Psychology Commons^™

Guest Editor's Note, Rajiv Thakur

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Spaces Of Progress And The Challenge Of “Mindfulness” In A Postcolonial World, M. Satish Kumar

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Progress implied both change and improvement in the colonial and postcolonial world. Such a concept of progress came to be enshrined in specific geographical places. The notions of development and underdevelopment in the postcolonial context thereafter supplanted this idea. Over time, while the structures of colonial domination dissolved, those of embedded regional inequalities came to be deeply entrenched, thereby urging for Thich Nhat Hanh’s approach to “mindfulness” in a “postcapitalist,” postcolonial world. The key question is whether postcolonialism has reached an impasse in its delivery and deployment of ideas across the widening gulf between the spaces of progress and stagnancy. …

The Decline Of Republican Democracy And Rise Of The Techno-Authoritarian State: Reading Dystopian Novels In Hindi Literature, Manindra Nath Thakur

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In the past few decades, the nature of capitalism has changed fast as it has lost its philosophical justification based on the principle of the common good. There have been many avatars of the idea of the “common good”: “white man’s burden to civilize the world,” “welfarism,” and “neoliberal concept of freedom of choice.” Capitalism now seems to have moved in a new direction, however, and it has failed to produce any further philosophical justification for its existence as a mode of production despite generating unprecedented economic inequality. Consequently, there is a rising tension between capitalism and democracy in societies …

Statement From The Indiana Academy Of The Social Sciences And Board Of Directors

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

The Adaptation Wedge: Capacity-Building Scenarios For India’S Cities, Jagan Shah

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The increasing frequency and severity of floods, heat waves, and storm surges impacting global cities, combined with the growing morbidity in public health, necessitates prompt and effective climate action. Adaptation and mitigation require adequate and appropriate institutional, technical, and societal capacities—all of which are in short supply in most low- and middle-income country cities that are experiencing growth while suffering vulnerabilities. Although national governments are alerted to climate risk and the imperatives of planning, financing, and managing climate transitions, their responses to capacity constraints and approaches to capacity building display neither urgency nor scale. We use a scenario-building methodology to …

Professional Development Experiences Aligned To The Ideal Self: A Positive Psychology Perspective On Individual Development, Udayan Dhar

Faculty Journal Articles

The purpose of this study is to use a positive psychology lens to broaden and refine our understanding of professional development experiences, and to construct a practical, but evidence-based framework for a developmental human resource management (HRM) system. Study 1 uses focus group interviews with 18 full-time professionals enrolled in a management education program to explore experiences that are likely to strengthen and clarify one's aspirational future professional identity, or the ideal self. In study 2, two separate professional samples (N = 204, 271) are used for measurement development and hypotheses testing. Overall, the two studies show that 15 …

Shame, Guilt, And Behavioral Responses To Conflict In Organizational Life: A Correlational Study, Lori Anne Shaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the relationship between self-conscious emotions, namely shame and guilt, and constructive and destructive behavioral responses to conflict among working adults in the United States. Researchers have underscored the importance of task-focused conflict and adaptive leadership in fostering positive conflict outcomes. However, the connection between shame and guilt and behavioral responses has yet to be explored. Drawing upon the Conflict Dynamics Profile and the Test of Self-Conscious Affect-3, this correlational study examined the associations between shame and guilt and 15 distinct behavioral responses to conflict among a sample of 203 participants, mostly women employed full-time. The cross-sectional survey …

The Blessed Assembly: Irreplaceable Physical Co-Presence In Worship And Healthy Hybridity Reimagined After The Pandemic In The Digital Age, Yvette, Ying Wai Lau

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

Because of the unprecedented and unexpected force of the pandemic since 2020, most churches around the world have experienced some online worship during the lockdown of their cities or the mandated closure of the church buildings. For many people, online worship seems to be an equivalent, if not better, alternative for gathering together—a physical co-presence in worship—even after the pandemic has ended. As necessary and vital as online worship experiences have been for Christians during the pandemic, the witness of the church from Pentecost throughout Christian history indicates that gathered worship in physical spaces is irreplaceable for faith formation and …

Exploring Producers' Willingness To Pay For Ecosystem Services: Three Essays On Soil Health, Location Preferences, And Cover Crop Adoption, Kaouter Essakkat

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation comprises three essays: one assessing Midwest producers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for soil health-enhancing ecosystem services (ES), another examining the impact of policy implementation locations on WTP, and a third identifying factors influencing producers' adoption of cover crops (CC).

The first essay pioneers the understanding of agricultural producers’ valuation of soil health-associated ES amid growing concerns of soil degradation due to agricultural intensification. Using a discrete choice experiment, this study assesses producers’ WTP for a policy that incentivizes ES provision, specifically improved water quality, carbon sequestration, and enhanced crop yield. Surveying producers across Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, our results show …

Examining A Regulatory Flexibility Framework Of Psychological Distress: Integrating Distress Tolerance, Emotion Differentiation, And Emotion Regulation Flexibility, Germaine Yue Qi Tng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Several theoretical accounts identify emotion regulation (ER) difficulties, including poor abilities to withstand or distinguish negative emotions, as a transdiagnostic risk factor for symptoms of psychological distress. Considering this, nascent evidence hints that ER flexibility may be a mediating mechanism that explains the relationship between specific ER abilities (i.e., distress tolerance, negative emotion differentiation) and distress symptoms. Across time-lagged (Study 1) and three-wave longitudinal (Study 2) investigations of college-aged adults, a regulatory flexibility framework of distress was examined in which ER flexibility mediates the respective pathways from distress tolerance and negative emotion differentiation to psychological distress symptoms. Furthermore, we explored …

Neurodivergent Employees: The Impact Of The Disclosure Decision And Subsequent Workplace Accommodations, Tamara Farquhar

Theses and Dissertations

A great deal of organizational investments have gone towards diversifying the labor force as of late. However, the same cannot be said for efforts made towards making newly acquired talent feel included. Neurodivergent individuals in particular have not been sufficiently welcomed in organizations, partially explaining their reluctance to disclose their identity along with feeling excluded. Despite researchers framing the characteristics displayed by neurodiverse talent as natural variations found at the tail ends of the bell curve, many people are incapable of viewing them as such. Discrimination and stereotyping have thus resulted, further dampening neurodivergent employees’ work experiences. These two factors …

Organizational Challenges: The Impact Of Role Clarity On Burnout In A Technology Division, Jessica Arriaza

The Scholarship Without Borders Journal

Organizations grapple with significant challenges such as burnout, turnover, and low job satisfaction. Studies indicate that emotional exhaustion, influenced by job demands and available resources, significantly impacts job performance positively or negatively. This quantitative study uses secondary data from the Work, Family, and Health Study to investigate the relationship between role clarity and burnout within Tomo, the technology division of a Fortune 500 company in the United States. The findings reveal a significant inverse correlation between role clarity and burnout, with participants reporting "Never" experiencing burnout more likely to have well-defined roles. Supported by chi-square and linear regression analyses, these …

A Workplace Security Framework: Mitigating Employee-Related Threats, Alan Saquella

Publications

In the modern discussion on workplace security, the focus often centers around preventing active shootings and violence stemming from terminated or disgruntled employees. The article “Publicly Humiliating Events: A Precursor to Workplace Violence” by Karie Gibson, Lauren Brubaker and Andre Simons rightly highlights the crucial role that public humiliation plays in triggering such violent acts. However, beyond the immediate threat of homicide, there exists a broader spectrum of potential risks posed by former employees, including acts of sabotage, espionage, vandalism and cyberattacks, all of which demand attention and proactive measures from security professionals.

The Impact Of Human-Ai Relationship Perception On Voice Shopping Intentions, Marisa Tschopp, Kai Sassenberg

Human-Machine Communication

In the emerging field of voice shopping with quasi-sales agents like Amazon's Alexa, we investigated the influence of perceived human-AI relationships (i.e., authority ranking, market pricing, peer bonding) on (voice-)shopping intentions. In our cross-sectional survey among experienced voice shoppers, we tested hypotheses specifically differentiating voice shopping for low- and high-involvement products. The results emphasized the importance of socio-emotional elements (i.e., peer bonding) for voice shopping for high-involvement products. While calculative decision-making (i.e., market pricing) was less relevant, the master-servant relationship perception (i.e., authority ranking) was important in low-involvement shopping. An exploratory analysis of users’ desired benefits of voice shopping reinforces …

The Nexus Of Passive-Avoidant Leadership And Deviancy: Exploring Job Embeddedness, Anthony Maurice Da Silva

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers have experienced unprecedented changes in the workforce, including labor shortages and new legislation. As a result, many organizations, known as second-chance employers, proactively seek alternative talent sources to mitigate staffing shortages, including hiring candidates with criminal backgrounds, either voluntarily or as mandated by law. However, this approach has challenges; individuals with criminal records often lack essential support upon reentry and experience an increased risk of reoffending. Although existing literature indicates that the appropriate leadership style is crucial for behavior correction, there is a gap in the literature addressing employees who work for …

The Entrepreneur’S Burden: Investigating The Interplay Between Impostorism And Entrepreneurial Identity, Megan Laura Weber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Entrepreneurship is often portrayed as a glamorous pursuit of success but conceals a darker side, exacerbated by impostorism, characterized by challenges, identity conflicts, and diminished well-being. This "dark side" of entrepreneurship is seldom explored due to our collective fascination with the central figure of the entrepreneur. Impostorism is a prevalent phenomenon among individuals who perceive that their role is beyond their capabilities and fear being exposed as a "fake." Impostorism can have negative consequences, including self-sabotage, missed opportunities, and difficulty in seeking help or support, which can impact the ability of entrepreneurs to take entrepreneurial action and experience well-being.

This …

“I’M Not Your Friend”: Content Type Influence On Parasocial Relationship Formation On Youtube, Sage E. Driscoll

Honors Projects

Media consumers are increasingly using online video platforms, such as YouTube which has record high numbers of viewers and subscribers compared to other media sites. This viewership increases the popularity of content creators who can be divided into two main categories; relationship-based or idea-based content. YouTube viewers bond with their favorite celebrities which has translated into parasocial relationships. In this study, explanatory qualitative research examines whether the two types of content found on YouTube, relationship-based or idea-based, influences the parasocial relationships formed. As the results show, relationship-based YouTubers consistently form more intense parasocial relationships than idea-based YouTubers.

Uncovering The Mimicry Of Online Review Breadth And Depth And Its Subsequent Effect On Consumer Responses, Andrea Pelaez Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Word-of-mouth (WOM) in marketing occurs when consumers discuss a company's product or service or any consumption experience with their friends, family, and others with whom they have any relationship. With the advent of social media, this phenomenon has expanded rapidly into virtual environments where consumer conversation is enabled through chats, forums, social media posts, and online reviews. In response to this rapid growth of online WOM, academics and practitioners have focused their interest on this phenomenon and its implications on consumers, firms, and society. So far, the evidence of the critical role that online WOM plays in helping consumers make …

Empirical Essays On Retail Investors, Institutional Investors, And Anomalies, Yuqing Yang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of five chapters on market efficiencies through retail and international mutual fund investors.

Chapter 1 This chapter briefly introduces this dissertation.

Chapter 2 This chapter Anomalies Never Disappeared: The Case of Stubborn Retail Investors delves into the “stubborn” retail investors and finds that anomalies traded against by retail investors never disappear in the long run, defying the conventional wisdom that anomalies are disappearing in recent years as market efficiency improves. Incorporating retail trading, I develop asset pricing models that surpass existing prominent models in explaining these long-run alphas. I hypothesize that retail investors exacerbate anomalies: the more …

On-Site Sensory Experience Boosts Acceptance Of Cultivated Chicken, Mark Chong, Angela K. Y. Leung, Tricia Marjorie Fernandez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study set out to assess if presenting cultivated chicken in the context of a familiar meal, in a familiar dining setting, would motivate repeat consumption and recommendation. A survey of 107 diners was conducted at Huber's Butchery and Bistro in Singapore – the world's first butchery to serve cultivated meat – from April to June 2023. The findings showed that eating cultivated chicken significantly boosted post-consumption acceptance levels. In addition, cultivated chicken's tastiness may be a more important factor than its integration into a familiar meal or dish in fostering repeat consumption. Implications for the cultivated meat industry, limitations, …

Demands At Work: The Moderating Influence Of Motivation On The Relationship Between Challenge Demands And Employee Work Engagement, Lauren R. Dinnat

Doctoral Dissertations

Work engagement is a popular topic due to the positive outcomes linked to it. For example, engaged workers are shown to be more productive workers and better organizational citizens. The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Theory has been the most widely accepted explanatory model for work engagement due to its flexibility to be applied to all work environments. While the JD-R does not argue that motivation is fixed, it does not account for moment-to-moment changes in motivation. A state theory of motivation that examines how motivation may impact the relationships between demands and work engagement has yet to be examined. This study …

The Impact Of Irrational Beliefs On Dysfunctional Decision-Making In B2b Salespeople, Barron W. Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

The complexity of the contemporary business-to-business (B2B) sales landscape requires salespeople to respond faster, be more knowledgeable, and add more value to buyer interactions than ever before. As such, B2B salespeople must carefully consider the impact of their decisions since they have the potential to directly impact organizational revenue and bottom-line outcomes. The present research utilizes rational-emotive behavior theory to examine judgment and decision-making in B2B salespeople. Research questions are presented and tested with a sample of 306 B2B salespeople using structural equation modeling. The results of the analysis reveal that irrational beliefs lead to dysfunctional emotions, and in turn, …

Philanthropy In The Helping Profession: An Overview And Introductory Workshop Intended To Support Counselors And Counselors In Training, Matthew Higgins

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

Many new counseling professionals enter the field with a deep understanding of the therapeutic relationship but lack knowledge of the financial realities that sustain counseling services. Traditional training prioritizes building rapport with clients, leaving a gap in understanding the business side of the helping profession. As the demand for therapy increases, particularly in the United States, it's crucial for counselors to explore innovative solutions to sustain the field in the long term. Integrating education on philanthropic support into counselor training offers a creative approach that would fall in line with the ACA Code of Ethics. While more research needs to …

Mental Health Among Collegiate Athletes, Stella Elise Fairbanks

Honors Thesis

Mental health has become increasingly more linked with athletics, especially collegiate athletics. There has been an increase in public acknowledgment of the presence of mental health in sports, specifically, more athletes are speaking about their mental health struggles as well as more research is being conducted in order to gain a greater understanding of the relationship between mental health and athletics. This literature review discusses athletes’ personal experiences of their mental health struggles, the presence of stigma associated with mental health and athletics, and the results of the recent NCAA, National Collegiate Athletic Association, research. This thesis aims to uncover …

Let's Move! An Analysis Into The Relationship Between Physical Activity, Work-Related Outcomes, And Mental Health, Colin Elliott

Honors Projects in Psychology

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 subsidized the use of Corporate Wellness Programs (CWPs) as a way to combat the growing obesity problem currently plaguing the United States. Despite this subsidization, these CWPs offered by employers are still lacking in both quality of programs and the number of programs that are offered to employees. 52% of all companies in the United States sponsor a CWP, and these numbers decline to approximately 28% of all companies offering a physical activity program for employees. Current literature highlights the benefits of physical activity, but there is lack of research on CWPs and their …

A Qualitative And Quantitative Review Of The Terms "Job" And "Organization" From The Employee's Perspective, Nirvana Mejia

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study explores how employees perceive workplace constructs like job satisfaction and differentiate them between their job and organization. It highlights the importance of avoiding mistaken associations, known as the "jingle fallacy," which can oversimplify workplace dynamics. The research includes two studies, one qualitative with 12 participants discussing their job and organization, and one quantitative with 197 to 252 participants assessing job satisfaction dimensions. Findings indicate that people generally mention tasks when discussing their job and broader organizational aspects when discussing their organization. The majority of job satisfaction dimensions fall into a mixed category, with Regular Tasks being the only …

Persuasion As A Function Of Celebrity, Argument Complexity, And Need For Cognition, Stratton Stave, Blair T. Johnson Dr., Lisset Martinez-Berman, Matthew B. Jané

Honors Scholar Theses

With advertising commanding so much money as an industry, it is critical to determine what people like or do not with ads. Our focus was on three main factors within advertising, two dimensions within how the advertisement is presented, one based on the person reading the ad. The two dimensions based on presentation were the complexity of the ad, done the first time by omitting letters from the ad and the second time by swapping letters within words, and celebrity endorsement, comparing popstar Taylor Swift’s to Alicia Steele, an AI-generated celebrity. We also measured Need for Cognition (NFC), the level …

The Extreme Rise Of The Fast Fashion Industry From Country To Country: Does Consumer Behavior Differ Cross Culturally Regarding Fast Fashion Between The United States And European Countries?, Madison R. Feuerbacher

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The apparel industry has various categories of fashion. One of these categories known more readily today as fast fashion. Fast fashion has gained immense global popularity over the past decade. The concept of fast fashion apparel involves producing vast amounts of product as quick as possible to sell to the consumer at an aggressively low price. It is important to understand this current phenomenon of the global rise of fast fashion as well as understand the devastating effects our environment is facing because of it. As the vocalization of the harmful effects of fast fashion have become more prevalent …

Balancing Act: An Exploration Of Polarities In Personal And Professional Life, Hana Mamnoon

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This purpose of this project is to explore the concept of polarities. I have been using creative problem solving for years, but recently, I have come to realize that some of the complexities we face in our everyday lives are not actually problems to solve, but rather are polarities to manage (Johnson, 2014). By undertaking this project, I aimed to build my skill set around polarity management in order to help me develop in both my personal and professional spheres. This project allowed me to explore some of the literature of polarities as well as put the concepts into practice …

To Tip Or Not To Tip: An Analysis Into Prompted Tipping, Jared Dingman

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Giving tips (or gratuities) in restaurants in the United States has been and is currently a hotly debated and discussed topic. Concerns regarding proper compensation have been raised, but there is a need for empirical evidence to investigate and solve potential issues of compensation. This honors thesis aimed to answer two questions: Whether restaurant patrons tip more when prompted with tipping percentages, and whether those who have worked in the tipping industry tip more than those who have not. I administered a brief survey with tipping scenarios to gauge prompted and unprompted tipping behaviors. With these scenarios, demographic information was …