Emotions pervade academic situations and influence the ways that learners think, behave, and achieve (Pekrun, 2006; Schutz & Lanehart, 2002). Writing may be a particularly emotion-laden activity, and especially so for students concentrating in fields that value writing production. However, very few studies have quantitatively investigated writers’ emotional experiences. The goal of the current study was to examine the writing-related emotions of graduate students enrolled in writing-intensive disciplines as well as how these emotions related to writers’ daily productivity and attention-regulation behaviors. To do so, the study employed a daily diary design (Gunthert & Wenze, 2012) in which participants completed brief daily surveys over 28 days. Data from a final sample of 183 participants were analyzed in several frameworks, including descriptive statistics, reliable change indices, and longitudinal modeling via generalized estimating equations. Results from these analyses indicate that writers tend to experience positive valence emotions (e.g. enjoyment, pride) more strongly than negative valence emotions (e.g. anxiety, shame) and that, for most of the emotions studied, writers’ emotional states tended to vary considerably from day to day. Furthermore, results indicate that writers’ emotional states are differentially related to daily writing outcomes such as attention regulation, time spent writing, and number of words written, and that state emotions are more predictive of these outcomes than are trait emotions. Theoretical implications and suggestions for future research are also presented.

Numerous researchers have explored the benefit of creative activities for the aging population diagnosed with dementia. However, there is a lack of data available to community administrators and organizers of senior residences about how successful aging may be enhanced, in the relatively healthy older adults, through their participation in creative art-making. Activities that provide mental stimulation, facilitate expression of emotions, and that are related to overall psychological well-being can provide a foundation for healthy aging. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to explore older adults' subjective experience of engaging in creative artwork. The conceptual framework that guided this phenomenological study was based on Lazarus's cognitive-emotional-relational theory of emotions. The focus of the research questions was on the subjective experience of 10 older adults who participated in 7 weekly art sessions offered at a senior residence. Audiotaped interviews that were held after the last art-making session, together with participants' artwork and field notes, were analyzed, coded, and then categorized into themes. Results indicated the participants learned they can be creative, and that their images became a visual inroad to meaningful expression of emotions, insight, and motivation. The results point to evident social change when community organizers and administrators of senior residences increase activities for residents, especially meaningful activities designed to facilitate expression of emotions and insight during later life. Creative image-making activities can lead to continued learning, heightened social interactions, increased mental fitness, reduced depression, and enhanced healthy aging.

The field of psychoneuroimmunology seeks to examine the impact of stress and other psychological processes on physical health. While some theories suggest that processes such as worry may have a significant impact on prolonging the physiological stress response and subsequently increasing risk for long-term health issues, to date, this research has not yet thoroughly examined the impact of worry on physical health processes. The current study sought to combine theories from clinical and health psychology to investigate the impact of experimentally-induced worry and relaxation on cortisol, heart rate variability (HRV), and inflammation. Participants (N = 85) were community members from the New York City area. They completed worry and relaxation inductions within the laboratory while HRV was collected continuously. Three blood samples were taken throughout the study to test for inflammation and cortisol. Results indicated changes in HRV, IL-6, and IFN-γ throughout the study conditions that were not moderated by levels of trait worry. HRV, cortisol, and inflammation did not covary throughout the different experimental conditions and changes in cortisol and/or HRV did not temporally precede changes in inflammation throughout the study. Overall, the findings from the current study offer insight into the contrasting impact that worry and relaxation have on physiological biomarkers and highlights important directions for future research in the field of psychoneuroimmunology.

Mobile robots are being used for an increasing array of tasks, from military reconnaissance to planetary exploration to urban search and rescue. As robots are deployed in increasingly complex domains, teams are called upon to perform tasks that exceed the capabilities of any particular robot. Thus, it becomes necessary for robots to cooperate, such that one robot can recruit another to jointly perform a task. Though techniques exist to allocate robots to tasks, either the communication overhead that these techniques require prevents them from scaling up to large teams, or assumptions are made that limit them to simple domains. This dissertation presents a novel emotion-based recruitment approach to the multi-robot task allocation problem. This approach requires less communication bandwidth than comparable methods, enabling it to scale to large team sizes, and making it appropriate for low-power or stealth applications. Affective recruitment is tolerant of unreliable communications channels, and can find better solutions than simple greedy schedulers (based on experimental metrics of the time necessary to complete recruitment and the total number of messages transmitted). Experimental results in a simulated mine-detection task show that affective recruitment succeeds with network failure rates up to 25%, and requires 32% fewer transmissions compared to existing methods on average. Affective recruitment also scales better with team size, requiring up to 61% fewer transmissions than a greedy instantaneous scheduler that has an O(n) communications complexity.

Why do some people experience more emotional distress than others after spousal-death? And can we predict who will struggle more than others? While many will exhibit resilience in the wake of a bereavement, a small but notable portion ranging from 7-10% (Maciejewski, Maercker, Boelen & Prigerson, 2016; Nielsen et al., 2017) experience a prolonged period of elevated symptoms and distress (Bonanno et al. 2007; Prigerson et al., 2009). Although there is marked individual variation in the grief course, little is yet known about the mechanisms underlying grief that endures, and why some people will struggle more than others after experiencing the death of a spouse. Compelling findings have linked deficits in emotion regulation with the development of psychopathology (Buss, Davidson, Kalin, & Goldsmith, 2004; Gehricke, & Shapiro, 2000), and the study of one particular form of emotion regulation, contextually responsive emotional responding, may be particularly promising in predicting divergent individual differences in the grief course following the death of a spouse (Bonanno & Burton, 2013). Recent bereavement studies have provided preliminary evidence linking contextually responsive emotional expression to grief-related adjustment. However, these studies suffer from notable methodological limitations, such as the use of limited measures of emotional expression or cross-sectional design. The current study will use a longitudinal design to investigate whether individual differences in emotional expressions of happiness and contempt, across varied contexts, can predict long-term adjustment and psychopathology. In addition, we will employ a standardized facial coding system to investigate contextually unresponsive facial behaviors, which we operationalize as the mismatch between facial expression of emotion and four systematically varying idiographic contexts.

In this dissertation, I seek to examine the effects of purposeful journaling and guided storytelling on past traumas, perception of current lives, and the development of new coping skills among men at The Salvation Army’s residential adult rehabilitation center (ARC). All residents of the ARC must attend Christian-based devotional services, go to Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) meetings, follow the A.A. 12-step program, and sign up for several weekly counseling and educational groups, one of which is the “Guided Journaling and Storytelling” group I lead. The men who attended this group are (1) addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, (2) face homelessness, (3) cope with some form of mental or physical health issue, (4) may have criminal records, and (5) have alienated most of their social support. Through a twelve-week curriculum I developed, I introduced coping skills—building resilience, expressive writing, and deep breathing—while incorporating art, music, and poetry in the groups. I elicited participants’ stories through prompts, using my own experiences to model vulnerability and demonstrate concepts, such as: narrative reframing; how memories can be uncertain, partial, and elusive; how storytelling can prompt forgotten stories; and the efficacy of including emotion and rich details in the stories we tell. Knowing the value of writing and storytelling, I set out to see if the communicative practices I had learned in the past that had improved my life situation might assist others to write themselves out of destructive patterns, desperation, and trauma, and into sober and more fulfilling lives.

From a Western perspective, North Americans and Western Europeans perceive Muslim women as being oppressed (Andrea 2009; Lutz 1997, 96; Ozyurt 2013). Led by this assumption, some view studying abroad as an international student as an experience that allows Muslim women the opportunity to "escape" this supposed oppression and to know "freedom" in the U.S. However, Muslim women's experiences are more dynamic and complex than this dualism suggests. In this thesis, I explore adaptation strategies of Muslim women international students, and how gender, race, and religion affect their experiences while abroad. Furthermore, I explore the women's use of emotion management as a means of navigating their experiences during their study abroad. Data consist of qualitative interviews with 11 Muslim women students from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Nigeria, Morocco, Oman, The Gambia, Kuwait, and India. Findings in this study are consistent with previous research of international students' challenges; Muslim women face difficulties with English language proficiency, new social network creation, transition to a student role, and management of finances during their study abroad. In addition, Muslim women international students actively synthesize traditional gender norms from their countries with new identity formations but also "police" others to ensure that they abide by traditional gender expectations. The Muslim women in this study learn and apply American racial schemas (Roth 2012) within a context of constructing the U.S. as a racial and religious paradise. Paradoxically, these women still feel the need to actively debunk negative stereotypes of Muslim communities. Yet, they still maintain connected with their home countries through daily religious involvement such as prayer and wearing the hijab.

No description available.

The thesis is an exploratory and descriptive study focusing on the emotional dimensions of collegial relationships in a primary school. The research is timely given the current pressures to develop cultures of collaboration and shared leadership in schools today. The study concentrates on the non-classroom work of teachers and investigates three particular areas of school life: the collegial practices of staff; the emotional milieu of teachers' work; and the contributions of members towards an emotionally healthy staff community. An interpretive tradition has been used in conducting the research, thus giving voice to the perceptions of research participants about their work. The research was conducted as an ethnographic case study. Data were gathered largely through participant observation and interviews. The researcher visited the school on a regular basis through the course of one school year, averaging over one day per week working in the school. Eighteen staff members were formally interviewed, the principal and assistant principal on several occasions. Extensive fieldnotes and interview transcripts were created and, aided by NVivo, a computer package for the analysis of non-statistical data, data were broken down into categories and resynthesised to bring to life a picture of the lived reality of collegiality for staff members in a primary school. The study adds to new knowledge in several important ways. First, it allows for a reconceptualisation of teachers' work. It shows how many different practices contribute to a collegial culture within a primary school and demonstrates how the social and emotional dimensions of collegiality are significant in the development of professional relationships. Second, the study develops an understanding of emotional labour for school personnel and contributes importantly to a broader picture of how emotional labour can be practiced, particularly for the sake of collegiality. It is posited that different kinds of emotional labour exist within the school setting, and that emotional labour in schools may be different from that in some other service organisations. The study explores bounded emotionality as a cultural practice among staff, suggesting that it allows expression of emotions about classroom work while at the same time constrains negative emotional displays so as to build and maintain community. The study suggests that the principles of bounded emotionality, as they operate within the primary school, present both benefits and burdens for a collegial staff, but may encourage an emotionally healthy workplace.

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-70).