Engaging in 150+ minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise is a recommended self-management strategy for arthritis. Considering the low levels of exercise among individuals with arthritis, national calls have been made for investigation of theory-based processes important for adherence. Self-regulation may be a key process important for persisting with exercise plans in the face of arthritis pain anxiety. The present study examined relationships based upon a known model (Fear Avoidance [FA] model) used to understand self-regulatory behavioral responses to pain anxiety – an unexamined relationship in the arthritis and exercise literature. Primary study purposes involved examination of predictors (pain, pain anxiety, and pain acceptance) of maladaptive and adaptive self-regulatory responses among adults with arthritis who exercise. The secondary purpose examined whether participants who met the recommended dose of exercise over a two-week period significantly differed in their pain cognitions and self-regulatory responses to pain anxiety compared to less active counterparts. Participants were 136 adults (Mage = 49.75 ± 13.88years) with self-reported medically-diagnosed arthritis. Online surveys of pain cognitions and demographics were completed at baseline, followed by self-reported exercise two weeks later. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses illustrated that: (a) pain anxiety was a significant, positive predictor of the use of maladaptive self- regulatory responses (p < .001) and (b) the interaction of pain anxiety x pain acceptance was a significant predictor of the adaptive self-regulatory responses relationship (p < .05). Follow-up analyses illustrated that pain acceptance was a moderator of the pain anxiety – adaptive self-regulatory responses relationship. Participants with higher pain acceptance used adaptive responses less frequently when anxiety was lower than participants with lower acceptance. When pain anxiety was higher, both higher and lower pain acceptance was associated with the more frequent use of adaptive self-regulatory responses. A MANOVA analysis illustrated that participants meeting the recommended exercise dose had significantly lower pain anxiety, higher pain acceptance, and used maladaptive self-regulatory responses less compared to the group not meeting the dose (p’s ≤ .01). Taken together, findings provide the first ever support for FA model predictions in the arthritis – exercise domain. The results of this observational study suggest a next step could be an extended longitudinal study design with multiple time periods of assessment (e.g., measures once a month over a six-month period). Observing the relationships over time would provide a better understanding of within-person changes in the psychosocial variables relative to exercise. Such research would provide a profile of individuals’ levels of anxiety, acceptance, and self-regulatory responses when they either decrease or completely avoid exercise and when they adhere. Obtaining a social cognitive profile of people at risk for exercise avoidance may be a useful tool in the future to identify those who are in need of intervention to deal with their pain anxiety.

The analyses in this dissertation were designed to identify 1) whether there is an age effect among three-, four-, and five-year-old preschool children for false-belief understanding, deceptive ability, and deception detection ability, 2) whether there is a gender effect among preschool children for false-belief understanding, deceptive ability, and deception detection ability, 3) whether there is a relationship between false-belief understanding, deceptive ability, and deception detection ability in preschool children, and 4) whether there is a relationship between peer acceptance and false-belief understanding, deceptive ability, and deception detection ability among preschool children. Participants were 78 (34 male, 44 female) preschool children of mixed ethnicity who were between three to five years of age. All subjects completed four tasks that assessed false-belief understanding, deceptive ability, deception detection ability, and peer acceptance. Results from the four-way repeated measures mixed-model analysis of variance (2 Gender x 3 Age x 2 False-Belief Understanding x 2 Deception) suggest that there is a task effect, age effect, gender effect, and false-belief understanding effect for deception among preschool children. Children received significantly higher scores on the deception detection ability task than they did on the deceptive ability task. This indicates that young children find deception detection to be easier than deceptive ability. In addition, this also provides evidence that deceptive ability and that deception detection are two separate constructs. This is further supported by the principal components analysis, which extracted two separate components for deception intelligence. In addition, three-year-old children perform significantly lower than four- and five-year-old children on deception tasks. However, there is not a significant difference between the performances of four- and five-year-old children on deception tasks. This supports previous research that four years of age appears to be the critical age for the emergence of Machiavellian Intelligence (Peskin, 1992; Peterson, 2003). Moreover, males perform significantly better on deception tasks than females. Furthermore, there is a significant positive correlation between deception detection ability and peer acceptance. Children who obtain higher deception detection ability scores are ranked as being more liked by their peers.

In recent years, smartphone has become the most popular products, the literature for smartphone is relatively less, most of using Technology Acceptance Model ¡]TAM¡^ as the main research framework to explore. Influencing the consumer intension is concept of cognition ¡]perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use¡^, thereby affecting subsequent behavioral intentions, but what kind of product characteristics affect consumer¡¦s perceiving are seldom addressed. This study proposes "Involvement - Brand Loyalty Model" as the theoretical basis, with the "involvement" concept applied to smartphone users in order to explore the brand loyalty. Involvement antecedent focuses on "product utility", and explores what kind of product characteristics affect the product utility from the past literature, and then is combined with the social influence to investigate smartphone usage. Finally, the study will also compare different groups based on with or without owning a smartphone, and then provide the final analysis of the research results. The final results show that user involvement does affect the brand loyalty of the smartphone, and if the users are highly involved, regardless of whatever the user experience may be, product involvement will affect the brand involvement. Comparison with previous studies finds the similarity and the differences between those two groups. The common is the high involvement of smartphone. The differences lie in the user experience that does affect the user for the demand of products characteristics, and the impact of the social influence. The three products characteristics: convergence, innovation and network externality will definitely affect the product utility for someone who has smartphone, but we can understand that the user experience will impact convergence by analyzing the groups without smartphone. It is difficult to measure the value of convergence for someone who doesn¡¦t have smartphone, so in the study show that the convergence does not significantly affect the product utility, while the other two product characteristics ¡]innovation, network externalities¡^ are significant impact the product utility. For people who have usage experience, the social influence can directly affect their brand judgment, nevertheless without the usage experience, the social influence has impact on the brand involvement only through the product involvement.

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Social risk elicits an internal struggle between wanting to form significant relationships (i.e., connectedness goals) and avoiding rejection (i.e., self-protection goals). The current research tested an intervention designed to reduce perceptions of risk for low self-esteem individuals (LSEs). However, the intervention did not function as anticipated and regardless of self-esteem level, participants reported lower perceived acceptance and lower state self-esteem in the intervention condition compared to the control. In a post-session two weeks following the manipulation, high self-esteem individuals (HSEs) in the intervention appear to not only recover, but actually reported significantly more perceived regard and global self-esteem than HSEs in the control. A second study investigated the impact of the intervention in light of these surprising findings. Results suggest that viewing the intervention video in a socially risky situation caused both HSEs and LSEs to experience social threat. In contrast, the control video actually served to reduce social risk.

This study examines the online shopping behaviour of 142 international university students (IUSs) within the context of a modified version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Results indicate that perceived entertainment outweighs the impact of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived self-efficacy (PSE) on attitude towards online shopping (ATT). Perceived risk (PR) was not related to ATT and ATT and behavioural intentions (BI) did not influence actual behaviour. Experience was strongly related to ATT, but demographics have little influence on TAM measures. Entertainment and usefulness were the primary motives for IUSs to shop online. The findings of this study could help universities and e-retailers develop guidelines to ensure a safe and attractive e-shopping experience for IUSs.

The World Health Organisation predicts that by 2020 depression will be the second highest cause of death and disability in the world (World Health Organisation, 2010). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have been found to be the most suitable antidepressant for first-line treatment of a mood disorder (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, 2004), but less than half of all individuals achieve complete remission after therapy with a single antidepressant. Others display partial or intolerant responses to treatment (Nemeroff & Owens, 2002). This emphasises a need to develop alternative treatment options. There is evidence that micronutrients have fewer side effects than antidepressants (Dalmiya, Darnton-Hill, Schyltink & Shrimpton, 2009). Kaplan, Crawford, Field and Simpson (2007) suggest that errors in metabolism may result in unstable mood, leading to possible mood disorders. Mutation of metabolism is correctable by giving the malnourished individual additional vitamins thereby correcting metabolism and creating a more stable mood. An online survey completed by 661 participants (141 males, 520 females) assessed acceptance levels towards the use of micronutrients as an alternative treatment for mood disorders. As predicted, healthcare and medical professionals scored lower in acceptance (t(659)=3.12, p=0.002) and people who lead healthy lifestyles scored higher in acceptance (r=0.105, n=658, p <0.05). There were no significant effects of gender (t(659) =1.74, p=0.082), experience with mood disorders (F(3, 657)=0.86, p=0.46) or low household incomes (r=-0.066, n=661, p<0.05). Treatment users and providers alike seek more knowledge about the effectiveness of micronutrients and acceptance of micronutrients is largely granted on the basis of a combination treatment with conventional methods. The study is limited by an overrepresentation of females in the sample.

Death is a universal event that all living things experience. Older adults, in particular, are more mindful of death than younger generations because of their proximity and increased exposure to it. In addition, thoughts of one’s own death often increase with the death of a spouse. Previous research has explored the role of social support in death acceptance and the effect of previous marital satisfaction on a widow’s well-being. However, there is a lack of research regarding the experience of a widow’s personal death acceptance relative to spousal death acceptance and marital satisfaction. This phenomenological study aims to better understand the personal death acceptance of eight older widows (age 65+) through their experiences with marital satisfaction and spousal death acceptance. Seven women and one man participated in two rounds of semi-structured telephone interviews and completed supplemental surveys regarding their marriage and death attitudes. Findings indicate that essential dimensions of recalled high marital satisfaction and spousal death acceptance relates to experiences of positive personal death acceptance.

Chronic pain is a public health problem that is likely to increase as the population ages, and has few effective treatments. Although viewed by many as profoundly distressing and disabling, there are a surprising number of people (approximately 30%) who cope well with their chronic pain and do not continue to seek treatment. There is little theory to explain how and why these individuals manage their pain well. This means there is limited knowledge about the approaches used by people who cope well and whether these strategies could help those who have more difficulty. This thesis presents a substantive grounded theory of living well with chronic pain, the theory of re-occupying self. Seventeen individual interviews were recorded, with data collection, analysis and theory generation following classical grounded theory methodological approach. Constant comparison, theoretical sampling, theoretical coding, and theoretical sensitivity were used to identify the main concern of people who cope well with pain. This concern is achieving self-coherence, and is resolved by re-occupying self. Resolution involves making sense to develop an idiographic model of their pain; deciding to turn from patient to person, facilitated or hindered by interactions with clinicians and occupational drive; and flexibly persisting where occupational engaging and coping allow individuals to develop future plans. By completing this process, individuals form a coherent self-concept in which they re-occupy the important or valued aspects of themselves. This study supports using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy because of its functional contextual view of people and their actions. This study illustrates that coping strategies are used in different ways depending on the primary goal within that context. Occupations, or active; purposeful; meaningful; contextualised and human activities, are used by people to make sense of their situation, and as a key motivation for developing coping strategies. These findings lead to new research questions about values-aligned activity, coping with identity change, and acceptance.