L’objectif de ces recherches était de mettre en relation des facteurs contextuels, individuels et communicationnels au cours d’une activité collective et d’étudier leur effet sur les performances et la charge de travail d’un collectif lors de tâches collaboratives. Une première étude se focalisait sur la mise en relation de la mesure de la charge de travail de manière collective et de la structure temporelle des communications au sein du collectif. Une seconde étude avait pour objectif d’étudier l’interaction du contexte, du mode de communication, de la charge de travail et de la personnalité sur les performances. Un premier axe de traitement des données a permis de modéliser les interactions de ces différents facteurs et leurs effets sur la performance. Le modèle obtenu prédisait un effet du mode de communication, du contexte, de l’estimation de la charge de travail et de certains traits de personnalité sur les performances. Le second axe de traitement des données avait pour objectif d’étudier la relation entre la structure de la personnalité des participants et le niveau de charge de travail. Les analyses statistiques ont permis de mettre en évidence que les personnes confrontées à une tâche collaborative qui étaient à la fois aimables et consciencieuses estimaient une charge de travail plus faible que les autres. Enfin, le dernier axe de traitement des données a permis de confirmer les liens entre la structure temporelle des communications et le niveau de charge de travail estimé collectivement. La troisième étude a apporté à cette recherche un volet plus appliqué, en testant des recommandations basées sur les résultats des deux premières études. / The aim of this thesis was to link individual, contextual and communicational factors during a group activity and to study theirs effects on collective performances and workload during collaborative task. Our first study focused on linking workload measurement in a group context and the temporal structure of communication within the group. The aim of the second study was to examine the interaction between context, communication modes, workload and personality on performances. A first analysis of the collected data allowed us to model the interactions between these factors and their effects on performances. The resulting model predicted effects of the communication mode, the context, the workload estimation as well as personality on performances. The second axis of the data analysis aimed to study the relationship between the structure of the participant’s personality and the workload level. Statistical analysis highlighted that those who are categorised as friendly and conscientious personalities, when in a group task context estimated the level of workload weaker in comparison with other. The last axis confirmed the links between the temporal structure of communication and the workload level within a group. Finally, the third study provided a applied component to this basic research by testing the recommendations based on our previous studies. The results indicated that the addition of precise instruction and specific tools to realize the task supported the development of structured operating strategies the participants to develop structured operational strategies improving collective performances

Self-esteem and measurement thereof is a very prominent phenomenon in psychology and related fields of study. In contrast to traditional measures of selfesteem which focus on individual self-esteem, Luhtanen and Crocker (1992) developed a measure of Collective self-esteem (CSE) with the following subscales: membership self-esteem, private collective self-esteem, public collective self-esteem and importance to identity. The aim of this study was to determine if the instrument is a valid measurement of collective self-esteem in the South African context. The CSE was evaluated using item analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. According to the findings of this study the Collective Self Esteem Scale is a reliable instrument for South African use, but confirmatory factor analysis determined that it is not factorially valid. The fit indexes indicate that the theorized four-factor model is not a good fit to the data in the South African context and should pave the way for further research on the construct validity of the Collective Self esteem Scale. Copyright 2010, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Rossouw, A 2010, Confirmatory factor analysis of the collective self esteem scale, MCom dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02212012-122435 / > C12/4/134/gm / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

The majority of today’s emerging adults view climate change as the defining challenge of their generation (Amnesty International, 2019). Young people’s climate concern has translated to unprecedented collective climate action, such as the youth climate strikes of 2019. However, young people and their relevant social identities are underrepresented in research on collective climate action. Following the social identity model of pro-environmental action (Fritsche et al., 2018), the current study assesses the extent to which emerging adults identify with Generation Z, or Gen-Z, as a relevant ingroup. In a Prolific survey of 296 participants aged 18-24 and currently living in Canada, I examined young people’s Gen-Z ingroup identification, perceived collective efficacy of Gen-Z, and three collective action outcomes: intentions to follow youth climate groups on social media, intentions to engage in future collective climate action, and participation in sending an advocacy message to the B.C. Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. I hypothesized that the interaction of ingroup identification and collective efficacy would predict collective climate action outcomes above and beyond the influence of each construct individually. This hypothesis was not supported. While Gen-Z ingroup identification and perceived collective efficacy each predicted intentions to follow youth climate groups on social media and intentions to engage in future collective action, the interaction term added no explanatory power to the models. Neither Gen-Z ingroup identification nor collective efficacy predicted participation in the advocacy message behaviour. These findings underscore the importance of systematically investigating broad social identities in the field of collective climate action, which has predominantly focused on specific environmentalist groups. The current study also highlights the need for further investigation of predictors of behavioural outcomes. / Graduate / 2022-12-15

The problem with which this study is concerned was that of developing an understanding of teacher attitudes toward collective bargaining. The investigation was initiated so that members of school boards, administrators, and those associated with professional organizations could have the needed knowledge to permit them to deal realistically with employer-employee relations. There were two purposes for conducting this study. First, an effort was made to determine the specific attitudes these teachers possess toward collective bargaining. The second purpose was to analyze the teachers' background characteristics to determine whether classifications such as sex, academic degree, experience, assignment level, professional memberships, or age have an impact on these attitudes.

In considering the Israel-Palestine conflict, focus has remained on conventional major issues: borders, settlements, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugee rights and water. Should there be one binational state, or two states for two peoples? Yet this is a conflict that is sustained by factors more profound than the dispute over limited resources or competing nationalisms. The parties’ narratives, continually rehearsed, speak of a cataclysmic event or chain of events, a collective trauma, which has created such deep suffering and disruption that the rehearsers remain ‘frozen’ amid the overarching context of political violence. This study offers a critical analysis of the concept of collective trauma together with the role of commemorative practices, including core contemporary canonical days of memory, and asks to what extent they may hinder progress in the resolution of an intractable conflict, such as the Israel/Palestine conflict. Without addressing the powerful traumatic current that underpins a chronic conflict, no amount of top-down formal peace-making is likely to be sustainable.

The present dissertation explores the collective identity of the Anonymous movement. This movement is characterised by the heterogeneity of its activities, from meme-crafting to pranks to activist actions, with a wide range of goals and tactics. Such heterogeneity raises the question as to why such a diverse group of people makes the decision to act under the same name. To answer this question, the concept of collective identity is applied, which describes how participants collectively construct the definition of their group. This dissertation is based on a three-year ethnography. The main findings show that the collective identity of Anonymous rests on five sets of self-defining concepts related to: 1) Anonymous’ counterculture of offense and parrhesia, 2) its personification into two personae (the ‘trickster’ and the ‘hero’) that have differing goals, means, and relationships with the environment, 3) a horizontal organisation and a democratic decision-making process, 4) practices of anonymity and an ethics of self-effacement, and 5) its self-definition as a universal entity, inclusive, and unbounded. The collective identity construction process is marked by tensions due to the incompatibility of some of these concepts, but also due to differences between these collective identity definitions and actual practices. As a consequence, they have to be constantly reaffirmed through social actions and discourses. Not all individuals who reclaim themselves as Anonymous recognise the totality of these collective identity definitions, but they all accept a number of them that are sufficient to legitimate their own belonging to the movement, and most of the time to be recognised by others as such. The different groups constituting Anonymous are therefore symbolically linked through a web of collective identity definitions rather than an encompassing and unified collective identity. This ‘connective identity’ gives the movement a heterogeneous composition while at the same time permitting it to retain a sense of identity that explains the use of a collective name.

This thesis investigates how and why various Iraqi and Lebanese politicians and laypeople account for the armed conflicts, which they have been living through, and the involved sides of these conflicts. In both of these countries people have been exposed to major international and civil wars. Both nations are also cosmopolitan societies that contain multiple ethnic, racial, and religious groups, which make the issue of identity of great importance. How wars should be examined is a subject of much debate within psychology. On the one hand, the majority of psychological studies of war rest upon the assumption that war is primarily a destructive experience. Thus, the focus has been traditionally on investigating lasting psychopathological effects of war. A Large number of previous studies have reported that a significant segment of people who were exposed to the experience of war developed psychological problems, especially post traumatic stress disorder. On the other hand, a growing number of psychology researchers contend that most people maintain their psychological equilibrium in the face of almost all types of traumatic experiences, including war-related affairs. These researchers have shifted the focus toward examining and explaining this finding. Within this vigorous debate, limited attention has been paid to the question of how and why people account for their experiences as well as the various aspects of war in their own words. Currently, a limited number of studies indicate that people can and do present the same war in significantly different ways, as a means to attain certain ends. Furthermore, a significant body of research suggests that people’s collective identities play an important role in relation to their understandings, descriptions, preferences and behaviours in relation to war. The war rhetoric is also reported as an important issue that can influence the people’s understanding of war, as well as war’s course of events. Hence, through adopting a discursive psychological approach to analysis, this thesis examines several important issues simultaneously. Accounts of the wars and collective identities are approached as communicative resources that are constructed and deployed as a means to accomplish social actions. This thesis examines, specifically, how different Iraqi laypeople and politicians construct the 2003 American and Allies intervention in Iraq, with focus on collective identity. It also examines how various Lebanese construe the events of the 2006 war and the civil strife that occurred during and afterward this war. The data is taken from three sources. The first one is represented by semi-structured interviews conducted in Lebanon in October 2006. The second source is TV interviews conducted and broadcasted live with Iraqi politicians and decision makers in the period from 2003 to 2008 and with Lebanese politicians from 2006 to 2008. The third source is an open-ended question distributed in Basra City, Iraq in May 2005 as part of an extensive questionnaire. This study has several practical and theoretical implications to psychology in general and in particular to the study of armed conflicts. The first contribution is highlighting the importance of analysing laypeople’s rhetorical accounts of wars, as directly involved people can and do present surprisingly different discourses from the outsiders’. I argue that to gain a realistic and applicable understanding of the discourse of war, its function and its potential implications, it is necessary to study the general public’s versions of such experience in addition to the elite’s discourses. The analysis shows that different participants have constructed different action-oriented accounts of the same war. Within these various accounts the participants invoked and incorporated a number of different stimulating notions, such as dignity, nationalism, religion, resilience and victory as part of the rational of the war. These accounts have important practical and discursive functions, such as establishing, warranting, rejecting, and promoting specific views of the war, the involved sides, and the appropriate course of action. Secondly, this study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the role of rhetorical collective identity during armed conflicts. The analysis shows that collective identities attain their meanings and their functions from, by, and through the accounts they are situated within. Thirdly, the findings of this thesis highlight the complex and consequential role of rhetorical accounts in relation to wars and to violence and the relevance of qualitative analysis. I argue that discourse of war can obscure its destructive effects, which in turn can contribute to maintaining people’s psychological equilibrium but, also, prolong the conflict. Thus, exposing the rhetorical strategies that legitimate war and warrant killing other people can be an important step toward making war unconditionally morally unacceptable.

published_or_final_version / Conservation / Master / Master of Science in Conservation

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