Call number: LD2668 .T4 1986 M54 / Master of Science / Physical Education, Dance, and Leisure Studies

Psychologists have studied the relationship between personality and academic performance for over a century, and more recently the relationship between personality and situations, but no connection between academic performance and situation characteristics has been researched. The current study examines this relationship using the DIAMONDS dimensions and undergraduate GPA. Participants wore a life logging camera to capture pictures of their surroundings for 24 hours and then self-sorted and rated the photos into meaningful situations. Results found support for previous findings of the relationships for personality with GPA and situations. Significant correlations were found between GPA and Adversity, Deception, and Mating situations, though none were significant unique predictors. There was also no correlation between GPA and percentage of situations which took place in a classroom setting, though there was a significant correlation with time spent in a classroom. Limitations and future research ideas are discussed. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Drawing upon the regulatory theories of focus, mode, and fit, the three chapters of this dissertation demonstrate that subtle distinctions in framing and word choice can have profound impact for entrepreneurs and their startups. In Chapter 1, a field study and experiment on regulatory focus reveal that investors pose promotion-focused questions in the domain of gains to male entrepreneurs and prevention-focused questions in the domain of losses to female entrepreneurs, helping to explain the sizable gap in their respective funding outcomes. Chapter 2’s archival and experimental studies pertaining to regulatory mode indicate that organizations with mission statements high in locomotion (the mode of urgent action) and low in assessment (the mode of thoughtful consideration) have a greater likelihood and frequency of involvement in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cases of discrimination. Across an observational and experimental study, Chapter 3 shows entrepreneurs seek regulatory fit in the form of social identity alignment that helps to explain variations in talent selection and retention, with those manifesting the identity of a “builder” (motivated to incrementally improve over time) exhibiting higher tenure rates than those manifesting the identity of a “disrupter” (motivated to break with the status quo). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Throughout the course of a day, individuals experience a number of different situations that affect how they think, feel, and behave. However, until recently, there was little research aimed at describing what factors may be related to the psychological properties of situations in individuals' everyday lives. Recent theoretical (e.g., the Situational Eight DIAMONDS) and methodological (e.g., experience sampling, Day Reconstruction Method) advances make the present research tractable. Based on the extant literature, three studies, employing different methodologies, were designed to explore whether three specific factors are related to the experience of situations: time of day, gender, and employment status. Study 1 employs data from 835 participants recruited on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT). Participants reported a recent situation (single time-point method) and completed a 290-item measure of situations, the Comprehensive Situations Item Pool (CSIP). The results demonstrated consistent daily patterns in the experience of situations. For example, the situational characteristic Duty tends to increase throughout the day, peak at noon, decreasing thereafter. Study 2 uses an experience sampling method to further investigate the daily and weekly temporal patterns in the situational characteristics from a within-person perspective. University participants (N = 210) were contacted via smartphone and rated their situation up to 8 times per day for 7 days. The results showed that there are some similarities and differences in the temporal pattern of situations at the within-person level. Duty, for instance, exhibits a different pattern depending on the day of the week (e.g., negative and linear on weekends, but quadratic on weekdays). Overall, Study 2 demonstrates that there are clear within- and between-day patterns in situation characteristics. Lastly, Study 3 employs a full-day method using archival data from the 2013 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Participants drawn from a representative sample of Americans (N = 11,384) reported all of their situations for a recent day using the Day Reconstruction Method. The results found that, in addition to consistent daily and weekly trends, patterns for situation characteristics are related to individual differences such as gender and employment status. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Despite long-held recognition of the importance of situations in psychological understanding and analysis, current research is lacking in discernment of structurally important elements of situations as they relate to behavior (Funder et al., 2012). Using the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ: Wagerman & Funder, 2009), an 89-item measure used to assess the psychological properties of situations, the major aim of this study was to identify a reliable set of categories or types of situations that people experience every day. Data was collected online from a U.S. sample (N = 186). Participants were asked to recall details about a situation he or she experienced during the previous day (i.e. "What were you doing yesterday at this time?"). Participants were then asked to rate that situation using the RSQ. Inverse factor analyses revealed the following everyday situation types: 1) Social Closeness, 2) Obligatory, 3) Cognitive, 4) Enjoyable/Aesthetic, and 5) Anxiety Inducing. / by Brittany M. Thompson. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Key words: perspective taking, age differences, motivational trigger hypothesis, experimental manipulation / Moreover, in Experiment 2, with a distance manipulation, both younger and older adults showed impaired performance in emotion recognition. Findings from these two experiments supported the Motivational Trigger Hypothesis , such that the well-documented poor performance in perspective taking tasks of older adults might be due to a lack of motivation instead of a lack of ability to perform in laboratory settings. In daily contexts, especially with someone close to them, older adults might be more motivated to take others' perspective and thus perform better on the perspective-taking tasks. / There was a folk notion of increased perspective taking abilities with age, such that older adults should be better at understanding others' behavior and intention, and show greater empathy to others. However, empirical studies on older adults showed the reverse pattern. In a series of experiments, I investigated the phenomenon from a motivational perspective. In Experiment 1, I manipulated perceived closeness between participants and the experimenter in a faux pas recognition task, and in Experiment 2, I manipulated perceived closeness as well as distance between participants and the target in an emotion recognition task, to examine whether the experimental manipulations could influence participants' performance in the two perspective taking tasks. The results revealed that in the control condition without any experimental manipulation, the well-documented negative age effect was only replicated in both faux pas recognition and emotion recognition. However, in the closeness manipulation condition, older adults significantly enhanced their performance in both tasks, such that they now performed at a comparable level with younger adults; whereas younger adults did not show such enhancement effects. / Zhang, Xin. / Advisers: Helene Fung; Alan Wong. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-92). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

潘建忠. / 據手稿本影印. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學, 1988. / Ju shou gao ben ying yin. / English title: Human nature and work motivation. / Includes bibliographical references: leaves 112-122. / Pan Jianzhong. / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 1988. / Chapter 一 --- 論文撮要 / Chapter 二 --- 鳴謝 / Chapter 第一章 --- 緒論 --- p.1 / Chapter 第一節 --- 研究的背景 --- p.2 / Chapter 第二節 --- 研究的目的 --- p.5 / Chapter 第三節 --- 研究的內容 --- p.8 / Chapter 第二章 --- 孟子的人性論 / Chapter 第一節 --- 中國人性論的形成 --- p.8 / Chapter 第二節 --- 人性之函義 --- p.16 / Chapter 第三節 --- 孟子之人性論之性質 --- p.17 / Chapter 第四節 --- 孟子人性論之進路─即心言性 --- p.18 / Chapter 第五節 --- 孟子人性論之證立 --- p.19 / Chapter 第六節 --- 孟子性善論之申論 --- p.28 / Chapter 第七節 --- 孟子性命對揚論 --- p.31 / Chapter 第八節 --- 結語 --- p.34 / Chapter 第三章 --- 孟子的激勵論 / Chapter 第一節 --- 激勵的涵義 --- p.41 / Chapter 第二節 --- 激勵的目的 --- p.43 / Chapter 第三節 --- 人性與激勵 --- p.45 / Chapter 第四章 --- 激勵之途徑與方法 / Chapter 第一節 --- 他勵 --- p.51 / Chapter 第二節 --- 自勵 --- p.57 / Chapter 第三節 --- 激勵的態度─執中用權 --- p.70 / Chapter 第五章 --- 從人性論激勵論看孟子的管理哲學 / Chapter 第一節 --- 管理哲學的涵義 --- p.78 / Chapter 第二節 --- 管理的目的 --- p.79 / Chapter 第三節 --- 管理之本─德治 --- p.82 / Chapter 第四節 --- 總結 --- p.88 / Chapter 第六章 --- 孟子的管理哲學對香港中學的學校行政的意義 / Chapter 第一節 --- 引言 --- p.91 / Chapter 第二節 --- 組織 --- p.91 / Chapter 第三節 --- 管理 --- p.96 / Chapter 第四節 --- 環境 --- p.104 / Chapter 第七章 --- 總結 --- p.109 / 參政書目 --- p.112 / 附圖 / Chapter 圖一 --- 人類激勵的一般模式 --- p.41 / Chapter 圖二 --- 需求理論學版之理論內容比較 --- p.49 / Chapter 圖三 --- 香港資助中學行政組織 --- p.93 / Chapter 圖四 --- 中學教師參與決策程度說明 --- p.103

Wearable physical activity (PA) monitors have been adopted by millions of people across the United States, but we do not fully understand who wears them and why. The devices have been promoted as a tool that motivates users by collecting data on their daily activities and delivering tailored feedback based on predetermined goals. The purpose of this dissertation was twofold: 1) To describe users of activity monitors detailing how and why they used this technology, and 2) To explore the motivational profile of activity monitor users and assess how it is related to PA. This dissertation consists of a series of two separate but related studies. The first study recruited over 2000 activity monitor users from across the United States to complete a web-based survey describing why they used this technology and how they interacted with their device. This study showed significant differences in sociodemographic and use characteristics between current and former users and between women and men. Activity monitors were perceived by users as influential on their PA behavior and differences in use patterns between subgroups warranted further exploration of associations between user characteristics, motivation to exercise, and PA. The second study investigated the motivation and PA of activity monitor users. While activity monitors have been widely promoted as a means to motivate users to be more active, the motivational profile of users has never been assessed. While all motivational regulations were significantly correlated with PA, the strongest associations were with the more self-determined motives (integrated, identified and intrinsic respectively). Five motivational profiles emerged from the cluster analysis: ‘High Amotivation’ (n=30), ‘Autonomous with High Introjected’ (n=101), ‘Low Overall Motivation’ (n=61), ‘High Controlled Motivation (n=47), and ‘Autonomous with Low Introjected’ (n=81). Profiles characterized by more autonomous regulations had higher levels of PA. These studies offer new insights on who activity monitor users are, why they decide to use this technology, and how they interact with their devices. While the second study identified an association between motivational profiles and PA, further longitudinal research is needed to assess whether use of an activity monitor impacts the direction and/or magnitude of this relationship.

Motivation has been defined as a set of processes which enables organisms to overcome obstacles by energizing behavior in the pursuit of a goal. There are several important observations about motivated behavior which provide insight into the neural mechanisms underlying goal-directed motivation. First, motivation serves two important functions, as it both energizes behavior and also directs it toward or away from specific stimuli. Many of the behavioral tasks used to assay motivation in laboratory rodents do not specifically aim to measure these two distinct aspects of motivation. A second feature of goal-directed motivation is that it is sensitive to both costs and benefits of a given situation, enabling animals to make cost-benefit decisions. Again, many of the behavioral tasks which study cost-benefit decision making do not specifically aim to independently measure the impact of cost manipulations and benefit manipulations in an isolated manner. Here, I first develop behavioral measures which aim to specifically dissociate activational and directional effects of motivation. By characterizing a novel behavioral measure known as a Progressive Hold Down (Ph.D.) task, and using this task in parallel with a more traditionally used Progressive Ratio (PR) task, I show that methamphetamine robustly enhances activational effects of motivation, leading to increased response rates in both the Ph.D. and PR task, but mice are not more goal-directed in the Ph.D. task. I next develop and characterize two novel behavioral assays which are specifically used to examine effort and value contributions to cost-benefit decision making. The Concurrent Effort Choice (CEC) task measures how changes in effort levels impact decision making whereas the Concurrent Value Choice (CVC) task measure how changes in reward value impact decision making. Using these novel assays to examine specific processes important for goal-directed motivation, I carefully examine the role of manipulation of the Dopamine D2 receptor (D2R) in a mouse model which over-expresses the D2R within the striatum (D2R-OE), and the role of pharmacological manipulation of the Serotonin 2C receptor (5-HT2CR) with the functionally selective ligand SB242084. Whereas D2R-OE specifically impacts sensitivity to changes in effort levels which decrease overall levels of goal-directed motivation, selective modulation of the 5-HT2CR via treatment with SB242084 increases response vigor through enhanced dopamine release in the dorsomedial striatum, but this increase in response vigor does not alter sensitivity to effort or value changes when working for rewards. Together, these studies demonstrate the benefits of developing a more nuanced understanding of how specific manipulations impact motivated behavior by examining the specific underlying processes being altered.

This study was designed to investigate decision-making as it relates to message appraisal, and determine what effect, if any, identification with the message source has on those appraisals. For the purpose of study, message appraisal was operationalized as message strength ratings. Furthermore, the study investigated how the political ideology of message receivers and the perceived partisanship of message senders might influence identification, and message appraisal by extension. The study used the theory of motivated reasoning to explain the role of identification in the process of message appraisal. The results indicate that there is a relationship between identification and message strength ratings, which suggests identification can produce motivated reasoning. However, the study did not show support for an interaction effect between the political ideology of participants, the perceived partisanship of message senders, and identification when considering message strength ratings.