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This thesis explores how visions of the good life, as understood by Lauren Berlant, communicate through advertising for home cleaning services in a Swedish context. With an ambition to map out how life is portrayed in these commercials this thesis wants to shed light on how these portrayals of life can be understood as the good life and in turn, how they reproduce structures of power. In relation to research on the debate of the Swedish Rutavdrag, work/life balance and the perception of cleaning in Sweden the thesis continues to look into how paid cleaning service is constructed and understood. It draws on theories about work, emotion/affect and temporality that is tied together in an understanding of the good life as dependent of all of these to become possible. A promotion of happiness and feelings of intimacy, work induced with emotional value and a productivist temporality are all parts of what makes up the good life, that is what I pay attention to in my analysis. Through a multimodal critical discourse analysis, the material is analyzed in three steps where the first two steps is focused on one individual commercial/ad and the third connects several of them to analyze how the good life is depicted. The analysis is divided into two main themes: time for relationships and Win win. The first theme shows an emphasis on close family relationships that appears to be threatened by cleaning or mainly conflicts about cleaning, the service smooth over the frictions and makes an intimate life enjoyable and improved. The good life here is closely linked to good relationships and busy schedules. The second theme Win win analyses material that focuses on how the work and the workers situation. In this theme a picture emerges of the employer as someone who does a good deed by employing someone through a good company that has good conditions. This theme implicitly addresses the tension that surrounds cleaning services in Sweden and dissolves it with smiles. While wrapping the service good feelings and the promise of good deeds the unequal exchange changes into something natural and good. The good life is not as obvious in this theme, the focus on the good conditions rather promotes home cleaning as a possible part of the good life since it does not disturb the narrative of the good life as a moral good. In order to have an opportunity to move towards the good life, time is needed.

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Removing the vulnerability of a stereotype threat can weaken the stereotype’s negative influence. However, stereotype threats can be produced simply by reminding individuals of their stigmatized social identity. In this study, a typical explicit stereotype threat was compared with two types of reports on positive role models to determine whether the influence of stereotypes varied according to the type of report. In total, 178 college athletes were recruited and randomly assigned to the explicit threat group (EX group, n = 46), report on a special case group (RS group, n = 42), report on a general topic group (RG group, n = 46), or neutral report group (control, n = 44). The participants first read a short text with manipulated context. They then completed scales assessing career adaptability and optimism and were asked to choose whether to complete a scholastic test with high or low difficulty or not take the test at all. The career adaptability and optimism scores of the control group were higher than those of the RS and EX group. The career optimism scores of the RG group were higher than those of the EX group. Fewer participants opted for the difficult version of the scholastic text in the EX and RS groups; the majority of participants in these groups chose to not take any test. The results indicated the influence of negative stereotype threats and indicated that reading the news report on the special case did not have a positive and encouraging effect on the participants.

The Red Junglefowl is a species of bird that was domesticated by humans around 8 000 years ago. Over time, domestication has led to changes in behavior and morphology, made possible by reduced fear of humans. Fear has been shown to affect cognitive processes, such as the way ambiguous stimuli are perceived by the individual. In this study, I observed the behavior of Red Junglefowl hens that had been selected for either high or low fear of humans to see how the early stages of domestication would affect their tendency to make pessimistic or optimistic judgements. The hens were put in a test arena where they were exposed to positive, negative, and ambiguous stimulus cues, and the time taken to approach each was measured. Hens that had been selected for low fear of humans had overall, albeit not significantly, shorter latencies to approach ambiguous cues. In other words, they were more likely to make optimistic judgements. The results were also affected by the order each stimulus cue was presented. I conclude that domestication may influence the way Red Junglefowl perceive ambiguous stimuli by reducing pessimism.

The counselor is an important contributor to client outcome. Research findings about therapist effects are mixed. In this study positive psychology variables, hope and optimism, were evaluated with client outcome. The sample for this study consisted of 43 graduate-level counselor trainees in the first or second practicum semester and their adult clients in a university’s community counseling clinic. Results revealed no statistically significant relationships between student counselors’ hope and optimism and client outcomes. Post hoc analysis of student hope and their post-graduation expectations, revealed statistically significant relationships. Implications for counselor educators are presented along with areas for future research.

<p>    </p> <p>Dysmenorrhea is the most common pain condition in reproductive-aged women and is characterized by pain during menstruation. Dysmenorrhea has far-reaching effects, such as increased psychological distress, increased relationship problems, reduced physical activity, and decreased sleep efficiency. It is the leading cause of absenteeism in this population. Though dysmenorrhea impacts many women and has such far-reaching effects, it has not been studied as extensively as other pain conditions, specifically regarding trait expectations and specific expectations. In other pain conditions, hope and optimism, the two most studied trait expectations, are protective factors for pain severity, interference, and the psychological effects of pain. Trait expectations additionally predict specific expectations, with hope predicting specific expectations related to the self, and optimism predicting specific expectations related to experiences. Both self- and experience-expectations predict outcomes, such as pain severity and pain tolerance. The current study sought to 1) examine the factor structure of specific expectations for dysmenorrhea; 2) examine the roles of trait and specific expectations in predicting dysmenorrhea; and 3) examine the roles of trait expectations and dysmenorrhea in predicting psychological adjustment. A longitudinal study of 389 menstruating women, over the age of 18, who could read and write English was conducted through CloudResearch. Confirmatory factor analysis and mixed latent- and measured-variable path analysis were used. Results indicated two distinct factors of specific expectations, pain-expectation and self- expectation. Hope predicted self-expectation, which predicted dysmenorrhea interference. Pain- expectation predicted dysmenorrhea severity and interference. Additionally, both hope and optimism predicted psychological adjustment. Dysmenorrhea interference predicted psychological distress. However, trait expectations did not predict dysmenorrhea. This study is the first to examine the associations among trait expectations, specific expectations, and dysmenorrhea and expands on the differences between dysmenorrhea and other pain conditions. </p>

Background: Multiple studies have shown that people who have experienced a serious health problem such as an injury tend to overrate the quality of health they had before that event. The main objective of this study was to test whether the phenomenon of respondents overrating their past health can also be observed in people from the general population. A second aim was to test whether habitual optimism is indeed focused on events in the future. Method: A representatively selected community sample from Leipzig, Germany (n = 2282, age range: 40–75 years) was examined. Respondents were asked to assess their current health, their past health (5 years before), and their expected future health (in 5 years) on a 0–100 scale. In addition, the study participants completed several questionnaires on specific aspects of physical and mental health. Results: Respondents of all age groups assessed their health as having been better in the past than it was at present. Moreover, they also assessed their earlier state of health more positively than people 5 years younger did their current state. Habitual optimism was associated with respondents having more positive expectations of how healthy they will be in 5 years time (r = 0.37), but the correlation with their assessments of their current health was nearly as high (r = 0.36). Conclusion: Highly positive scores of retrospectively assessed health among people who have experienced a health problem cannot totally be accounted for by a response to that health problem.

One of the most critical issues of our time is sustainability. Simultaneously, techno optimism is prevailing in public discourse suggesting that technology will create a sustainable future without requiring drastic changes. Despite the connection that is often drawn between technology and sustainability and the presence of technologies in organisations, research combining the two concepts remains limited and does not account for the interplay of social values and technological artefacts. To overcome this incomplete picture of technology, this thesis employs sociomateriality to investigate how sustainability and technology are understood in relation to each other by young sustainability practitioners in for-profit organisations. Following the social constructivist philosophy, nine semi-structured interviews were conducted which show that practitioners recognise the environmental and social limits to development and use the triple bottom line (TBL), consisting of economic, environmental and social dimensions to translate sustainability into organisations. However, TBL implementation varies between organisations showing the difficulty of unifying organisational sustainability in one concept. Furthermore, young sustainability practitioners understand technology as sociomaterial, describing the interplay between an artefact’s affordances and restraints, and the practitioner’s configuration work that co-create outcomes. Moreover, the interviewees are optimists not because they rely on technology, but they believe in human’s ability to change which differs from techno optimism. It can be concluded that practitioners are critical about relying on technology for sustainability and believe that sustainability is created through an interplay of humans with technology, transferring responsibility to humans. When it comes to creating a sustainable future, they first struggled to envision an alternative future beyond technological developments but started imagining when given space to reflect. One outcome of the research is that young sustainability practitioners must be given room to reflect on their understanding of sustainability, technology and their relationship as the first step to taking actions to create the future.