For many individuals, religious development begins in the family. Previous literature has confirmed this assumption and demonstrated that parents play a dominant role in the development process. There is a gap in the current literature regarding how other family members could also potentially contribute to religious development. This project takes the first step towards understanding how siblings may influence religious development by investigating the extent to which siblings share similar religiosity levels. Hierarchical linear models are applied to data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in order to assess whether siblings share similar religiosity levels. This project also investigates potential explanations of this similarity. The results of this thesis demonstrate that siblings share common levels of religiosity. The similarity was still moderate after controlling for known predictors of adolescent religiosity such as parental influence, religious affiliation, race, and age. Sibling communication also explained a small proportion of sibling religious similarity. The results of this project leave open the possibility that siblings may contribute to one another’s religious development. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--Ohio State University, 1964. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-140). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

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Numerous research studies have offered evidence that I-sharing (perceived subjective similarity) facilitates interpersonal connection (e.g. Huneke & Pinel, 2016; Pinel, Long, Landau, Alexander, & Pyszczynski, 2006; Pinel & Long, 2012). Despite this research, no interventions currently exist to foster I-sharing between individuals, thereby leaving interventionists and others unable to utilize I-sharing to nurture authentic connections. The current dissertation takes an important step in the direction of developing usable interventions based on I-sharing research. Specifically, I examine the effectiveness of a technique designed to foster I-sharing genuinely between individuals. Building on I-sharing theory, which specifies that people most confidently believe that they I-share when they react simultaneously and identically to the same stimulus (Pinel et al., 2006), I randomly assigned participants either to experience novel, emotionally-arousing stimuli that provoke predictable reactions in a context in which participants could also experience each other's in-the-moment subjective experiences (the Fostered I-sharing condition), or in a condition in which they could not fully experience each other's experiences (the comparison condition). To investigate whether I-sharing also proves effective for people who see themselves as dissimilar on an important self dimension, I also manipulated perceived value similarity of the other participant prior to the I-sharing intervention. Participants either learned of an unshared value, learned of a shared value, or did not receive any value information. Results showed that the I-sharing intervention significantly increased feelings of subjective similarity, but only increased liking and interpersonal behavior when participants also initially learned that they shared a similar value. I discuss potential explanations for results, and means of intervention improvement.

The purpose of this research is to test the idea that creating a social connection with an outgroup member by thinking about how the self is similar to this outgroup member produces positive intergroup outcomes, whereas creating a sense of connection by thinking about how the outgroup member is similar to the self produces less positive intergroup outcomes. An overview of the literature on connections between the self and outgroup members, and the importance of the framing of such connection is reviewed in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, I examine whether a sense of social connection can be created and whether the nature of this connection is influenced by the way the similarity between the self and the outgroup member is framed. I find non-significant effects, though in an interesting pattern suggesting that a better manipulation may produce stronger effects. In Chapter 3 I examine how framing of the connection to an outgroup member affects stereotyping of, and interest in, the outgroup. I find that participants tend to project their own personality onto an outgroup member when their connection with him or her is framed as how the outgroup member is similar to the self. They thus show decreased stereotyping but also less interest in the other’s culture. In contrast, when participants make a connection to an outgroup member and their connection with him or her is framed as the self is similar to the outgroup member, they display an interest in the outgroup culture and a decrease in stereotyping that is accompanied by more positive outgroup evaluation. In Chapter 4, I extend these findings by demonstrating that when participants make a social connection with an outgroup member and this connection is framed as how the self is similar to the outgroup, then they experience more distress when they learn about a real case of discrimination against a different outgroup member. In Chapter 5, I tried to create a social connection with a member of an outgroup by having them notice that they share a birthday with the outgroup member. Unfortunately, this manipulation did not appear to produce my expected effects, suggesting that sharing interests as opposed to a birthday may be important in creating the type of connection necessary for my effects. In Chapter 6 I examine how the social connection with an outgroup member can effect a social interaction with that outgroup member and openness to cultural activities of the outgroup. Creating a social connection in which similarity to an outgroup member is framed as the self being similar to the outgroup member leads to a more positive online interaction with increased friendliness toward the outgroup members and greater interest in the other’s culture. In Chapter 7, I discuss the theoretical implications for these findings, their weaknesses and directions for future research.

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We can know that the failure of ISD project may result from knowledge resource risk, including insufficient knowledge and failed to integrated available diversified knowledge. As a result, it is very important issue for ISD team that how to integration a large number of knowledge from diversified background team members. This study explores the affecting factors of knowledge integration within ISD team from team composition view and based on similarity-attraction theory. The theory framework starts form three dimensions, including demographic similarity, cognitive similarity and goal similarity, affecting the interpersonal attraction and then explores the impact of similarity of team members on team integration which includes social integration and knowledge. An empirical survey methodology is applied to test the research model and six hypotheses are developed in this study, and then we use PLS to analyze it. Our empirical results showed that goal similarity is significant affecting on interpersonal attraction. The study results also found that interpersonal attraction is a mediator between similarity and construct of team integration. In addition, social integration is an important antecedent of knowledge integration and similarity of team members also affect knowledge integration indirectly. In sum, unlike much prior research that focused on diversity-conflict view of team composition, we take similarity-attraction view and proposed a more comprehensive model to explore the affecting factors of knowledge integration. And this study provides some suggestions for the knowledge integration research.

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The first goal of this study is to test the prediction that children who perceive similarity between a novel physical event and the real world will be more likely to express belief in the reality of a novel character involved in the event than children who do not perceive such similarity. The second goal is to test the effects of familiarity on similarity judgements, reality status beliefs, and their association. In this study, children ages 4 and 6 years were visited 5 times and were repeatedly told about a novel character performing either a highly similar, moderately dissimilar, or a highly dissimilar physical event. Their similarity judgements and reality status judgements were solicited on days 1 and 5. Results revealed high rates of association between similarity and reality status beliefs for the highly similar and moderately dissimilar events but low levels of association for the highly dissimilar event on day 1. With repeated exposure, children’s positive similarity judgements increased for the highly dissimilar event leading to higher rates of association. / text

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