Psychology Commons^™

The Prediction Of Personal Narrative On Features Of Recovery Among People With Schizophrenia-Spectrum Disorders, Beth Vayshenker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Among individuals with schizophrenia, research has demonstrated that in addition to the positive and negative symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia, the diminishment of the self also represents an important aspect of the illness (Lysaker & Lysaker, 2010). Research has confirmed that the self-experience, particularly as measured by the telling of one’s life story through the Scale to Assess Narrative Development (STAND), is linked to a variety of subjective and objective recovery outcomes from schizophrenia. While this association has been documented in different research studies, less is known about the ways in which personal narrative functions to predict recovery outcomes in a …

Persistence Of Cultural Heritage In A Multicultural Context: Examining Factors That Shaped Voting Preferences In The 2016 Election, Anna M. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The prevailing discourse about the myth of the “melting pot” of American culture implies that heritage cultures are eliminated in favor of a homogenous “American” norm. However, this myth belies the persistence of our cultural heritage in forming our attitudes, morals, and habitual patterns of thought, each of which shape how we participate in our democracy through voting. By contextualizing voting predictors such as authoritarianism, social dominance, and sexism in developmental and ecological theories, this dissertation shows how they are shaped by culture and transmitted through consumption of media and interaction with members of one’s community and family. In an …

Masculine Identities Among Asian American Men: Negotiating Varying Masculine Ideals For The Self And Others, Elisa J. Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study examined the implications of varying masculine identities for Asian American men of East Asian descent. The study tested the hypotheses that compared to White men, Asian American men would endorse lower levels of Western hegemonic masculine ideals, see themselves as less masculine in terms of those ideals, and report lower levels of believing others perceive them as masculine by Western hegemonic standards. It also examined if the type of masculinity Asian American men endorsed moderated the psychological functioning (gender role conflict, psychological distress, and substance use) related to any discrepancies and synchronicities between self-perception and others’ perception (e.g. …

Real Gender: Identity, Loss, And The Capacity To Feel Real, Hannah Wallerstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project concerns gender and feeling real. It begins with a seeming paradox: on the one hand, since Judith Butler (1999; 2011) we can no longer think gender as ontological in any simple sense; on the other, clinical experience and the voices of transgender and gender-queer individuals shows gender to function on the order of reality, and one exceeding the social. In other words, if feeling real depended entirely on being read as such, how would we account for the many who pass easily as “real” men or women and yet feel unreal, or come to feel more real by …

United In Political Solidarity: How Multicultural Endorsement And Group Identity Inspire Intergroup Political Solidarity Among Members Of Lower Status Groups, Justine Calcagno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation tests a new theoretical model that describes when low status group members will work with members of higher status groups for social change, known as intergroup political solidarity. Research on intergroup political solidarity has focused on either the high status group’s orientation toward solidarity or when members of separate groups work together on behalf of a common low status group. There is thus a lack of research on intergroup political solidarity from the perspective of lower status groups.

It is proposed that recognition of group differences by the high status group influences orientations toward intergroup political solidarity. Specifically: …

Gendered Expression Online: Exploring Gendered Communication On Facebook And In A Collaborative Editing Task, Christina M. Shane-Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

College students are increasingly using digital media, such as social network sites (SNSs) and collaborative editing tools (Wikipedia), as identity exploration tools, aligning or distancing themselves from their offline selves through the online affordances of anonymity and agentic choice. The opportunities for gender fluidity available online (Armentor-Cota, 2011) provide college students with opportunities to experiment with and manipulate varied identities in a safe space where consequences of confronting identity norms may be less severe (Turkle, 1996; Shaw, 1997). Similarly, restrictive offline gender differences may diminish in online spaces, favoring a more flexible and androgynous enactment of gender (Martin, Cook, & …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …