Enron, Pfizer, UBS, Halliburton: In recent years, organizational wrongdoing has cost taxpayers and stakeholders billions of dollars. Whistleblowers, organizational insiders who witness and report wrongdoing with the intent of effecting an organizational response, play a major role as combatants to such corruption. What motivates whistleblowers versus silent witnesses of wrongdoing? And what cognitive and emotional patterns underlie their actions? Here I construe whistleblowing as a personally costly but pro-organizational action (Miceli, Near, & Dworkin, 2008). As such, whistleblowing represents a novel type of extreme pro-group behavior that identity fusion theory seeks to explain (Swann, Jetten, Gomez, Whitehouse, & Bastian, 2012). The identity fusion approach posits that some people experience a visceral feeling of "oneness" with a group, a feeling that motivates a range of extreme pro-group actions. Across four preliminary studies, I first establish that fusion with one's organization (i.e., work or university) parallels fusion with other groups (e.g., country, political party). In addition, Preliminary Study 4 shows that fusion and whistleblowing are associated in retrospective accounts of workplace behavior. Given this initial support, a controlled lab experiment was conducted to address two major questions. First, to what extent is identity fusion with one's university associated with initial and formal whistleblowing behaviors? Second, in what ways, if any, do strongly vs. weakly fused individuals' cognitive and emotional experiences differ in response to witnessing organizational wrongdoing? As hypothesized, fusion with one's university predicted spontaneous reporting of an in-group transgressor. Strongly fused students' actions were associated with several cognitive and emotional factors, and cross-method evidence indicated that active negative emotions (e.g., anger) coupled with a heightened sense of personal responsibility drove strongly fused persons to spontaneously blow the whistle. Furthermore, strongly fused students were also especially likely to formally (as compared to spontaneously) report the transgressor. Evidence from participants' debriefing responses suggested that while weakly fused students diffused formal reporting responsibility to others, strongly fused students felt personally responsible to follow-through with a formal report. Overall, these results suggest that identity fusion is a promising perspective for understanding motives underlying personally costly pro-group behaviors. / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Knowing some of the cultural tenets that may be related to depression can help inform counseling. Culture will be measured using collectivism, which is defined as being more orientated to others, rather than to oneself. It was hypothesized that shyness and social support would be related to both collectivism and depression. Shyness would be associated with an increase in collectivism and depression, while social support would be associated with an increase in collectivism and a decrease in depression. Social support however, would be more strongly related to depression than shyness. It was found that more social support was indeed significantly related to lower depression, and higher levels of collectivism. Shyness was significantly related to higher levels of depression but it was also related to a lower collectivistic level, though not significantly. An interaction was found between shyness and social support on the outcome of depression, which means that the higher the social support, the less impact shyness has on depression. Further studies should focus on research that more clearly defines a relationship between depression and collectivism using shyness and social support as predictors. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

The overall purpose of this study was to uncover, from among a sample of university students, naturally occurring, salient and less potentially harmful group categories and stereotype content. The reason for this was to learn more about which group categories and associated stereotype content ordinary South Africans naturally consider to be salient or important, rather than those group categories and stereotype content that South Africa’s academic establishment may unduly focus on. This was done because of a suspicion, which itself was based on an extensive review of the history of South African stereotype research, that the group categories and associated stereotype content of race and gender may be the subject of an undue focus on the part of South African academia. The results generated by this study were to be used to supply future stereotype threat studies in South Africa with accurate, relevant and specifically less potentially harmful group categorisations and associated stereotype content. The research questions of this study were posed at two hierarchical levels, the ‘higher’, more abstract “groups of people in South Africa” and the ‘lower’, more local, “groups of people on campus”. The reason for this was to learn how the manipulation of hierarchical group salience conditions would affect the group categories generated by the participants and the stereotype contents about those groups. The results of the study suggest that while the category of race seems to be the most salient or important among the participants, the category of gender was not salient at all. This occurred at both the national and campus hierarchical levels. The broad categories of economic status and social class were the second most salient, but only at the national level. There was some evidence of the effects that manipulating hierarchical group salience conditions had on group category and stereotype content generation. Certain group categories and stereotype content were generated exclusively at either the national or campus levels, and when they were generated at both levels, there was evidence to suggest that they were generated in slightly different ways. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

Canadian superhero comic books represent a politically significant opportunity to study popular conceptions of national politics, cultures, and identities. Canadian superheroes are 'others' in the shadow their American neighbours, but embrace this 'Not-American otherness' as a central factor defining Canadian national identity. The diversity of Canadian multiculturalism collapses into a monolithic white/male/Anglophone identity produced in the tensions created by the binary relmionship between 'self-as-other' and 'American' articulated by the texts, creating one universalised and naturalised "Canadian" identity. This thesis seeks to politicise existing surveys that ignore the political implications of the comic book texts, and to critique other problematic methodologies in the comics discourse: tendencies towards canon-building, and resistance to interdisciplinary methodologies. I forward a social/cultural/political analysis that draws equally on my multiple backgrounds and subject positions as a university-educated art historian, a popular culture critic, a Canadian, and a (feminist) reader and fan of superhero comic books. / Graduate

Des etudes anterieures ont ete incapbles de determiner quels facteurs sous-tendent l'identite sociale. A l'aide de plusieurs innovations methodologiques (une mesure permettant d'exprimer librement les facteurs relies a l'identite sociale, le fait de choisir l'endogroupe et l'exogroupe et une conceptualisation de l'identite sociale comme etant composee de l'attirance envers l'endogroupe et du rejet par l'exogroupe), cette etude avait pour but d'etudier l'influence des trois facteurs postules par Tajfel (cognition, emotions et evaluation) et les croyances symboliques (coutumes, valeurs et normes) sur l'identite sociale. Les resultats de cette etude indiquent qu'une evaluation positive de l'endogroupe, les emotions positives envers l'endogroupe et une evaluation negative de l'exogroupe menacant sont associees a une identification sociale plus forte. De plus, les resultats de cette etude demontrent qu'une difference individuelle (A quel point vous percevez-vous comme un membre typique de votre groupe?) est associee a des facteurs relies a l'endogroupe (une identification plus forte et une integration du concept de soi plus eleve) et a l'exogroupe (menace intergroupe, discrimination personnelle et collective).

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, August, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, 2001. / "Stellingen" ([1] leaf) inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. [105]-115).

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-100). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-85). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.