<p>The purpose of this essay has been to examine whether attitudes and behavior among Swedish people who takes snuff are dissonant or not and how their attitudes are affected by the media debate about the health risks snuff can cause. Furthermore, we were interested in finding out how different reference groups´ attitudes would influence the attitudes and the willingness of people to stop taking snuff and investigate how much control the people who take snuff think they have. To answer these questions we chose to ask primarily students at Stockholm University and Södertörns Högskola. The students were asked to fill out a questionnaire with 22 questions and the 100 responses we collected were worked up in a statistic program, SPSS, on the computer. The main models used for the essay and for the questionnaire were the Theory of Planned behavior and the Dissonance theory. Later, theories about rationality, risks and health were added to the essay.</p><p>The results showed that the media debate does not influence the respondents to stop taking snuff and since the majority of the respondents had many friends that took snuff as well, the respondents didn’t feel any great dissonance which made their intention to stop even smaller. The answers to the question about the perceived behavior control tended to be quite contradictive. The respondents admitted to be addictive to nicotine but at the same time they said that they were able to quit taking snuff tomorrow if they wanted to. It seems like they underestimated the power of nicotine and overestimated their ability to quit. This is according to earlier research a very common thing among addicts.</p><p>The results are not statistically significant since the number of respondents were very few. This essay may serve as a preliminary investigation for further research in this area. </p>

The purpose of this essay has been to examine whether attitudes and behavior among Swedish people who takes snuff are dissonant or not and how their attitudes are affected by the media debate about the health risks snuff can cause. Furthermore, we were interested in finding out how different reference groups´ attitudes would influence the attitudes and the willingness of people to stop taking snuff and investigate how much control the people who take snuff think they have. To answer these questions we chose to ask primarily students at Stockholm University and Södertörns Högskola. The students were asked to fill out a questionnaire with 22 questions and the 100 responses we collected were worked up in a statistic program, SPSS, on the computer. The main models used for the essay and for the questionnaire were the Theory of Planned behavior and the Dissonance theory. Later, theories about rationality, risks and health were added to the essay. The results showed that the media debate does not influence the respondents to stop taking snuff and since the majority of the respondents had many friends that took snuff as well, the respondents didn’t feel any great dissonance which made their intention to stop even smaller. The answers to the question about the perceived behavior control tended to be quite contradictive. The respondents admitted to be addictive to nicotine but at the same time they said that they were able to quit taking snuff tomorrow if they wanted to. It seems like they underestimated the power of nicotine and overestimated their ability to quit. This is according to earlier research a very common thing among addicts. The results are not statistically significant since the number of respondents were very few. This essay may serve as a preliminary investigation for further research in this area.

This thesis examined how international students experience life in the UK and, in particular, how these students respond to experiences with discrimination and social exclusion. Specifically, we drew on the rejection-identification model (Branscombe et al., 1999) in order to examine the impact of minority group identification as a coping strategy against perceptions of discrimination. Despite the number of studies supporting the rejection-identification model (e.g. Schmitt et al., 2002, Schmitt et al., 2003), discrepant findings were found in other research (e.g. McCoy & Major, 2003; Eccleston & Major, 2006). In order to solve these inconsistencies we proposed to extend this model in two important ways. Firstly, building on important work on the multidimensionality of social identification (e.g. Cameron & Lalonde, 2001; Ellemers et al., 1999; Jackson, 2002), we argued that a multidimensional perspective of the rejection-identification model is fundamental given that different dimensions of social identification (i.e. ingroup affect, centrality, and ingroup ties) have different effects on psychological well-being. Secondly, we hypothesised that the protective effect of the different dimensions of social identification depended upon individual preferences, beliefs and behaviours towards own and host group (i.e. acculturation strategies). These two extensions to the rejection-identification model were tested longitudinally with a sample of 160 international students. Results indicated that none of the dimensions of social identification serve to protect students from the harmful effects of discrimination. Indeed, support was found for the argument that it is important to investigate possible moderators of the rejection-identification relationship. Our results also indicated that when international students perceive discrimination, a separation strategy allows them to maintain ingroup affect, and in this way protect their self-esteem. Integration, marginalisation, and assimilation strategies were associated with lower ingroup affect leaving these students without a successful strategy to cope with discrimination. Although the aim of this thesis was to examine the experiences of international students, in Chapter 7 we replicated our previous model with a sample of Polish immigrants (N = 66) in order to test whether our results could be generalised to other minority groups. Results supported the previous findings with international students. Finally, the discussion of this thesis focused on the importance of taking into account individual acculturation strategies in order to understand the relation between perceived discrimination, minority group identification, and well-being. We also focused on how the knowledge generated by this research may support international students.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:18:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cristina Gomes Freire.pdf: 6705838 bytes, checksum: bf87719ecfd1e41a1ece80d7ae442c44 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-06-30 / This research enquiries how fashion takes place constructing people`s identities, starting on an analysis of the film The Devil Wears Prada, from David Frankel. Throughout sociossemiotics and the interaction and sense regimes concept by Landowski, we study the actor`s construction on their social interactions in a the plot focused on the fashion industry scenario in which the identity paths are inserted. We describe and analyze on a sequence of small filmic narratives the way fashion takes place as cognitive modalizer of the human beings nowadays; the way it is a bush of sensitive interactancial relations; the way it works as regulatory of the ways of dressing in the social scenery and also how fashion makes accidents possible. We investigate the ways of articulation between body and clothes emphasizing that those kinds of arrangements create innumerous possibilities of appearances and how they interfere on the subjetal dynamics. We pointed as hypothesis that the style and the way it structures itself by the means of the outfits and the taste for fashion brings up forms of behavior and life actualized on the presence ways. Another hypothesis thrown was that fashion and, in its consequence, its byproducts such as clothes, accessories and the garment arrangements take place into the edification of the making to be of the individuals. Besides, we could see, in conclusion, that the presence ways of the persons are governed by the visibility ways, which create simulacral figures programmed and manipulated by the fashion industry. The ways of presence and the ways of visibility product figures broadcasted on the media, which are figurative marks of the style for the subjective searches of escape from the modulations by the adjustments and accident mechanism. We studied these mechanisms in order to understand how, on its reiteration, the styles are brought together that segment and identify belonging groups of the social constitution. The research bounds to the communication area as we take fashion as a communicational phenomenon that broadcast identities and style due to the persons make their bodies boards for the dressing that communicate messages which meanings are apprehended by the visual aesthetics / A pesquisa examina como a moda participa da construção da identidade dos sujeitos sociais, a partir de uma análise do filme O Diabo Veste Prada, de David Frankel. Por meio da sociossemiótica e dos regimes de interação e de sentido conceituados por Landowski estudamos a construção dos actantes em suas interações sociais em uma trama centrada no cenário da indústria da moda nas quais se inserem os percursos identitários. Descrevemos e analisamos em um recorte de seqüências do filme como a moda participa como modalizadora cognitiva dos sujeitos da atualidade, como esta é propulsora de relações interativas sensíveis, o modo que a mesma funciona como reguladora dos modos de vestir na sociedade e como ela possibilita acidentes. Investigamos os modos de articulação entre corpo e roupa enfatizando que esses tipos de arranjo formam as várias possibilidades de aparência e como interferem na dinâmica subjetal. Tivemos como hipótese que o estilo e modo como ele se estrutura por meio dos looks e do gosto pela moda acarreta formas de comportamento e de vida atualizadas nos modos de presença. Outra hipótese levantada foi a de que a moda e, em conseqüência, seus produtos como as roupas, acessórios e os arranjos vestimentares participam da edificação do fazer ser dos sujeitos. Além disso, constatamos, em conclusão, que os modos de presença dos sujeitos são regidos por modos de visibilidade, os quais criam imagens simulacrais programadas e manipuladas pela indústria da moda. Os modos de presença e os modos de visibilidade produzem imagens difundidas nas mídias, as quais são marcas figurativas identificáveis do estilo pelas buscas subjetivas de escapatórias das modelações por mecanismos de ajustamento e acidente. Estudamos esses mecanismos a fim de entender como, em sua reiteração, formam os estilos que segmentam e identificam grupos de pertencimento e de referência da constituição social. A pesquisa se entrelaça com a área de comunicação quando tomamos a moda como um fenômeno comunicacional que propaga identidade e estilo já que os sujeitos fazem de seus corpos suportes pelo vestir comunicam mensagens cujos significados são apreendidos pela estética visual

Considerando-se a importância das relações sociais e da influência interpessoal no comportamento dos indivíduos de baixa renda, este estudo apresenta como objetivo identificar e analisar os grupos de referência valorizados pelas consumidoras de baixa renda em seu processo de decisão de compra. Para a coleta de dados, utilizou-se uma abordagem multimétodo fundamentada, primeiro, em entrevistas em profundidade com 12 mulheres e, depois, na técnica de Análise Conjunta com uma amostra de 53 entrevistadas pertencentes a esse segmento. Devido à crise econômica vivida atualmente, mostrou-se necessário delimitar o contexto da pesquisa a um bem que permanecesse atrativo nessas circunstâncias: o batom. Trata-se de uma categoria de produto de alto envolvimento, capaz de representar o segmento de cosméticos como um todo, associando-se à autoestima, à sensação de bem-estar e ao reconhecimento social. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que as consumidoras de baixa renda valorizam a presença de diferentes grupos de referência em seu processo de decisão. Especificamente, identificaram-se dois grupos de respondentes com preferências distintas quanto aos grupos de referência. Diante disso, ressalta-se que as principais contribuições desta pesquisa foram a observação de perfis diferentes dentro do segmento de baixa renda, o desenvolvimento do conhecimento sobre o processo de decisão de compra dessas mulheres e a identificação de apelos de grupos de referência que as empresas podem usar para atrair consumidoras de baixa renda. / Considering the importance of social relations and interpersonal influence on the behavior of low-income individuals, this study aims to identify and analyze the reference groups valued by low-income female consumers in their decision-making process. A multimethod approach was employed. First, the data were collected through in-depth interviews with 12 low-income women. Subsequently, a conjoint analysis technique was applied with a sample of 53 female interviewees belonging to this segment. Due to the current economic crisis, it was necessary to delimit the research context to a product that remained attractive in these circumstances: lipstick. It is a high involvement product category, capable of representing the segment of cosmetics as a whole, being related to self-esteem, a sense of well-being and recognition. Results showed that low-income female consumers value the presence of different reference groups in their decision-making process. Specifically, it was possible to identify two groups of respondents with distinct preferences regarding the reference groups. Therefore, the main contributions of this research were the observation of different profiles within the low-income segment, the development of knowledge about the decision-making process of these women, and the identification of reference group appeals that companies can use to attract low-income female consumers.

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The broad objective of this thesis is to study the patterns of objective and subjective well-being among the immigrants in Europe. The main part of the thesis consists of three single-authored empirical chapters. The first chapter analyzes the longitudinal patterns of relative poverty among the foreign-born in Sweden. The second chapter examines the mechanisms of occupational attainment, occupational mobility and long-term occupational cost of migration among Senegalese immigrants in France, Spain and Italy. The third chapter analyzes life satisfaction and income satisfaction among immigrants in Germany. At the most general level, the results in the empirical chapters suggest that the objective well-being improves with duration of stay at destination, even if very gradually for some immigrant groups, while, on the other hand, there is a ceteris paribus negative relationship between the subjective well-being and duration of stay. A number of other findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the processes associated with the well-being among immigrants. / L'objectiu general d'aquesta tesi és estudiar les pautes del benestar objectiu i subjectiu dels immigrants a Europa. La part principal de la tesi consisteix en tres capítols empírics d'autoria única. El primer capítol analitza les pautes longitudinals de pobresa relativa entre els nascuts a l’estranger a Suècia. El segon capítol examina els mecanismes d’obtenció d’ocupació, la mobilitat i cost professional a llarg termini de la migració entre els immigrants d’origen senegalès a França, Espanya i Itàlia. El tercer capítol analitza la satisfacció general amb la vida i la satisfacció amb els ingressos entre els immigrants a Alemanya. Els resultats en els capítols empirics suggereixen, a nivell general, que el benestar objectiu millora a mida que creix la durada de l’estada en el lloc de destí, tot i que de manera molt gradual per alguns grups d’immigrants, mentre que, d’altra banda, hi ha una relació ceteris paribus negativa entre el benestar subjectiu i la durada de l’estada. Diversos resultats contribueixen a una comprensió més matisada dels processos associats amb el benestar entre els immigrants.

Considerando-se a importância das relações sociais e da influência interpessoal no comportamento dos indivíduos de baixa renda, este estudo apresenta como objetivo identificar e analisar os grupos de referência valorizados pelas consumidoras de baixa renda em seu processo de decisão de compra. Para a coleta de dados, utilizou-se uma abordagem multimétodo fundamentada, primeiro, em entrevistas em profundidade com 12 mulheres e, depois, na técnica de Análise Conjunta com uma amostra de 53 entrevistadas pertencentes a esse segmento. Devido à crise econômica vivida atualmente, mostrou-se necessário delimitar o contexto da pesquisa a um bem que permanecesse atrativo nessas circunstâncias: o batom. Trata-se de uma categoria de produto de alto envolvimento, capaz de representar o segmento de cosméticos como um todo, associando-se à autoestima, à sensação de bem-estar e ao reconhecimento social. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que as consumidoras de baixa renda valorizam a presença de diferentes grupos de referência em seu processo de decisão. Especificamente, identificaram-se dois grupos de respondentes com preferências distintas quanto aos grupos de referência. Diante disso, ressalta-se que as principais contribuições desta pesquisa foram a observação de perfis diferentes dentro do segmento de baixa renda, o desenvolvimento do conhecimento sobre o processo de decisão de compra dessas mulheres e a identificação de apelos de grupos de referência que as empresas podem usar para atrair consumidoras de baixa renda. / Considering the importance of social relations and interpersonal influence on the behavior of low-income individuals, this study aims to identify and analyze the reference groups valued by low-income female consumers in their decision-making process. A multimethod approach was employed. First, the data were collected through in-depth interviews with 12 low-income women. Subsequently, a conjoint analysis technique was applied with a sample of 53 female interviewees belonging to this segment. Due to the current economic crisis, it was necessary to delimit the research context to a product that remained attractive in these circumstances: lipstick. It is a high involvement product category, capable of representing the segment of cosmetics as a whole, being related to self-esteem, a sense of well-being and recognition. Results showed that low-income female consumers value the presence of different reference groups in their decision-making process. Specifically, it was possible to identify two groups of respondents with distinct preferences regarding the reference groups. Therefore, the main contributions of this research were the observation of different profiles within the low-income segment, the development of knowledge about the decision-making process of these women, and the identification of reference group appeals that companies can use to attract low-income female consumers.

Considerando-se a importância das relações sociais e da influência interpessoal no comportamento dos indivíduos de baixa renda, este estudo apresenta como objetivo identificar e analisar os grupos de referência valorizados pelas consumidoras de baixa renda em seu processo de decisão de compra. Para a coleta de dados, utilizou-se uma abordagem multimétodo fundamentada, primeiro, em entrevistas em profundidade com 12 mulheres e, depois, na técnica de Análise Conjunta com uma amostra de 53 entrevistadas pertencentes a esse segmento. Devido à crise econômica vivida atualmente, mostrou-se necessário delimitar o contexto da pesquisa a um bem que permanecesse atrativo nessas circunstâncias: o batom. Trata-se de uma categoria de produto de alto envolvimento, capaz de representar o segmento de cosméticos como um todo, associando-se à autoestima, à sensação de bem-estar e ao reconhecimento social. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que as consumidoras de baixa renda valorizam a presença de diferentes grupos de referência em seu processo de decisão. Especificamente, identificaram-se dois grupos de respondentes com preferências distintas quanto aos grupos de referência. Diante disso, ressalta-se que as principais contribuições desta pesquisa foram a observação de perfis diferentes dentro do segmento de baixa renda, o desenvolvimento do conhecimento sobre o processo de decisão de compra dessas mulheres e a identificação de apelos de grupos de referência que as empresas podem usar para atrair consumidoras de baixa renda. / Considering the importance of social relations and interpersonal influence on the behavior of low-income individuals, this study aims to identify and analyze the reference groups valued by low-income female consumers in their decision-making process. A multimethod approach was employed. First, the data were collected through in-depth interviews with 12 low-income women. Subsequently, a conjoint analysis technique was applied with a sample of 53 female interviewees belonging to this segment. Due to the current economic crisis, it was necessary to delimit the research context to a product that remained attractive in these circumstances: lipstick. It is a high involvement product category, capable of representing the segment of cosmetics as a whole, being related to self-esteem, a sense of well-being and recognition. Results showed that low-income female consumers value the presence of different reference groups in their decision-making process. Specifically, it was possible to identify two groups of respondents with distinct preferences regarding the reference groups. Therefore, the main contributions of this research were the observation of different profiles within the low-income segment, the development of knowledge about the decision-making process of these women, and the identification of reference group appeals that companies can use to attract low-income female consumers.