Age stereotypes are the different and often negative expectations and attitudes held by individuals about a given age group. Not only can age stereotyping lead to the unequal treatment of older people through differences in affective (age prejudice) and behavioural responses (age discrimination) toward them, but older people's own reactions to these stereotypes can have negative and damaging consequences. This thesis addresses the extent to which older adults' responses to negative age stereotypes impact on their performance on tests, and their health and well-being, further increasing age-based inequalities. Chapters 1 to 4, the introduction and theoretical chapters, introduce the thesis and the background for the subsequent studies. Areas reviewed include that of age stereotyping, how this may reflect negatively upon older adults' social identities, 'stereotype threat' as a specific response to this and evidence that perceiving ageism is associated with worse health and well-being in later life. Having identified research gaps, Chapter 5 then presents Study 1 (N = 105) which addresses the question of whether people are conscious of being judged negatively because of their age, what age stereotypes they are most conscious of and in what settings they believe they are applied. Findings confirmed that adults (particularly those aged 18-69) have a strong awareness of age-based judgement and that adults aged 60+ in particular are concerned about negative stereotypes of their competencies in a range of domains. Chapters 6 to 8 present studies 2, 3 and 4 which aimed to extend 'stereotype threat' research (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Stereotype threat theory posits that stigmatised individuals may fear confirming negative stereotypes about their social group. This negative experience ironically disrupts performance making it more likely that they act in line with negative stereotypes. Study 2, a meta-analysis including 82 effect sizes (N = 3882) split into multiple analyses, confirmed that age stereotypes have the potential to negatively impact older adults' memory and cognitive performance through age-based stereotype threat (ABST). Building on the findings from the meta-analysis, Study 3 experimentally tested whether uncertainty surrounding stereotype-based judgement explains why more subtle stereotype-based cues to stereotype threat have a greater impact on performance than fact-based cues, as was found in Study 2. Further, Study 4 examined whether the presence of a young observer or the giving of help to older participants might cue ABST and negatively impact maths performance. Although the hypotheses derived from stereotype threat theory were not supported by studies 3 and 4, these studies contribute to the stereotype threat literature by examining the potential everyday cues to ABST and the mechanisms through which it occurs. Finally, Chapter 9 presents Study 5 which uses survey data to examine different reactions-threat or challenge responses-to perceived ageism and whether these responses are associated with better or worse subjective health and well-being. Findings suggest that challenge responses may be a more adaptive reaction to ageism, with potential benefits for health and well-being in later life. Overall, the thesis highlights the damaging effects of older adults' threat responses to negative attitudes to ageing. Both negative societal attitudes and the way older people respond to and cope with negative stereotyping need to be addressed.

Gang membership is a global phenomenon and a problem affecting a multitude of official and unofficial agencies, often reported by the media and causing overwhelming financial strain, as well as increasing fear of crime in communities. Whilst research on gangs has enjoyed popularity for almost a century now, this was mostly based on a criminological perspective, which did not provide a holistic picture for practitioners. Specifically, little is known about the psychology of gang membership, as such research is still in its infancy. Moreover, calls for understanding the social psychological motives for gang membership - such as gang members' perceptions of group processes, and how these influence individuals - have been present for the last 50 years but development in the area has been limited. The aim of this thesis was to address some of this crucial gap in our knowledge of gang membership, to help enrich theoretical understanding, as well as prevention and rehabilitation strategies, so that these can be appropriately developed. In order for this to happen, it is key to understand which group processes lie behind gang membership based on gang members' subjective experiences, in different types of gang members, and how these relate to members' decisions to join and remain with a gang. The core assumption of gangs - that they are groups - has been largely neglected by research. The studies in this thesis provide the first holistic picture of the relevance of group processes in gang membership. The first, qualitative study, identified that group processes regularly manifesting in groups do, indeed, also manifest in gangs. It was also found that such group processes are understood by gang members in a manner specific to them. Further, the perceived group processes manifested differently at different stages of membership - when joining a gang and when remaining in a gang. The large quantitative studies that follow revealed that gangs differ from non-gang delinquent groups, and that different types of gang members differ in their perception of how group processes manifest. It was found that different types of groups and gangs were characterised by a specific set of perceived group processes. Further, these group process clusters differed, based on the stage of an individual's membership. This thesis therefore uncovered that the area of social cognition based on group processes is important. The main conclusions drawn from the studies presented in this PhD are: 1) Group processes manifest in gangs and are perceived in a specific manner. 2) The perception of group processes differ in gangs and other delinquent groups, and between different types of gang members. 3) There are specific clusters of perceived group processes which characterise specific types of groups and at different stages of membership - group processes should not be dealt with in isolation. 4) The findings show that how gang members perceive group processes should be a key consideration in future research and any intervention strategies designed for gang members.

There are three main theories of shame and guilt, each of which ascribe differing levels of social content to each emotion: the internal/external view, for example, posits that guilt is more internally located than shame, the act/person views posits the opposite, while the reciprocal/hierarchical view posits that these two emotions are both inherently social. A difficult challenge for these theories is that shame and guilt are both often felt in response to individual self-control failure. Six studies examined the relationship between self-report measures of shame and guilt, and self-control failure (e.g., studying, dieting, and self-nominated goal failure), testing the assumptions of the three aforementioned theoretical distinctions. Overall, the internal/external theory was supported: shame was shown to be less internalised than guilt, which was shown to be characterised by two independent forms of internalised concerns. Remarkably, one of these internalised forms of guilt was characterised by relational concerns: participants, for example, would "feel betrayed" or "cheated" if they failed at their dieting (or other self-selected dilemmas). This hinted at the possibility of a social, albeit distal, form of guilt, that perhaps reflected an internalisation of social relationships. To address this latter idea more directly, three studies examined the social nature of guilt (controlling for shame) in more objectively social contexts, involving harm related concerns. In support of the reciprocal/hierarchical theory, guilt was shown to be associated with interpersonal concerns while shame, consistent with the earlier six studies, was shown to be less internalised and associated with concerns relating to negative social comparisons. In addition to the internal/external and reciprocal/hierarchical theories, some support was also found for the act/person theory. A nested model of shame and guilt was proposed to integrate these apparently disparate theories of shame and guilt: specifically, the internal/external theory was suggested to be a good proximal explanation of shame and guilt in self-control; the act/person theory was suggested to be a good explanation for the outcomes of shame and guilt; and the reciprocal/hierarchical theory was suggested to be a good ultimate explanation of shame and guilt overall.

This thesis focuses on the communication of unpleasant information in six experimental studies. Specifically, the experimental studies investigate how withholding and/or disclosing unpleasant information is appraised by the communicator in three various ways (degree of severity, concern for one's self-image and concern for one's social-image in the eyes of others), how these appraisals relate to three core feelings (felt rejection, felt inferiority and felt shame), and how these explain two main motivations (wanting to distance oneself from the other, wanting to repair the social bond with the other) across various social bonds (both private and professional). In the two first studies it was found that disclosing unpleasant information caused the communicator to report significantly less distress (lower levels of appraisals, feelings and motivations) compared to when the communicator withheld the unpleasant information. In studies three to six, it was found that, when communicators disclosed the unpleasant information, the prototypical communication strategy of being person-centred caused the communicator to feel significantly less distress (lower levels of appraisals, feelings and responses) than if two other prototypical ways of communicating were used (the fully direct strategy and the fully indirect strategy). In all six studies, I found that the motivation of wanting to distance oneself from the other was explained by a "concern for one's social-image → felt rejection" pathway, while the motivation to repair the social bond with the other was explained by a "concern for one's self-image → felt shame" pathway. The thesis argues the importance of disclosing the unpleasant information and of disclosing it in a person-centred way.

Deliberate firesetting has huge emotional, social, and economic impact. Traditionally, firesetting research has focussed on apprehended populations in prisons or secure psychiatric settings. In contrast, the literature relating to un-apprehended populations is extremely scarce; there has only been one study assessing un-apprehended firesetters living in the UK (Gannon & Barrowcliffe, 2012). The purpose of this thesis is to fill the research gap, and evaluate the prevalence and psychological characteristics of un-apprehended deliberate firesetters living in the UK. Five studies were conducted: Study 1 examined the prevalence and characteristics of un-apprehended deliberate firesetters living in a high firesetting prevalent community in Kent. Study 2 specifically focussed on the psychological characteristics of un-apprehended deliberate firesetters. Studies 1 and 2 identified that firesetting tends to occur in adolescence rather than adulthood. However, the age of participants ranged from 18 to 72 years in Studies 1 and 2 and it was apparent that participants may be unable to fully recollect their adolescent behaviour. Therefore, in order to reduce recollection failures, younger participants (aged 18 to 23) were recruited for Study 3a with the aim of assessing the psychological characteristics of individuals who ignited fires in adolescence. Across Studies 1 to 3a there was an 11.5% to 25% prevalence rate of un-apprehended deliberate firesetters living in the UK and some common psychological characteristics were evident. For example, relative to non-firesetters, un-apprehended deliberate firesetters were male, exhibited higher fire interest, reported experimenting with fire before the age of 10, and having a family history of firesetting. Study 3b compared the offence characteristics and psychological characteristics of un-apprehended firesetters (aged 18 to 23) reporting single firesetting incidences and multiple firesetting incidences. Few notable differences were found, however, relative to single episode firesetters, recidivistic firesetters engaged in more criminal behaviour such as underage drinking and robbery. Studies 1 to 3b utilised self report measures (e.g., questionnaires) to assess psychological characteristics. In contrast, an implicit measure, a lexical decision task, was employed in Study 4 to identify the existence of any of the five implicit theories hypothesised as being relevant to deliberate firesetting (e.g., Dangerous World, Normalisation of Violence, Fire is Fascinating or Exciting, Fire is a Powerful Tool, and Fire is Controllable; Ó Ciardha & Gannon, 2012). Relative to non-firesetters, un-apprehended firesetters were significantly faster at identifying letter strings as words which supported the Dangerous World implicit theory but slower at classifying words supporting the Fire is Fascinating or Exciting implicit theory. This research is the first of its kind to evaluate the psychological characteristics and implicit theories of un-apprehended deliberate firesetters. The new data associated with the studies reported in this thesis offers an insight into the psychological characteristics of un-apprehended firesetters, and details future research directions with the aim of reducing the incidences and devastating consequences of deliberate firesetting.

During the visual processing of sexual content, pupillary responses have been positively associated with observers' sexual orientation. The question of whether this measure also reflects age-specific sexual preferences, however, is rarely considered. This is remarkable given the potential applied value of pupillary responses for directly measuring unhealthy and inappropriate sexual desires in clinical and forensic settings. The experiments in this thesis addressed this question with a series of tasks whereby observers' viewed images of adults and children while their eye movements and pupil responses were recorded. These results were then compared with sexual appeal ratings for these images and self-report questionnaires relating to sexual interests and experiences. The main findings indicate that pupil dilation is a measure of sexual orientation that is particularly robust and consistent for male participants (Chapters 2 to 4). Furthermore, these experiments provide initial evidence that pupil dilation could also be used as an age-specific measure of sexual interest in males and females (Chapters 2 and 3). Additionally, this thesis explored the influence of low-level stimulus artefacts within the scenes on pupillary patterns (Chapter 2). Findings provide further evidence that the pupillary responses obtained in these experiments are driven by the person content in the scenes. These findings are discussed in relation to existing research on eye-tracking and other current measurements of sexual interest.

To date, masculine honour beliefs have been studied in the context of insults, threats and moral transgressions, and almost exclusively linked to aggressive emotions (e.g., anger) and behaviour (e.g., fights, confrontations). Here, it is proposed that masculine honour beliefs can also be associated with subtle, withdrawal-related behaviours, such as reluctance to engaging in feminine tasks and befriend feminine men. Furthermore, based on the theory suggesting that manifest indicators of a culture of masculine honour are expressions of individuals' overactive 'reputation maintenance psychology', I tested whether these subtle behaviours are underpinned by reputation maintenance concerns. Using self-report measures and different cultural samples (UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia), the studies reported here as a whole provided evidence for the proposed associations and the reputation maintenance account. Studies 1a-b and 2a-b established an association between masculine honour ideals and men's self-presentations using masculine traits, as well as disfavourable judgments of effeminate men. Studies 3a-b and 4 focused on examining a voluntary relationship decision (choosing to associate oneself with a target as friends) to make reputational issues more salient and demonstrated that men who endorse higher levels of masculine honour beliefs were more reluctant to being friends with effeminate men. Study 4 further showed that this was due to high honour-endorsing men's concerns that being associated with an effeminate man who is perceived as lacking coalitional value would damage their own reputation among male friends. Focusing on the issue of men's disinterest in domestic roles such as child care, Studies 5a-b and 6 demonstrated a relationship between masculine honour beliefs and men's negative feelings (shame, frustration) about being a primary caregiver to their own children and revealed that this is due to high honour-endorsing men's concerns of losing reputation among their male friends, but not due to their wives' reduced appreciation of them. Taken together, these findings extend our understanding of individuals socialized with masculine honour norms, and also offer more nuanced explanations of men's anti-effeminacy bias and disinterest in communal roles.

This qualitative study explores spiritual issues in relation to coping with loss in situations of chronic and terminal illness. An Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological approach was chosen as the most appropriate methodology for exploring nurses’ lived experience of utilising spirituality as a means of helping patients cope with loss. My prior knowledge both brought me to the subject of study and influenced my interpretation of data. To ensure transparency of method this prior knowledge is outlined in my fore-structure of understanding. A purposive sample of 12 registered nurses, 5 from hospice, 4 from community practice and 3 from a nursing home setting participated in semi-structured interviews. A stepped process of analysis of interview texts produced overarching themes which are illustrated with excerpts that collectively produce a ‘thick enough description’ intended to facilitate understanding of my interpretation of data by those who chose to read this study. Findings were illuminated by drawing on existing theoretical knowledge and concepts. My research diary and notes at interview constituted a research journal that recorded how my knowledge and understanding developed through my reflection on, and reflexive response to interview data. In this way my research journal was used to illuminate the research process. There are an increasing number of studies that consider spirituality in healthcare and how patients’ spiritual needs can be recognised and fulfilled. However, this study provides a different perspective, in particular, examples of how nurses’ development as persons may render them not only a spiritual resource in themselves, but also, contribute to how they become proficient in spiritual care in situations of loss. There were four overriding ways in which the development of this aptitude was evident. Firstly, belief provided them with a means of coming to an understanding of why things happen and so helped them accommodate repeated exposure to patients’ grief. Secondly, being a spiritual carer involved establishing a relationship with patients through ‘connected’ communication. Thirdly, becoming proficient in spiritual care was reflected by an increasing maturity in engaging with patients’ real life and death issues, which was sustained by taking ‘time out’ to reconnect with the self. Finally, belonging to a team whose culture reflected a spirit of reciprocal support was crucial when patient care was emotionally demanding.

Christian teachers of Personal social health education (PSHE) can be conflicted when confronted with sensitive and controversial issues in their professional practice. Concerns include unprofessional conduct, exercising undue influence of their personal values and beliefs on students and being untrue to their faith. These can lead to uncertainty in negotiating areas of conscience and controversy. This life history study situated within the south east of England was used to illuminate the complexities which abound when operating within a wider milieu of perceived marginalisation of the Christian faith through advancing secularisation and liberalism. These tensions are reflected in the curriculum, policy frameworks and legal documents and have implications for teachers’ personal values, Christian faith and professional practice. Semi-structured questionnaires were administered to 13 PSHE teachers and analysed for emergent themes, borrowing language from thematic, ethical and theological analysis. The research illuminates insights into a wider context of faith in professional life. It demonstrates the way teachers are in transition in these conflicts, yet understanding faith as a holistic quality. Findings show that the approaches that teachers adopt to the interpretation and application of faith in personal life influence how faith is integrated professionally. The conflicts confronted, reflect responses of resilience, compliance and rebellion, while some teachers remain unchanged in their positions. Analysis of the data suggested that discreetly integrating faith in practice is a coping strategy some teachers employ. My study suggests that silence can be a price to pay for faith, balancing courageous restraint with conflicting compromises and professional hypocrisy. The research captures teachers in transition located in professional practice obligations, ethical and theological positions as they negotiate and navigate the place of their Christian faith and personal values with students’ rights, freedoms and autonomy.

<p> This dissertation compares the integrated vipassana movement of North America and the school of psychology. The comparison examines both healing practices and ontological paradigms. The integrated vipassan&amacr; movement in the United States is defined by that element of vipassan&amacr; teachings that blends Therav&amacr;da Buddhist practices with American cultural mores as promoted and disseminated by Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Existential-humanistic psychology is here represented by the teachings of Rollo May, James Bugental, and Irvin Yalom. This inquiry seeks to apprehend the nature and efficacy of compassionate and caring present-moment attention in the context of two distinct ontological orientations. The analysis begins with each tradition's description of humanity's most fundamental flaw: dukkha and angst. The examination of these maladies of life is followed by a comparison of these traditions' respective portrayals of health and harmony: Buddhist liberation as compared with existential freedom. This study then examines and compares the way in which these traditions employ the blended healing practices of compassion and present-moment awareness. The findings include the observation that the Therav&amacr;da concept of no-self and the existential notion of the groundlessness of being provide for two distinct kinds of healing: one promotes a grace born of skillfully encouraging a depth of surrender of self, and the other speaks to creating an authentic world for oneself. This dissertation finds that the two traditions offer practices and orientations that may be used complementarily.</p>