Cette thèse a pour objectif de reconstruire à travers les principales œuvres pratico-politiques, de l'"Essai sur le droit naturel" aux "Principes de lu philosophie du droit" - la pensée juridique hégélienne en saisissant sa spécificité à l'égard du contexte historique-culturel de l'époque. au moment où la tradition du droit naturel est affaiblie par l'apparition d'une démarche volontariste et d'une méthode historique. Tout en visant le rapport entre le droit et la philosophie de l'esprit et en soulignant la valeur du droit en tant qu'esprit objectif, cette recherche envisage de mettre en évidence les noyaux conceptuels de la philosophie hégélienne, comme par exemple le lien unissant la rationalité à la positivité, la tension entre la nature et l'histoire ou bien la relation de l'individu par rapport à l'éthicité. Notre recherche s'intéresse en particulier au statut de la raison, au rôle de la volonté et aux caractéristiques de la liberté afin d'en mettre en exergue les retombées aussi bien sur le fondement du droit que sur les droits subjectifs, La thèse a pour but de mettre en valeur la réflexion de Hegcl en tant qu'enquête sur le rapport entre idéalité. empirie et historicité. en se penchant sur la corrélation entre droit et loi et sur la connexion entre celle-ci et les coutumes, les institutions. les pratiques sociales qui appartiennent à une communauté. Ce travail montre la modernité de la pensée hégélienne qui concerne le conflit entre autonomie individuelle et ordre social. la relation intrinsèque entre droit et état, l'identification du droit comme droit positif, ainsi que le lien entre le rôle accordé au juridique et la conception du pouvoir, / The thesis I am presenting is a path that. from the " Essay on Natural Law" and through the main practical- political works. leads to Hegel's "Philosophv of Right". It aims al retracing Hegels juridical thought and understanding its peculiarity with respect to the historical context of the time when the tradition of the natural law was thrown into crisis by the birth of the voluntarist approach and the historical method. The investigation highlights some conceptual points of Hegel', philosophy such as the connection between rationality and positivity, the tension between nature and ,history and the relationship between individuals and ethical life. The aim is achieved by underlining both the relationship between right and the philosophy of spirit and the value of right as an objective spirit. The research underlines, in particular, the stature of reason, the role of will and the characteristics of freedom with respect to the basis of law and the issue regarding subjective rights. Moreover. it gives value to Hegel's reflection as an investigation on the relationship among ideality, empirics and historicity. The research also deals with the relationship between right and law and the link that the latter has with a community's set of customs, institutions and social practices. The thesis gathers the modernity of Hegel's thought starting from the conflict between individual autonomy and social order, from the relation between law and state and the identification of right with positive law, as well as from the connection between the role attributed ta the right and the conception of power,

Magister Scientiae - MSc / This thesis deals with analysis and implementation of a positivity preserving numerical method for a vaccination model for the transmission dynamics of two HIVsubtypesnin a given community. The continuous model is analyzed for stability and equilibria. The qualitative information thus obtained is used while designing numerical method(s). Three numerical methods, namely, Implicit Finite Difference Method (IFDM), Non-standard Finite Difference Method (NSFDM) and the Runge-Kutta method of order four (RK4), are designed and implemented. Extensive numerical simulation are carried out to justify theoretical outcomes

Although a large body of research on financial management in marriages and conflict/divorce as outcomes of financial problems exists, the topic of how individuals describe the communicative processes leading to positive outcomes regarding financial conversations remains understudied. Because financial conversations emerge as a strong “tug-of-war” opponent to the successful partnership couples hope to achieve, this study sought to understand how romantic pairs talk about money in ways that lead to positive results. By using an interpretive approach, this study used online, open-ended survey questions to gather stories to better understand how married couples effectively discuss finances. The participant stories explained how individuals in committed romantic partnerships described successful conversations they had with their partner about money. The data were thematically coded using Spradley’s (1979) taxonomic coding categories. The stories from the 100 participants revealed specific strategies that couples used during positive financial conversations that led to positive relational outcomes. This study first reveals a taxonomy of tactics that individuals use in positive conversations about finances. Second, this study supports and offers new contributions to relational maintenance literature (Canary & Stafford, 1992; Stafford, 2011; Stafford & Canary, 1991; Stafford et al., 2000) regarding how maintenance strategies are used when talking about money. Finally, this study offers a taxonomy of reported relational outcomes for couples who have positive financial conversations. The knowledge gained from this study will be helpful to all couples who wish to positively navigate financial matters.

PROBLEM STATEMENT: The way we interact in our relationships is continuously changing as technology advances. Technology can be used to enhance or destroy relationships depending on how people manage their use within relationships. Human relationships especially romantic ones are essential as they have an impact on a person's emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Most of the research to date has focused on the quantitative measurement of the advantages and disadvantages of technology as well as on the problematic use of smartphones. Little research has been done on the effect of smartphones on romantic relationship maintenance. THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH: The objective of this research was to find out how individuals in romantic relationships were using their smartphones to maintain their relationships. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY: This research followed an interpretivist qualitative approach. Data was collected firstly through a discussion on Twitter under the hashtag #“RomanticMaintenancewithSmartphones”. This was then followed by fourteen in-depth semi-structured interviews which were done with individuals who were in romantic relationships or had been in a romantic relationship less than six months ago. A combination of purposive, snowballing and convenience sampling techniques were used. The affordance theory was used as a theoretical framework for the research and the data was analysed using thematic analysis. FINDINGS: The study identified individual and interactional affordances of smartphones for romantic relationship maintenances. Relationship thinking, breaking away from reality and displaying intimacy and affection where the individual affordances identified in the study. The interactive affordances were showing support and encouragement, planning and organising, openness for conflict management and displaying transparency. Personal values and culture were seen to have an impact on which affordances of smartphones a person utilised. In addition to maintaining the relationship positively, there were also negative outcomes of the actualization of the affordances of smartphones such as unrealistic expectations created on partners and partner abstraction.

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Depressed persons have demonstrated emotion based cognitive biases, specifically surrounding vigilance of negative information and avoidance of positivity. These biases are sometimes operationalized through emotion recognition tasks. However, previous emotion recognition tasks lack in their ability to accurately measure and decompose positivity avoidance with enhanced negativity, while accounting for basic cognitive processes that can drive the results. Therefore, we developed a novel emotion recognition task that examines emotional intensity thresholds, while accounting for general response bias. Linear mixed effects modeling revealed substantial individual differences on all conditions in the task, using both frequentist and Bayesian approaches. Additionally, the findings suggest that those with higher depression scores exhibit a greater cognitive response bias on emotion recognition tasks. Ultimately, this study provides evidence that there is variability in performance on the morphing paradigm, as further researcher is needed to assess the influence general response biases have on emotion recognition performance in depression.

Purpose: Post-COVID-19 workforce issues have pushed terms like resilience and burnout further into the forefront of professional discourse. Strategies aimed to improve resilience, decrease burnout, and increase retention appear to be less effective in the current climate. One potential unexplored contributor is toxic positivity. The purpose of this research is to analyze the concept of toxic positivity and its relevance to nursing. Aims: Research questions; “1) How is toxic positivity used across contexts?; 2) Whose perspectives are represented and whose are not?; 3) What are the dimensions of toxic positivity?; 4) How are the dimensions related?; and 5) How is toxic positivity constructed and used in nursing? Methods: Using Schatzman’s dimensional analysis approach, the first analytic phase, Identification, elucidates relevant conceptual dimensions. The second analytic phase, Logistics, examines relationships among dimensions and contexts. Finally, a dimensional matrix provides conceptualization of toxic positivity for nursing. Results: Preliminary results reveal roots of toxic positivity in the realm of positive psychology with relevant dimensions including unrealistic optimism, inauthentic platitudes, and emotional invalidation and identified contexts including business, psychology, and medicine with no identified contexts in nursing. Primary limitations include limited time to complete this analysis, lack of empirical evidence regarding toxic positivity, and the potential for other unrealized dimensions or contexts. Conclusions: Results suggest nursing perspectives are missing from the literature about toxic positivity. Identifying toxic positivity as a phenomenon in nursing work environments has potential to inform future research and theoretical work related to nursing workforce burnout, retention, and coping strategies.

Previous research has explored the ways in which health, beauty, and gender discourses are used to promote and regulate an ideal of thinness. Further, research has explored how the fat acceptance movement and fitspiration has fought to resist such narratives. However, in the age of hashtag feminism a new group on social media, body positivity, has become the buzzword among celebrities, news conglomerates, and fashion companies. This study draws on interviews with body positive influencers and Instagram posts tagged #bodypositive and #fitspiration to examine the extent to which body positive influencers and users modify understandings of normative feminine body ideals and to what extent they resist and accommodate traditional discourses of gender, health, and beauty. In doing so, I explore which bodies are newly included and who is left out. / Doctor of Philosophy / In that last 5 years body positivity has gone “mainstream”—gaining the attention of women across the United States, circulating across a variety of mass media sources, being viral content on social media, and becoming the buzzword among celebrities, news conglomerates, and fashion companies. But what is body positivity and its impact? This dissertation sought to explore that question as it relates to gender, health, and beauty in the context of social media. Drawing on interviews with 12 body positive influencers and an examination of 210 Instagram posts tagged #bodypositive or #fitspiration I examine the extent to which body positive influencers and users modify stereotypical understandings of femininity, particularly the idea that the healthiest, most attractive, and most feminine body is a thin body. Findings suggest that body positivity is understood by influencers as made up of five aspects: (1) a connection to the fat acceptance movement; (2) an opposition to diet culture; (3) the belief that all bodies are good bodies; (4) celebrating self-love; and (5) proclaiming that all people have a freedom to be beautiful. In addition, my examination of Instagram posts shows that although a greater variety of body sizes appear in posts tagged #bodypositive than those tagged #fitspiration, both center hyper-feminized and sexualized white women who transgress stereotypes of femininity in one dimension, fatness or muscularity. As such, Instagram influencers and users struggle to negotiate an adherence to the traditional understandings of femininity, beauty, and health at the same time as they seek to expand them.

The capacity of the visual system to process information about multiple objects at any given moment in time is limited. This is because not all information can be processed equally or in parallel and subsequently reach consciousness. Previous research has utilized behavioural experiments to explore visual attention. More recently research, however, has used electroencephalography (EEG) to measuring the electrical brain activity in the posterior scalp. By time locking visual stimulus events to fluctuations in scalp activity researchers have been able to estimate the time course of attentional changes by measuring changes in these event-related potentials (ERP). One component in particular (N2pc) has been a reliable tool in measuring either the suppression of, or the shift of attentional to, both ignored and attended items in the visual scene. The N2pc is measured by comparing the ERP activity contralateral and ipsilateral to the visual field of interest. More recently, evidence has been presented that the mechanisms of attention thought to be represented by the N2pc (suppression and attentional selection) could be separated into different ERP components (Pd: indexing attentional suppression of an ignored item; and Nt: indexing attentional selection of the target) and measured independently. In six experiments, using ERPs, this thesis employs these components to explore the mechanisms and strategies of the human attentional system. Additionally, this thesis focuses on the impact of different types of simultaneous processing load on the attentional system and how the mechanisms of this system are influenced. Experiment 1 explores the idea that the type or valence of information to be ignored may influence the ability to suppress it. Results of this experiment 4 show that neither the type nor valence of the irrelevant information modulated the amplitude of the distractor positivity (Pd), indicating suppression of the irrelevant distractor was not altered. Noted in experiment 1 was also the presence of an early negativity (Ne) that appeared to represent attentional capture of the ignored lateral stimulus. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the valence of the lateral target did not alter the target negativity (Nt), indicating a different pattern of results between the Nt and the N2pc reported in previous studies (e.g. Eimer & Kiss, 2007; Feldmann-Wüstefeld et al., 2010). Experiment 2 also showed a similarity of the target negativity (Nt) to the early negativity (Ne; the N2pc like component observed in exp 1) toward face and non-face stimuli. This comparison supported the idea that the early negativity (Ne) reflected attentional capture of the ignored lateral distractor and as a result was relabelled the distractor negativity (Nd) in subsequent experiments. Experiment 3 showed that the salience of the lateral image did not modulate the Pd as should be the case if the Pd reflected sensory-level processing. An early contralateral negativity (similar to the Nd observed in exp 1) was altered by the salience of the distractor which added support to the hypothesis that this reflects attentional capture of the lateral ignored image. Experiment 4 attempted to manipulate working memory (WM) to assess the effect of WM load on attentional capture and suppression. While the results did indicate modulation of suppression under WM load, the limitations of the design of experiment 4 made any definitive interpretation of the results unreliable. The results of experiment 5 showed that suppression, as indexed by the Pd, was not altered by cognitive load. However, reductions in attentional capture under high cognitive load, as indexed by the distractor negativity (Nd), were observed and contradict the results of previous experiments (c.f. Lavie & De Fockert, 2005) 5 where cognitive load resulted in an increase in attentional capture. Although, there appears to be some issue in the authors interpretation of the results of these experiments (see chapter 6 for discussion). The results of Experiment 6 show the opposite effect with a significant increase in the laterality of the Pd under high perceptual load. A similar increase in the laterality of the Pd was not reflected in terms of valence though, where suppression of threat related distractors was not altered under high perceptual load. The hypothesis that an increase in perceptual load will result in a decrease in attentional capture was generally supported by the results of experiment 6. Under high perceptual load angry face distractors captured attention, as indexed by the laterality of the Nd, with neutral face distractors showing a reduction in attentional capture. While under low perceptual load, both angry and neutral face distractors resulted in a significant (and similar) laterality of the Nd. The thesis concludes by discussing issues concerning Lavie’s Load Theory of attention and outlines some potential misinterpretations of previous data that have led to the proposal that cognitive load results in a decrease in attentional resources and therefore a decrease in attentional capture of ignored stimuli. It is argued in this thesis that the results of Lavie and de Fockert (2005), which concluded that the increase in cognitive load resulted in a decrease in attentional capture, are more likely to be due to changes in attentional capture (i.e. a reduction) and changes in RT (i.e. an increase), under cognitive load being separate responses to the availability of resources, one that focusses attention on the goal directed task and the other that results in extended processing time to carry out the more difficult task. In this case both ‘changes’ appear to work to prioritise resources in favour of the goal directed task.

Background:  Body positivity promotion has recently received great attention, both from companies as well as from consumers. The responsibility of companies to promote a healthy body image and be inclusive of all people through their marketing activities is increasing, as the body positivity movement on social media has started to expand and change consumer demands for underwear apparel.                                    Purpose:  The purpose of this study is to examine Swedish female consumers’ online purchasing behavior toward underwear apparel. In order to find explanations as to which factors influence consumer purchase behavior, and what companies can do better, to promote body positivity and make the consumer satisfied.    Method:  The study follows a positivism approach to understand social phenomena and provide explanations through theories.  A quantitative research approach is used by conducting a survey about underwear apparel and body positivity on female consumers. The empirical data is analyzed through a statistical software, SPSS, and the interpretations are guided by the use of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the MAO framework, background studies, and a conceptual framework developed from the TPB. The conceptual framework includes five added factors to test behavior. Conclusion:  The empirical findings presented positive, statistically significant associations among the introduced factors from the conceptual framework and the purchasing behavior for underwear. The findings also suggest that companies should take a more active role in diversity inclusion in their marketing of underwear, in order to take a step further in their body positivity promotion.