Although sexual and physical abuse have clear definitions, psychological abuse is difficult to define and conceptualize. Though men can and have experienced psychological abuse, there is limited research on heterosexual men's experiences with psychological abuse and much of the research on abuse has been on women. Therefore, this qualitative phenomenological study, grounded on control theory, the social choice framework, and narrative theory, was conducted to investigate how heterosexual men describe their experiences with psychological abuse. A phenomenological qualitative approached with purposeful sampling was used to draw a sample of heterosexual male participants (N = 6), ages 30 to 42 were interviewed, and transcripts were created from their responses for content analysis. The data was analyzed and coded to identify categories and themes. The results of this study indicated that heterosexual men do experience psychological abuse and they define this phenomenon with the underlying behavior of manipulation where physical abuse may or may not be prevalent. This research may also provide behavior health practitioners an opportunity to develop treatment strategies that address heterosexual men who experience psychological abuse. This research may also provide understanding to policy, lawmakers and law enforcement into understanding the lived experiences of heterosexual men who experience psychological abuse. This research has the potential for social change by adjusting both perspective and clinical definition as it pertains to heterosexual men who have experienced psychological abuse.

This study looked at the health beliefs of Maori who live in Utah, U.S. and examined what ways those beliefs have evolved from traditional Maori health beliefs. It also looked at the conditions and indicators of those conditions that maintain those health beliefs. A New Zealand study found that Maori older than age 45 years were more likely to have traditional health beliefs, whereas Maori younger than age 45 were more likely to have western-based health beliefs. Using grounded theory, the narratives--from two groups, younger or older than 45 years, where each group was composed of eight randomly selected participants--were collected and analyzed. It was found that all participants held traditional Maori health beliefs. Those beliefs were compatible with the construct of the Maori health model as presented in Te Whare Tapa Wha. This Maori model, along with participants, presented health as holistic, comprising components of physical, mental, spiritual, and family. Participants perceived health as having all four elements interconnected, with spirituality being the key element that binds all the others. Conditions that maintained this belief were time in country; acculturation, with racism possibly providing resistance to that condition; enculturation; and spirituality. Participants' spirituality was the key condition of maintaining their Maori health belief that is presented in this study. Enculturation, as a necessary but insufficient condition of Maori health beliefs, was based on indicators of opportunity, location, family, and social support and how these indicators play out over the life course of individuals. The most important indicator for enculturation was family or other social support for individuals to engage in Maori cultural activities.

People differ in the degree to which they focus on the ethical aspects of daily experiences. Past work operationalizes such differences using general, abstract items focused on perceiving and deliberating about moral conflict, but this conception may not capture the full psychological experience of morality, leading to problems with predictive validity. We built on past work to create a new measure, the Focus on Ethical Considerations (FEC) scale, which focuses on concrete moral experiences whether or not they involve conflict, allows for intuition and emotion, and invites relative rather than absolute judgments, in a bid to increase construct and predictive validity. Across three studies, the FEC scale improved upon the predictive accuracy of the moral attentiveness scale for relevant measures such as moral identity, the moralization of everyday life, and empathic concern, although moral attentiveness predicted need for cognition better than the FEC. Moreover, although both moral attentiveness and the FEC predicted rejection of causing outcome-maximizing harm in conventional sacrificial moral dilemmas, a process dissociation analysis revealed that moral attentiveness predicted reduced moral concerns about outcomes whereas the FEC predicted increased moral concerns about harm. Together, these findings suggest that the FEC scale improves upon past measures for capturing individual differences in moral considerations, and that chronic moral appraisal involves more than cognitive recognition of conflict. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2019. / January 28, 2019. / Focus on Ethical Considerations, moral attentiveness, moral identity, moral judgments, prosocial behavior / Includes bibliographical references. / Paul Conway, Professor Directing Thesis; Jon Maner, Committee Member; Colleen Ganley, Committee Member.

Currently, there exists no conclusive etiology of child abuse although there are two major and contrasting theories which attempt to impart a systematic interpretation to the data. The purpose of this study was to determine what are the significant factors in child abuse and to what extent the respective theories render a coherent and comprehensive explanation of these factors. This study aggregated the data on the demographic, social, economic, and psychological features of the child abuse victim and perpetrator. Each study was analyzed according to a methodology of review which considered the problems involved in eliciting meaningful data from a group of studies grounded on different assumptions and conducted according to disparate research designs. The studies were compared and contrasted to determine what factors were significantly related to child abuse. Thereafter, both major theories of child abuse were tested against the findings of the literature review to determine to what extent the respective theories successfully predicted and related significant factors in child abuse. The review of the literature clearly established a demographic profile of the child abuse victim and his family. The abused child is usually very young, typically below the age of three. Neither race nor gender are specifically related to the age of the victim. Abusing families tend to have more than the average number of children, but usually select only one child - frequently, the eldest or the youngest - as the target for abuse. The child is likely to have been born prematurely and to have had more than the usual number of serious physical illnesses or disabilities throughout his life. In addition, a significant number of abused children display intellectual, social, and psychological dysfunction which may have resulted from injuries sustained from previous abuse. Most injuries stemming from child abuse fall into the general category of superficial bruises and welts although compared with accidental childhood injuries, there is a higher frequency of fractures and head injuries. The pattern that emerges from the somewhat limited data is that abused children are unusually impaired in intellectual, social, and psychological functioning. Nearly all child abuse is committed by parental figures most of whom are the natural mothers and fathers of abused children. Most abusing parents are around twenty-five years old reflecting the fact that the majority of abuse victims are infants and younger children. Mothers are the most frequent child abusers. Although only one parent actually attacks the abuse victim, generally speaking, the other parent is overtly, or at least covertly involved in abusing the child. Abusing parents are characterized by a history of anti-social behavior and psychological problems. A general atmosphere of instability and disruption surrounds the child abusing family indicated by frequent discord among married parents, as well as separations and divorces. On all measures of socioeconomic status, child abusing families have low achievement and face the stresses of poverty and its associated conditions. However, neither race nor socioeconomic status distinguish the abusing family when compared with the social, racial, and economic groups to which they belong. Abusing families are distinguished by their transience and inability to maintain social contact with the community or affiliation with social organizations. Neither a sociocultural or a psychodynamic theory of child abuse effectively relates and explains all the significant findings of the literature review. While the former predicts the several environmental factors significantly related to child abuse and the latter explains the significant findings associated with the perpetrator, neither theory provides an explanation of the role of the child abuse victim. This review suggests that an alternative theoretical framework which incorporates environmental factors and relates significant factors about the child abuse victim and perpetrator will produce the most comprehensive explanation of child abuse.

This study developed a balance theory analysis of stepfamily relationships in order to understand family adjustment and empirically tested hypotheses derived from that analysis. Sentiment and unit relations between the stepparent, natural parent, and adolescent child, and between these stepfamily members and the nonresident (absent) natural parent were included in the analysis. The assumption of balance theory is that sentiment (affective) relations and unit relations (the perception of belonging together) tend toward a balanced state. If a balanced state does not exist, the imbalance will produce tension. The general hypothesis tested was that the degree of balance of the stepfamily system of relations is associated with stepfamily adjustment indicated by family members' feelings about satisfaction with family life, acceptance by other family members, expected permanence of the family, and self-esteem. Balance indices were calculated based on sentiment relations alone and on unit and sentiment relations together. Thirty-seven newly formed stepfamilies with a resident adolescent child provided the data for the study. Questionnaire data were obtained from the natural parent, the stepparent, and the child in regard to intrafamily communications, extrafamily relationships with the absent natural parent, and the adjustment variables. The results supported the hypothesis of an association between balance and family members' feelings indicative of stepfamily adjustment. For the child, the association between balance and feelings indicative of stepfamily adjustment was stronger when unit relations were included in the calculation of system balance than when balance was based on sentiment relations alone. For adults, the balance calculation based on sentiment relations alone produced the stronger associations with family adjustment. Self-esteem was not associated with family system balance. It was associated with the number of positive dyadic sentiment relations in the family system to which a member was a party. Implications of the results are: (1) Balance theory appears to be a fruitful theoretical approach to understanding stepfamily adjustment; and (2) A positive relationship between the child and the nonresident (absent) natural parent may make the child's adjustment in the stepfamily more difficult.

Education in the United States attempts to present maximum opportunities for learning in a democratic atmosphere. Many great educators have sought means to accomplish this end. Today, because of the stimulating force of other nations, even greater pressure is being brought to bear to achieve these goals. The plan of grouping pupils according to their abilities has been presented s one way to facilitate learning. Ability grouping is the assigning of pupils who are essentially alike to special grade levels and to parallel sections of the same grade. Although it may be thought that ability grouping is a new procedure, as early as 1920 the Detroit schools divided ten thousand students entering the first grade into three groups, on the basis of group intelligence tests. A letter classification of X, Y, or Z was given to each group. Group X was composed of the highest 20 per cent of the new enrollment; Group Y, of the middle 60 per cent; and Group Z, of the lower 20 per cent of the pupils. From the first recorded use of ability grouping, different methods of grouping have been used, with varying degrees of success. In the Unit ed States, during 1947-48, over half of the 1,598 city school systems were using ability grouping in some form or another in at least one of their schools. The percentage of cities using ability grouping ranged from 72 per cent in cities of more than 100,000 population, to 44 per cent in cities of 2,500 to 5,000 population. Typical of problems arising in ability grouping are: the relationship of ability grouping to achievement, the relationship of ability grouping to attitudes, the relationship of ability grouping to emotions, and the relationship of ability grouping to social acceptance. The purpose of this thesis is an evaluation of problems arising in ability grouping in relation to social acceptance, or sociometrics.

Past studies have shown that a relationship may exist between certain forms of epileptic seizures and specific environmental stimuli. This relationship is not well understood. The objective of this study was to assess this relationship by determining the effect of a selected token economy on seizure rates. The token economy utilized in this study may differ from token economies described in the literature as it employed certain punishers. This was done by dividing the study into three experiments. During Experiment I three severe epileptics were exposed to a series of conditions including baseline, token economy condition and baseline. During the baseline conditions the epileptic subjects were placed on one of two general psychiatric wards. The emotionality of the epileptic subjects was concomitantly measured. Emotionality was measured by recording the number of token fines and the number of time-outs the epileptic received. The emotional behaviors of the epileptics were compared to a number of nonepileptic subjects (X=24), who also received most of the same experimental conditions as the epileptic subjects. The results of Experiment I were: (1) The seizure rates of all three epileptics increased over the first baseline condition during the token condition; (2) the seizure rates for all three subjects returned to near baseline after the reversal; (3) the three epileptics received fewer fines and time-outs than did the nonseizure subjects during the first baseline; (4) during the token condition the three epileptic subjects received more fines and time-outs than the nonseizure patients. The results suggest that the token economy condition was accompanied by an increase in seizure rates and emotionality of the epileptic subjects. Experiment II systematically replicated Experiment I by utilizing only one ward for all three conditions; baseline, token condition and baseline. The seizure rates of the two subjects increased significantly over that of the baselines. Experiment III attempted to determine what parameter of the token economy accounted for the increased seizure rates. One subject was exposed to these conditions: ( 1) Standard token condition; ( 2) threefold increase of reinforcer prices; ( 3) no-token contingencies and (4) standard token condition. The seizures and ix the behaviors (checked every half hour) of the subject were recorded. The results were: ( 1) The subject had the same amount of seizures during each standard token condition; (2) her seizure rate increased during the second condition and decreased during the third condition. Her percentage of appropriate behaviors were: ( 1) 26 percent during condition one; (2) decreased to 18 percent during condition two and (3) increased to 49 percent during condition three. The conclusions drawn from this study were: ( 1) The selected token economy generated a higher seizure rate than did the general psychiatric ward procedures; ( 2) the seizure subjects had more seizures during the last weeks of the token condition than during the first weeks; and ( 3) concurrent with the increased seizure rates was a decrease in the number of appropriate behavior.

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