Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2007. / Thesis directed by George S. Howard for the Department of Psychology. "December 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-56).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Psychology, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-01, Section: B, page: 0570. Adviser: James Townsend. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Feb. 22, 2007)."

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2003. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-63). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL:http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2004&res%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss&rft%5Fval%5Ffmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss:MQ99384

<p> In the United States, women&rsquo;s persistent gains in structural power may cause backlash among those motivated to preserve the status quo. The proposed study examines the conditions that prompt men and women to endorse sexism and promote gender stereotypes. System justification theory proposes that people are motivated to justify the socio-political system that governs them and threats to the stability of their system can increase individual&rsquo;s motivated defenses. I expect men to show the strongest motivated defenses when the hierarchy is threatened or viewed as unstable, because to protect group-based interests men will reinforce the legitimacy of the system through stronger endorsement of system defenses. In contrast, women will show the strongest system defenses when the hierarchy is viewed as stable, to avoid feeling trapped in an unchanging system that oppresses them. To test these ideas, 430 men and women were exposed to a gender status hierarchy that was portrayed as stable or unstable and then they responded to several measures of sexism and gender stereotypes. Support for the hypothesis was only found on one measure of gender stereotypes. Men reported more system justifying stereotypes of traditional women in the unstable condition, while women showed the opposite pattern. Exploratory results demonstrate that men&rsquo;s and women&rsquo;s reports of agentic stereotypes for traditional and nontraditional women depended on whether they were exposed to a stable or unstable gender hierarchy. Future directions and limitations are discussed in consideration of these exploratory findings.</p>

<p> This inquiry follows several threads: Adolescence as an archetypal complex; manifestations of trauma and countertransferential responses in the alternative high school classroom; and resistances to self-transformation, the hallmark of heuristic self-search inquiry. Guiding questions address the necessary, ethical, and compassionate practice of honoring a mythopoetic approach and the imaginal field in the alternative high school classroom. Using a heuristic self-search inquiry approach, research was conducted in four nonlinear and nonchronological phases: immersion, acquisition, realization, and synthesis. The inquiry can be viewed as a poetic reverie of the author&rsquo;s transformative journey of healing from personal trauma by encountering and working through resistance. Alternately, the inquiry can also be viewed as an example and extended praxis of archetypal reflectivity, a professional development practice that fosters mythopoesis in education. </p><p> Held within the metaphoric framework of the myth of Dionysos, including motifs of Ariadne&rsquo;s Thread, <i>Duende,</i> and the archetype of indestructible life, the research is presented as a journey through the Passages of the labyrinth to a final encounter with the Minotaur. The concluding chapter includes a psychoanalysis of the author&rsquo;s journey, identifies unconscious countertransferential responses in the classroom which curtailed effective student progress, and argues that nuturing the archetypal Adolescent plays a vital role in our humanity. </p><p> Keywords: adolescence, alternative education, archetypal reflectivity, Dionysos, trauma, mythopoesis.</p>

<p> Although it is well established that people are motivated to maintain a positive self-image, choice researchers have largely ignored how this desire impacts what consumers choose. The current research investigates the notion that people's choices can serve as a signal that affects their beliefs about themselves. I explore a self-signaling framework to make unique predictions in two important substantive domains: prosocial giving and forfeiture choice. </p><p> The first essay shows that consumers are more likely to give to a charity when the donation appeal mentions a hedonic product. This occurs because the presence of a hedonic product changes the self-attributions, or self-signaling utility, associated with the choice to donate. I demonstrate the effect with real choice and field experiments, and provide evidence that the increase in donation rates occurs because the choice not to donate is a stronger signal of selfishness in the context of a hedonic product.</p><p> The second essay looks at forfeiture choices and finds that the structure of the self-concept can determine whether or not people give up an unused good. I develop a conceptual framework based on a known aspect of the self (self-concept clarity) to predict that when consumers are less clear about their self-concept they are more likely to self-signal. Four experiments show that people are more likely to keep an informative good or service they do not use (e.g. keep paying for a digital magazine subscription they do not read) when they are unclear about their self-concept.</p><p> Taken together these findings enrich our understanding of the role of self-signaling in choice, enhance our knowledge of how people use choice to manage their self-image, and link the behavioral findings of self-signaling in marketing to an established literature on self in psychology. The results have implications for choice theorists interested in understanding self-image motives and for marketing practitioners interested in understanding choice. </p>

<p> Extra-marital affairs are common in the US and frequently result in difficulties for individuals, families, and society as a whole. Empirical research on the topic is problematic. There is no universally accepted psychological definition of what behaviors or experiences constitute an affair; there are value-laden assumptions about marriage and affairs that are not usually questioned as part of the design or discussion of studies; and, there are non-trivial non-response biases in sampling on the topic. As a result there is a lack of meaningful psychological understanding of affairs and a dearth of evidence to support clear treatment directions for those who seek psychotherapy for this common issue. In an attempt to understand the essential psychological structure of the beginning of affairs, a descriptive phenomenological psychological study of the experiences from three adults who have had affairs (as they define them) and who had promised monogamy was undertaken. These interviews were transcribed, transformed and analyzed using Giorgi&rsquo;s (2009) descriptive phenomenological method for psychology. The resulting structure of the experience includes the following constituents: dissatisfaction with the marriage and hopelessness about it improving; a sense of the self and the spouse having a fixed character that does not change; a lack of curiosity for the spouse; a preference for passion and novelty; a sense of deserving sexual satisfaction; the experience of passion overriding judgment; and, a lack of real consideration of divorce as a solution to the dilemma prior to the affair. In addition, passive intentionality, (Husserl, 2001), is offered to explain how a series of interactions with another outside the marriage develops into an affair before it is grasped as such. This structure is potentially clinically meaningful as thus far it has not been articulated in a descriptive and complete manner. It offers direction for the future development of clinical interventions and provides entry points into: discussions of ethics, values, intimacy, passion and subjectivity; marriage reform; and, the socio-historical contexts in which the meaning of affairs is located. Keywords: Extra-marital affair, monogamy, non-monogamy, marriage, infidelity, couples&rsquo; counseling, Giorgi, phenomenological research methods, intentionality.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1989. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [358]-376).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2004. / Title from title screen (viewed 7 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Psychology, Faculty of Science. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Dissertation (Ph.D. in Computer Science)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2009. / Dissertation supervisor: Singh, Gurminder. "June 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on July 14, 2009. Author(s) subject terms: mobile computing, context awareness, activities as context. Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-117). Also available in print.