M.A. / The notion of home is one which stirs deeply within us. The search for home is guided by an almost ineffable sense of longing. It is search which we share as common, yet the longing is intensely personal and the constructions of our home unique. At the heart of this search are our experiences of alienation and belonging. The process of negotiating our sense of alienation and belonging, separation and togetherness is fundamental to the way in which we experience, construct our identities and make meaning. Our sense of home is inextricably related to our sense of identity. Our identities carry with them the markers that help us to resonate with a situation or feel alienated from it, to join with it or remain apart. At the same time our sense of alienation and belonging will playa role in the construction of our identities. This study explores the participants' experience of their search for home and their experiences of alienation and belonging that pave this journey. It suggests that there is a dialectical nature between alienation and belonging. This particular dialectic influences our meaning making and can be a frame through which we view our experiences. The dialectic shifts and shifts along with identity. Identity in turn operat~s to shift our experience of alienation and belonging. The study will explore how I ,see the theme of alienation and belonging operating in my own life and will create a context for the rest of the study. It will explore the relationship between epistemology and identity. It will make particular reference to then theme of the bounded monad that runs through modern epistemology. It will look at the potential for this to shift to one of greater connections as understanding of identity is seen within a postmodern epistemology. Epistemology and identity therefore form a broad context in which a sense of alienation and belonging is experienced. The study views alienation and belonging as a broad template of experience that can be used to frame experiences and negotiate a way through experiences of 'stuckness'. It does not seek to prove, but rather to open a domain of conversation with which the reader can explore her own experiences and perhaps find resonance.

<p> This dissertation aims to understand various developmental decision making phenomena associated with turning points in the lives of middle-aged adults. More specifically, the decision processes of persons who lived in pre-war Nazi Germany were studied in relation to their decisions around emigration, based on their memoirs. The source material is from an archive located at Houghton Library, Harvard University, entitled &ldquo;My Life in Germany before and after January 30, 1933,&rdquo; collected in 1939&ndash;40. The study reveals three main reasons given for deciding to emigrate, the loss of employment opportunities, a feeling of moral repugnance for the Nazi regime, and an experience of physical threat. Developmental findings related to the turning point, following Maslow, revealed coping abilities amid an atmosphere of tension, reflecting maintained attainment of adult functioning and a persistent sense of self. Turning point findings supported an extended rather than pinpoint definition of the turning point.</p>

<p> Guided Autobiography is a process of writing, sharing and preserving one&rsquo;s life stories and life experiences. It leads one down a path through vast stores of memories, leading to an increased awareness and appreciation of having lived through so much. </p><p> The purpose of this study was to adapt Birren&rsquo;s Guided Autobiography (GAB) program for U. S. veterans 65 years of age and older. The themes developed for this study were based on Birren&rsquo;s nine themes for conducting autobiography groups. It was tailored to include themes relevant to older adult war veterans. Local veterans were interviewed and asked about past war experiences. The responses were recorded and analyzed using qualitative research methods. GAB serves to assist Gerontologists, Social Workers and other Health Practitioners in that it helps to provide insight into veterans&rsquo; experiences.</p>

<p> Self-compassion has been described as an adaptive form of self-to-self relating. It involves the three interrelated components of self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity exhibited toward the self at times of pain and perceived failure. This study explored the process of becoming self-compassionate for people attending the Compassionate Reparenting Training, a five-week program aimed to facilitate emotional self-awareness and the development of self-compassion. The aim of the present study was to pursue an idiographic investigation into the lived experiences of the participants in their process of developing self-compassion and the obstacles, barriers, and opportunities encountered. Data was analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) with the aim of identifying people&rsquo;s experiences of the process of becoming more compassionate to themselves after completing the training. Based on qualitative inquiry using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of interview data with nine participants, the findings suggested that self-compassion is a learned ability that ebbs and flows as a life-long journey and can be enhanced in self-to-self relating through the image of the inner child self. The presence of four superordinate themes and ten subthemes emerged from the descriptions of the journey in the lives the participants. The superordinate themes included (1) Strategies Used in Initiating the Process, (2) Making Meaning&hellip;<i>Connecting the dots</i> (3) The Struggle to be Self-Compassionate&hellip;<i>It&rsquo;s a work in progress</i>, and (4) The Value of Developing a Self-Compassion Practice. A higher-order construct was identified that appeared embedded within and across both superordinate and subthemes: Self-Compassion is an ongoing and evolving process&hellip;<i>A life-long journey that ebbs and flows </i>. The current dissertation expands the scope of inquiry to include a qualitative dimension to the recent literature on self-compassion. Findings will help to develop future research and guide clinical interventions in order to cultivate compassionate self-to-self relating.</p><p>

<p> This critical hermeneutic case study of the Occupy movement and Occupy Portland considers indicators of cultural change and new social imaginary significations through the lenses of bodily relations to place and depth psychology&rsquo;s psychoanalytic tradition. In Occupy, the convening power of mass self-communication technologies allowed the substitution of organizing properties of place for organizational capital (structures developed in advance of the gathering); and, the configuration of physical capital within convening places had a co determinative influence over the development of social structures and group identities. The partial substitution of place for organizational capital reduced the distanciation that might otherwise have been required to convene such large gatherings, and so provided a paradoxical opportunity for increased participant experience of both autonomy and community. In connection with Occupy Portland, qualities of the ever present struggle between desires for connection and autonomous expression shifted with shifting places. Events associated with Occupy indicate ontological changes may be increasing the relevance of communal social imaginary significations counter to those of Western capitalism, or at least departing from it significantly. Ephemeral gatherings like Occupy (here termed social condensation events) are revelatory of that which is socially unconscious and are likely to occur with increasing frequency due to mass self-communication technologies. As with Occupy, places of future social condensation events will give shape to the resulting social spaces as they become organically constructed in relation to those places. </p>

The theory of games seems to me to provide the most promising alternative to the traditional theories of social behaviour. Gaming modelS are inherently social in character (an individual's strategy choice in a game cannot even be properly defined without reference to at least one other individual) and they represent a radical departure from the "social stimulus - individual response" approach. They sean, furthermore, to be the only models which can adequately conceptualize an important (and large) class of social behaviours which arise from deliberate free choice. (From preface)

<p> Millions of selfies are posted on social media every day. Past research has attempted to explain this behavior, though inconsistent results have necessitated further investigation. The present study broadened the scope of selfie research by using electronic survey methods in a sample of active social media users to examine the relationships between narcissism, extraversion, purpose in life, prevalence of posting, and two novel constructs: number of selfie drafts taken before final selection, and immediacy of posting after taking a selfie. Higher prevalence was significantly related to greater number of drafts and belief that selfies facilitate self-expression and self-discovery. Greater number of drafts was also associated with lower feelings of purpose, greater immediacy, and younger age. These findings, together with an absence of strong links between selfies and narcissism or extraversion, suggest that selfie sharing is more nuanced than previous studies have shown. The present data&rsquo;s correlational nature precludes causal inference, but informs future research on selfies and human behavior on social media.</p><p>

<p>Janice, Josephine. Bachelor of Arts, University of Indonesia, Spring 2014; Master of Science, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Summer 2017 Major: Psychology Title of Thesis: Preschoolers? Prosocial Responding to Social Others? Distress Thesis Director: Dr. Hung-Chu Lin Pages in Thesis: 83; Words in Abstract: 199 ABSTRACT The present study examined the effect of familiarity with social partners on preschoolers? prosocial responses to social others? distress and related their responses to dispositional empathy and temperamental inhibition. Sixty-one preschoolers (38 boys, 23 girls, mean age: 44 months) were recruited from local preschools. Preschoolers went through three conditions of simulated distress in different social partners in the same order (the caregiver, an adult stranger, and an infant manikin). Parent-report Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM) and the Behavioral Inhibition Questionnaire (BIQ) were used to measure children?s dispositional empathy and temperamental inhibition. The results indicated that preschoolers? behavioral responses to social others? distress varied by familiarity with social partners, with the greatest amount of time spent in showing caregiver-oriented actions followed by infant-oriented actions. Overall, higher levels of dispositional empathy were related to a greater amount of time spent in response behaviors with a focus on others? well-being. Temperamental inhibition also exhibited predictive values for prosocial behavior, with high inhibition related to less other-oriented behaviors. Together, the present study underscored the social and personality factors that are implicated with individual differences in preschool children?s prosocial responses to social others? distress. Keywords: preschoolers, prosocial behavior, familiarity, social partners, dispositional empathy, temperamental inhibition

The purpose of this study was to investigate the stability of the social desirability scale values used by Edwards in the construction of his Personal Preference Schedule (PPS). The specific hypotheses were: (a) The social desirability scale values determined for University of British Columbia students, Hungarian university students and Canadian female delinquents will correlate significantly with Edwards’ scale values determined on American college students; and (b) The social desirability scale values derived for these three groups, together with Edwards' scale data and the scale values derived on five other groups will all intercorrelate significantly. This hypothesis specifies that a common stereotype of what is socially desirable and undesirable will persist throughout the various groups. Two additional problems were also investigated, namely, the extent to which the item pairs on the PPS were matched for social desirability for the groups tested, and how these three groups, together with Edwards' American sample, differed when the items on the PPS were grouped into the manifest needs that they purport to assess. In order to investigate the hypotheses and problems, social desirability ratings were obtained from 226 University of British Columbia students, 70 male Hungarian university students and 40 female delinquents. The items rated for social desirability were those contained in the PPS. The obtained ratings were scaled by the method of successive intervals. All Intercorrelations were significant at the .01 level. Thus the two hypotheses were supported, suggesting that a common attitude of what is desirable and undesirable cuts across many different groups. The results of the intraclass correlations for matched pairs on the PPS suggested that the PPS would control for the social desirability variable on a group of UBC students, but not for the Hungarians or delinquents. Analysis of variance techniques employed on the PPS items grouped in terms of the needs they measured indicated highly reliable group differences. The Canadian and American university students showed no significant differences in their need ratings. Compared with the American and Canadian students, the Hungarians appeared to evaluate positively the needs of order and aggression and to underevaluate the need for affiliation, and, comparatively, the delinquent group rated highly the needs of autonomy, change, heterosexuality and aggression and underrated the needs of achievement, order, introception and endurance. It was emphasized that it could not be assumed that a group possessed to a strong degree those needs to which they give high social desirability ratings. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

This study attempts to clarify the meaning of the concept of alienation for political science by integrating theoretical discussions and empirical studies of alienation with research on political participation in order to assess the implications of alienation, specifically political alienation, for both political participation and political systems. To this end, the present study reviews the literature on alienation, both theoretical and empirical. This involves appraisal of the use of the concept by social philosophers, analysis of studies considering alienation as a psychological condition as well as empirical studies concerning the social sources and distribution of alienation. These studies are then related to research on political participation. The idea of alienation found expression in eighteenth century social and political criticism and is particularly evident in the writing of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Hegel was the first to give systematic consideration to the problem of estrangement; he had an important influence on Marx, who recognized Hegel’s insight, but rejected his metaphysical explanation of alienation. Hegel and Marx, in turn have had a profound influence on twentieth century discussions of alienation. A review of recent literature on alienation indicated that the most frequent meanings attached to the concept of alienation are powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, self-estrangement, aloneness, and cynicism. Discussions of personal effectiveness, sense of political efficacy, and political cynicism were found to be related to discussions of alienation. A review of the literature also indicated that most frequently man is said to be alienated from God, nature, himself, other persons, and from society and culture. Politically, alienated man is said to be alienated from political processes. The causes of estrangement include industrialization involving technological advances, the division of labour and ownership, the transition from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft, the size of the modern state, and position in the social structure. Empirical research studies of alienation differ in terms of research objectives, assumptions about alienation and in terms of the measures and scales used. Review of empirical studies reveals serious research gaps including lack of information on the relationship between age, family cycle, residence, religion, race, and alienation. The review also found that evidence concerning the relationship between alienation and political participation tends to be contradictory, although alienation seems to affect the direction of the vote and the level of political information. More research is required on the relationship between alienation and personality. The need for comparative research is evident. The review of empirical research did find a substantial body of research which indicates that alienation decreases as socio-economic status increases, that women tend to be more alienated than men, that within an organizational context, alienation is highly related to satisfaction with the organization and that organizational structure itself affects alienation. Finally, organization members tend to be less politically alienated than non-members. In conclusion, alienation appears to be a promising concept, however, empirical evidence on the question is often lacking or inconclusive, and there is need for further research. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate