Psychology Commons^™

Development Of A New Measure Of Political Ideology, Vanessa M. Sinclair

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Ideology is central to political psychology, but despite recent renewed interest in studying political ideology, its measurement is inconsistent. Ideology scales are numerous and heterogeneous in content. Further, there is disagreement on whether ideology is unidimensional multi-dimensional, and what the nature of these dimensions are. These inconsistencies limit the generalizability of conclusions made about ideology as it relates to political views and behaviour. There is a clear need for a conceptual model that is grounded in theory, and for a well-validated scale that organizes and quantifies ideology. Chapter 1 reviews the state of ideology measurement and identifies plausible dimensions supported …

A Longitudinal Person-Centred Investigation Of Commitment In Newcomers To The Military, Brittney K. Anderson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Organizational commitment is a force that binds individuals to their company through their desire, obligation, and need to stay. Employees who are committed to the organization are more likely to demonstrate higher engagement, greater satisfaction, and fewer intentions to leave their company. Research has also demonstrated that investigating how each of the three forms of commitment – affective, normative, and continuance – interact allows for better prediction of employee outcomes. Using person-centred approaches, previous research has shown that there are typically five to seven profiles of commitment, and that membership in these profiles has implications for employee behaviours. However, little …

Girls’ Internalizing Symptoms And White Matter Tracts In Cortico-Limbic Circuitry, Ola Mohamed Ali

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Dysfunction in cortico-limbic circuitry is implicated in internalizing disorders, but less is known about whether structural abnormalities precede disorder, thus potentially marking risk. I therefore examined associations between white matter tract integrity in cortico-limbic circuitry at age 7, obtained using Diffusion Tensor Imaging, and concurrent and longitudinal patterns of internalizing symptoms, over a 5-year period, in 42 typically developing girls. Using Automated Fiber Quantification, diffusion properties were examined at multiple points along tract length (cf., an average diffusion measure of the entire tract). Concurrent internalizing symptoms were associated with reduced fractional anisotropy in segments of the cingulum bundle and uncinate …

An Investigation Of The Role Of Corporate Social Responsibility Features In Attracting And Retaining Employees, Nicholas L. Bremner

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown in parallel to organizations’ adoption of the triple bottom line (economic, environmental, social) approach to performance, and stakeholders’ expectations for organizations to contribute to a greater social good (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012). As a burgeoning area of research, the CSR literature has mostly been conducted from a macro-level (organization-level) perspective aiming to answer questions about the implications of CSR for organizations and society. Micro-level (individual-level) research is comparatively less common, but is beginning to grow as well (Rupp & Mallory, 2015).

While micro-level research has made significant progress toward answering …

Resiliency And Well-Being: Trajectories Of Change Over Time, Matthew Mclarnon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Resiliency is often considered an attribute that can assist an individual in overcoming adversity. The predominant theme in the literature is that resiliency is positively related to achieving positive outcomes after a challenging experience. For example, stemming from Luthans and colleagues’ work on Psychological Capital (Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007), resiliency has been positively linked to psychological well-being, job satisfaction, and job performance. However, scant research is available on the processes behind resiliency and the mechanisms that promote well-being in the face of adversity. Therefore, the two studies comprising this dissertation aimed to address focal research questions around a) why …

The Impact Of The Operational Environment On The Commitment Profiles Of Canadian Armed Forces Soldiers, Christina L. Eastwood

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The aim of this study was to use latent profile analysis to determine whether commitment profiles found in previous studies could be replicated in a deployed Canadian military sample. This study examined antecedents contributing to the development of the profiles, outcomes associated with profile membership and stability of profiles solutions. A total of 4254 (pre-deployment) and 2365 (post-deployment) military personnel completed surveys related to affective (AC), normative (NC) and continuance (CC) organizational commitment, unit climate, operational preparedness, psychological distress, and intention to stay. Four commitment profiles (e.g., high AC- dominant, low CC/NC-dominant, Moderately and Weakly committed) emerged across both samples. …

Motivation And Well-Being: A Test Of Self-Determination Theory Using A Person-Centered Approach, Chelsea A. Vaters

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Self-determination theory postulates that individuals can experience motivation in different ways and that these different types of motivation fall along a continuum from controlled to autonomous regulation. Recently, there have been challenges to the notion that an individual’s motivation can be categorized as falling at a particular point along the autonomy continuum. Researchers have begun to investigate the possibility that individuals can experience different types of motivation simultaneously. The current study used a person-centered approach to study motivation and also examined how the profiles detected related to well-being outcomes and adaptive student behaviours. Latent profile analyses of data from two …

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 …