As a social phenomenon, the elitist, snobbish and conspicuous nature of luxury in Europe and early America, described in Veblen's (1899) "Theory of the Leisure Class," has transcended into a democratized new luxury in the United States. This new luxury empowers a larger portion of the population to fulfill their consumption fantasies. The most extraordinary change is from conspicuous consumption to ubiquitous inconspicuousness. This and other changes are continuing to impact marketing strategy, brand management, product development and the retail environment, presenting opportunities for marketing researchers. A Hermeneutic examination, using Seidman's (1998) three-interview series model, was conducted among consumers of the iconic New Luxury (Fiske and Silverstein, 2002) brand, Victoria's Secret. This examination aims to describe a slice of life, as opposed to a slice of science, and allow a better understanding of what it is like to form brand attachment and loyalty in the context of New Luxury. Women, who have been working more, earning more, and marrying later in life, provide an appropriate participant pool to demonstrate how the concept of "old" luxury has changed in contemporary America. This examination presents five dimensions of consumers' meaning-making processes. These afford Victoria's Secret a unique position in the market, as well as in consumers' lives. In the market, it is perceived as prestigious and commands a significant premium despite being ubiquitous and accessible to all. In consumers' lives, it takes a unique position of an emotional brand that is highly functional, thereby differentiating itself from both categories simultaneously. The study's findings point to the obsolescence of "Luxury" in contemporary markets and research contexts, and suggest future reexamination of luxury in light of paradigm shifts among markets, consumers, and marketers. This research describes and discusses the advantages of qualitative methods in marketing research and consumer research. Specifically, issues of researching female consumers not as prey for marketers but as an influential market player, and the implementation of hermeneutics in consumer research (Arnold and Fischer, 1994) are addressed and encouraged. Finally, this research urges conducting academic research geared toward application by practitioners in addition to developing, classifying and testing theoretical concepts.

Instructional time is a precious commodity within the school day. Research has shown (Gettinger & Ball, 2008; Hollywood, Salisbury, Rainforth & Palombaro, 1994) that students are only academically engaged for a fraction of time that is protected for instruction. In order to increase academic achievement, we must increase and protect instructional time. This study used a multiple baseline design across teachers to examine teacher behavior and student engagement. Teachers and students were systematically observed in the classroom. In the first phase, the data from these observations were provided graphically to teachers, thus serving as performance feedback. Performance feedback has been demonstrated as an effective means of increasing treatment integrity and facilitating teacher behavior change (Noell et al., 2005). During the second phase of the study, consultation meetings included a review of the data, collaborative brainstorming of strategies for increasing instructional time and goal setting. It was hypothesized that sharing performance feedback would lead to increased levels of observed instructional time. Results show inconsistent effects for increasing instructional time across participants.

According to attachment theory, individuals develop working models that organize their understanding of themselves and others in relationships. These working models should guide interpretation of ambiguous relationship events, and thereby affect emotional reactions to those events. In this study, individuals with different attachment styles--who hold different working models of attachment--read and rated their emotional reactions to ambiguous relationship scenarios presented via computer. The computer timed their reactions. They later provided explanations for why the events might have occurred and completed a measure tapping their beliefs about relationships. Respondents differed by attachment style in their emotional reactions across all scenarios, and their patterns differed depending on the type of scenario, as well. They differed in how quickly they responded to the emotion questions, indicating potential defensive processing among members of one attachment group. Respondents in also differed in their tendency to explain the events as caused by themselves or their partners. There were no differences on the measure of relationship beliefs. Results are discussed in terms of attachment theory.

The current research investigates how the perceived emotional responses of a majority of Americans to 9/11 (i.e., collective anger and fear) affect individuals’ support for governmental policies, in particular, military intervention, anti-immigration policy, and restricting civil liberties. Study 1 found that perceived collective anger was associated with support for military intervention and anti-immigration policy, and that those effects of perceived collective anger on policy support were significantly driven by individuals’ own anger. Study 2 showed that experimentally manipulated collective anger (i.e., exposure to the majority’s anger relative to the minority’s anger) had marginal effects on support for anti-immigration policy and restricting civil liberties, and individuals’ own anger mediated the marginal effect of collective anger on support for restricting civil liberties. Participants exposed to either the majority’s or minority’s fear supported anti-immigration policy and restricting civil liberties as strongly as did those exposed to the majority’s anger. Implications and limitations of these findings were discussed.

This dissertation examines the use of the dark areas of the occult in the lives of six adolescents who have been involved with black magic, satanic ritual, or other occult practices. All but one of the subjects were connected to the community helping system because of divorce, abuse and/or neglect, delinquency, and substance abuse. Data was collected by means of an interview concerned with the ethnic, economic and religious background of the subjects' family, the subjects' relationships with family, community and state agencies, and the duration of involvement with the occult. The interview and data analysis drew from two perspectives: The first five stages of Erik Erikson's "Eight Stages of Man" identity development model and the existential psychological examination of the "problems of youth" by Paul Goodman in Growing Up Absurd (1960). The study provides an examination of the historical and current use of the occult as a social-strain gauge and disturbing parallels of despairing behavior between the youth culture of Weimar Republic Germany and that of the United States. A strong connection is made between the involvement with dark areas of the occult and the loss of meaning, hope and faith. The subjects came from circumstances that hampered healthy negotiation of Erik Erikson's first five stages of identity development. The subjects grew up in circumstances that led to despairing beliefs and behaviors, as described by Goodman. The data suggests that the nature of the use of magic during early adolescence depends on the nurturent (physical, psychological and ideological) circumstances of infancy, and latency. If the child despairs because of insufficient family/community nurturence then the dark, deviant and depraved element of the occult is more likely to manifest itself. The subjects represent a larger despairing population (uninvolved with the occult or the helping system) that puts society at risk politically and economically. The current youth culture parallels with Weimar Republic youth culture suggest that this larger despairing population threatens society because they could be manipulated by historical circumstance and charismatic personalities to commit widespread depravity in the name of political change.

The purpose of this study was to examine the targets and functions of humor in relation to group development processes in order to ascertain if there were any changes and patterns in the way groups use humor as they evolve through developmental stages. Four small groups, consisting of five or six, were videotaped. Tapes were observed and coded by trained observers. Coding categories were incident, target, and social function(s). In addition, observers assessed group development stage via the Group Development Stage Analysis instrument (Carew, Parisi-Carew, Stoner & Blanchard, 1988). Data were also obtained from examination of transcriptions of the videotapes, group participants' journals of the experience, exit interviews, and written exit responses. Combinations of quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the data obtained. By using these approaches, observable phenomena were linked with participant experience and perception to ascertain connections of humor to group dynamics. All of the groups manifested similar patterns in the functional use of humor in relation to group development stages. Evidence of discernable "humor stages" (Just Joking, Evoking, Yoking, Poking) was identified and delineated. The stages reflect the unfolding of both overt and underlying relationship issues present within a group as it develops. The results of this study should offer a greater understanding of changes in the way groups use humor in relation to developmental processes. This is particularly important in helping people learn to use humor in more constructive ways, such as enhancing creativity and reaching consensus, and to prevent destructive uses of humor, such as perpetuating stereotypes and scapegoating.

The purpose of this study was to identify self-reported psychological symptoms of African college students in five colleges and universities in Western Massachusetts. The question was whether the severity of the self-reported symptoms would predict help-seeking attitudes. The study also investigated whether sociodemographic variables and the extent of acculturation correlated with help-seeking attitudes and symptoms reported. In addition, this study also identified the African students' preference for and use of counseling services on college and university campuses. The Brief Symptoms Inventory, (Derogatis 1975) was used to collect data on self-reported symptoms of psychological distress. Fischer and Turner's (1970) Attitude Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help scale was used to measure help-seeking attitudes. To measure levels of acculturation among African students, a modified version of Ceullar and Jaso's (1980) Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans was used. Subjects were ninety African college students (65 males, 25 females) enrolled in undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral programs in colleges and universities in western Massachusetts. Students were identified through foreign student offices and the African Student's Association. The data obtained included a completed score on the Brief Symptoms Inventory and the Student Attitude Scale from each student. Correlations were computed for students' responses on both instruments. No statistically significant gender differences were found in the self-reported symptoms. Although African college students reported higher levels of depression, anxiety and paranoid ideation compared to the normative sample symptom severity does not necessarily predict a positive help-seeking attitude. The level of acculturation, however, was a fairly good predictor of positive attitude toward seeking professional help. It was also evident from this research that informal sources of counseling (e.g. use of foreign student advisors) were preferred over established counseling and mental health centers. It was therefore suggested that counseling centers tap this unique resource and also expand outreach programs to reach African college students. Based on these findings, it was suggested that American Embassies in African countries make pre-departure counseling a component of their services to African students. Also orientation programs on arrival should address perceived needs of African college students and direct them to available services on campus.

Impulsive behavior is a common theme in psychology, but human decision making, animal choice, foraging, and personality research define and measure impulsiveness differently. The first goal of this study was to determine how much agreement exists between impulsiveness measures based on these different perspectives. A review of these literatures suggests that individual differences in sensitivity to rate of reward and punishment may be an important factor in impulsive decision-making. The second goal of the present study was to investigate this possibility. College undergraduates (n = 159) responded to a four-part questionnaire. The first part was a series of duplex bets that assessed each subject's relative attention to four risk dimensions: amount to win, amount to lose, rate or probability of winning, and rate or probability of losing. The second part of the questionnaire represented the common definitions of impulsiveness in decision theory with 20 items posing hypothetical choices between immediate and delayed rewards. The third part was the 42-item Eysenck Impulsivity Scale used in personality research. Finally, subjects responded to a single 7-point self-rating of impulsiveness, and gave examples of impulsive and unimpulsive behavior. The decision theory items and personality measure of impulsiveness were very weakly related. The findings suggest that reliability and validity issues with regard to hypothetical choices of this type should be investigated carefully before using them in further research. Regarding the suggestion that individual differences in sensitivity to rate account for impulsive behavior, the results of the study indicate that impulsive individuals may instead be particularly sensitive to punishment or cost. When unavoidable cost is explicitly associated with reward, as in the choices in the duplex bets and hypothetical choices in the questionnaire, impulsives weight that information heavily, but in many everyday decision situations, like those described in elicited examples, they may actively avoid cost considerations, which leads to rapid action, sometimes with objectively negative outcomes.

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