Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, and San Diego State University, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-178).

Thesis (M.S. in Psychology)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2004. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-79).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2008. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, MARCS Auditory Laboratories, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-273). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1994. / Title from title page screen, viewed April 3, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Lanny E. Morreau (chair), Barbara Heyl, Ira L. Neal, Paula J. Smith, Jerome Tillman, Pamela H. Wheeler. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-224) and abstract. Also available in print.

M.A. / Leadership has been defined as the competencies and processes required to enable and empower ordinary people to do extraordinary things in the face of adversity. It is also the ability to constantly turn in superior performance to the benefit of oneself and the organisation (Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Charlton, 1993; Kelly, 1986; Senge, 1991). This definition includes being skilled in emotional competencies. Emotional competence results in being attuned to those one is dealing with, as well as being self-aware. This study focusses on the emotional intelligence factors considered to be characteristic of effective leaders. The link between the management of emotions and leadership ability is gaining increasing interest in business. People who are unable to maintain a degree of control over their emotional life, fight inner battles that sabotage the ability for focussed work and clear thoughts (Goleman, 1995). Unclear thinking and a lack of focus may in turn, contribute to decreased productivity and an overall decline in organisational success. Emotionally intelligent leaders with the ability to think clearly whilst being in tune with self and others, would thus be required to lead an emotionally intelligent organisation (Cooper & Sawaf, 1997). Leaders may not necessarily occupy positions of authority in the organisation, yet even at lower organisational levels they lead others by example. Otto (1995) refers to such leaders as "little leaders". It is the purpose of this study, to identify specific emotional competencies that may be characteristic of successful "little leaders". The question to be addressed, is: Is their a statistically significant difference in factors of emotional intelligence, between a group of identified "little leaders" and a group of nonleaders at the same level in an organisational context? A leadership questionnaire (The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), (Bass & Avolio, 1990b)) consisting of 45 items was administered to managers of a large financial institution. They were asked to rate their subordinates using this scale as it identifies the presence of transformational and transactional leadership behaviour (Bass, 1985). Only the transformational leadership scores were used to identify two groups. Based on the transformational leadership scores of the MLQ, rated employees were grouped into leader and non-leader groups. Of the 220 (N=220) rating forms returned, 31 subjects fell into the leader group and 31 fell into the non-leader group based on the cutoff scores provided by the authors of the questionnaire. The middle ratings were not utilised for the present study. No participant in the study was made aware of the grouping procedure. The employee group was all English speaking, with a minimum educational level of matric. They occupied similar positions within the hierarchy and were all of non-managerial status. All 220 employees were asked to complete the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) inorder to ensure privacy regarding the group ratings (Bar-On, 1996a). The EQ-i assesses 15 factors said to be important indicators of emotional intelligence. These include; problem solving ability, social responsibility, happiness, independence, stress tolerance, self-actualisation, assertiveness, reality testing, interpersonal relationship, self regard, impulse control, flexibility, self awareness, empathy and optimism. Two additional factors, namely, positive and negative impression provide assistance in score validation. Comparative statistics (Wilks' coefficient lambda and Students t-test) were used to analyse the data. A stepwise discriminant analysis was also conducted. A comparison of EQ-i scores between the leader group and the non-leader group indicates that the factors of optimism and self-actualisation are significantly higher for the leader group than for the non-leader group. The non-leader group had significantly higher scores on the positive impression scale, indicating a possible skewing of results for that group. A total of four variables was extracted following the stepwise discriminant analysis namely, positive impression, self-actualisation, self-regard and optimism. Generally, the research data appear to support the fundamental postulates of transformational leadership theory. Transformational leaders are able to raise awareness in both self and others regarding issues of consequence (Bass, 1997). This heightening of awareness requires a leader with vision, self-confidence, and inner strength to argue successfully for what he or she sees as right or good (Bass, 1997; Charlton, 1993; Senge, 1991). The factors of self-actualisation and optimism indicate an awareness of self and an ability to influence others (Seligman, 1990). The research findings indicate that the application of emotional intelligence theory to leadership identification may assist those in the fields of recruitment, selection and training and development. Future empirical research within the same empirical framework as this investigation, may benefit from greater standardisation and broader application of the assessment instrument used, the use of larger experimental populations and a possible replication of the findings of the present investigation. A comprehensive exploration of the interaction of Emotional Intelligence factors and the contribution of other possible factors to emotional intelligence in leadership may also contribute to the accuracy of future identification of potential leaders.

Our experience of the world is subjective–we are constantly interpreting the world around us according to what we have already perceived, experienced, and learned. How we interpret the world–and how we draw on prior experience to do so–is studied in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, theorized about in philosophy, and explored in the arts. To study subjective interpretation, we combine multiple disciplines – using behavioral paradigms from cognitive neuroscience and psychology in order to test an overarching framework of subjective interpretation that arose in art history–the Beholder’s Share. In this dissertation, I present three studies that investigate the behavioral and neural phenomena of the Beholder’s Share. I begin, in Chapter 1, by giving an overview of the Beholder’s Share and its intersections with theories of the mind and brain. I then discuss our approach to studying the Beholder's Share; namely, by measuring cognitive and neural responses to abstract and representational art by the same artist, as a key prediction following from the Beholder’s Share is that it will be different for abstract and representational art. Following this, I then present a review of the literature that has begun to characterize the cognitive and neural responses to abstract and representational art, and the open questions we address in our studies. Chapter 2 presents a behavioral study that leverages the well-established theory of mental representations–Construal Level Theory (CLT). Drawing from CLT, we develop a behavioral paradigm that reliably characterizes differences in mental representations between abstract art and representational art, showing that abstract art evokes more abstract, context-independent representations than representational art. This study serves to establish reliable and measurable differences in the subjective experience of abstract and representational art, and yields a task that can be used to elicit these differences. Chapter 3 describes a study that combines behavior and fMRI, and takes advantage of advancements in multivariate analysis methods of brain activity and models of natural language processing to capture the Beholder’s Share in neural activity and written descriptions. This study demonstrates that both neural and semantic representations evoked by abstract paintings are more subject-unique than those evoked by representational paintings. Moreover, subject-unique patterns of brain activity are present in the Default Mode Network, a set of brain regions thought to be involved in internally oriented cognition. This study demonstrates that participants contribute personal associations to abstract paintings more than to representational paintings, and links this process to brain regions involved in higher-level cognitive processes. Chapter 4 examines the role of prior experience in subjective interpretation. I present a study in which we induced different prior experiences with an emotional autobiographical memory induction and measured the effects of that manipulation in written descriptions of abstract paintings. This study shows that abstract paintings are more vulnerable to manipulations in prior experiences, as well as individual differences in naturally occurring experiences, measured by self-report. Together, these results suggest that abstract paintings are interpreted more subjectively than representational paintings. This process of subjective interpretation recruits regions of the brain involved in internally oriented cognition (the DMN) and involves drawing on prior experiences. These results, and the methods we used to obtain them, have implications for understanding subjective experience and cognition more fully. Chapter 5 situates these results in the broader discussion of how we study subjectivity, and carves out a role for the Beholder’s Share in future research characterizing individual differences.

Parents' and children's behaviors are intricately woven together over the course of development. Consequently it is difficulty to determine the sources of influence predicting socially and academically oriented outcomes. Research from several developmental fields suggests that developing mechanisms of attention during the preschool years is crucial for both emotional and cognitive control. The current study shows that parental responsive behavior is important in understanding the development of voluntary attention. More specifically, the results suggest that parental awareness, assessed utilizing their perceptions of attentive temperament is an important factor in predicting their own behavior and the developmental outcomes of their children. / by Aviva R. Kadin-Pessoa. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Emotional design addresses peoples needs and desires which is at the center of product or technology development. Currently, there is no established process of emotional design in the field of industrial design to address research and design issues. A five step emotional design process is proposed in this thesis. Research theories and methods on emotional design were reviewed. Existing pantry storage products were evaluated. User research was targeted on women between age 45 and 60. Research data were collected through interviews and surveys. Research findings were produced by analyzing the data using a proposed data analysis method called Product Emotion Baseline. Product function design, product interface design and user experience study on smart pantry were presented. All five steps of emotional design process were applied to smart pantry design to illustrate in detail how the proposed process works.