The aim of this study is to explore how children experience their social community in the preschool and see how norms and views in the preschool environment could be related to a structural perspective on bullying. I have interviewed six children, five or six years old, about norms, relationships, inclusion, exclusion, friendship and violations in the preschool. There have been a total of six interviews with two to three children in each interview. During the first two interviews I read two children’s books and the discussed them with the children. The third interview included questions about relationships and violations based on the books and the children’s earlier answers. I have analyzed the interviews to see how the children’s answers correspond to research about norms, relationships, inclusion, exclusion, friendship and violations in the preschool and bullying from a structural perspective. The research states that gender and age are the two main reasons for exclusion in the preschool, and that age can be a social resource which can be used to exercise power over younger children. The results show that the children answers correspond quite well with what the research tells us. They emphasize on the importance of being nice, and they react strongly towards violence and psychological violations. They show awareness of gender norms and equality, but this is not always the case when it comes to age differences. My conclusion from this study is that there is a gap between what the research states about age in the preschool and how age and age norms are actually being addressed in the preschool, on an organizational, group and individual level. The children’s views on age norms in the preschool could be a sign that violations between children of different age groups could be accepted within preschools, which could in turn be a starting point for bullying.

Abstract   In 2005 the United Nations (UN) unanimously agreed setting up a framework for the responsibility to protect (R2P) populations facing mass death and large scale atrocities consisting of three pillars. This responsibility was primarily for states to protect their own population (pillar 1). However, the second pillar of R2P mentions the responsibility for outside actors to engage protecting populations if their home government fails to ensure this protection. This study is about the emergence of R2P and why it has failed to protect the population in the ongoing Syrian intra-state war. Applied to the case of the Syrian conflict is Amitav Acharya’s (2013) model of norm circulation which will serve as the analytical framework for this research. Furthermore, the implementation of R2P is hampered when a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decides to veto a resolution. This study suggests that when the UNSC is unable to act to protect populations at risk of mass death, a regional organization should have the authority to respond with necessary actions, even though that action would violate the sovereignty of the third state (see Williams et. al, 2012). As to date, the emerging norm of R2P still needs further diffusion in order to reach global acceptance. This research search to continue the development of the understanding of R2P and the emergence of global norms.   Keywords: R2P, Syria, emerging norms, the United Nations

In this thesis I argue that our philosophical account of the nature and norms of belief should both inform and be informed by our scientific understanding of monothematic delusions. In Chapter 1, I examine and criticise standard attempts to answer the question “What is delusion?” In particular, I claim that such attempts are misguided because they misunderstand the kind of term that “delusion” is. In Chapter 2, I look at the nature of explanation in psychology and apply it to delusions. In particular I look at the constraints on a successful explanation of a person’s psychological state in terms of brain damage or dysfunction. I then propose, in Chapter 3, a way of understanding how delusions of misidentification arise. In particular, I criticise the standard view that they are formed via inference (in the relevant sense of “inference”) on the basis of anomalous experience. I draw on empirical work on object and individual tracking, on dreams, and on the Frégoli delusion, and argue that inference is not only un-necessary, but is actually often bypassed in humans, for judgments of identification. The result is a non-inferential file-retrieval view. On certain views of belief, this would mean that the Capgras delusion lacks the right functional role to count as a genuine belief. In Chapter 4, I criticise such views of belief, and put forward a “downstream only” view. Roughly, something is a case of believing if and only if it disposes people to act in certain ways. I defend such a view against two serious and influential objections. In Chapter 5, I ask whether this means that the Capgras delusion can therefore safely be called a belief. I argue that there is a risk – even if one accepts the downstream only view of belief – that it still won’t count as a belief, as a result of the subject’s “incoherence” or “agentive inertia.” However, I then distinguish egocentric from encyclopaedic doxastic states. This opens the possibility that one can truly say that the subject has the egocentric belief, “This man is not my father”, but may fail to have the encyclopaedic belief, “My father has been replaced by an impostor”. It also demonstrates that the question “Are delusions beliefs?” has been approached in an unhelpful way by the main participants in the debate. This thesis is important because it shows the extent to which real-world phenomena can inform and be informed by central philosophical notions like belief. More precisely, it shows that the most plausible way of accounting for monothematic delusions involves abandoning both a strong normativism, and a discrete representationalism, about belief.

The purpose of this paper is to test the ability of Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior and Shapero's model of the entrepreneurial event to predict entrepreneurial intent (EI) among Swedish university students. A conceptual framework was developed where attitude towards entrepreneurial behavior was constituted by perceived self-efficacy, perceived social norms, and independence and serves as a mediator for the EI.A comparison between three focus groups composed of non-business students, business students and participants from the 'Enterprising & Business Development' (EBD) program at Linnaeus University was undertaken. The results show all three studied variables are significant determinants of EI, which in turn is a precursor of the attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour. However, evidence suggests a negative relationship between the perceived social norms and the EI among EBD and business students.This paper contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by testing how certain factors affect the EI of university students. Its originality arises from combining the two most significant models for EI and applying them to three groups with different prerequisites. Although the study is subject to some limitations, they can be overcome by further studies.

The practice of cultural planning proceeds largely in the absence of discussion regarding its purpose, norms and goals, either in academic literature or among its practitioners. This paper seeks to uncover the norms and goals of cultural planning, as understood by cultural planners working in Austin, TX, through a series of interviews with these individuals. Interviews also brought to light cultural planners’ understandings of the function of art in communities. Ultimately, little connection was found between cultural planners’ understandings of the function of art in communities and the norms and goals of cultural planning. It is argued herein that these two conversations must be closely linked and that cultural planner’s understandings of what art can and should do in communities must form the basis for the goals and norms of cultural planning practice. / text

Although the non-profit sector is now the third largest sector of the global economy, relatively little is known about the psychological processes that underlie decisions to donate to charity. Across five experiments, the present research explores two factors that are thought to underlie giving: social norms and personal values. Study 1 elicits personal values and manipulates descriptive social norm information and finds that both of these factors influence giving behavior. Study 2 replicates these findings with injunctive norms in place of descriptive norms. Study 3 manipulates both descriptive and injunctive social norms within a single study and finds that while both have an influence on giving, they do not interact in any meaningful way with each other. Study 4 manipulates descriptive and injunctive norm information in the context of a realistic online donation decision and finds that both injunctive norms influence rates of giving, but that descriptive norm information alone influences willingness to give. Study 5 experimentally manipulates the costs and benefits associated with viewing social information and finds that while participants are willing to view social information when there are no associated costs, willingness to view information decreases dramatically under even very small costs. We conclude in Chapter 6 by discussing the implications of these findings and potential directions for future research.

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Previous theory-driven research studies in the activity area examining descriptive norms (e.g., Priebe & Spink, 2011, 2012) have demonstrated that these perceptions about others’ behaviour can influence individual behaviour. Although the results of these studies are informative, many questions still remain. The studies comprising this thesis add to the extant literature by improving upon methodological limitations of past work, extending the examination of the effects of norms on activity to include both injunctive norms (i.e., perceptions about others’ approval) and combined norms (aligned and misaligned), examining other activity-related cognitions (self-efficacy) and behaviour (sedentary), as well as examining characteristics of the norm reference group. Three independent experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 examined the effects of a descriptive norm message on muscular endurance and task self-efficacy in Pilates participants. Results revealed greater endurance and higher task self-efficacy among participants in the descriptive norm information condition as compared to control group participants. Study 2 compared four information conditions: injunctive, aligned descriptive and injunctive, misaligned descriptive and injunctive, and control with respect to their influence on muscular endurance and efficacy in a student population. Individuals receiving the aligned norms had the longest post-condition muscular endurance and greater task efficacy than all other conditions. No differences emerged between the injunctive, misaligned, and control conditions. Study 3, an online experimental field study, examined the effects of descriptive norms on both light activity and sedentary behaviour in an office setting. Study 3 also examined the effects of norms when the reference group differed in personal or contextual similarity. No differences emerged between participants receiving information about groups that varied in similarity. However, after receiving an email with descriptive norm information about co-workers’ behaviour, light activity increased and sitting behaviour decreased within the office setting across all conditions. Results from these three studies suggest the following: (1) aligned norms seem to be more effective than misaligned, (2) standalone injunctive norms might not be salient in the activity setting, (3) descriptive norms can impact objective activity behaviour, self-report light activity and sedentary behaviour, and (4) descriptive norms also may inform related cognitive constructs such as task self-efficacy.

In the diachronic studies of Afrikaans in the past, the focus used to be on the origin and early development of Afrikaans from Dutch. During the twentieth century, the philological school, with a tradition of researching all Cape-Dutch coloured texts in detail, was established through the work of J. du P. Scholtz and his students. Through their analyses, they estimated the stabilisation of Afrikaans as early as the end of the eighteenth century (for example Raidt, 1991:145; Ponelis, 1994:229). In the past few decades, however, this estimation has begun to receive criticism from other scholars, including Roberge (1994:159) and Deumert (2004:20). With the help of a corpus, Deumert (2004) has shown that there is substantial variation in Afrikaans letters as late as the early twentieth century, and this study expands on her work by researching the variation in published writing. This is done by focusing on verbs, as there is significant change from the Dutch verbal system to the Afrikaans verbal system. This study uses corpus linguistic research methods, and researches Dutch-Afrikaans variation in verbs in published Afrikaans texts, compiled in three corpora. The main corpus was compiled from all the Afrikaans writings of Totius (J.D. du Toit) in the publication Het Kerkblad from 1916 to 1922. Two control corpora are also used: the first was compiled from excerpts from published Afrikaans books for the same period, and the second was compiled from excerpts from Afrikaans periodicals for the same period. In order to compensate for the shortcomings of corpus data alone, normative works on Afrikaans from the relevant period are also taken into account, and there is shown which recommendations these works made about the relevant constructions, and how the corpus data correlates with these recommendations. Variation in six verbal constructions are analysed in this study: 1. End consonant t/n (for example gaat/gaan): the old (more Dutch) word forms are scarcely used in the corpora, while the modern Afrikaans word forms are almost fully established. 2. End consonant g (for example seg/sê): the old word forms are also scarcely used in the corpora, while the modern word forms take the lead. 3. Stem vowel (for example breng/bring): the old word forms are more frequent at the beginning of the period, followed by some uncertainty, with the modern word forms taking over by the end of the period. 4. Preterite (specifically had/gehad and werd/geword): there is great instability throughout, worsened by a distinction in use between main verbs and auxiliary verbs made by some authors. 5. Past participle (for example gedaan/gedoen): there is significant instability at the beginning of the period, but the modern word forms are used more frequently by the end of the period. 6. Perfect tense auxiliary verb (is/het): the old form is still used in the corpora, but the modern form is more frequent from the beginning, and becomes even more frequent towards the end. This data shows that there was still significant variation in Afrikaans under Dutch influence as late as the early twentieth century, and the correlation between the different corpora implies that the written language might have been much closer to the spoken language than had been previously assumed. It is further confirmed by the amount of attention this variation gets in the normative works from that period. / Thesis (M.A. (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

This study proposed that new insights about attention, including its phenomenon and pathology, would be provided by combining perspectives of the neurobiological discourse about attention with analyses of artworks that exploit the constraints of the attentional system. To advance the central argument that art offers a training ground for the attentional system, a wide range of contemporary art was analysed in light of specific tasks invoked. The kinds of cognitive tasks these works initiate with respect to the attentional system have been particularly critical to this research. Attention was explored within the context of transdisciplinary art practices, varied circumstances of viewing, new neuroscientific findings, and new approaches towards learning. Research for this dissertation required practical investigations in a gallery setting, and this original work was contextualised and correlated with pertinent neuroscientific approaches. It was also concluded that art can enhance public awareness of attention disorders and assist the public in discriminating between medical and social factors through questioning how norms of behaviour are defined and measured. This territory was examined through the comparative analysis of several diagnostic tests for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), through the adaptation of a methodology from economics involving patent citation in order to show market incentives, and through examples of data visualisation. The construction of an installation and collaborative animation allowed participants to experience first-hand the constraints on the attentional system, provoking awareness of our own “normal” physiological limitations. The embodied knowledge of images, emotion, and social context that are deeply embedded in art practices appeared to be capable of supplementing neuroscience’s understanding of attention and its disorders.