This thesis aimed to develop a measure to investigate the perceived motivational climate in individual sports. In particular, it aimed to address some of the knowledge gaps in the current literature examining motivational climates: by developing a measure whose intended population participate in individual sports; that incorporates the perceived motivational climate created by multiple significant others; and that incorporates the 'impact' or salience of each of these perceptions of the motivational climate. In order to achieve this, the thesis is comprised of four studies.

Within the realm of applications, a relatively new payment form has emerged: called Microtransactions. These small one-time payments (less than 10 Euros) offer an addendum to an existing app, service, or game. Microtransactions have generated a revenue stream largely due to the tech savvy segment of young adults aged 18 to 24, but there hasn’t been significant research from an academic perspective which sheds light on this trend. This issue prompted the research question: Which quantifiable elements of a Microtransaction contribute to a university student’s purchase decision? The phenomenon of Microtransactions has not previously been studied under traditional theories of consumer behavior, which is what the scope of this research provided. The consumer behavior theories selected include: Ego Depletion Theory, Extended Self, and Perceived Value Theory. The selected methodology was a quantitative survey and content analysis. The data collected partially supported Perceived Value Theory, but was unable to validate Ego Depletion and Extended Self as significant influences on purchasing behaviors of Microtransactions among university students. Although the theories were unable to support all our hypotheses, we still concluded with two major findings. First, pricing and functionality are the primary elements of a Microtransaction which university students will consider before purchasing. Second, the Perceived Value Theory’s consumption values of Emotion and Finance are, indeed, consumption values shared among university students.

This thesis presents six original experiments investigating the relationship between age-related gains and losses in cognitive and emotional abilities and consumer decision making. Novel tasks designed to closely resemble real consumer decisions were used to assess how older and younger adults fare when making everyday decisions. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the relationship between consumer decision making and measures of fluid intelligence, crystallised intelligence and numeric ability in older and younger adults. The data revealed that numeric ability and fluid intelligence independently predicted consumer decision making in older adults. In Experiment 1, participants made factual and inferential decisions about utility suppliers. Findings were corroborated in Experiment 2 using a larger sample and an additional consumer decision task based on selecting a mobile phone provider. Experiment 2 also revealed numeric ability as an independent predictor of young adult’s consumer decision making. Experiment 3 assessed the interplay between age, cognitive resources and emotion regulation. Cognitive resources were assessed by the number of times older and younger adults decided to stick with a pre-selected option, switch to an alternative option or decide in the future. Results suggested that older and younger adults required differing amounts of resources to regulate emotions in accordance with different emotion regulation strategies. Older adults made better consumer decisions when instructed to regulate their emotions by way of reappraisal and younger participants made better consumer decisions when instructed to regulate their emotions using suppression. These results were contrary to what was expected based on previous research on emotion regulation. Because of this, two exploratory experiments were conducted on young adults in an attempt to identify a reliable methodology for inducing and measuring affects more typically associated with self-regulation. These experiments revealed some surprising findings. Participants exposed to manipulations high in terms of cognitive demand made better subsequent consumer decisions than participants placed in less demanding conditions. It was hypothesised that participants exposed to demanding manipulations were primed to make more adaptive consumer decisions. A final experiment tested the effect of age and instruction manipulation on consumer decision making. The relationships between cognitive measures of individual differences and decision making were again measured. Results substantiated previous findings revealed in Experiments 1 and 2 insofar that fluid intelligence was found to independently predict consumer decision making performance in older adults. Fluid intelligence and numeric ability predicted consumer decision making in younger adults. In terms of instruction effects, younger and older adults made better decisions when asked to do so in a rational manner compared to an intuitive manner. It is believed that this work represents some of the first of its kind to study the impact of ageing on cognitive ability and decision making using tasks representative of existing consumer decisions in terms of context and response options. The findings presented provide a valid and unique insight into how cognitive and emotional ability changes with age and the subsequent implications this has when making consumer decisions. This thesis concludes with the theoretical and practical implications for the ageing consumer.

As is evident from the title of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), the protagonist of the play, the salesman Willy Loman, will die. This essay will investigate what role Ben, Willy’s deceased brother, plays in Willy’s suicide. The thesis is that Willy needs Ben’s support in order to commit suicide and therefore needs to bring Ben’s values, at the possible expense of his wife Linda’s, into his superego. Ben is, to Willy, a true example of the American Dream, as he was a very successful businessman. Willy’s ego (or rational mind) seems to realize that his superego (or conscience) needs to replace the humane values of Linda with the economic values of Ben, in order to justify his motivation of an “economically beneficial” suicide. When Willy arrives at his final conclusion of how his favorite son Biff would financially benefit from his “accidental” suicide and thereby being able to attain Willy’s version of the American Dream, the evidence brought forth may suggest that Willy, at that point, allows Ben full access into his mind.        Willy’s mind will be investigated via Freud’s triple model of the psyche; the id, the ego and the superego.

The present study used the Psychoanalytic Rorschach Profile (PRP) to assess differences in personality organization in violent and nonviolent juvenile offenders.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

The aim of the current study was to examine variations in the impact of ambiguous versus blatant race related stressors on ego depletion in a sample of African American adults. Blatant race related stress was compared with ambiguous race related stress in regards to the relative impact on the constructs of ego depletion and perseverative cognition. Perseverative cognition was also examined as a potential mediating variable in the relationship between race related stress and ego depletion. Additionally, attributional ambiguity was hypothesized to moderate the effect of race related stress on perseverative cognition. The study implemented an experimental design, and assessed the integrity of the proposed moderated mediator model in a sample of 159 African American undergraduate students using MANCOVA and hierarchical multiple regression. Analyses failed to detect significant differences in ambiguous versus blatant race related stressors on perseverative cognition or ego depletion, and did not support the proposed model. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed.

First part of the thesis reviews current literature on self-control, with a particular focus on the strength model of self-control. This model asserts that the ability to self-control depends on a limited resource, which gets depleted with its use. According to the model, the ability to self-control is dependent on one resource. The experimental part of the thesis purports to ascertain whether two resources can in fact be identified - one for initiatory self-control and another one for inhibitory self-control. Two types of manipulations were tested in the experiment. The results showed that one type of experimental manipulation hadn't led to any measurable depletion of initiatory self-control whilst the second type of manipulation had indeed led to results that may be interpreted as a support for distinguishing between inhibitory and initiatory self-control. It would be an interesting finding that would broaden our current knowledge about self-control if the findings of the thesis were successfully replicated in a study addressing limitations of the present research. Keywords: self-control, experiment, strength model of self-control, initiatory self-control, inhibitory self-control, Stroop task

Student Number : 9901978A - MA research report - School of Human and Community Development - Faculty of Humanities / This research explored the relationship between gender identity, body image and ego strength in men. A questionnaire consisting of a demographic section, the Bem Sex Role Inventory, the Adonis Complex Questionnaire- Revised, and the Psychosocial Inventory of Ego Strength was administered to 74 male students from the School of Actuarial Science and Statistics at the University of the Witwatersrand during lecture time. Correlation analyses were used to infer the relationships between the three variables, while a multiple regression assessed whether particular combinations of gender identity and ego strength could predict higher body image dissatisfaction. The results showed that both masculinity and androgyny had a positive effect on body image satisfaction, as did higher ego strength. The latter was also positively correlated with both femininity and masculinity, though not with androgyny. Body image disturbance did not correlate with any dimension of gender identity or ego strength. With regard to the interaction between the variables, higher ego strength was found to have a moderating effect on body image dissatisfaction in men who endorsed femininity, but not with men who endorsed masculinity. An androgynous orientation further predicted lower body image dissatisfaction irrespective of the degree of ego strength. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Prosocial behavior can be defined as any behavior that an individual engages in to benefit another (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006). Prosociality is not one homogenous trait, however, but is made up of three specific types of behavior: helping, cooperating, and sharing (or, more accurately, donating) (Tomasello, 2009). Although helping and cooperating are important to understanding prosocial development, giving behaviors might be particularly informative when trying to understand prosociality in young children as it poses a distinct problem for younger children (Tomasello, 1998). Research on proximate causes of prosocial behavior state that these behaviors are influenced by emotions of empathy (Batson, 1991), theory of mind, or understanding of social norms of ownership (Blake & Rand, 2010). Research on more ultimate causes of prosociality suggest that these behaviors evolved due to mechanisms or kin selection (Hamilton, 1964) and inclusive fitness (Trivers, 1971), and is evident by the effect of social category and relatedness on donations in resource- allocation games (Gummerum et al., 2009). Research with children using resource- allocations games, such as the dictator game, are sparse, but typically find that children donate more as they get older, and that out-group receive fewer allocations than in-group members (Moore, 2009). This research also highlight the importance of anonymity and its effect on prosociality. When tested using an anonymous design, children donate less and some children don’t donate at all (Benenson et al., 2007). Using an anonymous dictator game, children’s giving behaviors were examined across in- group, out-group, and family members. Thirty-five children (12 3-year-olds (7 male), 13 4-year-olds (8 male), and 10 5-year-olds (7 male) completed the experiment. Each child participated in each condition, as well as measures of theory of mind and ownership understanding. Children’s empathy scores were attained from a parent questionnaire regarding children’s empathic behaviors. Results revealed that some children did not donate any stickers at all; seven in total, and that these children differed significantly from those that gave on measures of empathy. Of those that donated, 3-year-old children donated significantly more than 5-year-old children (F(1,3) =3.64, p < .05). This is contrary to previous findings which find that giving increases across age., The was no main effect for Recipient, and no significant interaction between Age and Recipient. Five-year-olds scored significantly higher on measures of ownership understanding (F(2, 25) = 4.36, p< .05), suggesting that understanding of social norms of ownership may be partially responsible for their decrease in overall giving. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection