Researchers have not been able to ascertain how survivors of childhood trauma, especially sexual abuse, develop resilience. To explore resilience and what influences its development, this mixed-method study investigated the roles of cognitive emotion regulation and proactive coping by using a critical-realist ontology. The data was collected from eight women (between ages 25 and 56) who considered themselves to be resilient survivors of severe child sexual abuse. Harvey’s (2000) Multidimensional Trauma Recovery and Resiliency Interview (MTRR-I), the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski, Kraaij&Spinhoven, 2002) and Greenglass’s (1999) Proactive Coping Inventory were used to gather the data necessary to determine whether resilience is influenced by cognitive emotion regulation strategies and proactive coping and to attempt to define what could be considered as traits of resilience in survivors or child sexual abuse. Through thematic analysis, approximately 50 a-priori codes were generated and grouped into 23 themes using the Atlas.ti program. The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between cognitive emotion regulation, proactive coping and resilience in order to better understand, and develop intervention processes that can provide survivors of child sexual abuse and other trauma with the resources needed to be more resilient. Although causality could not be determined between these variables, it became evident that the more often a participant employs adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and the higher the scores on the Proactive Coping Inventory are, the more resilient the participant tends to be. The participants who displayed higher levels of resilience also verbalised that they felt they had dealt with the abuse and had managed to move on in their lives. Even though all the participants considered themselves to be resilient, half of them were functioning at a noticeably lower rate of resilience than the others. All the participants claimed to rely on spiritual strength in some way and attribute their resilience to their faith in God. The higher the levels of resilience, the more the participants used adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and proactive coping; and the more optimistic their views of the future and the more they considered their lives to be meaningful. Because the study was based on the ecological model of human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1995, 2005,) the interplay of the proximal environment, the individual, the social context and the changes that have taken place over time, were all taken into consideration because resilience, cognitive emotion regulation and proactive coping skills all develop within and between the same systems in which an individual develops. However, Bronfenbrenner (2005) states that the family is no longer taking the responsibility for the upbringing of children as it should and that other settings in society have had to step in to fulfil the role. One aspect of mental health is the ability to develop spiritually and since schools may not include religious instruction because it is the responsibility of the family, it happens that children are not being developed spiritually and this could influence the way in which individuals deal with traumatic childhood experiences. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

This study represents a shift in focus with regard to studies related to traumatic events such as childhood sexual abuse (CSA). It endeavours to go beyond documenting the prevalence of CSA to understanding the moderating factors that encourage adaptive adjustment to CSA. The rationale of this study was to understand how personal beliefs in a just world, future aspirations and proactive coping in the context of an earlier traumatic event such as CSA, are related. My secondary interest was to understand how the aforementioned constructs feature in the development of resilience. I strove to do this by exploring the relationship between proactive coping, just-world beliefs (with specific reference to personal belief in a just world) and future aspirations of a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I made use of an instrumental case study design. A single participant was purposively selected for this study due to her unique features of being a self-identified resilient survivor of child sexual abuse. Data was collected over a period of three months by means of semi-structured interviews, drawings and theory-based scales. In this study I made use of qualitative data analysis to explore the theoretical relationships amongst the constructs. The results of the study suggest that there is a relationship between personal belief in a just world and religiosity, and that this relationship may mediate the optimistic orientation in the participant of the present study. There also appears to be a relationship between the personal belief in a just world and future aspirations of the participant in this study, suggesting that the role of just world beliefs in terms of the active pursuit and investment in future goals need to be further examined. Finally, the relationship between positive future aspirations and proactive coping was less clear, requiring further investigation to elucidate this relationship. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

In the fast pace of the development of the Internet and the increased use of it more and more people use interactive platforms to connect with each other. The increased opportunity and ability to share content with people around the globe has led to the emergence of eWOM. eWOM means that consumers generate content that is consumption-related and mainly directed towards other consumers. Today, social media sites are the biggest source to eWOM. Consumers are actively searching for eWOM in order to gain information and reduce uncertainty, as a part of their purchasing process. In general, consumers tend to trust consumer generated content more than marketer generated content. Therefore, eWOM becomes a crucial component to business performance.  Negative eWOM has been shown to affect the purchase intentions, loyalty and trust in a negative way, which eventually affects the turnover for a company. Negative eWOM has further been seen to have a larger impact on consumers, compared to positive eWOM. These consequences emphasize the importance of marketers being aware of negative eWOM and have strategies to manage it. The subject of eWOM has been acknowledged by practitioners and researchers. However, despite the increased interest in eWOM and its effects on business performance, there are still research gaps on how to proactively and reactively avoid and manage negative eWOM.  The purpose of this study was to examine and understand what strategies companies use in order to avoid and manage negative eWOM on company owned and external interactive platforms. To fill the identified research gaps, this study took an inductive approach and the authors conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. The sample was purposively selected to include respondents within different companies that had knowledge about the companies’ strategies and approach towards managing negative eWOM. The sample consisted of companies of different sizes, which provided different perspectives and rich information of how companies can approach negative eWOM. A thematic analysis was conducted in order to analyze the empirical data and present relevant findings from the data collection.  As a result of the thematic analysis, two global themes were identified: proactive strategies and reactive strategies. Within the global theme proactive strategies, five sub- themes were found: observation, detect critical potential scenarios and questions, communicate expectations, encourage feedback and facilitate contact. Within the global theme reactive strategies, six sub-themes were found: acknowledge or leave, do not delete, accommodative, defensive, answer in public, drive to private, and humorous and cleverly. These themes laid the foundation for a final conceptual model. The findings of this study suggest that marketers in retail use different proactive strategies to avoid negative eWOM from occurring in the first place. Moreover, the findings of this study show that marketers in retail, depending on the content of the negative eWOM and the platform it is taking place on, also use different reactive strategies to manage negative eWOM. The results also show that what strategy to use is to a large extent dependent on the individual’s subjective ability to interpret the negative eWOM.

Research indicates that adolescence is an especially crucial time for developing habits of values congruent behavior that will persist throughout the lifespan. Past research has suggested that parents may play an important role in socializing their children, however few studies have looked at the mechanism through which this socialization occurs. The current study explored associations between different types of proactive and reactive parenting and value congruent behavior using nationally representative data from across three years during adolescence. Additionally, the current study attempted to further explain these associations through the mechanism of extrinsic and intrinsic values regulation. The current sample included 500 families including parents (67.7% two-parent families, 69.9% of mothers and 68% of fathers had a bachelor's degree or higher) and an adolescent (Mean = 13.89 years, 50.9% female, 70.4% European Descent) from the Northwestern USA. The hypotheses of the study were tested using structural equation models. Results of the study were not strong enough to confirm direct or indirect associations among study variables, and results should be interpreted with caution. One finding suggested that reactive parenting practices may be detrimental, above and beyond the level of autonomy granted to adolescents, in that reactive parenting practices were associated with higher rates of deviant peer association and delinquent behavior. Discussion focuses on future studies and methodologies that may be better able to detect meaningful associations.

In einer komplexen Berufswelt, in der ständige Veränderungen den Alltag vieler Unternehmen bestimmen, ist die Fähigkeit von Mitarbeitern, ihr Verhalten den veränderten Bedingungen anzupassen (Adaptive Performance) eine bedeutsame Facette der beruflichen Leistung. Es ist jedoch bis heute unklar, ob Adaptive Performance sich als eigenständiges Leistungskonstrukt von anderen Formen der beruflichen Leistung abgrenzen lässt. Ferner ist die Befundlage hinsichtlich einiger Antezedenzien inkonsistent, während andere bisher noch nicht im Zusammenhang mit Adaptive Performance untersucht wurden. In der ersten Studie wird ein Fragebogen zur Erfassung von Adaptive Performance sowie von Proactive Behavior, einem etablierten Konstrukt der beruflichen Leistungsforschung, entwickelt und anhand vorhandener Skalen validiert. Die Studie (N = 196) zeigt, dass sich adaptive Leistung von proaktivem Verhalten empirisch abgrenzen lässt. Es können emotionale Stabilität und (wahrgenommene) Autonomie als differenzielle Prädiktoren nachgewiesen werden, wobei emotionale Stabilität erwartungsgemäß höher mit Adaptive Performance und Autonomie höher mit Proactive Behavior korreliert. In der zweiten Studie werden anhand der aktuellen Forschungsliteratur Anforderungen an eine Instrumentenentwicklung zur fähigkeitsbasierten Erfassung von Adaptive Performance in Form eines webbasierten Postkorbs abgeleitet und die Entwicklung des Messinstruments beschrieben. Die aufgestellten Anforderungen werden anschließend anhand einer studentischen Stichprobe (N = 104) geprüft. In Studie 3 wird in einem Experiment (N = 185) der Einfluss von Intelligenz, der Fähigkeit, rational zu denken sowie von Routinestärke auf Adaptive Performance untersucht. Hierbei wird Adaptive Performance mit Hilfe des vorab entwickelten Postkorbs erfasst und die jeweiligen Zusammenhänge unter kontrollierten Bedingungen betrachtet. Entgegen der Hypothese ergeben sich keine Hinweise auf einen bedeutsamen Einfluss der Intelligenz. Hingegen zeigen sich bedeutsame Zusammenhänge mit der Fähigkeit, rational zu denken sowie mit der Routinestärke. Die theoretische sowie praktische Bedeutung der Befunde wird abschließend diskutiert und darauf aufbauend werden Implikationen für die weitere Forschung und Personalpraxis abgeleitet.

Recent negatively publicized police-citizen interactions in the media, followed by a subsequent rise in crime rates in the United States, has been named the Ferguson Effect. The Ferguson Effect has been explored by prominent scholars in the criminal justice community; however, little is known about how police officers in small police agencies perceive the Ferguson Effect. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions and lived experiences of police officers regarding the Ferguson Effect in small police agencies, as well as police officers' perceptions of their own organizational justice. The theoretical framework for this study was Greenberg's theory of organizational justice. Research questions focused on exploring police officers' perceptions, attitudes, and experiences of the Ferguson Effect phenomenon and willingness to partner with the community. A qualitative phenomenological study design was employed, using purposeful random sampling and semistructured interviews of 9 active sworn law enforcement personnel in southcentral Virginia. Data were analyzed through In Vivo coding, pattern coding, and structural analysis utilizing NVivo 11 Pro. Themes included: (a) racial division, (b) rush to judgment, and (c) steadfast leadership. Findings indicated participants demanded clear and fair policies and procedures from leadership, increased effort of transparency in policing, feelings of racial tension, and the need to regain community trust post-Ferguson. Implications for social change include refinement and development of leadership training for police leadership and refinement in organizational policies that support fairness, community engagement, and community interaction.

As contemporary organizations are met with increasing demands and uncertainty, their continued success relies on employees' willingness and ability to think proactively and take action in the face of challenges. Some scholars have reasoned that stressors in the work environment may serve as indicators, to employees, that change is needed, therefore promoting proactive work behavior. However, current theories related to work stress assert that demands in the environment may exert effects dependent on the degree to which resources are available to cope with demands. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources model and others, the present research examines the interplay between psychological resources, work stressors, and proactive work behavior in a sample of 229 preschool teachers in Germany. Specifically, the focus is on the moderating role of state-level psychological resources (e.g., enthusiasm, self-assurance, attentiveness, and feeling recovered) in the relationship between work stressors and proactive work behavior. Data was collected at three time points and included both self- and co-worker reports of proactive work behavior. Results indicate that psychological resources, characterized by positive mood and high energy, play an important motivational role in the face of work stressors. Findings support the importance of considering individual factors (e.g. availability of psychological resources) when examining relationships between environmental factors and proactive behavior. Implications for future research are discussed.

The development of connected vehicle (CV) technologies enables advanced management of individual vehicles and traffic signals to improve urban mobility and energy efficiency. In this thesis, a cooperative vehicle-signal control system will be developed to integrate an Eco-driving system and a proactive signal control system under a mixed connected environment with both connected vehicles (CVs) and human-driven vehicles (HDVs). The system utilizes CVs to conduct an accurate prediction of queue length and delay at different approaches of intersections. Then, a queue-based optimal control strategy is established to minimize the fuel usage of individual CVs and the travel time delay of entire intersections. The system applies the model predictive control to search for the optimal signal timing plan for each intersection and the most-fuel efficient speed profiles for each CV to gain the global optimum of the intersection. In this thesis, a simulation platform is designed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system under different traffic scenarios. The comparison with the eco-driving only and signal control only algorithms verifies that the cooperative system has a much more extensive reduction range of the trip delay in the case of medium and high saturation. At low saturation, the effect of the system is not much different from that of the eco-driving algorithm, but it is still better than the signal control. Results show that the benefits of CVs are significant at all different market penetration rates of CVs. It also demonstrates the drawback of the system at high congestion levels. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Proactive behaviors are defined as employees’ future-oriented, agentic behaviors that aim to improve workplace conditions. Recent research alludes that employee perceptions of whether they have permission to act proactively may influence their actions. With these ideas in mind, this dissertation introduces the concept of proactivity permission, which is defined as the perception of the extent to which an employee is allowed to perform proactive actions at work. Using a multilevel research design with 501 employees from 112 work groups, I examined the effects of employee and supervisor personality characteristics, relational factors, and contextual factors on proactivity permission. Findings indicate that employee personality characteristics (i.e., psychological entitlement and psychological reactance) positively influence employee proactivity permission beliefs, whereas supervisor personality characteristics (i.e., social dominance orientation and rule-based reasoning) negatively influence proactivity permission judgments of supervisors. The quality of relationships (LMX) between a focal employee and his/her supervisor positively affects both employee proactivity permission and supervisor proactivity permission judgments, while workplace contextual factors (e.g., organizational rule formalization, rule consistency, and normative tightness) are relatively distal to, and play a minor role in, proactivity permission. Additionally, this dissertation finds that employees who believe they have permission to act proactively engage in proactive behaviors to a greater extent, and that supervisors are more supportive toward the proactive behaviors of those employees who they perceive to have greater permission to act proactively. In all, this dissertation offers important contributions to theory and research on employee proactivity and suggests several practical recommendations for managers and organizations who are interested in fostering greater proactivity in the workplace. / Business Administration/Human Resource Management

<p dir="ltr">Metacontrol describes outsourcing cognitive control to environmental cues, allowing for efficient instantiation of appropriate cognitive control. While recent years have seen many studies characterizing metacontrol in behavioral terms, relatively little effort has been made to characterize the neural mechanisms underlying metacontrol. Thus, the current dissertation project aimed to investigate the neural systems and interactive features of metacontrol, more specifically, proactive and reactive metacontrol that exert context-appropriate control states in preparatory and just-in-time manners, respectively. Specifically, Study 1 employed a functional magnetic resonance imaging technique and identified brain regions activated under proactive and reactive metacontrol operations. Importantly, the study revealed that the two metacontrol modes were supported by distinct neural systems. Building on the premise that distinct neural systems supporting the two metacontrol modes would enable the concurrent operation of both modes, Study 2 tested whether a preparatory metacontrol mode, proactive metacontrol, can coexist with a just-in-time metacontrol mode, reactive metacontrol. Using electroencephalography, Study 2 revealed that the two metacontrol modes can operate in parallel. Lastly, extending Study 2, Study 3 investigated how proactive metacontrol interacts with reactive metacontrol. Study 3 observed that high preparatory control states during proactive metacontrol benefit reactive metacontrol. Specifically, reactive metacontrol was observed only when penalties were at stake, which promoted heightened preparatory control states. In summary, Study 1 demonstrated that the two metacontrol modes are not only operationally distinctive but also characterized by separate neural systems underlying them. This aligns with the observation from Study 2 showing that the parallel operation of two metacontrol modes is feasible. Lastly, Study 3 suggests that despite the two metacontrol modes being supported by distinct neural systems (as shown in Study 1), they are not entirely independent and can interact with each other. Collectively, these findings reveal the relationship between the two metacontrol modes and elucidate their intricate interactions, thereby deepening our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying metacontrol.</p>