Digital Commons Network^™

Educating For Conscious Evolution, Adams, Anne

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Art And Mental Disturbance, Benjamin, Elliot

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article presents a perspective on psychology that relates directly to Abraham Maslow’s focus upon studying the highest levels of human functioning, but is geared specifically toward a psychological study of what I refer to as the “successful creative artist” and the relationship between art and mental disturbance. The focus is upon what I consider to be “natural” as opposed to “normal,” i.e. individual self-motivated creative expressions vs. widespread socially approved norms and expectations. Along the lines of Thomas Szasz and R.D. Laing, what is referred to as “mental illness” is viewed from a non-judgmental perspective, but with the distinctive …

Transforming The Invisible The Postmodernist Visual Artist As A Contemporary Mystic: A Review, Haberkorn, Christine

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

A Review Of Peter Kingsley’S Book: Reality, Brewer, Brian

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

On Unity Experiences: A Review, Wilcox, Sally

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Unity is both complex and elegant which in itself reflects the Universe. Experiencing unity is examined philosophically as a natural human desire for reasoned reality. From a spiritual perspective it may be the return to our original divine essence. From a neuroscientific view, it may be neurocorrelates in the brain resonating with an electrical field. And from a physics perspective, it may be particle entanglement and spin-wave directionality. The debate is broad and deep. The prevailing western framework for exploring such a topic is rational cognitivism, and intersects several disciplines including; cognitive science, consciousness studies, neuroscience, philosophy, phenomenology, psychology and …

An Exploration Of Powerful Power Of Thought Experiences, Martin, Jeffery

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This study explored participant’s assumptions regarding power of thought and analyzed examples they provided of powerful power of thought experiences. The method used was intuitive inquiry, which allows for both traditional and transpersonal research techniques to be employed. Each of the four participants produced an initial two page (aprox.) reflection, read each others reflections, and then produced a second two page reflection paper. Clarifying questions were then asked, and the final coding and analysis completed. Six strong themes between all study participants were uncovered: belief that it can work, complexity, guidance, unity, choice, and release. A shared cosmology was observed …

The Holographic Principle Of Mind And The Evolution Of Consciousness, Germine, Mark

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The Holographic Principle holds the information in any region of space and time exists on the surface of that region. Layers of the holographic, universal “now” go from the inception of the universe to the present. Universal Consciousness is the timeless source of actuality and mentality. Information is experience, and the expansion of the “now” leads to higher and higher orders of experience in the Universe, with various levels of consciousness emerging from experience. The brain consists of a nested hierarchy of surfaces which range from the most elementary field though the neuron, neural group, and the whole brain. Evidence …

The Construction Of Reality In "Waking Life" And "Dreaming Life", Krippner, Stanley

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Shamans were the first dreamworkers and the first to ask traditional philosophical questions. They used (and still use) altered states of consciousness to travel into "dreamtime," obtaining power and knowledge to help and heal members of their communities -- the social group that awarded them shamanic status. In psychological terms, shamans regulate their attention to obtain information not available to their peers, using it to reduce stress and improve the living conditions of members of their society.

Over the centuries, Western scientists and philosophers have dismissed shamanic "journeying" as fanciful at best, and delusional at worst. Julian Silverman (1967) postulated …

The End Of Death? Conscious Life In Global Cyberspace, Purdy, Michael

Journal of Conscious Evolution

In The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser, in talking about the magical structure of consciousness[1], states: "All directing implies a consciousness process" (EPO 49). And so to die is to become not consciousness, to lose the power to direct, ultimately to lose control over our own destiny. Being only human, and realizing that death is often more real than an afterlife that we cannot experience while alive[2], we actively fight any loss of control-we fight the passage to death. In that directedness, the glimmerings of which began with magical consciousness, and that came to full awareness …

A General Introduction To Integral Theory And Comprehensive Mapmaking, Saiter, Sean M.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

While attempting to keep to the larger vision of integral studies as a whole I shall be proposing a rudimentary outline of an underlying assertion primarily based upon the works of Ken Wilber, Jean Gebser, Don Beck and Christopher Cowan (based on the work of Clare Graves), and Mark B. Woodhouse. Robert Kegan, Howard Gardner, James Mark Baldwin, Susan Cook-Greuter, and Carol Gilligan are influences working in the background.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when trying to understand integral studies as a field is that a fundamental, underlying message in Wilber's, Graves', Beck's, Gebser's, and Woodhouse's …

Therapeutic Theatre With Adolescents At-Risk Of School Dropout, Dan Summer

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

The aim of this study was to assess the effects of therapeutic theatre, a method of drama therapy, on resilience among adolescents at risk of high school dropout. A mixed method approach was employed to qualitatively examine participant perspectives on resilience and quantitatively measure change in resilience. Participants engaged in weekly after-school drama therapy groups to collaborate on developing themes and a script for a performance to be witnessed by an audience of family and community members. Qualitative and quantitative findings were triangulated and embedded to examine relationships. The Behavioral Assessment System for Children Second Edition (BASC-2) and Resilience Scale …

Development Of Social Exclusion Detection: Behavioral And Physiological Correlates, Hyesung Grace Hwang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The present work aimed to directly test the theoretical claims about how we as human detect social exclusion using both physiological and behavioral methods across different life stages. Because feeling excluded from a group is a common human experience that starts in early childhood, this basic human need to belong or connect with others is argued to be universal and thought to have an evolutionary basis. In fact, it has been argued that the ability to detect being excluded may be present from birth and detecting exclusion occurs rapidly with little cognitive processing. Study 1 tested whether this rapid detection …

Fostering Peace And Leadership: A Project For The Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit, Tomo Brown

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The Black Mambas are members of a majority-female anti-poaching unit in South Africa that preserves wildlife in the world’s most targeted site for rhinoceros poaching. Despite the Black Mambas’ successes, the organization’s director has expressed concerns of a potential leadership issue in the unit, for which he seeks to identify the source and resolve accordingly. To assist in realizing these efforts, the researchers of this project traveled to South Africa and conducted work analysis interviews with 18 of the 34 members of the Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect qualitative data on participants’ perceptions of cultural …

Societal Individualism–Collectivism And Uncertainty Avoidance As Cultural Moderators Of Relationships Between Job Resources And Strain, Seulki Jang, Winny Shen, Tammy D. Allen, Haiyan Zhang

Psychology Faculty Publications

The job demands–resources model is a dominant theoretical framework that describes the influence of job demands and job resources on employee strain. Recent research has highlighted that the effects of job demands on strain vary across cultures, but similar work has not explored whether this is true for job resources. Given that societal characteristics can influence individuals' cognitive structures and, to a lesser extent, values in a culture, we address this gap in the literature and argue that individuals' strain in reaction to job resources may differ across cultures. Specifically, we theorize that the societal cultural dimensions of individualism–collectivism and …

Internalizing Symptoms Associated With Emotional Abuse: An Examination Of Religious Social Support As A Moderating Variable, Jessica Chambers, Diana Morelen, Jason Steadman, Michelle Hurley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Emotional abuse in childhood is linked to an increased risk for internalizing symptoms such as depression and anxiety in adulthood. Religious social support offers a promising defense in maintaining mental well-being in the face of trauma. This study aims to investigate if religious social support in childhood will moderate the impact of negative outcomes associated with emotional abuse. Further, this study will examine whether and how gender and ethnicity impact this relationship. The sample includes undergraduate students attending East Tennessee State University, located in the southeastern United States (n = 471, 73% female, 11% African American, M age = 20.37, …

Socialization Trajectories Of Civic Development: Examining Variation Among Children In Black Immigrant And African American Families, Juliana Karras-Jean Gilles

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Little is known about how developmental experiences spanning early childhood through adolescence prepare children and youth to engage with society (Astuto & Ruck, 2017), and even less so for ethnically diverse Black children and youth (Jagers, Lozada, Rivas-Drake, & Guillame, 2017). Building from work linking positive youth development (PYD) to civic engagement (Lerner et al., 2006), this study examined how socialization trajectories from early childhood through adolescence in concert with early childhood experiences and contexts related to adolescent civic development. Civic development was measured by the PYD outcomes of competence, confidence, connection to school and peers, caring, and character; these …

Dancing, Mindfulness, And Our Emotions: Embracing The Mind, Body, And Sole, Alisha M. Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project examines dance, as an intervention and mindfulness practice that assists with managing our emotions. There is a need for dance therapy in social institutions such as, healthcare facilities, schools, and community centers. Dance therapy has the potential to reduce negative emotions, create mindfulness, improve self-expression, and promote a healthy well-being. I am proposing that dance therapy is applied as a regular practice in social institutions to develop mindfulness and promote emotional stability.

In this study, I argue that dance therapy can contribute to our well-being long term. In addition to this written thesis, a visual component of …

Differences In The Role Of Acculturation On The Correlates Of Suicidal Ideation Among Asian Subgroups, Khadijah Ahmad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ethnic and racial differences have been acknowledged in the relationship between culture and psychopathology, and acculturation has been associated with risk for suicidal ideation. The present paper examined the relation between acculturation and the correlates of suicide (i.e., hopelessness, depression) among Asian subgroups. Because an emphasis on Asians as a homogenous group obfuscates important ethnic differences that may influence risk for suicide, the present paper sought to highlight differences in risk for suicide among different Asian subgroups. This paper is divided into seven sections that address the role of acculturation and cultural values, norms, and beliefs on the correlates of …

A Pathway To Psychological Difficulty: Perceived Chronic Social Adversity And Its Symptomatic Reactions, Cody Ding, Jingqiu Zhang, Dong Yang

Education Sciences and Professional Programs Faculty Works

In this paper, we attempt to predict and explain psychological maladjustment or difficulty. Specifically, we discuss the concept of perceived chronic social adversity, and we expect that such perceived chronic social adversity may potentially lead to chronic stress responses. Accordingly, we propose the symptomatic reactions of perceived chronic social adversity. We put forward a set of hypotheses regarding the relationships between perceived chronic social adversity and those chronic stress responses, and we further hypothesize a mediating role of individualized negative essentialism brought by perceived chronical social adversity. Resilience and individual differences in the ability to cope with perceived adversity are …

Social Media: On Tech-Caves, Virtual Panopticism, And The Science Fiction-Like State In Which We Unwittingly Find Ourselves, Michael Major

Theses

Making use of three historic philosophical thought experiments, this paper blends psychological perspectives with philosophical reasoning to show how social media is corrupting our perception of reality, the result of which is ultimately detrimental to society as a whole. This is accomplished by first using Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to analyze and discuss the ways in which social media is limiting humanity’s access to real knowledge. Next, Michel Foucault’s analysis of punishment in its social context, Discipline and Punish, is used to discuss the ways in which social media is adversely affecting our behavior. Finally, Robert Nozick’s “Experience …

Fresa Style In Mexico: Sociolinguistic Stereotypes And The Variability Of Social Meanings, Rebeca Martinez Gomez

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation examines the flexibility in the social meanings of sociolinguistic stereotypes and how linguistic and non-linguistic information affect these meanings. The investigation consists of four empirical studies surrounding the case of fresas in Mexico –members of the upper class that are perceived as using a unique linguistic style.

Study 1 investigates the linguistic and non-linguistic characteristics associated with the fresa stereotype. Through a qualitative analysis of 64 webpages and 3 performances of the style, it is shown that fresasare perceived as the counterpart of another construct, nacos,and that their linguistic style is linked to English due to …

Emotional Intelligence And Leader Development: Measuring Trait Emotional Intelligence Scores Of Mid- Career Commissioned U.S. Army Officers, Stephan Lorentz Walters

Dissertations

The United States Army is preparing for the ambiguous and consistently changing realities of the modern world by developing leaders who are adaptive, mentally agile, and open to change. However, without instruments or tools that purposefully measure adaptability within each individual leader, it is challenging to determine the U.S. Army’s effectiveness at the strategic goal to develop adaptive and self-aware leaders.

The dependent variables of interest are the trait emotional intelligence scores of commissioned U.S. Army leaders who have at least 10 years of military experience. This quantitative survey based study samples (N = 28) mid-career U.S. Army Majors using …

Variation In Emotion Eliciting Events And Display Rules As A Function Of Individualism And Collectivism: A Cross Cultural Comparison Of Pakistanis And Americans, Serah Saleem Fatani

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Culture not only influences the conditions under which we will experience an emotion, but also may have bearing on its manner of outward expression. This study investigated cultural differences in the construction of emotion-eliciting events and the associated display rules for exhibiting those emotional responses to others within the context of the cultural classification system known as Individualism/Collectivism (I/C) (Triandis, 1994, 1995; Triandis et al., 1988). In this comparative study, individualists were represented by a sample of participants from the United States whereas collectivists were represented by a Pakistani participant sample.

I/C tendencies of the Pakistani and American respondents were …

Am I Good Enough? Dealing Pastorally With The Shame Of Women In The Amalgam Of Korean Confucian And Christian Culture, Sarah Ahn

Seminary Masters Theses

In this paper, the literature review of shame is examined: the definition of emotions, the relationship between shame and the self, the definition and characteristics of shame alongside with guilt, the social nature of shame, and the female quality of shame. After examining the previous attempts on shame and its relationship with culture, this paper argues how shame functions, particularly in Korean culture, employing a cultural-anthropological, a societal-anthropological, and a Korean native-psychological approach. Furthermore, the paper explores the relationship between shame and Korean women in the amalgam of Korean Confucian and Christian context. The negative and positive roles of shame …

Innovating At Cultural Crossroads: How Multicultural Social Networks Promote Ideas Flow And Creativity, Roy Y. J. Chua

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Diversity in social networks is often linked to enhanced creativity. Emerging research on exposure to diverse informational resources (e.g., ideas and knowledge) however has painted a more complex picture regarding its effect on individuals’ creative performance. This research examines the effects of culturally diverse networks on the flow of ideas and individuals’ creativity. Combining social network analysis with experimental methods, two studies using different samples found that a culturally diverse network increases the likelihood of receiving culture-related novel ideas (but not other types of novel ideas) from network contacts, whether or not these contacts share one’s own culture of origin. …

Moral Mode Switching: From Punishment To Public Health, Stephen Koppel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A public health response to drug offenses has potential to improve both public safety and public health. However, the public’s desire for retribution represents a possible hindrance to reform. Relying on dual-process theory of moral decision-making, this dissertation examines agreement among laypeople about the relative blame deserved for various crime types, and probes several possible predictors of support—the need for cognition (“NFC”), intergroup bias, and free-will doubt—for retributive as well as consequentialist responses to crime. Findings from several web-based experiments show: (a) in comparison to core crimes (eg., murder) substantially less agreement about the relative blame deserved for noncore crimes …

Student Motivation Profiles As A Diagnostic Tool To Help Teachers Provide Targeted Support, Cailin Tricia Currie

Dissertations and Theses

Research has demonstrated that academic engagement is an important resource for students, promoting their learning and achievement. Less well documented is the possibility that students' classroom engagement may also be a valuable resource for their teachers, capable of influencing how teachers treat their students over time. The current study sought to examine the relationship between student motivation and teacher behavior to better understand how teachers perceive and respond to their students' classroom motivation and whether these motivational states contain diagnostic information about the types of supports students may need in order to be engaged, enthusiastic learners. The observable manifestations of …

“I Want Her To Make Correct Decisions On Her Own:” Former Soviet Union Mothers’ Beliefs About Autonomy Development, Masha Komolva, Jane Y. Lipnitsky

Publications and Research

This qualitative study examined Former Soviet Union (FSU) mothers’ explicit and implicit attitudes and parenting practices around adolescents’ autonomy development. Interviews were conducted with 10 mothers who had immigrated from the FSU to the US between 10 and 25 years ago, and who had daughters between the ages of 13 and 17 years. Mothers predominantly defined autonomy in terms of adolescents’ ability to carry out instrumental tasks, make correct decisions, and financially provide for themselves, but rarely mentioned psychological or emotional independence. Mothers reflected on the various aspects of autonomy emphasized in their country of origin and America, and balancing …

The Psychology Of Marathon Television Viewing: Antecedents And Viewer Involvement, Riva Tukachinsky, Keren Eyal

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

This study focuses on the expanding trend of marathon (“binge”) television viewing. It examines the personality antecedents of such media consumption (attachment style, depression, and self-regulation deficiency) as well as the psychological experiences of marathon viewers relative to the narrative (transportation, enjoyment) and its characters (parasocial relationship, identification). In a two-study design, theoretical models of media use and involvement, on one hand, and models of media addiction, on the other hand, are applied to predict the extent of marathon viewing and to compare it with “traditional” viewing. Results advance understanding of enjoyment and involvement theory and support cognitive theories of …

Examining The Roles Of Child Temperament And Teacher-Child Relationships As Predictors Of Turkish Children’S Social Competence And Antisocial Behavior, Ibrahim H. Acar, Traci Kutaka, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Julia C. Torquati, Robert J. Coplan, Süleyman Yıldız

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

The present study examined the concurrent contribution of Turkish children’s temperament and teacher-child relationship quality to their social competence and antisocial behavior, with a specific focus on the moderating role of teacher-child relationships (closeness and conflict) on children’s temperament (inhibitory control and shyness) when predicting social competence and antisocial behavior. Participants were 94 children (56 boys) with mean age of 7.05 years (SD = .88) enrolled in 24 classrooms from five elementary schools in a suburban school district in Turkey. Mothers reported on children’s temperament and teachers reported on their relationships with children as well as children’s social competence …