Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att belysa chefens roll i förhållande till personalomsättning inom en säljande organisation, utifrån dimensioner av person-environment fit och role stress.   Metod: Utifrån studiens syfte har en kvalitativ metod använts. Data har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. Materialet har analyserats och redovisats med hjälp av well-grounded theory.   Resultat & slutsats: Denna studie visar på chefers förståelse för vikten av att personer de anställer ska passa in i yrket och organisationen. De rekryterar främst efter personlighet och möjlighet att passa in i gruppen. Chefernas synsätt skiljer sig gällande överbelastning och stress. Det är svårt med gränsdragningen mellan privatliv och yrkesroll.   Förslag till fortsatt forskning: En intressant utgångspunkt för framtida forskning kan vara att jämföra om chefers uppfattning av de dimensioner vi undersökt överensstämmer med hur de anställda upplever dem.   Uppsatsens bidrag: Studien belyser dimensioner som påvisats ha samband med personalomsättning. Vi bidrar med chefens roll utifrån dessa, till skillnad från tidigare forskning som utgått från anställdas perspektiv.   Nyckelord: Personalomsättning, person-job fit, person-organization fit, role overload. / Aim: The aim of this study is to highlight the manager’s role related to turnover within a selling organization, by dimensions of person-environment fit and role stress.   Method: A qualitative method has been used, based on the aim of this study. Data has been collected through semi structured interviews. The empirical data has been analyzed and presented using the well-grounded theory.   Result & Conclusions: This study shows the managers understanding of the importance to hire people which fit both the job and the organization. They mainly hire people based on their personality and how they fit within the group. However, their vision is different regarding the role overload and stress. Managers have a hard time to draw a line between the private life and work.   Suggestions for future research: An interesting starting-point for future research could be to compare if the managers perception of our dimensions is consistent with the perceptions of the employees.   Contribution of the thesis: This study highlights dimensions, which have a significant relation to employee turnover. Our contribution is the manager’s perspective of these dimensions, compared to prior research, which has the employee’s perspective.   Key words: Employee turnover, person-job fit, person-organization fit, role overload.

Thesis advisor: Lisa F. Barrett / Thesis advisor: Hiram Brownell / Human voice carries precious information about a person. From a brief vocalization to a spoken sentence, listeners rapidly form perceptual judgments of transient affective states such as happiness, as well as perceptual judgments of the more stable social traits such as trustworthiness. In social interactions, sometimes it is not just what we say – but how we say it – that matters. This dissertation sought to better understand how affective properties in voice influence memory and how they subserve social perception. To these ends, I investigated the effect of affective prosody on memory for speech by manipulating both prosody valence and semantic valence, I explored the fundamental dimensions of social perception from voice, and I discussed the relationship of those social dimensions to affective dimensions of voice. In the first chapter, I examined how prosody valence influences memory for speech that varied in semantic valence. Participants listened to narratives spoken in neutral, positive, and negative prosody and recalled as much as they could of the narrative content. Importantly, the arousal level of the affective prosody was controlled across the different prosody valence conditions. Results showed that prosody valence influenced memory for speech content and the effect depended on the relationship between prosody valence and semantic valence. Specifically, congruence between prosody and semantic valence influenced memory. When people were listening to neutral content, affective prosody (either positive or negative) impaired memory. When listening to positive or negative content, incongruent prosody led to better recall. The present research shows that it is not just what you say, but also how you say it that will influence what people remember of your message. In the second chapter, I explored the fundamental dimensions of social perception from voices compared to faces, using a data-driven approach. Participants were encouraged to freely write down anything that came to mind about the voice they heard or the face they saw. Descriptors were classified into categories and the most frequently occurred social trait categories were selected. A separate group of participants rated the voices and faces on the selected social traits. Principal component analyses revealed that female voices were evaluated mostly on three dimensions: attractiveness, trustworthiness, and dominance; whereas male voices were evaluated mostly on two dimensions: social engagement and trustworthiness. For social evaluation of faces, a similar two-dimensional structure of social engagement and trustworthiness was found for both genders. The gender difference in social perception of voice is discussed with respect to gender stereotypes and the role voice pitch played in perceived attractiveness and dominance. This study indicates that both modality (voice vs. face) and gender impact the fundamental dimensions of social perception. Overall, the findings of this dissertation indicate that the affective quality in our voice not only influence how our speech will be remembered but also relate to how we are being socially perceived by others. It would be wise to pay more attention to our tone of voice if we want to make our speech memorable and leave a good impression. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.

The person of the counsellor, or what is sometimes referred to as the counsellor�s self, is the focus of this thesis. How the counsellor�s self is described and manifested during therapy constitute the two main research questions. Various perspectives are presented from psychoanalysis, behaviour therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, person centered therapy and systems therapy. While issues pertaining to the counsellor�s self have been explored predominately by systems therapists, this study extends previous research by involving interviews with counsellors from a range of orientations. The study is conducted within an interpretative research paradigm, and data are collected and interpreted according to a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews with 16 counsellors, from a range of theoretical orientations, constitute the primary method of data collection. Other data sources include a short questionnaire sent to the same counsellors, the researcher�s reflective journal as well as recorded meetings between a peer debriefer and the researcher. Study participants describe the counsellor�s self as a multifaceted, positive and integrated entity. The counsellor�s self includes participant�s professional knowledge and skills as well as their beliefs, values, thoughts, feelings, personal style and an unknown aspect of self that some participants referred to as their unconscious. While somewhat influenced by past relationships and the client, the counsellor�s self is primarily autonomous and defined by the individual counsellor. Although the counsellor�s self has the capacity to change over time, in different environments and with different clients, the self also includes notions of stability and consistency. The counsellor�s self is involved in therapy as an inevitable presence, a deliberate tool and a stance. Participants highlighted the importance of self-awareness and various professional and personal constraints on the involvement of self. A central function of the self in therapy is in the therapeutic alliance. The study has implications for the training and supervision of counsellors and future psychotherapeutic research.

The current state of the personal ontology debate can be summarized as a disagreement between two roughly distinct camps. First, there are those philosophers who argue that personal identity consists of psychological continuity. According to the psychological continuity theorist, ones identity over time is traced by following a series of memories, beliefs, desires, or intentions. Opposed to psychological continuity theories are those who argue that personal identity consists of biological continuity. So-called animalists suggest that our identity corresponds to that of a human organism, a member of the species Homo Sapiens. As long as the event of the organisms life continues, there too do we persist, according to the animalist. It is my contention that both views suffer difficulties found when exploring their metaphysical commitments and responses to certain widely-discussed thought experiments. In this thesis, I aim to resurrect the ancient view of hylomorphism, by which I mean the view espoused by Aristotle and adapted by St. Thomas Aquinas that posits matter and form as the basic constituents of every material object. As a theory of personal ontology, I argue that hylomorphism has the resources to provide a formidable challenge to the two main views. I will offer hylomorphic responses to general problems faced by accounts of personal identity such as intransitivity, circularity, fission, and composition, and show how its answers are an improvement over those given by psychological continuity theory and animalism.

The current state of the personal ontology debate can be summarized as a disagreement between two roughly distinct camps. First, there are those philosophers who argue that personal identity consists of psychological continuity. According to the psychological continuity theorist, ones identity over time is traced by following a series of memories, beliefs, desires, or intentions. Opposed to psychological continuity theories are those who argue that personal identity consists of biological continuity. So-called animalists suggest that our identity corresponds to that of a human organism, a member of the species Homo Sapiens. As long as the event of the organisms life continues, there too do we persist, according to the animalist. It is my contention that both views suffer difficulties found when exploring their metaphysical commitments and responses to certain widely-discussed thought experiments. In this thesis, I aim to resurrect the ancient view of hylomorphism, by which I mean the view espoused by Aristotle and adapted by St. Thomas Aquinas that posits matter and form as the basic constituents of every material object. As a theory of personal ontology, I argue that hylomorphism has the resources to provide a formidable challenge to the two main views. I will offer hylomorphic responses to general problems faced by accounts of personal identity such as intransitivity, circularity, fission, and composition, and show how its answers are an improvement over those given by psychological continuity theory and animalism.

Zugl. geringfügig überarb. Fassung von: München, Univ., Diss., 2007

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 465-484). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 465-484). Also available on the Internet.

Encountering stressors, both chronic and acute, is ubiquitous to the human experience. From a layperson perspective, it should not be difficult to perceive whether someone is experiencing emotional stress: People rely on intuition to modify their interpersonal behavior in order to ensure smooth social interactions. From a research perspective, determining whether someone is experiencing an emotion is more complex. The majority of available evidence indicates that dimensions of emotional responding - physiological, psychological, and behavioral - are largely uncorrelated, which suggests potential moderators. This study addressed four specific aims: How are self-report (SR) and physiological experiences of stress associated? How well do people agree in their perceptions of others' stress? What dimensions of stress - psychological or physiological, or both - do people perceive when evaluating others' psychological states? What is the process by which people intuit others' stress? Ninety participants (targets, n = 31 men) provided SR tension, autonomic physiology, and Interleukin-6 (IL-6) data in the context of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Twenty observers across four conditions (n = 5 - 6 per condition) accessed audio (30 s), video (30 s), or audio-video (~13 min and 30 s) variations of recordings made during the TSSTs, and research assistants coded target facial behavior. Among targets endorsing more depression symptoms, SR tension and IL- 6 were inversely correlated, and SR tension and RSA were positively correlated. Among targets endorsing less depression symptoms, SR tension and physiology were uncorrelated. Observers who accessed audio data (3 conditions) evidenced greater agreement than those who viewed silent video. Across all conditions, observer ratings of target (ORT) tension were consistent with SR tension. ORT tension from the ~13 min audio-video condition predicted SR tension 90 min post-TSST after accounting for SR tension assessed immediately post-TSST. Associations among ORT tension and target physiology were variable: ORT from the 30 s audio-only condition (30A) predicted increases in IL-6, ORT from the ~13 min of audio-video condition (13AV) correlated positively with target IL-6 after accounting for SR tension, and ORT from the 30 s audio- video condition (30AV) predicted vagal withdrawal. Visually-observable target behaviors were not correlated with ORT tension, SR tension, or target physiology.

Given the increasing predominance of work teams within organisations, this study aimed to investigate the role that perceptions of person-team fit has in the recruitment process, in addition to other forms of person-environment fit. An experimental design was followed which manipulated the amount of team information made available to participants. It was hypothesised that participants who received more information would exhibit higher perceptions of person-team fit. Results supported this prediction with levels of person-team fit being successfully manipulated. Results also showed significant correlations between person-team fit and organisational attraction which is important in the early stages of recruitment. This study was conducted remotely over the internet with clickstream data associated with this medium being collected. It was hypothesised that viewing order and times may be related to dependent variables. No support for this prediction was found, however it did identify a group of participants that appeared not to engage in the task, which has implications for future research carried out online.