This thesis begins with an overview of existing blog research and human motivation theory. The research is novel because there has been a paucity of research on blogger motivations, particularly with theoretical underpinnings and using qualitative methods. Uses and gratifications theory is discussed as being particularly relevant to the study of blogger motivations, in part due to the inherent concept of an active . audience. The theory is used, together with existing blog motivations research to form a motivations theoretical framework. Privacy management is identified as an important concept that emerged from the research. Three theories of privacy are explored and theoretical framework is proposed. A sequential study, using predominantly qualitative methods, is used to collect data from an online survey, and multi-modal interviews conducted face-to-face, via phone and email. The studies were supplemented with participant observation during the course of the research. The novelty of the approach is discussed. The survey data confirmed data from a much larger survey on blogger demo graphics and behaviour. The interview data is used initially to describe a range of blogging practices, exploring social, writing and reading practices in particular. Following this, a key question of thesis is examined; why do bloggers blog? The interview data is discussed in light of this question, aligning the findings with existing research and the theoretical framework. Based on this analysis, amendments to the theoretical framework are suggested. Privacy is then examined in detail and related to the theoretical framework proposed earlier. Findings are presented concerning the conflicting needs of bloggers to both protect the privacy of those they write about, but also engage public ally with their audience. Finally, the findings relating to practices, motivations and privacy are brought together to draw conclusions about the interactions between privacy and motivations. The implications for similar, future services are discussed.

This thesis attempted to expand knowledge of intentional thought control in several directions. The primary aim was to provide an account of intentional thought suppression by relating the phenomenon to the methods used to assess the rebound effect, internal personality factors and psychopathology. An additional aim was to examine the rebound effect from the broader perspective of relating thought suppression to aging, the perception of volitional control and memory for future intentions. The results indicate that the method used to index the rebound effect may have a large impact on whether the effect is found or not. The rebound effect was obtained with the original method of assessment (Wegner, 1987) but not with the modified method that is currently used in the research. More importantly, the rebound effect was affected by the personality variable of state vs. action orientation (Kuhl & Beckmann, 1994b). State oriented participants demonstrated the rebound effect, whereas action oriented participants did not, irrespective of the method used to assess the effect. This finding provides support for the new intentional account of the rebound effect proposed in the thesis that is based on the Intention Superiority Effect (Kuhl, 1994) and the theory of action control (Kuhl & Beckmann, 1994b). The results also showed that suppression and expression performance in the laboratory did not have a common underlying mechanism. Successful expression performance was related to poorer suppression performance and visa versa. The results of the thesis also question the validity of the White Bear Suppression Inventory (Wegner and Zanakos, 1994)a s a measure of the tendency to suppress thoughts in everyday life. In young adults, apart from thought suppression, it also appears to measure the tendency to experience thought intrusions (rumination). Moreover, there was no relationship between the use of thought suppression in everyday life and actual suppression performance in the laboratory. A different pattern of results were obtained in a group of older adults (over 65 years). In addition, older adults reported using thought suppression reliably less frequently than young adults (i. e. had lower WBSI scores), and displayed much higher levels of repressive coping style than young people, 37% (old) vs. 9.5% (young). Finally, the results showed that thought suppression can also have other ironic effects on behaviour and perception. Participants attempting to complete an action while suppressing thoughts of the intention to perform this action came to feel as if the act was less intentionally performed. In contrast, participants completing actions under thought expression instructions rated the actions as more intentional. Furthermore, suppressing or expressing thoughts of an upcoming intention did not help one to remember to enact the intention with an enhanced frequency relative to thinking about a completely unrelated intention. Taken together, the findings have important implications for research on thought suppression and mental control by showing that the rebound effect is less robust than suggested by previous research. Thus, some of the controversy surrounding the rebound effect can be explained on the basis of individual differences in personality type (state vs. action orientation) as well as the methods used to index the effect. The results also raise several important questions for future research in this area (e. g. the validity of WBSI, effects of age on thought suppression and repression).

A key feature of rationality is the use of an optimal (or normative) strategy, i.e. the strategy that is most likely to maximize the fulfillment of one's goals. Numerous such strategies have been explored in the literature across a wide range of problems, and many researchers have argued that humans approach several problems irrationally. Recently, researchers have begun to study individual differences in rational responding to these tasks, crucially discovering that both fluid intelligence and individual thinking styles - such as the Need for Cognition (NFC) - contribute uniquely to rational performance. Fluid intelligence is proposed as one's capacity for manipulating information in a slow, serial manner, while NFC plays a role in the engagement of such deliberative thinking. Although the problems studied typically benefit from this type of thinking, I explore whether there might be a problem for which deliberative thinking is non- normative: sampling-based choice, in which the participant must gather information for two options before deciding which is better. I first demonstrate in two experiments that higher NFC is related to spending more time at this task - without any significant gain in accuracy - and this relationship is separate from fluid intelligence. In subsequent experiments, I explore the potential reasons for this relationship. I search for, but find no evidence that it is due to ability failure, and clear evidence shows that it is not due to boredom. I find some evidence that those high in NFC tend to focus more on accuracy. Finally, I find that the NFC-time relationship is partially mediated by social desirability, i.e. the tendency to try to promote a positive impression of one's self. Overall, this excessive focus on accuracy, and the mediator role of social desirability, suggest NFC is related to irrational performance on this task.

This thesis is about the human ability to share and combine representations of the uncertainty associated with individual beliefs - an ability which is called metacognition and facilitates effective cooperation. We distinguish between two metacognitive representations: an implicit confidence variable for oneself and an explicit confidence report for sharing with others. Using visual psychophysics and computational modelling, we address the issues of optimality and flexibility in the formation and the utilisation of these representations. We show that people can compute the confidence variable in an optimal manner (the probability that a given belief is correct as per Bayesian inference). Further, we show that the mapping of this variable onto a confidence report can vary flexibly - with people adjusting their reports according to the history of reports given and feedback obtained. This optimality and flexibility is important for effective cooperation. Being a probability, the optimal confidence variable can be compared across people. However, to facilitate this comparison, people must adapt their confidence reports to each other and develop a common metric for reporting the probability that their belief is correct. We show that people solve this communication problem sub-optimally; they match each other's mean confidence and confidence distributions, regardless of whether they are equally likely to be correct or not. In addition, we show that, while people can take into account differences in underlying competence to some extent, they fail to do so adequately; they exhibit an equality bias, weighting their partner's beliefs as if they were as good or as bad as their own, regardless of true differences in their underlying competence. More generally, our results pose a problem for our current understanding of metacognition which assumes that confidence reports are stable over time. In addition, our results show that confidence reports are socially malleable, and thus raise the possibility that well-known biases, such as overconfidence, might reflect particular norms for social interaction.

One route to understanding the thoughts and feelings of others is by mentally putting one’s self in their shoes and seeing the world from their perspective, a way of empathising called simulation. Simulation is potentially used not only for inferring how others feel, but also for predicting how we ourselves will feel in the future. For instance, one might judge the worth of a future reward by simulating how much it will eventually be enjoyed. In intertemporal choices between immediate and delayed rewards, it is observed that as the length of delay increases, delayed rewards lose subjective value; a phenomenon known as temporal discounting. In this thesis, I propose that if similar simulation mechanisms are assumed to underlie predictions of the feelings of others and of future selves, then effects of simulation observed when simulating others can be extended to future selves. When this is done, a testable psychological account of temporal discounting based on simulation emerges. In four studies, I test the predictions of this account using various putative markers of simulation (e.g. self-reported trait empathy, eye-gaze responses in a perspective-taking task, psychophysiological markers of mimicry, and neural activity related to Theory of Mind). The results provide support for the relationship between abilities to predict the minds of others and preferences for delayed rewards, and warrant investing further efforts to validate the claims of the model. In addition to novel suggestions for how simulation could be conceptualised and measured, these findings have implications for the basic understanding of intertemporal decision-making.

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Various disciplines such as rhetoric, marketing, and psychology have explored persuasion as a social and argumentative phenomenon. The present thesis is predominantly based in cognitive psychology and investigates the psychological processes the persuadee undergoes when faced with a persuasive attempt. The exploration concludes with the development of a concrete model for describing persuasion processing, namely The Subjective-Probabilistic Interactive Model of Persuasion (SPIMP). In addition to cognitive psychology, the thesis relies on conceptual developments and empirical data from disciplines such as rhetoric, economics, and philosophy. The core model of the SPIMP relies on two central persuasive elements: content strength and source credibility. These elements are approached from a subjective perspective in which the persuadee estimates the probabilistic likelihood of how strong the content and how credible the source is. The elements, however, are embedded in a larger psychological framework such that the subjective estimations are contextual and social rather than solipsistic. The psychological framework relies on internal and external influences, the scope of cognition, and the framework for cognition. The SPIMP departs significantly from previous models of persuasion in a number of ways. For instance, the latter are dual-processing models whereas the SPIMP is an integrated single-process approach. Further, the normative stances differ since the previous models seemingly rely on a logicist framework whereas SPIMP relies on a probabilistic. The development of a new core model of persuasion processing constitutes a novel contribution. Further, the theoretical and psychological framework surrounding the elements of the model provides a novel framework for conceptualising persuasion processing from the perspective of the persuadee. Finally, given the multitude of disciplines connected to persuasion, the thesis provides a definition for use in future studies, which differentiates persuasion from argumentation, communicated information updating, and influence.

The central aim of this thesis is to argue that having a genuine capacity 10 err is the criteria) feature that explains what it is for a system to bear a contentful and thus meaningful relation to the world. To defend this claim, my analysis is organized into three main parts. The first two chapters are devoted to an analytic presentation of the problem of meaningfulness and the problem of error. I begin by defining meaningfUlness as a system's ability to experience the world in an objective way. My use of the tenn 'objectivity' is based on Sttawson's views of objectivity and in particular, the notion ofa system having a point of view. In the second chapter, I give an account of genuine error based on the following idea: genuine error can be attributed only to a creature, which, on the one hand, has some form of understanding of being in error and on the other hand. can be held responsible (accountable) for that mistake. In the second and lengthier part of the thesis, the naturalistic theories of meaning, commonly known as naturalistic theories of intentionality, are critically approached. In particular. I offer critical accounts of Fodor's Causal Theory o/Content, Millikan's Teleofimctional Approach and Dretske's Informational Account. I have singled out those three theories based on their particular solutions to the problem of misrepresentation. Despite their originality, these solutions, fail to naturalize error. Consequently. they filil to account for the semantic properties of content. The main reason that current naturalistic theories of intentionality do not have any chance of successfully naturalising misrepresentation is that intentional systems cannot misrepresent the state of their environment just by being intentional. In other words, error is not a necessary condition of intentionality, whereas error is a necesstlry condition of meaningfulness. Finally, in the last chapter. I attempt to establish the strong dependency between meaning and error by showing how a system's genuine ability to err explains what it is for a system to have an objective point of view; that is, to have some form of awareness of the metaphysical distance between its experience and what is an experience of

Mental toughness is a familiar and commonplace term in both the sporting arena and the workplace. However, attempts to investigate the nature of mental toughness have been inconclusive and, following more than twenty years of research, the construct remained ill-defined. As a consequence of this lack of an accepted definition, a series of different strands of research were then undertaken, but each produced differing conceptualisations of the phenomenon. The work presented in this thesis represents an attempt to address these issues using both psychometric and experimental approaches. Preliminary work investigated the psychometric basis for the construct of mental toughness and enabled the development of a multidimensional measurement tool. This work was followed by a series of four experiments: The first two experiments focused on the moderating effects of mental toughness on the impact of physical and cognitive stressors, and the final two experiments considered the changes in mental toughness in individuals facing new life challenges and a mental toughness training programme. Both experimental and psychometric analyses supported the proposition of a meaningful construct with real world applications. The evidence in support of a psychometrically sound construct was particularly strong and the beneficial effects of superior mental toughness were highlighted in both the physical and cognitive studies undertaken. Most importantly, in terms of applied sport and occupational psychology, self ratings of mental toughness and objective performance were enhanced following exposure to appropriate psychological skills training.