Young men who grew up with emotionally absent fathers seem to find it difficult to attain equilibrium through dedication to both personal and relational concerns, probably because they tend to have low self-esteem, struggle to establish intimate relationships and may be at greater risk of engaging in antisocial or violent behaviour. The aim of this study was to explore the self-regulation strategies that white young adult male students employ to deal with the emotions and cognitions related to the experience of having emotionally absent fathers. Interactive Qualitative Analysis was applied to facilitate a discussion group process through which a hypothetical model for a purposive sample of nine participants’ self-regulation strategies was systematically constructed. Ten themes were identified, and judging from the model participants’ attempts at self-regulation seem to be unproductive in the long run, hence the presence of three feedback loops from which they are unable to produce constructive behavioural outcomes. Disappointment over emotionally absent fathers has introduced a number of inhibiting factors that hinder the participants’ growth towards self-actualisation. Results support the literature on the complex nature of self-regulation within conflicting relationships. Although the study was explorative and findings cannot be generalised, it does provide valuable cues for counsellors, psychologists and further research. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Emotions are integrated psychological, physical and cognitive responses that function as an internal automatic process that provides feedback to the individual regarding the success and quality of achieving goals, relations with others and the meaning of life. It is therefore important that emotions are regulated – this refers to the monitoring, evaluation and the modification of emotional reactions (Todd & Lewis, 2008) – so that failures do not negatively impact on a person‟s ability to achieve important goals in life. Young adulthood, between the ages of 20 and 30, can be typified as a developmental phase during which critical decisions with regard to goals in life are made. However, young adults are often not able to effectively regulate the emotional impact of blocked life goals. As a result the risk for poor decision-making and lower psychological well-being increases. The aim of this study is to firstly identify critical factors in emotional regulation of young adults in reaction to blocked life goals. Secondly, the research identifies relations between these critical factors and lastly, the study offers a model on emotional regulation in reaction to goals in life that are blocked. An availability sample of 77 young adults between the ages of 20 and 30 years took part in the study. The study was granted ethical permission by the North-West University and all the participants gave informed consent. Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA), a systems approach to qualitative research was used to generate and analyse data (Northcutt & McCoy, 2004). IQA uses interviews with groups and individuals to collect and analyse data in a participatory way. Eight themes are identified, three of which are specifically considered regulation strategies, namely: the supression of emotions, productivity and giving in to primal urges. The other five themes can be considered emotions, namely: loneliness, frustration and disappointment, uncertainty, anger and discouragement. Participants indicated 56 possible cause-and-effect relations between these eight themes. According to a frequency analysis only 24 of these relations, which explains 74.8% of the variance in the group, were used in the development of the model. The model indicates that there are three central processes, namely: a feedback-loop that comprises three negative emotions and suppression as regulation strategy, a destructive path and a productive path. The findings support the literature in terms of the fact that emotions serve as an internal feedback process that provides feedback to the individual about the success and quality of achieving his or her goals, relations with others and the meaning of life. In this case, negative emotions are experienced as a result of goals in life that are blocked. The literature (Kassin et al., 2008) also confirms that suppression is not a successful long term strategy and eventually it only leads to further loneliness, uncertainty, and ultimately frustration and disappointment. For some of the participants alternative behaviours characterised by anger, discouragement and giving in to primal urges like smoking and alcohol abuse follow this. This seems to be an externalisation of negative emotions by participants with lower self-control, and it supports previous literature in this regard (Caprara et al., 2013). On the other hand, it seems that participants with more self-control make constructive plans to reach their goals or set new goals despite the frustration and disappointment that comes with having goals in life blocked. The final conclusion is that the regulation of emotions can be described as a complex process that individuals use to change or control their emotions in order to achieve a desired outcome. In this study it was particularly evident that the suppression of emotions play an important role and further research is needed to determine its short and long term effects. Further research is also needed to determine the factors that differentiate between young adults that apply destructive and productive regulation strategies respectively. / MA (Clinical Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Young men who grew up with emotionally absent fathers seem to find it difficult to attain equilibrium through dedication to both personal and relational concerns, probably because they tend to have low self-esteem, struggle to establish intimate relationships and may be at greater risk of engaging in antisocial or violent behaviour. The aim of this study was to explore the self-regulation strategies that white young adult male students employ to deal with the emotions and cognitions related to the experience of having emotionally absent fathers. Interactive Qualitative Analysis was applied to facilitate a discussion group process through which a hypothetical model for a purposive sample of nine participants’ self-regulation strategies was systematically constructed. Ten themes were identified, and judging from the model participants’ attempts at self-regulation seem to be unproductive in the long run, hence the presence of three feedback loops from which they are unable to produce constructive behavioural outcomes. Disappointment over emotionally absent fathers has introduced a number of inhibiting factors that hinder the participants’ growth towards self-actualisation. Results support the literature on the complex nature of self-regulation within conflicting relationships. Although the study was explorative and findings cannot be generalised, it does provide valuable cues for counsellors, psychologists and further research. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Emotions are integrated psychological, physical and cognitive responses that function as an internal automatic process that provides feedback to the individual regarding the success and quality of achieving goals, relations with others and the meaning of life. It is therefore important that emotions are regulated – this refers to the monitoring, evaluation and the modification of emotional reactions (Todd & Lewis, 2008) – so that failures do not negatively impact on a person‟s ability to achieve important goals in life. Young adulthood, between the ages of 20 and 30, can be typified as a developmental phase during which critical decisions with regard to goals in life are made. However, young adults are often not able to effectively regulate the emotional impact of blocked life goals. As a result the risk for poor decision-making and lower psychological well-being increases. The aim of this study is to firstly identify critical factors in emotional regulation of young adults in reaction to blocked life goals. Secondly, the research identifies relations between these critical factors and lastly, the study offers a model on emotional regulation in reaction to goals in life that are blocked. An availability sample of 77 young adults between the ages of 20 and 30 years took part in the study. The study was granted ethical permission by the North-West University and all the participants gave informed consent. Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA), a systems approach to qualitative research was used to generate and analyse data (Northcutt & McCoy, 2004). IQA uses interviews with groups and individuals to collect and analyse data in a participatory way. Eight themes are identified, three of which are specifically considered regulation strategies, namely: the supression of emotions, productivity and giving in to primal urges. The other five themes can be considered emotions, namely: loneliness, frustration and disappointment, uncertainty, anger and discouragement. Participants indicated 56 possible cause-and-effect relations between these eight themes. According to a frequency analysis only 24 of these relations, which explains 74.8% of the variance in the group, were used in the development of the model. The model indicates that there are three central processes, namely: a feedback-loop that comprises three negative emotions and suppression as regulation strategy, a destructive path and a productive path. The findings support the literature in terms of the fact that emotions serve as an internal feedback process that provides feedback to the individual about the success and quality of achieving his or her goals, relations with others and the meaning of life. In this case, negative emotions are experienced as a result of goals in life that are blocked. The literature (Kassin et al., 2008) also confirms that suppression is not a successful long term strategy and eventually it only leads to further loneliness, uncertainty, and ultimately frustration and disappointment. For some of the participants alternative behaviours characterised by anger, discouragement and giving in to primal urges like smoking and alcohol abuse follow this. This seems to be an externalisation of negative emotions by participants with lower self-control, and it supports previous literature in this regard (Caprara et al., 2013). On the other hand, it seems that participants with more self-control make constructive plans to reach their goals or set new goals despite the frustration and disappointment that comes with having goals in life blocked. The final conclusion is that the regulation of emotions can be described as a complex process that individuals use to change or control their emotions in order to achieve a desired outcome. In this study it was particularly evident that the suppression of emotions play an important role and further research is needed to determine its short and long term effects. Further research is also needed to determine the factors that differentiate between young adults that apply destructive and productive regulation strategies respectively. / MA (Clinical Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in both the United States and worldwide. Twin and family studies have demonstrated that both genetic and environmental factors are important contributors to tobacco use behaviors. Understanding how genes, the environment, and their interactions is critical to the development of public health interventions that focus on the reduction of tobacco related morbidity and mortality. However, few studies have examined the transition from adolescent to young adulthood – the time when many individuals are experimenting with and developing patterns of tobacco use. This dissertation thesis seeks to provide a comprehensive set of studies looking at risk for tobacco use behaviors and nicotine dependence using samples of young adults. The first aim is to examine the joint contributions of genetic liability and environmental contexts on tobacco use in adolescence and young adulthood using classical twin study methodologies. The second goal is to identify genetic variants and quantifying genetic risk for tobacco use in young adulthood and examining their interaction with environmental context across development. Accordingly, the thesis is divided up into the following sections: i) reviews of existing literature on genes, environment, and tobacco use; ii) twin studies of genetic and environmental influences on tobacco use behavior phenotypes; iii) prevalence, correlates, and predictors of tobacco use behaviors; iv) genetic analyses of tobacco use behaviors; v) a commentary on the emergence of alternative nicotine delivery systems and its public health impacts; and vi) plans for an internet-based educational intervention seeking to reduce tobacco use (and nicotine dependence) by providing students attending university with information on genetic and environmental risk factors for nicotine dependence.

During the whole life people tend to make new relations with other people. Some relationships, based on their character, are closer than others; therefore we call them close relationships. Friendship, which is described in this thesis, is a type of the close relationship. In the theoretic part, the emphasis is put on the description of close, later friendly relationships and on the overview of their development in human's life. Special attention is paid to the adolescence and emerging adulthood and their specifics in the area of friendly relationships. The particular changes in friendly relations at these developmental stages are the subject of the study. The empirical part includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of the differences in friendship in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Based on the study of scientific resources and prior research, characteristics of friendship, respectively of the researched category, were provided. The sample involved 146 respondents between the age 15 to 30. Only small changes in friendship's character in the area of common activities, trust and frequency of contact were discovered. Key words: Adolescence, emerging adulthood, friendship, close relationship.

This thesis focuses on the topic of motivating workers, particularly on two groups of workers - workers in the life period of young adulthood and workers in the period of late middle adulthood. In the introduction the reason for chosing this topic is explained, there are also defined the key words of this problematic and the classic motivation theories; the overview of the motivation theories focused on work environment follow afterwards. Also the findings of developmental psychology, concentrating on the life period of young and late middle adulthood and its differences are presented. Not only the classic literature was the source for this thesis; also many researches that were carried out in recent years and that are focusing on finding out the main difference of motivation of these different groups of workers were the base for this thesis. In the last part of this work I analyse my own findings that are based on the interviews I made with young and older workers and I compare these findings with the findings presented in the international researches. Finally, I state that even though there are some differences in factors that motivate young and older workers and it is necessary to take these differences into account, in the elemental aspects the factors that motivate workers are the same for...

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in academic research on media and its influences on body satisfaction. To date, the majority of body image literature focuses on low body satisfaction. While low body satisfaction leads to negative outcomes, high body satisfaction leads to a host of positive outcomes. Further, in a non-academic domain, it would seem that even some media icons are starting to take part in the effort to try to promote positive appearance messages. Singers like Christina Aguilera, Colbie Caillat, and Alessia Cara have begun writing songs like Beautiful, Try, and Scars To Your Beautiful to combat the rampant standard of the thin ideal. The current study consists of an experiment to examine the effects of positive or negative appearance music lyrics and their influence on body related outcomes (body satisfaction measured implicitly through an IAT, self-reports of body satisfaction, and observed body surveillance) in emerging adult women while moderating by adherence to sociocultural attitudes of media ideals. Results revealed that participants who listened to the positive lyrics reported significantly better body satisfaction as compared to those who listened to the negative lyrics. However, those who listened to positive lyrics did not report significantly better body satisfaction compared to those in the neutral condition and those in the neutral condition did not differ significantly from those in the negative condition. Due to preconceived schema regarding how participants already felt about their appearance, perhaps they were primed to hear lyrics confirming their appearance fears (or soothing them), but failed to attend to lyrics "unappearance" related (the neutral lyrics). Therefore, when asked about their body satisfaction, their responses reflected what they attended to, namely, either the positive or negative lyrics, not the neutral lyrics.

A slight majority of American households headed by 55–64-year-olds do not have any savings for retirement, and those who have retirement savings have a median of around $109,000 saved, which is equivalent to an inflation-protected annuity of $405 per month (i.e., well below the official poverty level). Among the main reasons cited for the lack of retirement savings among parents is a desire to provide financial support to their young adult children. Indeed, on the whole, parents spend twice as much on financial support of their adult children as they save for retirement (Merryl Lynch, 2018). Understanding the precursors and predictors of this spending behavior may provide insight into decisions that lead to a lack of self-sufficiency in retirement, and hint at opportunities for prevention and intervention efforts aimed at bolstering retirement savings. To that end, this project was designed to examine the extent to which these financial decisions vary by context and belief systems. Specifically, three studies were developed to investigate motivation for providing support to young adult children in lieu of retirement savings. A sample of 496 respondents who were 40 years of age or older was recruited using the online Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform. Respondents were presented three factorial vignettes in which hypothetical parents were deciding whether to provide support to their adult child with a major expense—a car (Study 1, Chapter 2), college tuition (Study 2, Chapter 3), and a house (Study 3, Chapter 4)—and respondents were asked on a four-point Likert-type response scale whether parents should (definitely yes, probably yes, probably no, definitely no) provide financial support to their adult children in the given context, and to provide a rationale for their response. In each study, key contextual variables were randomly manipulated within the vignette across respondents (e.g., adult child’s gender [female vs. male], parents’ age [early 60s vs. late 40s], source of money [withdrawal from vs. under-contributing to retirement savings], college major [social sciences vs. business degree], and number of siblings [one vs. three]). Ordinal regression models were used to estimate the effects of the randomly manipulated variables on endorsement of parental provision of financial support to adult children, and content analysis was used to identify the most common rationales respondents provided for the beliefs they espoused in the closed-ended items. Endorsement of parental use of retirement saving for financial support varied depending on whether the stated purpose of the money was for purchasing a car (67% endorsed), paying for college tuition (34% endorsed), or paying the down payment on a house (31% endorsed). Across the three studies, only older parents (in their early 60s [Study 1]) and withdrawing money from a retirement account (Studies 2 and 3) had negative effects on endorsement of parental support; responses according to the other randomly manipulated variables did not statistically vary in these data, suggesting norms that supersede the other manipulated variables. Among respondent sociodemographic characteristics—gender, socioeconomic status, clarity of retirement goals, having adult children, and helping them with large purchases similar to situations described in the vignette—only ownership of a retirement savings account or a pension plan had a consistent negative association with endorsement of parental support across all three studies, indicating that people with retirement plans were more conservative in their attitudes about financially supporting young-adult children than were those without retirement plans. Major rationales for the provision of parental financial support included (a) responsibility for the child (i.e., a solidarity belief system), (b) a belief that children pay back their parents (i.e., a reciprocity belief system), and (c) a belief that parents should make sacrifices for their children (i.e., an altruistic belief system). Given that the majority of studies investigate retirement planning from an individual perspective, as if workers were making their decisions rationally in isolation from their family context, future studies may benefit from a more inclusive approach that takes into account the complexity of family relationships and also social perception of parental financial obligations toward their children.

<p>Three studies focus on an intriguing paradox in the associations between gender, friendship quality, and loneliness, and examine whether gender differences in friendship expectations help explain why the paradox occurs. Study 1 (n = 1761 college undergraduates) documents the three elements of this paradox: (1) females reported higher levels of various positive features in their friendships than did males; (2) higher levels of positive friendship features were associated with lower levels of loneliness; and (3) males and females reported similar levels of loneliness. Consistent with this paradox, when friendship features were statistically controlled, a statistical suppression effect was found such that females reported higher levels of loneliness than did males. </p><p>Study 2 (n = 1008 young adults aged 18 to 29) replicated each of the findings from Study 1 using a revised and expanded measure that reliably assessed a broader set of distinct friendship features. In addition to measuring friendship features and loneliness, Study 2 also examined friendship satisfaction, and here too a striking suppression effect emerged. Specifically, although females reported slightly higher levels of friendship satisfaction than did males, females reported lower levels of friendship satisfaction than did males when friendship features were statistically controlled. Another noteworthy finding was that several friendship features were more strongly related to friendship satisfaction for females than they were for males, suggesting that females may be more "sensitive" to subtle variations in friendship features than are males. </p><p>Study 3 (n = 419 young adults aged 18 to 29) further replicated the suppression effects observed in Studies 1 and 2, and was designed to learn whether gender differences in friendship expectations would help explain the paradox and suppression effects. Two different facets of friendship expectations were hypothesized and assessed with newly developed, highly reliable measures of each facet. The first facet, referred to as "feature-specific friendship expectations," focused on the degree to which individuals expect a best friendship to be characterized by each of the friendship features that were assessed in Study 2. The second facet, referred to as "feature-specific friendship standards," focused on identifying where individuals "set the bar" in deciding whether or not a friend's actions have fulfilled expectations in various friendship feature domains. </p><p>Gender differences were found for both facets of friendship expectations with females generally having higher expectations for their friends than did males. The two facets were only moderately correlated, and related in distinct ways to other variables of interest. Findings indicated that higher levels of feature-specific friendship expectations were generally associated with more positive functioning in the social domain (i.e., higher levels of positive friendship features and friendship satisfaction), whereas higher levels of feature-specific friendship standards were associated with potentially more problematic functioning (i.e., more negative responses to ambiguous violations of friendship expectations). </p><p>Study 3 also tested the hypothesis that discrepancies between feature-specific friendship expectations and the quality of a person's best friendship on each of the same features are associated with loneliness and also with friendship satisfaction. Polynomial regression analysis, rather than the traditional difference score approach, was used to test this hypothesis. The discrepancy hypothesis was not supported with regard to either loneliness or friendship satisfaction; possible explanations for this finding are discussed. </p><p>Together, findings from the three studies provide evidence of the replicability of the observed paradox, identify friendship quality as a suppressor variable on gender differences in loneliness and friendship satisfaction, and provide evidence for the existence of two distinct facets of friendship expectations. Results from this dissertation suggest important directions for future research designed to better understand the linkages among gender, social cognition, and social experience in contributing to emotional well-being for young adults.</p> / Dissertation