According to the theory of desirable difficulty, conflict during practice can elicit a greater degree of processing and result in a later memory benefit (Bjork & Bjork, 1994). The present paper extends the work by Thomson et al. (in prep) that there may be a stage-specific mechanism involved. They found a desirable difficulty effect when directing a conflict towards the categorization stage through classifying names by gender. However, no such effect was seen when classifying words by size. They provided evidence that gender classification is more semantically central than categorizing items by size, which tends to be relative and depend on context. We took the same stimuli used in the Thomson et al. (in prep) but had participants make animacy judgments (animal or “thing”) on words. A subsequent memory test revealed a desirable difficulty effect for incongruent words compared to congruent. Interestingly, animal words were better remembered overall compared to “thing” words. A second experiment directed a conflict towards the categorization and response processing stages through classifying names as male and female with semantic (male/female) and response selection (left/right) primes. A subsequent memory test revealed a desirable difficulty pattern of results (although non-significant) where incongruent compared to congruent words were better remembered for the sematic primes and congruent compared to incongruent words were better remembered for response primes. These results suggest to-be-remembered material needs to be the focus of attention and increasing difficulty to any stage of processing does not give you a guaranteed desirable effect. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

The thesis studies determinants and adjustment paths of the people's weight from the view point of rational behavior.It followes the research approach of Becker and Murphy (1988), makes use of the utility function from Levy (2002), and corporates a budget constraint so as to establish an optimal control model for food consumption and weight, and to find out the relationship between them. Negative correlations are found between the steady-state weight and food prices, basal metabolic rate, and time discount rate.Positive correlations are found between the steady-state weight and income, marginal utility of food, and desirable weight. There is a tendancy to guide the actual steady-state weight to a much higher fluctuation margin than that of the desirable weight.In the dynamic analysis, it is also found that, regardless of an increase or decrease of the steady-state weight, both directions of adjustment show that the process of food consumption is always ``overshooting."In other words, when the steady-state weight becomes heavier (lighter), consumers first increase (decrease) their food consumption substantially. And, as the time goes by, there is a gradual decrease (increase) in food consumption owing to the fact that the food consumption is still higher (lower) than what is required for metabolism of the body that makes the weight getting to increase (decrease) till the new equilibrium is arrived.

Research has shown that desirable responding can be detrimental to social relationships, achievement and health. This study used an experimental design to (a) induce an increase in desirable responding through threat to self-image and then (b) compare the effectiveness of self-compassionate and self-affirming writing in attenuating that increase. Control groups included no threat exposure, threat exposure alone and threat exposure plus neutral writing. Desirable responding was measured along two dimensions: self-enhancement and exaggerated virtue. Results show the threat did not result in the predicted increase in desirable responding so the effectiveness of the two strategies with regards to attenuating increases in desirable responding could not be examined and compared. However, results do reveal a difference in the mechanism of these two strategies. Engaging in self-compassionate writing resulted in a significant decrease in exaggerated virtue whereas being self-affirmed resulted in a significant increase, suggesting a possible benefit of a self-compassion strategy.

Under the mandator consolidation act of 1915, the county-unit school district in Utah had its beginning (10). Although, through this consolidation movement, many small school districts were combined into larger ones, the elimination of the small districts did not, necessarily, provide for the elimination of the small schools. Due to several factors including distance, poor communication and transportation facilities, and a strong desire on the part of the people who lived in small communities for a voice in school matters, the consolidation of school attendance areas did not keep pace with school district reorganization. With the improvement of highways and communication facilities and the rapid rise of the motor vehicle as a means of fast, dependable travel, school boards have considered consolidation of attendance areas as one of the possibilities open to them to improve the quality of education in their districts.

This thesis investigates predictions from prominent conflict theories of cognitive control that information experienced under high conflict conditions should be better encoded. More specifically, recent research suggests that selectively attending to relevant stimuli while ignoring conflicting stimuli can lead to better memory. These ideas have been broadly discussed in the desirable difficulty literature – described by instances where increasing difficulty during initial task performance leads to better later memory. As a growing number of studies have attempted to produce these effects with mixed success, calls for more focused investigations into the underlying mechanisms have been made. This encoding benefit for high-control-demand or high-difficulty situations has been broadly conceptualized as a task-general property, where all activated representations should be better encoded. The goal of this thesis was to investigate whether memory-enhancing effects of difficulty manipulations depend on inducing additional cognitive control at particular information processing stages. This thesis documents some of the first work showing that the within-task locus of conflict and attentional control is critical to whether later memory benefits are seen – conflict/control focused on semantic item representation produces better memory, but conflict/control focused away from item representations at response selection gives no memory benefit. These findings and theory are then extended to physiological measures of pupil dilation and sequential (Grattron-like) conflict/control situations. This thesis proposes a stage-specific conflict-encoding model which complements and extends current leading theories of conflict-driven cognitive control. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / There is an intuitive notion that making a learning experience hard will hinder memory of that information later on. Contrary to this belief, in certain circumstances, making learning difficult can actually enhance the memory of that information – this has been termed desirable difficulty. The issue with these desirable difficulties is that they are only sometimes effective. Originally it was proposed that general task-wide difficulty would lead to an enhancement in memory. This thesis, however, provides evidence suggesting that task difficulty is stage-specific in nature, meaning that for the difficulty to enhance memory, the difficulty needs to be at a specific stage of cognitive processing. For difficulty to have a beneficial effect on memory, the particular difficulty needs to focus an individual’s attention on the core meaning of what they are trying to remember, or else the difficulty will direct attention away from this important information causing a possible decrease in memory. These findings provide a framework for how and when to use difficulty as a means to enhance learning.

Princess Diana, or Lady Diana Spencer as she was called at the time,  took the whole world by storm when she at only 20 years of age married in to the British royal family, and thereby became a popular target for the media. It was through the media that people all over the world got to know and love Diana, and when she died in a terrible car accident in Paris, France, in the year of 1997, people mourned the loss of their beloved princess, and blamed the media for causing her tragic death for the chance of getting some photos of her.          Many people loved Diana and looked up to her, and the interest that was shown for her funeral was enormous and worldwide. The death of Diana gave the media a lot to write about, and in this study I investigate how the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, and the British newspaper The Guardian portrayed Diana in their articles during the week after her death on August 31 1997, until the day of the funeral September 6 1997. Specifically the study focuses on the portraying of Diana based on gender stereotypes. By using a theory about desirable and non-desirable feminine and masculine traits the conclusion was made that the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet mostly used female stereotypes when portraying Diana, both when it came to desirable and non-desirable traits, and the British newspaper The Guardian mostly described Diana with desirable masculine traits, and feminine non-desirable traits. / Prinsessan Diana, eller Lady Diana Spencer som hon då kallades, tog hela världen med storm när hon endast 20 år gammal gifte in sig i den brittiska kungafamiljen, och därmed blev ett populärt objekt för media. Det var genom media som människor över hela lära känna och älska Diana, och när hon dog i en hemsk bilolycka i Paris, Frankrike, år 1997, sörjde människor förlusten av sin älskade prinsessa, och anklagade media för att ha orsakat hennes tragiska död för chansen att få några foton av henne.          Många älskade Diana och såg upp till henne, och intresset som visades för hennes begravning var enormt och världsomfattande. Dianas död gav media mycket att skriva om, och i denna studie undersöker jag hur den svenska tidningen Aftonbladet, och den brittiska tidningen The Guardian skildrade Diana i sina artiklar under veckan efter hennes död den 31 augusti 1997, fram till dagen för begravningen den 6 september 1997. Studien fokuserar specifikt på skildringen av Diana baserat på könsstereotyper. Genom att använda en teori om önskvärda och icke önskvärda feminina och maskulina egenskapar kunde slutsatsen dras att den svenska tidningen Aftonbladet främst använde kvinnliga stereotyper för att beskriva Diana, både när det gällde önskvärda och icke önskvärda egenskaper, och den brittiska tidningen The Guardian beskrev Diana främst med önkvärda maskulina egenskaper, och icke önskvärda feminina egenskaper.

A follow-up was done to Leak and Fish's (1989) study of intrinsically and extrinsically religious individuals using Paulhus' (1984) Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding, a two factor scale of socially desirable responding measuring self-deceptive enhancement (SDE) and impression management (IM). 275 introduction to psychology students were group tested and categorized by gender and by religious orientation with Allport and Ross's (1967) fourfold Religious Orientation Scale (ROS). Differences between the four types were hypothesized on the religious relevance of the SDE and IM scale items. A difference score was also computed by contrasting two instructional sets on the BIDR as a measure of variation across situations. Measures of private and public self-consciousness, social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and self esteem were included.

OBJECTIVES: The general aim of this research was to analyse the relationships between bullying (as a distinct form of aggression), victimisation, personal and collective self-esteem, and narcissism in adolescents. Baumeister et al. (1996) refuted the conventionally accepted view that low self-esteem is a cause of violence whereby, for example, those who lack self-esteem may use aggression as a means of dominating others and thereby gaining self-esteem. Instead, it may be that aggression is related to high self-esteem such that individuals with a combination of high levels of both self-esteem and narcissism are more likely to react aggressively to a perceived threat. Design: After a conducting a small pilot study (n = 112), the main study employed a large-scale cross-sectional survey with self-report questionnaires administered to school students during class. METHODS: Participants were drawn from six metropolitan high schools in Adelaide (South Australia), resulting in 1,628 adolescents (665 females & 963 males, aged 12-17 years) completing the survey. The questionnaire battery comprised modified self-report bully and victim versions of the Direct and Indirect Aggression Scales (Bjorkqvist et al., 1992), personal (Rosenberg, 1979) and collective self-esteem (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992) scales, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Hall, 1981), and a measure of socially desirable responding (i.e., Impression Management; Paulhus, 1991). RESULTS: A variety of multivariate analyses controlling for socially desirable responses was employed to test and explore hypothesised relationships. Results showed no relationship between age and any form of bullying or victimisation. Boys reported significantly higher mean levels of direct and total bullying and victimisation, whereas girls reported higher levels of indirect bullying and victimisation. Victimisation was negatively correlated with personal self-esteem, and positively correlated with collective self-esteem. In contrast, bullying was positively correlated with personal self-esteem, with no significant relationship found with collective self-esteem. Collective and personal self-esteem did not differentially predict different types of bullying or victimisation. Narcissism was positively correlated with bullying. The predicted interaction between personal self-esteem, narcissism and bullying was evident, although the predicted collective self-esteem interaction was not found. Impression Management (social desirability) was significantly negatively correlated with bullying and, to a lesser extent, with victimisation. CONCLUSION: Research such as this into the possible causes and correlates of aggression and bullying will assist in the design, implementation, and maintenance of effective interventions. For example, as results corresponded with Baumeister et al.'s (1996) assertion in that bullying was related to high self-esteem, interventions that are designed to increase self-esteem might in reality be counterproductive and possibly contribute to an increase in bullying behaviour. Additionally, victims reported higher collective self-esteem than their non-victimised peers, clearly a novel finding worthy of further research. Findings suggested that, rather than running the risk of underreporting of socially undesirable behaviours, self-report methods provide a useful and valid means of measuring prevalence rates and internal states. Rather than underreporting aggressive behaviours, it is likely that respondents were being honest as they did not feel that these behaviours were, in fact, socially undesirable. The present sample reported bullying and victimisation prevalence rates that were comparatively high, despite using relatively conservative criteria, possibly due to an increased awareness of what constitutes bullying as a result of government and school anti-bullying policies and initiatives. The findings generally correspond with and build upon previous research. In addition, a number of the results are novel, providing numerous opportunities for future researchers to further explore and test the relationships between self-esteem, bullying, and victimisation.

In this thesis, single undesirable and semi-desirable facility location problems are analyzed in a continuous planar region considering the interaction between the facility and the existing demand points. In both problems, the distance between the facility and the demand points is measured with the rectilinear metric. The aim in the first part where the location of a pure undesirable facility is considered, is to maximize the distance of the facility from the closest demand point. In the second part, where the location of a semi-desirable facility is considered, a conflicting objective measuring the service cost of the facility is added to the problem of the first part. For the solution of the first problem, a mixed integer programming model is used. In order to increase the solution efficiency of the model, new branch and bound strategies and bounding schemes are suggested. In addition, a geometrical method is presented which is based on upper and lower bounds. For the biobjective problem, a three-phase interactive geometrical branch and bound algorithm is suggested to find the most preferred efficient solution.

Det har betydelse att förstå reaktioner på otrogna beteenden. Forskning visar att män upprörs av sexuell otrohet, kvinnor mer av emotionell. Skillnaderna kan med Sexual Economics Theory (SET) förklaras av olika roller i heterosexuella samspel. Syftet med denna studie var att se hur otrohet och partneregenskaper uppfattas hos studerande i Sverige samt om resultatet relaterar till SET. Ett tillgänglighetsurval på 84 kvinnor och 63 män gjordes på en högskola i Mellansverige. En enkätstudie med vinjett varierade bedragarkön och otrohetstyp. Resultatet visade att män och kvinnor reagerar mer på sexuell otrohet. Bedömning av otroget beteende skiljer sig inte åt beroende på manlig eller kvinnlig bedragare. Partnerattraktivitet är vanligare önskan hos män, engagemang vanligare hos kvinnor. Slutsatserna innebär likheter i otrohetsuppfattning hos studerande i Sverige samt svag olikhet vad gäller könsskillnader i önskvärda egenskaper. Vidare studier föreslås testa SET relaterat till otrohetsuppfattning och partneregenskaper i olika jämställda samhällen.