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Romantic relationship qualities are important for individuals' psychosocial adjustment. This dissertation focuses on how young adults' committed romantic relationships are related to experience of parental divorce and relationships with parents during adolescence. Also, how this relationship may be different by four dyads of parents and children - father/daughter, father/son, mother/daughter, and mother/son - is examined.The conceptual paper proposes parent-child relationships as a main family process affecting children's romantic relationships. Social learning theoretical perspectives is used as a guide that children observe, model, learn, and then apply the behaviors or patterns of relationships with parents to their own romantic relationships. Two potential roles of parent-child relationships are addressed in the dynamics among parental divorce, parent-child relationships, and children's romantic relationships. The first role of parent-child relationships is a mediation role between parental divorce and children's romantic relationships. The second role of parent-child relationships is a moderation role between parental divorce and children's romantic relationships. How one variable, parent-child relationships, can be a mediator as well as moderator is addressed in the conceptual paper. Also, the need to examine four dyads of parents and children in these models is addressed.Two empirical studies examine a potential mediation and a moderation model respectively. The data for these studies were taken from Wave 6 (high school senior) and Wave 8 (age 24) of the Michigan Study of Adolescent Life Transitions (MSALT). The mediation model is tested using a multi-group mediation model using SEM. The results suggest that there is indirect effect of parental divorce on children's romantic relationships, specifically for father-daughter dyads. The moderation model is tested using hierarchical regression analyses and the results show that there is interaction between parental divorce and relationships with parents. For example, relationships with fathers in always-married families are significantly related to children's satisfaction in their romantic relationships.In the conclusion chapter, implications of the findings, limitations and contribution of the studies, and direction for future research are addressed.

Relationship research on Mexican origin women often focuses on their ethnicity while ignoring other aspects of their lives. Mexican origin women are diverse and as researchers we need to study this diversity. Informed by Chicana Feminism, this dissertation examines the experiences of Mexican origin women in intimate relationship in the form of three manuscripts. My goal is to make Mexican origin women's voices more wholly heard in relationship research.The first manuscript is a conceptual one, in which I examine the shortcomings of relationship research on heterosexual Mexican origin women. Some scholars have regarded Mexican origin women as a "triple minority" (see Arellano & Ayala-Alcantar, 2004) due to their disadvantaged social locations in terms of gender, ethnicity, and social class. I argue that in order to fully understand the experiences of Mexican origin women, it is necessary to study the intersections in which they are situated. This manuscript critically examines how the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class affects women's experiences in heterosexual intimate relationships.In the second manuscript, I examine Mexican origin women's perceptions of the division of childcare and how these perceptions influence evaluations of their romantic and parenting relationships. Results reveal women's perceptions of the division of childcare impact both their romantic and parenting relationship. The moderating effects of gender role attitudes are also investigated. Results demonstrate the diversity of Mexican origin women's experiences within families.Lastly, in the third manuscript, I explore the impact of structural, behavioral, and attitudinal familism on relationship conflict. Participants were 64 cohabiting or married couples of Mexican origin. Actor and partner effects of structural, behavioral, and attitudinal familism on relationship conflict were examined with a series of structural equation models using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (Kashy & Kenny, 2000; Kenny & Cook, 1999). Results reveal that higher levels of men's behavioral familism is associated with lower levels of relationship conflict. Furthermore, higher levels of men's structural and behavioral familism are also associated with lower levels of their partner's relationship conflict. Results suggest that structural and behavioral familism for men may promote healthy relationships, as evidenced by lower relationship conflict.

In two-parent families, the ability of parents to negotiate their roles as parents, reaching agreement in childrearing, and being cooperative in sharing parenting (i.e. coparenting), leads to positive family climate, which in turn, impacts positively on children´s social competence. Studies have shown these variables to be relevant for European-American parents. The role of parent's cultural values has received scarce attention in predicting coparental and familial functioning. Additionally, couple's similarity has been found to help explain coparental and familial functioning; however further exploration is needed. Using series of hierarchical multiple regressions as an exploratory form of path analysis, this study tested the connections among the cultural values of familism/respeto, and simpatia, with parental agreement in childrearing and cooperative coparenting (i.e. coparental functioning), and family climate (i.e. familial functioning) in explaining children social competence in a sample of Mexican immigrant parents. Analyses found that the cultural values of familism/respeto and simpatia impact positively coparental functioning within this ethnic group; although the impact is different for mothers and fathers. While simpatia predicted cooperative coparenting for mothers; familism/respeto predicted parental agreement for fathers at the trend level. Whereas parental agreement did predict coparenting for mothers, it was not predictive for fathers. Couples' similarity in culture values proved to have a minimal impact over coparental and familial functioning with a small, trend level effect from similarity in simpatia to cooperative coparenting. Regression analysis for mothers, fathers, and couples failed to predict children social competence. Mexican values of familism/respeto and simpatia play a role in explaining coparental functioning with Mexicans, albeit a different role for mothers and fathers. For mothers, endorsement of harmony and avoidance of conflict (i.e. simpatia) influences coparenting, over and above the effect of agreement on coparenting. Mothers' agreement leads to reports of cooperative coparenting. For fathers, it is endorsement of values proscribing to the value of familism/respeto that impacts fathers' parental agreement. But for fathers, reaching agreement does not necessarily lead to cooperative coparenting. These findings suggest interplay between values endorsement and parental roles. There is also evidence that the shared an endorsement of the value of simpatia leads to coparenting.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the influence of a component of the service environment, namely music, on consumers' judgments and behaviors. More specifically, we were interested in the underlying mechanisms of pleasure effects. We proposed, based on theories from psychological environment and scene perception, that the pleasure induced by background music first influences the overall attractiveness of the service atmosphere, which in turn, has the ability to influence the attractiveness of the persons found in this environment, specifically the service personnel. Finally, these two dimensions of the service environment (i.e., the atmosphere and the personnel) are antecedents of consumers' judgments and behaviors. / The first study was designed to recreate, in a three-minute video-based scenario, a segment of a banking service experience. The video was filmed so to mimic the viewpoint of an actual customer waiting to be served. Three pre-tested background music selections were added as part of the ambient soundtrack. One hundred and fifty-three participants were thus exposed to music high to low in liking and were subsequently asked to complete a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed to assess participants' perception of the service environment, of the personnel, and of the overall service quality. Results showed that music-induced pleasure has a positive influence on the perception of the atmosphere, which was found to impact the perception of the personnel and together these two perceptual dimensions (atmosphere and personnel) were both found to impact overall quality perceptions. / The second study was designed to recreate as faithfully as possible an actual service experience in the controlled environment of the laboratory. One hundred and seventy-three participants were asked to browse an Internet catalog of house and kitchen gadgets and were asked to find a product that they would want to give to their best friend. After making a preliminary choice, they were guided to participate in an online chat session with a consultant. On a between-subject basis, participants were exposed during the browsing and chatting portions to two different lounge music selections that were pre-tested to provide two levels of pleasure---high and moderate. A control condition with no ambient music was also used. To assess the impact of different modes of perceptions, the music was delivered either through speakers hidden in the room or through speakers connected to the computer. This second study confirmed the positive impact of music-induced pleasure on the perception of the environment and of the personnel and their mediating role on the perception of the company and on future behavior. This study also revealed some of the negative consequences of lesser-liked ambient music, especially in consumption contexts where it can be the focus of customers' attention. / The results point to the complexity of music as an atmospheric stimulus and the difficulty of manipulating it for commercial purposes. The results should be useful to managers and designers who must engineer the various elements of the service environment.

This thesis includes several studies on the use of fear appeals in social marketing advertising. The first study uses a content analysis to examine the use of fear appeals in a sample of 589 social marketing television ads. The social marketing ads represented five health-related behaviors (smoking, drinking, driving while impaired, drug abuse, unsafe sex) in five countries (Canada, United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand), covering the period from 1980 through to 1994. The sample was content analyzed to examine the incidence of fear appeals, the adherence to the prescriptions of the Ordered Protection Motivation (OPM) model (Tanner, Hunt, and Eppright 1991), and whether fear appeals vary by country-of-origin, the types of behavior being targeted by social marketing advertising (smoking, drinking, driving while impaired, drug abuse, unsafe sex), and the choice of an intended target group (by age and/or sex). Findings suggest that ads generally adhere to the major tenets of the OPM model. In terms of incidence, the use of fear appeals is less common when the sponsor is a for-profit corporation, when the ads are targeted at a youthful target group, and when the behaviors being targeted are perceived to be less serious. Fear appeals appear to be more common in ads from Australia, as compared to the United States or Canada. To examine the idea that different target groups may respond differently to fear appeal ads, two experiments and a focus group were conducted. First, an exploratory experiment used drinking and driving (DUI) ads as a stimulus to examine the differential effectiveness of two different types of ads against different behavioral risk groups. This study compared an "OPM" social marketing print ad (i.e., one using fear appeals of the format prescribed by the OPM model), to a "MALADAPT" social marketing print ad (i.e., one which simply presents counter-arguments against maladaptive responses, beliefs, and behaviors). Individuals who differed in the extent to which they engaged in the targeted risky behavior (i.e., those who do engage in DUI versus those who do not engage in DUI) were exposed to either the "OPM" or "MALADAPT" social marketing ads, or to a control condition. It was expected that the non-DUI group would experience the greatest change in attitudes and behavioral intentions when exposed to the traditional "OPM" social marketing ad, while the DUI group would experience the greatest attitudinal/behavioral change when exposed to the "MALADAPT" social marketing ad. However, the results of the initial exploratory experiment were inconclusive, and further study of the DUI target group was warranted. Therefore, a focus group was conducted which examined the attitudes and beliefs of the DUI group. A key finding from this qualitative research was that DUI individuals are unconcerned about getting into an accident, but are instead primarily concerned with getting caught by the police. This suggests that some of the traditional high-fear appeals which feature bloody accidents may not be effective with this high-risk target group, and reinforces the idea that the MALADAPT ad which tries to attack maladaptive beliefs may be the most effective means of influencing this DUI target group. Insights from the focus group provided the means for improving the ad stimuli and questionnaire for a replication of the experiment. Pretests for the ad stimuli helped in developing ads which were compelling and interesting for all experimental conditions. Based on these inputs, the experiment was refined and replicated. Findings indicated that the "MALADAPT" ad (which attacked maladaptive coping responses) was actually more effective with the high risk DUI group than the traditional OPM fear-appeal type of ad.

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This dissertation examines how consumers cope with stress and, specifically, the role of magical thinking in consumer coping. Magical thinking is defined here as creating or invoking ‘extraordinary’ connections – symbolic relationships founded on a belief or intuition in the presence of mystical forces in the world – in order to understand, predict, or influence events. Previous research in the field of psychology has largely depicted magical thinking as a cognitive distortion or fallacious reasoning that emerges in stressful situations due to limited information-processing capacity or to provide an illusory sense of control (e.g., Zusne and Jones 1989). In contrast, I draw from research in sociology, anthropology, and religious studies to explore the cultural dimension of magical thinking. Building on Stivers’ (1999) culturally-based theory of magic, I seek to develop an understanding of magical thinking as a process of meaning negotiation whereby consumers invoke mystical forces to cope with stressful events. These themes are explored through a phenomenological investigation of consumers’ weight loss activities. Findings provide insight on the nature and conceptual domain of magical thinking in the marketplace; magical thinking emerges as a set of practices that involves imparting moral meaning to a situation, reifying and externalizing one’s control over the situation, attempting to symbolically influence this powerful, mystical entity that is vested with control, and interpreting scientific symbols as objective signs from this entity. This research also advances our understanding of consumer coping by illuminating the role of magical thinking as a resource that expands the realm of the possible to help consumers cope with the moral responsibility for a domain over which they experience limited agency. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-19 07:33:13.701

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The present dissertation examines the impact of advertising message involvement (AMI) and the type of ad (ADTYPE) on the nature (cognitive versus affective) and level of abstraction of the information that is encoded during ad exposure. In addition, it examines the impact of brand response involvement (BRI) and the type of purchase motives (TPM) on the nature and level of abstraction of the information that is used for making a judgment or choice. / An experiment using 372 subjects was conducted. A 2x2x2x2 between subjects design manipulated AMI (low versus high), ADTYPE (rational versus emotional), BRI (low versus high), and TPM (cognitive versus affective). Results indicated that ADTYPE determines the nature of the information that is encoded during ad exposure, whereas AMI determines the level of abstraction of cognitive (but not affective) information encoded. Results regarding the impact of BRI and TPM were not conclusive.