<p> This dissertation explores the relationship between empowerment and social capital formation among mothers of children with disabilities in Tajikistan as a result of their participation in parent associations. Mothers of children with disabilities in Tajikistan face extreme social stigma because of traditional beliefs that their child&rsquo;s disability is a reflection of their own sinful behavior. This results in a wide variety of overt discrimination for both mother and child. This can include institutionalization of children from birth, withholding medical care at birth or in early childhood, purposefully mislabeling a disability as &ldquo;birth trauma&rdquo; in hopes of protecting the mother, and hiding children with disabilities at home. For the mother, consequences can include limited marriage prospects for her other children, divorce, significantly reduced social status, and outright abuse within her marriage family or her birth family if she is forced to return to them following a divorce. The Soviet legacy of defectology reinforces this marginalization by framing disability as a defect within the child that requires correction through specialized services and segregated schooling in order for later participation or inclusion in broader society. Furthermore, formal public provision of specialized services in Tajikistan has largely disintegrated in the economic deprivation following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the chaos of the civil war. </p><p> Within this context civil society organizations concerned with women&rsquo;s health and international organizations, including the Open Society Foundations, have sought to provide support for mothers of children with disabilities. In hopes of helping them through post-partum depression and the psychological pain of isolation, they have supported group therapy and self-help groups. Several of these support groups, some with support from the Open Society Foundations, formed associations of parents of children with disabilities in 2007-13 and then a national Coalition of associations in 2014. The original goal of the association was to continue to support parents psychologically but also to provide services, like physical or occupational therapy, for children. It has also enabled parents to learn as much as possible about their children&rsquo;s disability, collecting or pooling resources to purchase equipment, and developing community-based service delivery. When little is available publicly and services are created from scratch, there is significant space for innovation, which can be a great advantage. However, this also requires a great deal of motivation, self-confidence, and assertiveness from the initial group of participants to develop these models and continued outreach to the community to ensure their sustainability. Together at the national level and individually within their own communities, they advocate for access to education, healthcare, and social benefits as well as working to create a more positive view of disability among the general public. </p><p> In the face of such huge barriers that include social stigma, discrimination within their own families, poverty, and lack of services, <b>how have these women become empowered advocates for themselves and their children?</b> This research develops three cases studies of parent groups in different parts of Tajikistan (Dushanbe, Khujand, Bokhtar) and with varying profiles (autism, general disability) in addressing this central research question. Building on the literature on empowerment and social capital formation in the fields of community psychology and international development, this dissertation explores the relationship between empowerment and social capital that grows from crisis or need to gaining knowledge through support from others. The objective is examine whether and how such partnerships, in turn, lead to increased confidence among women and a desire to work together in support of others, while nurturing a growing feeling of self-worth and self-efficacy. </p><p> The three cases were developed using qualitative research methods, including interviews and focus groups with association members and key informants, observations of activities within the parent groups, and analysis of documents produced by the groups. Field research was conducted during the summer of 2015. Common themes that emerge from these cases include the challenges of organizational development, especially maintaining the spirit of a parent association as the founding mothers become increasingly professional in their approaches to service delivery, the importance of public events in addressing the stigma associated with disability, and a strong desire to include children with disabilities in broader society through education. Although all public services are important, education is most likely to be available in every community through local schools. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)</p><p>

<p> A significant number of immigrants internationally are bicultural and bilingual and must negotiate being suspended between their culture of origin and the host culture, a process that entails shifting between the two. Differences between the cultures can cause conflict within the psychological makeup of the immigrant and affect self-identity. This qualitative study sheds light on the immigrant&rsquo;s unconscious somatic-sensory and somatic-emotional history and how it affects the immigrant&rsquo;s identity. The research takes a somatic, depth psychological approach to exploring components of the immigrant experience. A hermeneutic investigation of the somatic constituents of depth psychology correlates them with current research in neuroscience in relation to the immigrant&rsquo;s experience. Using heuristic inquiry, the author offers her own somatic experience of immigration and examines that of eight culturally diverse immigrant participants in a study guided by the method of interpretative phenomenological analysis. The participants&rsquo; responses to questions in semistructured interviews revealed somatic experiences of landscape, food and tastes, and language and sounds as tied to their identity as immigrants. The analysis of the data demonstrates the impact of the soma on the immigrant experience and vice versa and reveals how these immigrants made meaning of that experience in their attempt at acculturation. Common somatic-sensory and somatic-emotional patterns of experience detected in their stories revealed a psychological process whereby their experience of two cultures are synthesized into a new entity containing both somatic and psychic components: the _{immigrant archetype}. </p><p>

abstract: The previous research literature was reviewed on how perpetrator's group membership and individuals' racial identity impact intergroup attitude and behavior, as well as factors contribute to intergroup bias on individuals' empathy level. This study was designed to extend the existing research on intergroup relations by exploring the effect of perpetrator's ingroup/outgroup membership and the strength of racial identity on people's empathy toward the outgroup victims. A web-based survey was disseminated and administrated at a southwest university. One hundred and six Caucasian American college students who completed the survey and met the criterion of eighteen years old or older were involved in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of two target stories and one distracter story, and reported their empathy level toward each story. And then the participants' strength of racial identity was measured. Controlling for demographic variables, regression analyses revealed that, as expected, the interaction of the perpetrator's group membership and individuals' racial identity significantly predicted the level of empathy toward the outgroup victim. When the perpetrator was an ingroup member, people who highly identified with their group exhibited less empathy for the outgroup victim. However, perpetrator's membership and the strength of racial identity failed to predict individuals' outgroup empathy separately. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2015

abstract: Stress is an arguably universal phenomenon that has maladaptive effects on individuals’ mental health (i.e., depression). Individuals traditionally deal with stress through various coping strategies that fall under three coping styles: emotion-oriented coping, avoidance/disengagement coping, and problem-oriented coping. Furthermore, numerous studies have focused on the stress-reducing properties of music, but the literature lacks an examination of the use and effectiveness of music as a coping strategy. The current thesis examined the moderating role of music as a coping strategy in the link between stress and depression. Based on existing research, the author predicted that for participants who endorsed music coping as emotion-oriented or avoidance /disengagement-oriented, there would be an exacerbation of the stress-depression link. However, for participants who endorsed music coping as problem-oriented, there would be an attenuation of the stress-depression link. In an online survey-based study of 207 students attending Arizona State University, the author found that emotion-oriented music coping and avoidance/disengagement music coping exacerbated the relationship between stress and depression. The author, however, did not find support for the prediction that higher endorsement of problem-oriented music coping would buffer the effect of stress on depression. These results suggest that music coping may parallel alternative coping strategies in some respects but not others. Overall, the study findings support the further examination of music as a coping strategy in order to replicate emotion-oriented coping as the primary use of music. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2017

abstract: Older children are expected to serve as support substitutes when parents are not able to adequately provide the support needed to their younger siblings. This exchange of resources may influence the individual who is serving as a substitute to experience feelings of obligation and resentment that can ultimately lead to mental health symptoms. The term mental health is broadly conceptualized in this thesis as negative affect and positive affect. Online surveys were conducted on a sample of 170 Arizona State University students to analyze whether the provision of sibling support was related to worse affect. Hypotheses included: 1) provision of support from the student to the sibling will be related to lower positive and higher negative affect, 2) sibling support provision will be related to greater feelings of obligation and resentment, 3) obligation and resentment will mediate the relationship between sibling support provision and affect and 4) gender differences exist in the mediational relationship of sibling support provision, obligation/resentment, and affect. Results showed that sibling support provision is related to higher levels of both negative and positive affect. Moreover, provision of sibling support was significantly related to feelings of obligation and resentment. There was also some evidence for a mediational model, such that there was an indirect effect of sibling support provision on negative and positive affect through feelings of obligation, but not resentment. Lastly, females experienced significantly greater feelings of obligation to provide support, while males experienced significantly greater feelings of resentment. However, there was no evidence of a moderated mediation by gender. These results suggest that sibling support provision is related to affect and one potential explanation is the feelings of obligation engendered by the sibling support provision. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2017

abstract: Denver, Colorado is experiencing an unprecedented growth spurt, particularly in the downtown neighborhoods. As such, the city has proposed a multitude of urban revitalization projects in its urban core. This pattern of revitalization has unintended consequences including changes in residents’ meanings assigned to their neighborhoods and subsequently changes in residents’ attachment to those neighborhoods. Given this, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to use a symbolic interactionist perspective to uncover resident meanings of their neighborhoods and discover how redevelopment efforts are affecting those assigned meanings. Participants, recruited through the snowball sampling method in the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods in downtown Denver, were interviewed during spring of 2017. Photo-elicitation techniques were used as part of the interviews. Additionally, secondary data available through public documents were analyzed to provide a context for understanding the changes that are taking place in the selected neighborhoods. This data aids in guiding future research, which may ultimately better inform the government agencies and private organizations who are looking to redevelop low-income neighborhoods similar to the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods in the given study. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Community Resources and Development 2018

<p> The current study examined whether familial socialization contributes to personal preferences to date liberally (e.g., date multiple partners), whether these factors vary by gender and ethnicity, and whether these factors have consequences for romantic relationships. To test these questions we administered a retrospective online questionnaire to emerging adults (<i>N </i> = 710). We hypothesized that familial socialization to date liberally would predict one&rsquo;s personal endorsement to date liberally. We also expected men to report higher familial socialization and personal endorsement to date liberally than women, and Latino men to have the highest levels of socialization and endorsement compared to Asian and European American men. The data supported both of these hypotheses. Further, we hypothesized that these factors would be linked to having had a greater number of sexual partners and lower satisfaction in one&rsquo;s romantic relationship, which was also confirmed. These findings underscore the family's influence on relationship outcomes within diverse cultural contexts.</p><p>

<p> Unique benefits can be gained by combining advantages of both micro- and macrocognitive methods that would otherwise be impossible to gather from either of these methods separately. The proposed research examines several cognitive functions within one systematic study that combines some empirical investigation with post-hoc qualitative assessment to gather knowledge of strategies and computations. Thereby, analyzing a larger cognitive system in a standardized way. By analyzing several cognitive functions the multifunction mental model hypothesis (MMM) is explored. This hypothesis states that performance of one sensemaking operation is predictive of performance of other related sensemaking operations. Three additional hypotheses were also explored. (2) Through brief instruction and feedback, mental models are developed that involve understanding the relational structure between inter-correlated and independent feature(s). (3) Understanding of the relational structure of the features can be used to make error correction decisions. (4) The strategies that utilize the inter-correlated nature of the features can be recognized and verbalized by users. Four Experiments used a multi-cue probabilistic weather forecasting task. Evidence from Experiments 1-4 supported the MMM hypothesis. Systematic variability in probability estimation by using differentially weighted features and inter-correlated features were related to evacuation decisions, error detection, and error correction. Results also supported hypotheses 2-4. The present research provides evidence which supports the integration of micro- and macrocognitive methods for a richer understanding of cognitive function in complex sociotechnical systems.</p><p>

abstract: This project uses a functional approach to understand how members of stigmatized groups perceive emotional expressions on others' faces. The project starts from the premise that different groups are seen to pose different threats to others, and thus different groups face prejudices colored by different, specific negative emotions. For example, prejudice toward Black men is driven largely by fear, whereas prejudice toward obese people is driven largely by disgust. Members of these groups may thus come to be "expert" in perceiving fear or disgust in others' faces, depending on the specific emotional prejudices others feel toward their group. Alternatively, members of these groups may be biased to over- or under-perceive these emotional expressions on others' faces. I used a functional approach to predict that, if a Black man believes that seeing others' fear expressions will be useful to him, he will tend to overperceive fear on others' faces, whereas if an obese man believes that seeing others' disgust expressions will be useful to him, he will tend to overperceive disgust on others' faces. If, however, it is not considered useful to perceive these prejudicial emotions on others' faces, Black men and obese people will tend to underperceive these emotional expressions. This study recruited Black men, overweight men, and a group of comparison men. All participants completed an emotion detection task in which they rated faces on whether they expressed fear, disgust, or no emotion. Participants were randomly assigned to complete this emotion detection task either before or after a questionnaire designed to make salient, as well as to measure, participants' beliefs about others' prejudices and stereotypes of their group. Finally, participants completed a set of measures tapping predicted moderator variables. Results suggested that a) Black men tend to be less sensitive perceivers of both fear and disgust on others' faces than are other groups, unless prejudice is salient, and b) variables that would guide the functionality of perceiving others' prejudicial emotional expressions (e.g., belief that prejudice toward one's group is justified, belief that group status differences are legitimate, belief that one can manage stigmatizing interactions, stigma consciousness, and emotion-specific metastereotypes of one's group) do predict differences among Black men in perceiving these emotions on others' faces. Most results for overweight participants were null findings. The results' implications for the psychology of detecting prejudice, and emotional expressions more broadly, are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Psychology 2013

abstract: Reciprocity is considered one of the most potent weapons of social influence. Yet, little is known about when reciprocity appeals are more or less effective. A functional evolutionary approach suggests that reciprocity helps people survive in resource-scarce environments: When resources are limited, a person may not be able to obtain enough resources on their own, and reciprocal relationships can increase the odds of survival. If true, people concerned about resource scarcity may increasingly engage in reciprocal relationships and feel more compelled to reciprocate the favors done for them by others. In a series of experiments, I test this hypothesis and demonstrate that: (1) chronic concerns about resource scarcity (low socioeconomic status) predict increased reciprocity, (2) experimentally activating resource scarcity enhances the effectiveness of reciprocity appeals, (3) this effect is moderated by cues of persuasive intent, and (4) this relationship is mediated by increased gratitude. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Psychology 2014