Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / Self-identity formation and how we learn to express that identity to others is a lifelong process for so many people. My research explores the potential ways that the medium of music plays a role in the formation and expression of a self-identity. Through my qualitative data analysis from 12 interviews with college students who are self-defined as ‘music lovers,’ I argue that music does in fact play an integral role in the formation of this self-identity for some people. The ways in which that identity is expressed to others, whether it be physical manifestations of the music or the behaviors of the individual, can be centered around an us vs. them narrative, desire to find others like themselves, or aim to control the ways in which they are perceived through their music engagement, among other justifications. Additionally, I illustrate that individuals use music to mold a personal, almost autobiographical narrative of their own lives, weaving integral memories, people, and experiences together through their relation to music. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

A quick search in Google Scholar for documents containing both keywords “Japan” and “collectivism” revealed 28,100 results. This fact alone is enough to support the notion that collectivism is a commonly reoccurring descriptive in discussions about Japanese society. This is also enough to give serious consideration to the impact of collectivism when thinking about the development of educational programs that foster the development of creativity. More specifically it raises the question: if some people within Japan believe in the collectivist nature of themselves and their society how does that belief influence creative self-identity and creative self–efficacy? Since creativity and innovation require the ability to think divergently, understanding the impact of the alleged pressure towards conformity on creativity should be a top priority. Furthermore, understanding this relationship becomes important when considering methodologies and potential barriers to learning in the creativity classroom or workshop. With this in mind, a questionnaire was given to 50 Japanese participants of various ages and backgrounds. Using open-ended questions and a Likert scale, the questionnaire examines the collectivist self-identity, the collectivist social-identity, creative self-identity, and creative self-efficacy. Through narrative qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions and quantitative analysis of the scaled questions the relationships between the four categories were examined to see if any influenced the others. From this study we can see that the quantitative data and the qualitative data both showed the similar findings. Within the group the majority did not identify as having a collectivist self-identity, the results on collectivist socialidentity were split down the middle, and a majority of the participants did identify with having a creative self-identity. It is also clear from both the qualitative and quantitative data that creative self-identity and creative self-efficacy are linked. It appears that if the person does not believe that he or she is a creative person then that same individual is very likely to believe they do not have the capacity to do creative things.

abstract: Background: Previous research suggests a healthy eater schema (i.e., identifying yourself as a healthy eater) may be a useful concept to target in interventions. A "stealth" intervention that discussed the moral issues related to food worked better at promoting healthful eating than an intervention focused on the health benefits. No research has explored the relationship between moral foundations, a theoretical model focused on delineating core "foundations" for making a moral decision, and healthy eater self-identity or self-efficacy. Purpose: We explored the relationship between moral foundations (i.e., harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, & purity/sanctity) and health eater self-identity and fruit and vegetable self-efficacy (FVSE). Methods: 542 participants completed an online cross-sectional survey, which included moral foundations (i.e., MFQ), political views, healthy eater self-identity (i.e., HESS), and FVSE measures. Logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between moral foundations between healthy eater self-identity after controlling for age, gender, major, BMI, and political beliefs. OLS regression was used to explore the relationship between self-efficacy and the moral foundations after controlling for the covariates. Results: 75.6% of the sample were college students, with a mean age of 25.27 (SD=8.61). 25.1% of students were nutrition majors. Harm/care, authority/respect, and ingroup/loyalty were significantly associated with healthy eater schema, (i.e., OR=1.7, p<.001, OR=1.5, p=.009, and OR=1.4, p=.027, respectively). Ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity were related to FVSE (p=.006, p=.002, p=.04, respectively). Conclusion: Among college students, harm/care and authority/respect were associated with a healthy eater schema. Future research should explore possible uses of these moral foundations in interventions (e.g., a plant-based diet based on reduced harm to animals or eating fewer processed views based on "traditional" values). / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Nutrition 2013

Cette thèse, constituée de trois essais, porte sur les concepts interdépendants de matérialisme et de consommation compensatoire. Le premier essai passe en revue les différentes conceptualisations du matérialisme, ainsi que ses causes et ses conséquences. J’analyse comment les différentes conceptualisations peuvent expliquer les variations des travaux de recherche et je propose un cadre conceptuel général pour analyser la recherche sur le matérialisme. Je présente également les travaux sur la notion de consommation compensatoire qui renvoie à l'utilisation et à la possession de biens matériels pour faire face aux menaces portant sur l’identité personnelle. Pour conclure ce premier essai, j’ouvre le débat sur l’opportunité de plusieurs travaux de recherche portant sur la consommation compensatoire. Dans les deux essais suivants, j’approfondis plus particulièrement les questions liées à la consommation compensatoire.Dans le deuxième essai, je reviens sur les recherches montrant que dédommager des aspects menacés de l'identité personnelle avec des produits symboliques (c'est-à-dire la consommation compensatoire intra-domaine) provoque des personnes pour ruminer les menaces sur leur identité personnelle et diminue leur ressources de maîtrise de soi.Je constate qu'une telle diminution arrive uniquement lorsque les produits sont explicitement liés avec les aspects menacés de leur identité personnelle et non quand ils sont implicitement liés avec les aspects menacés.Le troisième essai se focalise sur l'efficacité de la consommation compensatoire intra-domaine et plus précisément sur la possibilité de restaurer les éléments endommagés de l'identité personnelle. Mes résultats montrent que la restauration de l'identité personnelle est contrariée lorsque les individus sont rétribués avec des produits ayant des liens explicites avec les aspects menacés de leur identité personnelle et non lorsque ces liens sont implicites. Les liens explicites rappellent aux consommateurs les menaces et empêchent le processus de réparation de l'identité personnelle. Je teste également une condition limite de ces résultats et montre que lorsque la menace sur l’identité personnelle est implicite (par exemple, subtile ou non évidente), même les produits ayant des liens explicites peuvent permettre la réparation de l'identité personnelle. / This dissertation comprises three essays that pertain to the interelated constructs of materialism and compensatory consumption. In Essay 1, I review research on the conceptualizations, causes, and consequences of materialism, analyze how adopting different conceptualizations may account for variations in research outcomes, and suggest a broad framework for analyzing materialism research. I also introduce research on compensatory consumption, which refers to the use and possession of material goods to address self-identity threats. In the end, I discuss some ideas for future research, particularly those related to compensatory consumption. In the next two essays, I investigate specific questions on compensatory consumption. In Essay 2, I revisit extant research that shows that compensating with products symbolic of threatened aspects of self-identity (i.e., within-domain compensatory consumption) causes threat-related rumination and depletes self-control resources of individuals. I find that such depletion occurs only when products are explicitly connected to the threatened aspects of self, and not when they are implicitly connected to the threatened aspects. In Essay 3, I examine the efficacy of within-domain compensatory consumption, that is, whether it restores self-identity on aspects damaged by a self-threat. I find that self-identity repair is thwarted when threatened individuals compensate with products having explicit connections to the threatened identity domain, but not when these connections are kept implicit. Explicit, but not implicit, connections remind consumers of the threat, thereby impeding self-repair. I also test a boundary condition to these finding, and show that when the self-threat itself is implicit (e.g., subtle, non-obvious), even products with explicit connections can provide self-repair.

Arguably life threatening and chronic illness is not just an attack on the body, it is an attack on a person s sense of self-identity, shattering the means by which a person experiences the world, and by which they also are experienced, contributing to a person s sense of powerlessness and distress. People living with a life threatening or chronic illness, often describe the impact of their diagnosis, treatment and illness as having changed their sense of self-identity beyond all recognition. Seven participants, purposefully selected from those attending a weekly day-hospice session in Wiltshire, took part in the study. This qualitative, practice-based research project challenges the power dynamics in art therapy and attempts to equalise the relationship between researcher and participant through the development of a collaborative intersubjective relationship, within which the participants are recognised as experts on their lived experience, and in a series of negotiations , co-design their own portraits directing how they wish to be portrayed. Through this process the participants become patient/researchers (PRs) and the artist/therapist/researcher (ATR), by creating the portraits, also becomes a reflexive participant . This project utilises an in-depth multiple case-study design and multiple creative data generation methods as well as a phenomenological approach to data analysis. This project reverses the terms of engagement within art therapy and uses the art therapist s artistic practice or third hand to create portraits for patients. (This is based upon the assumption that most art therapy theories terms of engagement include patients producing art within the therapeutic encounter, however some psychodynamic and psychoanalytic art therapists may use client art generation selectively or not at all). This raises important questions around who makes the artwork in art therapy interventions . The use of portraiture as a third hand intervention enables the art therapist to develop a sense of positive focussed attention and mirroring and attunement through the art object, enabling the addition of coherence through aesthetic resonance and the holding of dualities through metaphor and symbolism. The results of this study demonstrate the power of portraiture as an intersubjective way of knowing, being and relating, enabling the revisioning of identities disrupted by illness, characterised by increases in participants creative capacity to adapt to illness and feelings of home-like-being-in-the-world, developing a stronger, more coherent lived experience of self-identity, effecting closure to difficult life experiences, and improving their overall quality of life.

Ernest Gaines collection of five short stories Bloodline, (1968) depicts the effects of racism and its denigrating effects on the lives of the black men. Gaines use of animal imagery furthers the effects of racism on the psychology of the blacks. The resolution comes around in the form of a mentor who helps the protagonists to break through the debilitating mind-set and work towards a new self-identity no longer defined by the white man. Gaines articulates the effects of lack of maturity, responsibility and understanding on the lives of the protagonists, their families and the community as a whole. Gaines brings out the new avatar of the black man who in his self-actualized journey arrives at an understanding of nurturing, caring and contributing to the community. It marks both the culmination and a beginning of true manhood in the lives of his central characters.

This thesis submission is a collection of short stories about women and the many ways women create identities for themselves in popular culture. Each of the main characters are painfully self-conscious, but still unaware of how carefully they have created their own personas. In “For the Sake of Anonymity,” “Annie” learns that a sweater set can have a mind of its own. In “The Voice of Reason,” Lauren defines herself against her sister. “The New You” and “Developing Chloe” both show characters who consciously create new personas for themselves through superficial changes. “Sensible People” is a story about a woman who decides to finally let her real self come out from her past. / Thesis / Master

The purpose of this thesis is to delineate Taylor¡¦s reasoning on the concept of freedom. I start by explicating Taylor¡¦s thesis of philosophical anthropology to illustrate how he answers the question: ¡§what is human agency?¡¨ Based on this ontological condition, Charles Taylor begins his discussion of the predicament of modern freedom by tracing the transformation of moral and epistemological ideals since the seventeenth century. By picturing the trajectories of moral sources in Western modernity, he believes, it enables us to meaningfully reflect upon personal freedom in an age of pluralism. Taylor demonstrates how the Enlightenment and Romanticism have jointly shape the background understanding of modern freedom. Based on his diagnosis of the ambivalent nature of modern freedom, Taylor contends classic liberalism for its universalist and atomist understanding of freedom. He proposes a ¡§complex liberalism¡¨ that recognizes the ¡§embededness¡¨ of freedom, on the one hand, and acknowledges the fact that the moral ideal of being free has its intrinsic worth, on the other hand. The ideal of freedom, therefore, must be understood as a distinctively modern phenomenon that is constitutive of modern self-identity, rather than a freestanding principle independent of any substantial conceptions of the good.

In this thesis I have investigated the process of self-schematic transformation that has been argued that offenders undergo in order to desist from crime. In this thesis I have used narrative interviews with twelve desisting offenders consisting of five non-violent offenders and seven violent offenders. I have analysed these narratives using a social cognitive perspective in order to seek an understanding of the self-schemas of the offenders. The results show that the desistance is the result of a longer process and the turning point experienced by the participants were the high point of this process. Social influences were highly important for both groups. Both groups were low in agency, with the exception to their new selves and the desisting process; still, the violent offenders were somewhat higher than the non-violent offenders. In general both groups used outside sources to explain their past crimes and substance abuse, though the violent offenders did this in less extent. Further, the analysis showed that the self-schema of the desisting offenders could be divided into three parts; the former self, the true self, and the new self, or who they used to be, who they have always been, and who they are now. The degree to which the offenders expressed these different selves varied between the two groups.

Resultat från tidigare studier visade att långtidsskador inom idrott har en stor inverkan på det psykiska välbefinnandet och fann ett behov av mer forskning kring de psykosociala aspekterna vid skador i idrott. Studiens syfte var att studera emotionella omställningar vid elithandbollsspelares långtidsskador och dess samspel med emotioner, självbild och socialt stöd. Deltagare var 7 kvinnor och 3 män inom nordisk elithandboll. Intervjuer utfördes, transkriberades och tematiserades med avseende på mening utifrån ett hermeneutiskt perspektiv. I resultatet redovisades 33 centrala emotioner som t.ex. känslor av chock vid besked av skadans allvar, ångest över att inte prestera och deppighet över skadan. Resultat för självbild och socialt stöd visade på en stor identifikation med handbollsrollen, minskat egenvärde och betydelsen av det handbollsrelaterade stödet. Det verkade råda ett hårt klimat inom elithandbollen och vår studie skulle kunna användas till att skapa mer förståelse och bättre behandlingsalternativ för skadade individer inom elithandbollen.