Digital Commons Network^™

Examining The Relationship Between Dark Triad Personality Traits And Career Paths, Mary Robinson Gibson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Growing opportunities in information technology, digital accounting, and remote leadership have increased interest in the personality traits associated with these emerging work environments. The researcher examined the relationship between psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism, collectively referred to as Dark Triad personality traits, and career preferences. Specifically, the researcher tested whether higher levels of these traits predicted interest in careers characterized by prestige, power, autonomy, and opportunities for manipulation. Working professionals and college students completed the Short Dark Triad (SD3) and a career preference questionnaire. The researcher used binary logistic regression to assess whether Dark Triad traits predicted career cluster selection. Model …

The Struggle Is Real: How Black Female Supervisees Navigate Gendered Racial Microaggressions In Cross-Racial Clinical Supervision, Regina S. Rogers

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Clinical supervision between White supervisors and Black female supervisees occurs within contexts where power and racial dynamics are salient. Existing research suggests that Black female supervisees are at increased risk of experiencing gendered racial microaggressions due to their marginalized identities; however, limited research has examined how these intersectional stressors are navigated within cross-racial supervision. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the lived experiences of Black female supervisees in cross-racial supervisory dyads, with a focus on how they perceive and navigate gendered racial microaggressions and how these experiences impact psychological well-being, the supervisory working alliance, and professional development. …

Acceptance And Commitment Therapy For The Treatment Of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Critical Review Of Evidence-Based Treatment Methods, Caroline A. Page

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic and debilitating condition affecting approximately 3% of the U.S. population. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the current psychotherapeutic gold standard for treating OCD. Although highly effective, ERP can elicit much distress, has a limited focus on comorbidities, and has notable drop-out and refusal rates. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a third-wave behavioral therapy that may address some of these limitations as it (a) fosters a more accepting stance towards feared stimuli (obsessions) and (b) targets core mechanisms of OCD as well as transdiagnostic mechanisms seen in many other mental health disorders, such …

Strategic Silence: The Greek Left's Avoidance Of The 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe During The Refugee Crisis, 2015–2019, Harry Courts

College Honors Program

This thesis examines why the Greek political left, and specifically the SYRIZA government under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during the time period from 2015 to 2019, made near-absent reference to the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe when addressing the refugee crisis of those years. The Catastrophe, in which approximately 1.3 million Orthodox Greeks were displaced from Anatolia, is the foundational trauma of modern Greek nationhood and a living presence in Greek political culture. When hundreds of thousands of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi refugees arrived on Greek shores from 2015, the historical parallel was widely noted. That SYRIZA rarely drew it requires …

Person-Supervisor Fit Antecedents: Self-Determination Theory In Salesforce Turnover Intention, Ilgım Dara Benoit, Jeffrey R. Foreman, Bonnie S. Guy

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

From Body Positivity To Body Power: How Music Therapy And Body Liberation Intersect To Address Body Oppression In The Therapeutic Space–A Literature Review, Katherine M. Perkoski

Expressive Therapies Theses

With the rise of overt fascism, anti–fat bias, anti–intellectualism, anti–multiculturalism, anti–diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the persistence of white, capitalist, cisheteropatriarchy narratives around bodies, music therapists need to recognize how client and therapist bodies show up in practice. In this critical literature review, bodies will be sociopolitically and culturally contextualized, and the intersections of music therapy, body liberation, and body power will be discussed. Music therapists need to address the body oppression faced by sociopolitical identities such as race, gender, disability, age, body size, sexuality, neurodiversity, class, ethnicity, nationality, housing status, and immigration status. The music therapy field needs to …

From Worry To Invention: Developing The Lunch Bunch As A Multimodal Expressive Arts Model For Regulation, Collaboration, And Peer Connection In Elementary Schools, Pascale Lauren Mimran-Ugbabe

Expressive Therapies Theses

This thesis documents the development of the Multimodal Expressive Arts Lunch Bunch, a small group intervention for elementary students delivered during the school lunch period at a public elementary school in Boston, Massachusetts. Grounded in multimodal expressive arts therapy, intermodal transfer theory, polyvagal-informed co-regulation, and principles of externalization, the intervention was designed as a low-barrier creative support group accessible regardless of diagnosis, referral status, or family pursuit of clinical services. Two cohorts of teacher-nominated students, one group of fourth-grade girls and one mixed-gender third-grade group, participated in a sequenced arc moving from worry externalization through collaborative invention, prototype construction, and …

Variations In Moral Decision Making: In Morally Ambiguous Scenarios, Riley N. Eaton, Victoria Kempton, Edward Lansing, Troy R. Welker

Aurora

People are tasked with making decisions that often come with consequences, whether it be for someone else or themselves. Due to this, there is an ambiguity in understanding what is “right” and “wrong” in a given scenario. However, limited research has examined how interpersonal relationships and intensity of the punishment may affect this decision-making process. This study examines the effect of interpersonal closeness and punishment intensity on moral decision-making, defined in terms of fairness and empathy. Participants (N = 54) from a midwestern university were randomly assigned to one of three interpersonal closeness conditions (close friend vs. close friend, close …

Practitioners’ Experiences Of Developmental, Individual Differences, Relationship-Based (Dir) Approach In Their Professional Practice With Neurodivergent Clients: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study, Ekaterina Sidor

Educational Studies Dissertations

This phenomenological study explores how professionals experience integrating the developmental, individual-differences, and relationship-based (DIR) framework in their work with neurodivergent clients. Although DIR is recognized as an evidence-based developmental approach in the field of autism support, little is known about how its integration affects practitioners themselves. Grounded in relational-cultural theory and transformative learning theory, the study examines how engagement with DIR influences practitioners’ professional practice and development. Using a qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological design, data were collected through open-ended questionnaires and in-depth interviews with multidisciplinary professionals from diverse international contexts who completed DIRFloortime training and actively implement DIR in their work. …

Feasibility Of Staff Training In Facilitating Affirmative Moving With Unhoused Lgbtq+ Individuals, Sujin Ma

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

Homelessness-service environments require non-clinical frontline staff to manage frequent crises and provide relational support to sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals with extensive trauma and minority stress histories. However, staff training often prioritizes didactic knowledge over embodied skills that support emotional regulation, attunement, and identity-affirming engagement. Grounded in trauma-informed care, minority stress theory, and somatic learning, this mixed-methods study examined the feasibility and preliminary patterns of change associated with an embodied staff training designed to prepare non-clinical workers to facilitate Affirmative Moving (AM), a brief movement-based, LGBTQ+-affirming support group model.

The study was conducted between July and September 2025 at …

Prepulse Inhibition And Emotion: A Systematic Review, Jennifer U. Le

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Prepulse inhibition is a neurological pre-conscious sensorimotor gating mechanism by which a softer auditory sound (or prepulse) preceding a startle probe (or pulse) and subsequently reduce the magnitude of the startle blink reflex. Prepulse inhibition is deficient in many psychological disorders where emotion is a central component; however, emotion has been scarcely examined with prepulse inhibition in human studies. The current study is a systematic review that examines three databases (APA PSYCInfo, Pub Med, and CINAHL) to examine how state and trait emotion (such as happiness, sadness, anger, disgust) is related to prepulse inhibition within human subjects. The initial search …

Cultivating Confidence And A Habitus Of Ex Corde Prayer Among The Baptized, Abigail Reynolds

Master of Art Theology Thesis

Reynolds, Abigail C. “Cultivating Confidence and a Habitus of Ex Corde Prayer Among the Baptized: Encouraging Ex Corde Prayer Among the Baptized as Part of Diaconal Soul Care.” M.A. thesis, Concordia Seminary, 2026. 77 pp.

Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions abound with encouragement to pray, describing prayer as communication between children and their heavenly Father. Yet, for many parishioners in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, praying ex corde prayers aloud with other Christians (family or friends) causes anxiety and is not a common practice. This thesis examines the Lutheran teaching that prayer is based in baptismal identity as God’s child and …

School-Based Teen Dating Violence Prevention Programs: A Systematized Review, Chloe L. Marsh

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

Teen Dating Violence (TDV) is a prevalent issue for many adolescents and can be defined as physical, sexual, and psychological aggression and harm that can occur in-person, online, or through technology. TDV victimization can have devastating impacts for youth, and school-based TDV prevention efforts have been highlighted as a means of addressing this issue. However, there is limited research on how prevention programming influences student beliefs and behavior. This study sought to reveal how programming influences student outcomes and which elements of highlighted prevention efforts are associated with greater benefits. A systematized review was conducted to address these research questions. …

The Greater Good?: Tradeoffs Between Social Connection And Status In Decision-Making Scenarios, Jonah M. Dratfield

Student Theses

Strong social relationships have consistently emerged as predictors of well-being in the psychological literature. However, research has not distinguished between the intrinsic social value derived from these relationships and the status derived from them. We constructed the novel Relationship Orientation Scale to explore this gap, utilizing binary decision-making scenarios in which individuals were forced to pit these two goods against one another. Across two studies, we found that individuals displayed a significant, but by no means universal, preference for intrinsically rewarding social relationships. We found, also, that social media use and comparison orientation were negative predictors of relationship orientation, whereas …

Underlying Mechanisms In The Relationship Between Ptsd And Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Jillian B. Heymann

Dissertations

Current bodies of knowledge support the relationships between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), pain catastrophizing and PTSD, and pain catastrophizing and IBS. However, much less is known regarding how pain catastrophizing influences the relationship between PTSD and IBS. Additionally, while correlations between some demographic and trauma-related symptomatology have been elucidated in the relationship between PTSD and IBS, their impact as potential moderators on the relationship between PTSD and IBS has yet to be fully examined. Examining a student sample from a large midwestern university, the present study aimed to investigate the potential mediating and moderating roles …

Exploring Play: Counselor Education Strategies, Online Community Fantasy Play, And Sexuality In The Counseling Space, Nattalie Wolff-Tseng

Dissertations, 2020-current

This dissertation examines the ways that play is constructed and understood in a variety of settings. Using Relational Cultural Theory as a guiding theoretical influence, each portion examines how play influences relationships and how engagement in play and conversations about play can enhance student–teacher relationships, social connection, and the therapeutic relationship. The first section of this dissertation, the conceptual article, explores how play can support counselor education as it encourages creative engagement and discourages perfectionism, which is often noticeable in novice counselors. Play may take many forms in the classroom and offers counselor educators the opportunity to tailor activity to …

Reduction Of Restrictive Procedures Through A Behavioral Emergency Response Team, Christina Marie Broughton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

An Equity-Based And Culturally Responsive Bill Of Rights For Early Childhood Students Of Color With Exceptionalities, Evette Simmons-Reed, Michelle Frazier Trotman Scott, Gloria Tardash, Mildred Boveda, Donna Y. Ford

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing disparities in early intervention (EI) and early childhood special education (ECSE) services for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) disabled children, exposing critical gaps in access, services and support. systemic inconsistencies in implementation, training, and funding, remain barriers limit opportunities for CLD students to benefit, despite the aims of the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act (IDEA). To address these inequities, this manuscript proposes an expanded and updated Culturally Responsive Equity-Based Bill of Rights for EI and ECSE. Building upon Ford and colleagues' (2018) work, this revised document extends protections to children aged zero to five, emphasizing …

Bdnf Signaling Dysfunction In College-Aged Males: Mapk/Erk Contributions To Mood, Cognition, And Motivation., Abdul-Rahman Kassak

COD Library Student Research and Award Symposium

BDNF Signaling Dysfunction in College-Aged Males: MAPK/ERK Contributions to Mood, Cognition, and Motivation.

Faculty Sponsor:  Professor Liane Cochran-Stafira

Perceptions Of Correctional Staff Regarding Coping Strategies Used By Juvenile Female Offenders, Angela Pagano Johnston

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Ceo Biases And Heuristics For Large Firms’ Innovation, Cristina O. Vlas, Radu E. Vlas

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

Do different CEO biases affect large firms’ innovation differently, and to what extent are these effects bounded by CEOs’ heuristics? In this article, we highlight overlooked antecedents, such as the biases imposed by CEO narcissism and self-monitoring and the heuristics driven by CEOs’ motivation (regulatory foci) for certain courses of action. We found that narcissistic CEOs differ from self-monitoring CEOs when it comes to innovation. We found that, for self-monitoring CEOs, these effects are conditioned by the individuals’ underlying promotion and prevention motivation, but this is not the case for narcissistic CEOs. These findings contour our understanding of the immutability …

Book Review--Luke Kemp’S Goliath’S Curse: The History And Future Of Societal Collapse (2025). Ny: Alfred A. Knopf.

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Editorial 12(1), May 2026, Matthew R. Jamnik

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Developmental Ecological Psychology Meets Organicist Biology: The Example Of The Ecological Self, Catherine Read

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

In this paper we outline an ecological-organicist theoretical framework to understand human development. The ecological approach to development (Developmental Ecological Psychology, DEP) places the organism at the center and has a mutualist theoretical framework with an epistemic foundation in direct perception. While research in this tradition has paid much attention to specific developmental questions at a young age (such as perceptual learning, affordances, and action coordination), less effort has gone into the discussion of theoretical issues of overall development at the level of organism-environment mutuality. Meanwhile in biology, a new emphasis on the organism as an explanatory concept and level …

Co-Constituted Mandala-Making In Nature: A Trauma-Sensitive Field Protocol For Investigating Attention, Regulation, And Relational Orientation Toward Place, Merve Kurt

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

This article presents a theoretically grounded field protocol for mandala-making in natural settings using only already-fallen materials and intentional dissolution. The mandala is treated as an anthropogenic cultural form whose structural features, including radial organisation around a centre, bounded containment, and provisional totality, are shown to be analytically consequential for the process-level shifts the protocol seeks to foreground. Drawing on posthumanism, new materialism, Buddhist psychology, and ecopsychology, the article conceptualises this process as co-constituted mandala-making, a descriptive term for a field in which human attention and choice operate alongside material and ecological constraints and affordances, without attributing volition to nonhuman …

Ije Table Of Contents 12(1), May 2026, Editorial Board

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

The Predictive Validity Of Casual Dating Advice For Early-Stage Romantic Relationship Outcomes, Jayda Patrice Felder

Dissertations - ALL

For years, relationship scientists have advocated for more research on casual dating, which can refer to the period of time between a first date and coupling among a romantic dyad, as well as the general period of time an individual is on the dating market evaluating potential partners. Though much is known about established romantic relationships, casual dating and early relationship development remain understudied. To that end, there are many ongoing debates among laypeople about casual dating advice that should be followed (or abandoned) in order to make the best partner choice and experience the best relationship outcomes, yet empirical …

Promoting Social Communicative Gestures By Minimally Verbal Children With Autism, Rebecca J. Barall

Theses & Dissertations

Difficulties in social communication are a defining feature of autism. Pointing gestures typically emerge in the first year of life and have been consistently shown to predict later language development, yet are often delayed in this population. The present study replicated and extended the findings of Barall and Shillingsburg (2026) by examining whether an intervention to teach imperative pointing gestures (i.e., gestures used to initiate requests, or mands) would be effective for minimally verbal children with autism. Participants were three children (2 male, 1 female; mean age = 4.9 years, SD = 1.5). A nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design …

Daycare Directors’ Experience Of Child Sexual Abuse Prevention At Licensed Daycare Centers In Oklahoma, Taylor Ashley Wilson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Integrative Synchronicity: Learning To Hold The Space Between, Kelsey M. Bogumill

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.