The purpose of this study was to evaluate the types of communication activities adolescents reported as important and used most frequently, and how these communication preferences were reflected in adolescents' identity development status. Participants were approximately 600 new university students who completed a survey regarding 18 communication activities, along with the Erikson Psychosocial Stage Inventory identity subscale. Data analysis was conducted in two phases. To reduce the frequency and importance data to a manageable size, exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. Two identical factors were identified and validated related to the importance and the frequency of communication activities. The first factor comprised four items related to online ''performance": online gaming, participation in virtual reality settings, live chat with strangers, and live chat with groups unknown to the individual. The second factor comprised four communication activities that occurred on social networking sites as individuals created lasting "exhibits" of themselves: updating a personal profile, viewing the profiles of others, posting status messages, and sharing pictures or other content (articles, jokes, videos) with others. Analysis of means indicated that the three communication activities rated as most important and frequently used were face-to-face interaction, voice calls and text messaging. These were followed by social networking activities, and then writing activities such as blogging. The performative activities identified in the exploratory factor analysis were ranked as least important and least frequently used. Regression analysis revealed small but statistically significant negative relationships between the reported importance of performative activities and identity development status, and between the reported frequency of performative activities and identity development status. Small positive relationships were also identified between the importance of face-to-face interaction and identity development status, and the importance of voice phone calls and identity development status. Small positive relationships were also identified between the frequency of face-to-face communication and identity development, between the frequency of voice phone calls and identity development, and between the frequency of email use and identity development.

Even within counseling psychology’s multicultural literature, attention to individuals of Arab descent remains narrow (Awad, 2010; Abdel-Salam, 2019). Despite counseling psychologists’ goals regarding multiculturally proficiency, the dearth of systematic empirical research on the counseling of Arab Americans remains conspicuous. The present study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the impact of racial ambiguity and legal invisibility on Arab Americans’ sense of belonging and well-being. This exploratory consensual qualitative research (CQR) investigation analyzed interview data from 13 non-veiled Arab American women. The interview probed their reactions to Arab Americans’ legal invisibility in the US, queried how they believed White people versus people of color racially perceived them, and examined their subsequent emotional responses and coping strategies. The study’s results revealed participants’ feelings of invisibility, invalidation, and hurt when they were not recognized as a person of color (PoC) and brought the participants’ perpetual experience of exclusion to the forefront. The results not only have implications for professional practice and education but also for policy. Specifically, this study lends support to Arab and Middle Eastern North African (MENA) advocacy efforts for census recognition, as this acknowledgment of the Arab/MENA community would foster a sense of belonging not only among other PoC but also within US society as a whole.

My dissertation study portrayed how mature adults who had and practice their religious or spiritual convictions learned to develop spiritual friendships and how what they then learned from these friendships contributed to their own spiritual identity development. The study investigated how spiritual friendships, as learning schemes, gravitated towards learning and change by fostering critical reflection and encouraging the participants in such friendships to strive to be their best selves. The study also showed that spiritual friendships fostered personal and professional development that was linked to spiritual development. In particular, the study examined four spiritual friendships, involving nine participating spiritual friends (three dyads and one triad). It first uncovered how a spiritual friendship was initiated, developed, and maintained; then secondly, discussed how spiritual friendship cultivated the development of people in mature adulthood; and thirdly, explored how the learning and growth that occurred during the development procedure of the friendship contributed to the participants’ spiritual identity development. The study also defined what a spiritual friendship is as perceived and practiced by the research participants. The study employed portraiture, a qualitative research methodology, to paint a detailed representation of the participants’ lives, including their educational biographies, and to present their learning, formation, and development through practicing spiritual friendship. The study offers an in-depth and holistic portrayal of the paths the participating dyads and triads of the friendships walked as “fellow travelers” on their life voyages as these related to the formation of their spiritual selves in and through their spiritual friendships. It also sought to shed light on the triumphs of midlife and beyond: when people have gained greater experience, maturity, and capabilities, while at the same time they continued to grow and develop.

In 2007, revolutionary commander Daniel Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua, claiming to enact the “second phase” of the Sandinista Popular Revolution (1979-1990). However, this was not a return to revolution as Nicaraguans had come to know it. The Ortega regime established timely alliances with former adversaries, including the leadership of the Catholic Church as well as the nation’s business elites. Moreover, Sandinismo was recast from the figures of revolutionary militancy and the disciplined party-state to a personalistic vision of the loving patriarch, disseminating a kitsch-ified, religiously inflected doctrine of ‘love’ to the neoliberalized masses. Though Ortega was elected without a majoritarian mandate, his regime quickly grew in popularity while also consolidating an authoritarian political project that dismantled incipient liberal-democratic institutions and constitutional guarantees in the name of ‘the people.’ Based on 24 months of participant-observation research between 2014 and 2018 in the peripheries of a city located in the urban pacific of Nicaragua, a traditional Sandinista stronghold, this dissertation investigates the Ortega regime’s capacity to hail Nicaraguans into relation with Sandinismo and the FSLN party in the post-revolutionary moment. I argue that the material exchanges that are most often taken to explain the mobilizing capacities of authoritarian populism must be analyzed in conjunction with the economy of affects that circulate in and through exchanges, which issue powerful forms of identification that help sustain people’s attachments to the FSLN even when redistributive politics fades away. For historical militants and other Sandinistas that lived through the 1980’s, attachments to the FSLN are structured by way of a ‘revolutionary a structure of feelings’ that continues to be reproduced in the contemporary moment. For my interlocutors, the gift of being a Sandinista, narrated as a political birth, brought with it an unpayable debt that produces obligations to Sandinismo. It is this very structure of feeling that enables militants to cope with multiple injuries to which the party routinely subjects them, which I argue come to be experienced as sacrifices on Sandinismo’s behalf. Moreover I suggest that being wounded by the FSLN itself might afford pleasure, and that it might be the site of production of a victimized identity, one dependent on attachment to that which injures. Finally, I argue that for a younger generation, Sandinismo has also produced strong forms of identification in the absence of historically structured attachments. This time, attachments are predicated not on the notion of a revolutionary inheritance, but on Sandinismo as a patriarchal family which rewards its members with a sense of mediatized recognition, righteousness, and power in exchange not for sacrifices, but for following the injunction to ‘produce prosperity’ as good neoliberal subjects aspiring to gain access to a range of consumer pleasures. It is these affective excesses that sharpen the boundaries of the political community and invest it with a vibrance it could not otherwise achieve, inviting and enabling those that are part of it to the often violent, permanent defense of Sandinismo.

Home follows the Kelly family as they negotiate the darker recesses of Marshfield, a once paradisiacal vacation town on the South Shore of Massachusetts that has developed an underbelly all its own. In their search for a sense of belonging, Lynn, and her children, Ghost and Alexis, are left to interrogate their deepest-rooted fears and secrets. Through this lens, we learn the history of both the Kelly family and the town of Marshfield.

This study exp !ores the relationship between an individual's interest in and exposure to the rap/hip-hop genre and the messages and values contained within the music, as well as the role of self-esteem in generating interest and motivating exposure to rap/hip-hop music. A survey questionnaire was administered to 213 students at a community college in northern California. Interest and exposure to rap/hip-hop were found to be significantly correlated with acceptance of a number of values portrayed in the music. However, those most interested in and exposed to rap/hip-hop music were less likely to perceive negative social values in the music as well as believe these values characterized rap/hip-hop artists. Self-esteem failed as a predictor of interest and exposure to the music.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Research in Sociology, 2016 / "A reflective contemplation on the ordinary humanity of black South Africans under apartheid". [Quotation taken from p.4. No abstract provided] / GR2017

No description available.

The aim of the current investigation is the development and validation of an Interbeing Identity Scale (IIS)—used to measure the integration of an individual’s undamental sense of identity with all other beings, nature, and the cosmos. The study further investigates the association between scores on the IIS and 1) profiles of consciousness exploration practices and 2) psychological outcomes (mental health, positive psychology and relational ethics). Interbeing is a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh which describes all beings as unique and yet one. Interbeing identity refers to a sense of personhood rooted in beliefs, experiences, and behaviors aligned with an awareness of interbeing. The IIS was constructed to measure interbeing identity as reflected in an individual’s sense of non-dual relationship to nature, the universe, and other beings. The scale was developed as a concise metric, amenable to administration in applied contexts. Scale items were generated and refined with input from monks of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Blue Cliff monastery, and from researchers and clinicians. Content validity, internal structure, and reliability were assessed via expert surveys, content validity analysis, cognitive interviewing, convergent validity analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. The data indicates that: 1) the IIS is a valid and reliable measure of interbeing identity and 2) may be useful to assess identity transformation occasioned by spiritual, consciousness based, and/or clinical intervention.

With the exception of a few studies (Leak, 2009; Fulton, 1997), psychological research on religion has not been studied from an Eriksonian identity status perspective (Erikson, 1959; Marcia, 1966). Further, Erikson’s (1963) concept of identity appears to be inherently individualistic and may be conceptualized differently in Eastern/Asian cultures (Cloninger, 2008; Paranjpe, 2010). This study aims to understand the relationship of religiosity and quest to identity development across two cultures: USA and India. A total of 326 undergraduate students (mean age= 19.47, sd= 1.58) participated from two urban colleges in Mumbai, India (n= 159) and one in Orlando, USA (n= 167). All participants completed a battery of measures, including the measure of Religiosity, Quest Scale, Identity Distress Survey, and Ego Identity Process Questionnaire. Our first hypothesis was confirmed that females would have greater religiosity as compared to males amongst the Indian and USA sample. The second hypothesis was also confirmed that the USA sample would be found more among the achieved and moratorium ego identity statuses as compared to the Indian sample, who would be found more frequently in the foreclosed or diffused ego identity statuses. Although the USA sample was found to be significantly higher in identity exploration, the Indian sample was found to experience greater identity distress. Finally, our third hypothesis was partially confirmed in regard to religiosity, as it was not differentially related to identity variables in both the Indian and USA groups. However, religious quest was differentially related to the identity variables, in that it was related to identity distress in the USA sample, but not in the Indian sample.