most children, schools have tremendous potential to, and responsibility for, promoting resilience and well-being in children. This chapter reviews the rationale for focusing on resilience in education and illustrates some of the ways that schools can promote resilience in young people. Although resilience education can also encompass academic or educational resilience, the authors focus primarily on the power of schools to promote students’ social and emotional well-being and provide examples from their team’s work on school-based resilience and positive psychology interventions. As they hope to show, resilience education holds great promise in …