The present study investigated the relationship between religiousness, conservatism and traffic behaviour. It was shown that, intrinsic religious orientation significantly predicted ordinary violations of both the drivers and the pedestrians. Religiousness seems to have a positive effect by orienting the individual to obey the rules and to refrain from risk taking behaviour. Moreover, components of conservatism (conservation of values and resistance to change) were found to affect the aggressive violations and the positive behaviours of the drivers. While conservation of values decreased aggressive violations of the drivers, it increased the positive behaviours. On the contrary, resistance to change decreased positive behaviours and increased aggressive violations. These contrary results were accounted for by using Wilson&rsquo / s (1973) explanations of these dimensions. To conclude, variables distal to traffic context were shown to influence traffic behaviour differentially.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the professional and social roles of clinical psychologists are described in Turkey, how clinical psychologists evaluate these roles, and which factors are affecting the role definitions. It was hypothesized that there would be differences between the role definitions of the public, the role definitions of the other professions working with psychologists and the role definitions of psychologists themselves. Also, it was expected that the public would not differentiate the professions &lsquo / psychologist&rsquo / , &lsquo / clinical psychologist&rsquo / , and &lsquo / psychiatrist&rsquo / . Participants were 27 professions working with psychologists, 27 psychologists, and 105 citizens from Ankara, istanbul, Mugla, and Aydin. The data were gathered by administering 3 versions of Perceptions about Psychologists Questionnaires developed by the writer. Content Analyses were done to examine the data. The results indicated that although public had a general idea about the role definitions of clinical psychologists, it was also unable to differentiate the three relate professions. The results also summarized how clinical psychologists were understood in Turkey, and showed the factors related to the comprehension process. The findings, and their implications with suggestions for future research and practice, were discussed in the light of relevant literature.

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of attachment, personality traits, humor (humor styles and coping humor), intimacy, psychological problems on anger, on relationship and life satisfaction of individuals who are involved in romantic relationship. Attachment and personality traits are expected to be associated with each other and humor, intimacy and psychological problems, which are also expected to influence anger experience and expression. Anger is expected to effect life and relationship satisfaction. At the first phase Sternberg&rsquo / s Love Scale was translated to Turkish by using Relationship Happiness Scale. Data was gathered from 240 participants from different ages, cities, and soscio-economic status. Reliability and validity assessments were conducted for the whole scale and the subscales: intimacy, passion and commitment. At the second phase 519 subjects (married or dating) participated in the study. The participants were given Humor Styles Questionnaire, Coping Humor Questionnaire, Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Version, Sternberg Triangular Love v Scale, State-Trait Anger Scale, Basic Personality Traits Inventory, Relationship Happiness Scale, Brief Symptoms Inventory and Life Satisfaction Scale. The results indicated that the proposed model had satisfactory fit expect effect of personality on humor and effect of attachment on anger. Positive personality traits did not have an effect on adaptive humor styles used whereas negative personlity traits affected maladaptive humor styles and attachment had a direct effect on anger. The results showed the importance of intimacy and maladaptive humor styles on relationship and life satisfaction. These results, the importance and effects of humor and intimacy in romantic relationships and therapeutic applications were discussed in the frame of relevant literature.

This study addresses the question of the mental representation and processing of language by investigating &ldquo / structural priming&rdquo / in Turkish Genitive-Possessive (GEN-POSS) constructions. Structural priming is the facilitating effect of having already experienced a structural form on its subsequent processing. We investigate this phenomenon on a construction pair in Turkish, which shares the same external GEN-POSS morpho-syntactic template despite having distinct grammatical categories. The structures under scrutiny are possessive noun phrases (e.g. &ldquo / Korsan, [prenses-in(GEN) &ouml / yk&uuml / -s&uuml / n(POSS.3SG)]-&uuml / hatirladi.&rdquo / which means: The pirate remembered [the princess&rsquo / s story].) and embedded noun clauses with nominalized verbs as predicates (e.g. &ldquo / Korsan, [prenses-in(GEN) g&uuml / l-d&uuml / g(VN)-&uuml / n(POSS.3SG)]-&uuml / hatirladi.&rdquo / which means: The pirate remembered [that the princess (had) laughed/was laughing].) The results of the study which consists of a series of production and comprehension experiments with various methodologies (written sentence completion, self-paced reading and eye-tracking) indicate that structural priming might access the morphosyntactic level of representation in Turkish. Priming seems sensitive to the distinction between the phrasal vs. clausal nature of structures. During the processing of GEN-POSS constructions, the grammatical information regarding the constituents is accessed. Complex forms are further decomposed if processing resources are available. Overall, language production and comprehension seem to operate on the same structural representations but through different mechanisms. In addition, the study also contributes to the understanding of structural priming as a methodological paradigm and to the establishment of a bridge between the processing and theoretical linguistic analysis of Turkish nominalized verbs. To conclude, this study pioneers in exploring structural priming in Turkish and opens way to future research in this line.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships among individual and organizational characteristics variables, several aspects of organizational communication, organizational commitment, organizational identification, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Furthermore, the influence of supervisor and workgroup commitment on organizational commitment was also examined. With these purposes, following two different pilot studies, questionnaires were administered to a sample of 321 white collar bank employees who are working in different branches of different banks in Ankara. The results of the study revealed that influence of individual and organizational characteristics variables on job satisfaction, organizational identification, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions were low and most of the time insignificant. The results of both regression analyses and model test indicated that job satisfaction was significantly and positively predicted by downward instrumental communication and turnover intentions was found to be significantly predicted by upward instrumental and downward positive communication and organizational identification was found to be significantly predicted by downward instrumental communication in the model test. Furthermore, both job satisfaction and organizational identification were found to be significant positive predictors of organizational commitment. In addition, organizational commitment was found to significantly and positively predicted by commitment to workgroup but not by commitment to supervisor. On the other hand, organizational commitment was found as a significant negative predictor of turnover intentions. However, when entered into the regression analysis together with organizational commitment, neither job satisfaction, nor organizational identification predicted turnover intentions significantly. However, significance of indirect effect of job satisfaction and organizational identification on turnover intentions through organizational commitment confirms the mediation of organizational commitment. The results of the present study, its limitations, and implications were discussed in more detail in the light of the relevant empirical evidence.

The main purpose of the present study was to investigate predictive value of gender, attachment dimensions, and family environment in determining students&amp / #8217 / loneliness level. For this purpose, firstly, the effect of gender, attachment types and family environment on loneliness level was investigated. The participants of the study were 473 (281 females and 192 males) students from different departments of Ankara University. Participants were administered UCLA Loneliness Scale, Family Environment Assessment Scale, and Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire. Data analysis were carried out by three-way ANOVA (2 gender X 2 Family Environment X 4 Attachment Type) to investigate the effect of gender, attachment types and family environment on loneliness level and Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis to investigate predictive value of gender, attachment dimensions, and family environment in determining students&amp / #8217 / loneliness level. The results of three-way ANOVA yielded that while main effects were significant, interaction effects were not significant. Post-hoc analysis revealed that male students were lonelier than females / Families with low coherence scores were lonelier than families with high coherence scores and individuals with fearful pattern of attachment were lonelier than individuals with secure, dismissing, and preoccupied patterns of attachment. Stepwise multiple regression analysis also showed that, attachment types, family environment and gender together explained the 19 % of variance in loneliness.

The aim of the present research was to investigate attitudes toward sexual harassment (SH) and the relationships of these attitudes with locus of control and ambivalent sexism. A total of 311 university students from Middle East Technical University participated to the study. In order to measure attitudes toward SH, a new scale, Sexual Harassment Attitude Scale (SHAS), was developed by the author of the thesis and another researcher (Salman &amp / Turgut, 2006). This scale consists of three subfactors which were accepting SH as a result of provocative behaviors, accepting SH as normal flirtations between men and women, and endorsement of SH as a trivial matter. Locus of control was measured with Locus of Control Scale (LCS, Dag, 2002) having five subfactors which were personal control, belief in chance, meaninglessness of the effortfulness, belief in fate, and belief in an unjust world. Lastly, sexist beliefs were measured with Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI, Glick &amp / Fiske, 1996) having two factors which were hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. The results revealed that some domains of locus of control were significantly associated with sexist beliefs and subfactors of attitudes toward SH. In particular, people having internal personal control were more likely to accept SH as provocative behaviors of women. In addition, people believing in external forces, such as belief in fate and powerful others were more likely to have sexist beliefs and tolerate SH by seeing provocative behaviors as causes of SH, by accepting SH as normal flirtations and by trivializing this problem. This thesis aims to contribute to the literature by investigating (1) attitudes toward sexual harassment and its relationship with locus of control and (2) the roles of ambivalent sexism and gender differences in this relationship.

Facial symmetry has been a central component in many studies on face perception. The relationship between bilateral symmetry and subjective judgments on faces is still arguable in the literature. In this study, a database of natural looking face images with different levels of symmetry is constructed using several digital preprocessing and morphing methods. Our aim is to investigate the correlations between quantified asymmetry, perceived symmetry and a subjective judgment: &lsquo / attractiveness&rsquo / . Images in the METU-Face Database are built to represent three levels of symmetry (original, intermediate, and symmetrical) within five classes which also represent the orientation of bilateral symmetry: left versus right. In addition, the asymmetry of original images is quantified using a landmark-based method. Based on the theory of holistic face perception, we introduce a novel method to quantify facial asymmetry wholesomely: Entropybased quantification. In Experiment 1 and 2, images were rated on attractiveness judgments and on perceived symmetry, respectively. Results indicate that landmark-based quantifications were not sufficient to account for perceived symmetry ratings (SRs), but they revealed that as the vertical deviation of the symmetry decreases, attractiveness rating (AR) collected from that face increases. Moreover, morphing classes and their relationship to both ARs and SRs were highly correlated. Consistent with the previously done research, symmetrical images were found more attractive. We found that although ARs were the same for left versus right composites, for SRs, there is a significant difference between left and right. Finally, a more elucidative quantification approach for subjective face perception is achieved through significant correlations of entropy scores with both ARs and SRs.

This study establishes pedestrian safety focused environment around elementary schools. In order to reach this objective 3 consecutive goals are fulfilled / firstly / proposing, a newly designed black spot analysis, &ldquo / Behavioral Black Spot Analysis&rdquo / , secondly / documenting pedestrian behavior around black spots, and finally stimulating effective interventions around elementary schools. This study proposes a newly designed methodology / &ldquo / Behavioral Black Spot Analysis&rdquo / which is namely based upon pedestrians&rsquo / route choice and risk perception statements. Additionally it is observed that students choose the shortest route on their way. &ldquo / Behavioral Black Spot Analysis&rdquo / reveals that traffic flows, pedestrian visibility, vehicle visibility, waiting time, road width are most important parameters of pedestrians&rsquo / perception of traffic safety. Results of unobtrusive observations indicate that interventions have significant effect on vehicle speed, number of conflicts, yielding behavior of drivers, total number of cars forming a queue, number of pedestrians stopping on the curb, head movements, crossing angles, crossing tempos, and crossing distances of pedestrians. Behind this interventions affects pedestrians&rsquo / waiting time in negative manner. Recommendations for pedestrian safety interventions are suggested.

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between the social cognitive understanding, aggressive behaviors and behavioral adjustment of deaf children. Severely and profoundly deaf children between the ages of 6-11 participated in the study. Firstly, the social cognitive understanding of deaf children was assessed through picture sequence tasks. These tasks were designed to measure the first-order belief attributions, belief-based behavior prediction, intention understanding, intention consequence discrimination, moral reasoning, emotion understanding and emotional reasoning of deaf children. CDC Aggression Scale was used to measure the aggressive behaviors and SDQ parent and teacher forms were used to measure the behavioral adjustment of deaf children. Regression analyses were conducted in order to identify the predictors of aggressive behaviors and behavioral adjustment of deaf children. Results revealed that deaf children who were not able to understand the intention of others were rated as more hyperactive. In addition to that, deaf children who were not able to discriminate between the intention fulfilled and unfulfilled situations were rated as displaying more bullying behaviors and more conduct problems. The implications and the limitations of the study were discussed considering the existing literature.