Personality and Social Contexts Commons^™

A Rhetorical-Sociological Understanding Of Emotion, Amy Boone

All Dissertations

This project presents a rhetorical-sociological understanding of emotion while foregrounding the place and role of language. Born from Sara Ahmed’s work in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, it presents a simplified equation (contact + orientation = emotion) as both a prescriptive and descriptive formula for making sense of human emotional experience. Starting with an exploration of the difficult-to-understand affect system, this dissertation identifies both rhetoric and affect as energies which cannot be understood apart from their traces, the things they move, produce, and become. As a way to get at these often-invisible forces, two trace studies are conducted which explore …

(Non)Cognitive Dissonance? A Stakeholder-Based Exploration Of The Consideration Of Graduate Admissions Applicants' Personal Skills And Qualities, Reginald M. Gooch, Joseph H. Paris, Sara B. Haviland, Jose Sotelo

Journal of College Access

Prospective graduate students’ noncognitive attributes are commonly evaluated as a part of a holistic review of their admission applications. Yet it is difficult to determine which noncognitive attributes are considered by those who evaluate graduate admissions applications and what approaches they take to measure applicants’ noncognitive attributes. It is even less clear to what degree prospective graduate students understand how they are evaluated for graduate admissions and how the evaluation of their noncognitive attributes factor into admissions decisions. Drawing on surveys of graduate enrollment management (GEM) professionals and prospective graduate students in the United States, our study investigates the noncognitive …

Can Confidence Influence Persuasiveness In Disagreements By Conveying Competence Versus Dominance? The Moderating Role Of Competitiveness, Laura Rees, Ming-Hong Tsai, Shirli Kopelman, Hsiu-Hua Hu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Research has demonstrated that confident individuals gain social influence because their confidence signals competence rather than dominance in settings in which they do not experience a disagreement with others. We extend this research by exploring felt competitiveness, as reflected by perceptions of goal opposition between perceivers and others. In settings where people experience a disagreement, we explore the impact of felt competitiveness on the association between expressed confidence and social perceptions of the expresser’s competence and dominance, and how these shape persuasiveness. We conducted a field study examining dyadic interactions between coworkers (Study 1) and two experimentsmanipulating competitiveness and confidence …

Paranormal Beliefs And The Big Five: Extrinsic Optimism, Trust In People, And Fantasy Proneness, Caitlyn Ariel Irene Harvey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are many inconsistent findings on the relationship between paranormal beliefs and The Big Five. This study aims to clarify the correlations by assessing extrinsic optimism, trust in people, and fantasy proneness. Extrinsic optimism is associated with neuroticism and extraversion. Trust is associated with agreeableness. Lastly, fantasy proneness is associated with openness to experience. It was predicted that paranormal beliefs would be positively correlated with extrinsic optimism, trust in people, and fantasy proneness. It was also predicted that paranormal beliefs would be positively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, and openness. Correlational and regression analyses were run to test these predictions. Results …

Charismatic Leadership And Vulnerability: A Comprehensive Study Of Cult Dynamics, Danielle Santana Denrich

Psychology Presentations

The term "cult" has various definitions in academic discourse, including religious or quasi-religious groups and small, ideologically aligned communities. This paper explores the complexity of the term, its alternative labels, and the influence of media portrayal on public perception. It examines cult leaders' attributes, focusing on the "dark triad" personality traits—narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy—and their manifestation in charismatic leaders. The functionality of cults is scrutinized, highlighting their appeal as a familial structure and promises of intellectual, spiritual, and political power. However, the darker side of cult functionality involves manipulative recruitment tactics and thought-stopping techniques. Additionally, the paper examines susceptibility to …

Impact Of Emotional Intelligence On Client Satisfaction In Project Management, Mousami Berawala

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates the correlation between emotional intelligence (EI) and client satisfaction in project management. It is guided by the central research question: Is emotional intelligence linked to client satisfaction? To explore this, the research is structured around Practice of EI on Leadership and Junior level and impact on client satisfaction, the impact of varying work environments, including remote, hybrid, office-based, and site-based settings, on project outcomes post-pandemic; differences in EI practices across countries and the effect of diverse work cultures; the comparison of EI application across different fields, with a focus on work-life balance and industry-specific practices in banking, …

An Examination Of The Big Five, Mental Illness Stigma, And Crisis Intervention Training, Trista Wolfgram

Theses and Graduate Projects

The number of individuals incarcerated with mental illness continues to grow, and correctional officers may play a critical role in rehabilitation. A correlation analysis was conducted between Big Five personality traits and mental illness stigma to determine whether there is a significant relationship in a sample of state correctional officers who participated in Crisis Intervention Training. A mixed model ANOVA was also conducted to assess whether personality traits impacted levels of mental illness stigma following completion of the training. A moderate negative correlation was found between agreeableness and mental illness stigma. All other findings were not clinically significant, potentially due …

A Qualitative Case Study Of An Ultra-Brief Trait Emotional Intelligence Intervention For University Student Leaders, Britne K. Bacca-Haupt, Melinda R. Dilley, Fletcher J. Ferguson, Lisa C. Gillis-Davis, Jacqueline M. Schneller

Dissertations

Emotional intelligence gained interest in the early 1990s from researchers in hopes of assessing how understanding and developing emotions can help individuals be “healthy, rich, successful, loved, and happy” (Mayer et al., 2001, p. xi). Because of the expanded interest, increasing implications began occurring at the postsecondary level of education (Petrides et al., 2018). Trait emotional intelligence focuses on perceptions of oneself and others, illustrating how we regulate our emotions and recognize them in others. This qualitative study aimed to explore the impact of an ultra-brief intervention on the trait emotional intelligence development of university student leaders and how they …

Making Deception Fun: Teaching Autistic Individuals How To Playfriendly Tricks, Adel Naj, Megan St. Clair, Kacie Massoudie, Jonathan Tarbox, Lauri Simchoni, Marianne Jackson, Angela Persicke

Psychology Division Scholarship

Perspective taking is a critical repertoire for navigating social relationships and consists of a variety of complex verbalskills, including socially adaptive forms of deception. Detecting and being able to use socially adaptive deception likelyhas many practical uses, including defending oneself against bullying, telling white lies to avoid hurting others’ feelings,keeping secrets and bluffing during games, and playing friendly tricks on others. Previous research has documented thatsome Autistic1 children have challenges identifying deception and playfully deceiving others (Reinecke et al., 1997). Thecurrent study employed a multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the use of multiple exemplar training, rules,modeling, practice, and …

The Relationships Between Personality, Perceived Social Support, And Structure Of Friend Groups, Carolyn Lowe, Ella Marks, Maddie Wiseman, Emma Sarin

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Friendship formation has been studied by many psychologists, focusing predominately on connectedness within the friendship and less focused on variation of characteristics within the group that influence group dynamic (Laakasu et. al., 2016). Personality traits are a large contributing factor when determining relationship satisfaction, specifically Neuroticism and Extraversion. Having high Neuroticism has shown to be a consistent predictor of low relationship quality (Finn, Mite, & Neyer, 2013). On the contrary, Extraversion’s positive affect (i.e. characterized as being cheerful, energetic, and social) is associated with better relationship outcomes (Lyubomirsky, King, & Deiner, 2005). Undergraduate students (N = 50) completed a survey …

Music As A Coping Mechanism: Clinical Implications Of How College Students Utilize Music To Cope With Anxiety, Depression, And Daily Stressors, Karly Pikel

Senior Theses

Many college students face stress, anxiety, and/or depression in their daily lives which they cope with in their own ways. Listening to music or playing an instrument are particularly powerful forms of coping that can have a plethora of positive effects on an individual. The purpose of this study was to conduct a survey amongst the University of South Carolina student body to determine how they utilize music to cope in their daily lives. Of 847 respondents, almost all of them reported experiencing some extent of anxiety and/or stress and listening to music to help them cope. Respondents agreed that …

Harnessing The Power Of Cliftonstrengths®: How Multinational Corporations Can Use Deep-Level Diversity To Enhance Organizational Inclusion, Trapper Kay Pace

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research explicitly investigated how multinational corporations can enhance workplace inclusion through the novel use of the CliftonStrengths® assessment as a dimension of deep-level diversity. The study gleaned insights from employees’ perspectives, employing a constructivist grounded theory approach to explicate their experiences in rich qualitative narratives. Through open-ended surveys and intensive interviews, participants were selected using purposeful sampling to ensure meaningful data collection from the study organizations’ three global regions. The researcher conducted the analysis systematically through the constant comparison of data utilizing the NVivo14 software to assist in constructing codes, themes, and a theoretical schema. Results highlighted the significance …

Voices Unheard, Stories Untold: An In-Depth Phenomenological Exploration Of Workplace Bullying Among Indian Primary School Teachers, Mridul M, Aditi Sharma

The Qualitative Report

Workplace bullying adds significantly to toxicity in workplaces. The present phenomenological study aims to unravel the experiences of primary school teachers who have faced bullying at work. Such studies in India are still sparse, and in-depth qualitative examination of the target’s experiences provides deeper insight into their view regarding anomalous behaviours and bullies. Semi-structured interviews of seven teachers were conducted and analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The analysis resulted in three themes: “Workplace dynamics,” “I can tell what their problem is,” and “Coping with the problem.” The identified acts were linked to the extant model (Duluth model) describing the …

At The Intersection Of Religion, Spirituality, And Clinical Psychology: A Conversation With Two Jewish Psychologists, Robert A. Demayo, David A. Levy

Psychology Division Scholarship

This article presents a dialogue between two Jewish psychologists who share their respective personal and professional journeys on how spirituality and religious affiliation impacts their work as clinicians. They address the following questions: How would you identify your cultural background with respect to your religious or spiritual history and identity? How do you manage the competing demands of respecting both individual cultural identity and group cultural identity? How did your early experiences with Judaism influence your professional practice? What were your earliest academic influences on the question of spirituality in psychology? How have religion and spirituality manifested in your clinical …

Gender, Graduate School Stage, And The Impostor Phenomenon, John-Scott B. Kelley, Angela T. Barlow

Journal of Graduate Education Research

The impostor phenomenon (IP) includes five central factors: (a) a sense of fraudulence or phoniness; (b) a fear of failure and discovery; (c) compensatory perfectionism (i.e., procrastination and/or over-preparation); (d) interpersonal anxiety; and (e) externalized success and/or discounted positive feedback. After the final stage, the process starts over with reinforced vigor, creating a self-reinforcing cycle in which success is associated with psychological suffering. IP was initially used to describe the reports of high-achieving women, but recent studies have shown that IP is experienced across genders. Additionally, while graduate school is an achievement-oriented environment with many characteristics that could promote IP, …

Exploration Of Sustainable Attitudes And Behaviors And The Role Of Planned Behavior Amongst The Auc Community, Natalie Tamer Khairy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the use of a new Framework that was developed by combining both the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) theory to study the sustainability behaviors of students, faculty, and staff at the American University in Cairo (AUC). The research aims to provide insights into the factors influencing sustainable behaviors and how these factors differ across the three groups. The study used a combination of questions from the sustainability awareness questionnaire (SAQ) and Sulitest that was customized to the cultural context of the target group. The survey was administered to a sample of …

Power And Control Wheel Tactics: Assessing Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd) Epistemology Among Domestic Violence Survivors, Lisa Hady

Theses and Graduate Projects

Domestic violence affects more than 10 million adults in the United States annually (National Network to End Domestic Violence, 2020). The Power and Control Wheel (PCW) places power and control at the center of physical and sexual violence, with eight surrounding tactics representing the abusive behaviors perpetrators use to retain power and control over survivors. Although the PCW has been extended to understand various abusive relationships, and the PCW tactics have been examined in both Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Non-Intimate Partner Violence (NPV; Basile et al., 2004; Scott, 2018), limited research compares tactics used based on the perpetrator’s relationship …

Annual Research Review: The Power Of Predictability – Patterns Of Signals In Early Life Shape Neurodevelopment And Mental Health Trajectories, Elysia Poggi Davis, Laura M. Glynn

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The global burden of early life adversity (ELA) is profound. The World Health Organization has estimated that ELA accounts for almost 30% of all psychiatric cases. Yet, our ability to identify which individuals exposed to ELA will develop mental illness remains poor and there is a critical need to identify underlying pathways and mechanisms. This review proposes unpredictability as an understudied aspect of ELA that is tractable and presents a conceptual model that includes biologically plausible mechanistic pathways by which unpredictability impacts the developing brain. The model is supported by a synthesis of published and new data illustrating the significant …

Evaluating The Oral Health-Related Quality Of Life Among Dental Patients In South India - A Descriptive Study, Dheekshitha P K, Sudeep C B Dr., Sunil P M Dr., Suji M Dr.

Annual Research Symposium

This study aims to evaluate the oral health-related quality of life among dental patients in South India.

Profiles Of Activity Engagement And Depression Trajectories As Covid-19 Restrictions Were Relaxed, Jonathan L. Chia, Andree Hartanto, William Tov

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Given elevated depression rates since the onset of the pandemic and potential downstream implications, this research examined the association between activity engagement and depression among middle-aged and older adults postlockdown. This study aimed to (a) identify activity engagement profiles among middle-aged and older adults, (b) understand factors associated with profile memberships, and (c) compare depression trajectories across profiles as COVID-19 restrictions eased over 16 months in Singapore. This longitudinal study involved 6,568 middle-aged and older adults. Latent growth analysis was first conducted to obtain estimates of depression trajectories for each individual. Latent profile analysis was then conducted to identify different …

From The Outside Looking In: Transmasculine Narrative Identity, Experiences, And Larger Narratives On Social Media, Micah Roldan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Narrative identity development is an essential process in how individuals perceive themselves and the world around them. Often, narrative identity is studied in cisgender heterosexual individuals and applied to others without the acknowledgment of individuals that fall outside of these categories. Drawing upon existing literature and autoethnography, this thesis aims to meaningfully bridge this gap by studying the narrative identity development of transmasculine individuals through the lens of social media. This thesis proposes that the use of social media to share gender transition journeys has created a new digital trans and queer narrative for users and viewers. This narrative is …

Developing An Instrument To Measure Group Dynamics Awareness: A Mixed Methods Study, John Weng

Dissertations

In a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, adaptive leaders are needed more than ever. Based on group relations programs developed by the Tavistock Institute, a pedagogy known as case-in-point has recently been brought to prominence and incorporated into leadership development programs. These methods claim to develop systems thinking and individuals’ leadership capacity with little prior empirical research.

This mixed methods exploratory study explored individual awareness of group dynamics, a key outcome in case-in-point programs, and adaptive leadership theory. The goal was to create an instrument to measure awareness of group dynamics: the Group Dynamics Awareness Questionnaire …

When Did I Know Thee? Let Me Count The Months: Retrospective Accounts Of Impression Formation In Close Relationships, Andrew Beer, Leanne Smith

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

The current study utilizes relationship models and theories to file down how, why, and when people develop evaluations of others at zero acquaintance. A key aspect of the study is determining the relationship between Big Five traits and judgment accuracy, as well as how it fared over time (2 months). We took a sample of two-hundred and six participants and had them rate a target with closed and open-ended questions and rating scales. We found that Extraversion was the most salient and most accurately judged at zero acquaintance. Further, Neuroticism was noted most often in open-ended questions and only became …

Does Having Air Conditioning Affect Friendship Formation In The First Two Months Of College?, Zachariah Hunt

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Lifespace Patterns Of College Students High And Low In Personal Intelligence, John D. Mayer

UNH Personality Lab

Personal intelligence (PI) refers to the capacity to accurately reason about personality in oneself and other people. We hypothesize that people who are higher in personal intelligence differ from others in their relationships and behaviors. We conducted a series of theoretically-guided studies to examine how PI is associated with a person’s self-reported activities, interactions, situations, and group memberships: their lifespace. In two archival and three new studies of college students (Ns = 385, 358, 1186, 416, 696, respectively) we first identified 15 short, factor-based scales describing aspects of college students’ lifespace that are potentially relevant to personal intelligence. …

Galileo And The Church: An Ecological Perspective, Holly J. Lawson

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

The post-medieval church was surrounded by intense sociocultural factors, including the recent Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Although “the Galileo affair,” as it has been dubbed in the years since, is generally presented as a case example of the conflict between science and faith or religion, it is far more complex than these two issues alone. Galileo’s discoveries supporting the Copernican theory entered a complex interplay of factors, eventually leading to a highly pressurized encounter between Galileo and the Inquisition. Galileo’s indictment is a nuanced, poignant example of the rich cultural and contextual factors that drive clashes of religion …

Examining The Role Of Mononormative Beliefs, Stigma, And Internalized Consensual Non-Monogamy Negativity For Dehumanization, David L. Rodrigues, Thomas R. Brooks, Rhonda N. Balzarini, Amy C. Moors, Diniz Lopes

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Interest in consensually non-monogamous (CNM) relationships has been increasing in the general population in recent years. However, given the cultural dominance of monogamy and the normative expectations often imposed through socialization (i.e., mononormativity), people in CNM relationships may experience negativity, which can become internalized and harm their individual and relationship health. The present study investigated if mononormativity beliefs and CNM relationship stigma were associated with more dehumanization and if internalized CNM negativity was an underlying mechanism for these associations. Results showed that participants who endorsed more mononormative beliefs and CNM relationship stigma also reported more internalized CNM negativity. In turn, …

Modeling The Relationships Between Social Intelligence, School Bullying And Psychological Adjustment, Amal Al-Battashi, Fahima Alsaidi, Said Aldhafri

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

The descriptive study aimed to identify the levels of social intelligence, school bullying and psychological adjustment among students of seventh, eighth, and ninth grades studying in public schools in the Sultanate of Oman. The study also examined possible differences in the study variables according to gender, grade and birth order. In addition, the researchers proposed a mediating model that explains the causal relationships among the study variables. The study sample consisted of 403 students, including 165 male and 238 female students, who were selected by the random cluster method from three governorates in the Sultanate and the quantitative approach was …

Precommentary: Animal Personality Needs Animal Sentience, Ralph Adolphs, Yue Xu

Animal Sentience

We are grateful to Owens, Bryja & Bekoff (2024) for their important discussion of individual differences in animals, emphasizing the role of personality in conservation, wildlife research, and wellbeing. But their emphasis also raises new challenges: How should we conceive of personality in nonhuman species? what modern tools could be leveraged to best measure it? and, perhaps most important of all: how can we ensure that the conscious experience of animals — their capacity for wellbeing and for suffering — is not forgotten along the way? We touch on each of these challenges in this invited Precommentary in the hope …

Epigenetics And Character Virtue Development, David S. Moore

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Current understandings of epigenetics offer some insights into the developmental origins of character virtues. Research on epigenetics has demonstrated that phenotypes depend on both genomic and non-genomic information for their development, and such is true for the development of character virtues as well. This conclusion offers significant support for the Developmental Systems perspective. Although researchers have not yet studied the role of molecular epigenetic factors in the development of character, the field of behavioral epigenetics has revealed how such factors contribute to psychological and other behavioral phenotypes in general. In particular, behavioral epigenetics research can highlight the plasticity of human …