M.Ed. / Nowadays more and more emphasis is placed on the importance of the so called "Emotional Intelligence" which include aspects like social skills, purposefulness, persistence, self-motivation, reliability and solid interpersonal relationships. Goleman (1996: xii) mentions qualities such as "self-control, zeal and persistence" and says that these qualities can be taught and learned irrespective of the individual's intellectual potential. The modern working force requires people who are reliable, adaptable and flexible so that they can cope with various circumstances in a multi-cultural society that is characterized by diversity. The aspects mentioned here, manifest in the different dimensions of the self-concept of the individual and it is therefore important to investigate the nature and the quality of the self-concept and endeavour to determine how this self-concept is established. For this reason the meta-theoretical and theoretical assumptions concerning self-concept were discussed and serve as a theoretical frame of reference for this study. The aim of this study is to determine if similarities exist between the selfconcept of the child and the self-concept of the parent and to investigate whether the self-concept of the parent is reflected in the self-concept of the child. The research design and methods are discussed as well as the validity and reliability of the questionnaire and the test sample. A quasi-experimental research design was employed to enable the researcher to gather measurable data. This approach was used in order to make numerous comparisons between the different groups. In this way it would be possible to identify possible differences as well as possible similarities between the self-concept of children and the self-concept of their parents. The design that was followed, included the use of an existing questionnaire which provides for the measuring of he self-concept on eight different scales. These scales correspond with the different aspects of the self-concept and include: the intellectual (academic) self-concept, the general social selfviii concept, the role of the family, the value orientation of the learner and the educator, the physical aspect, self-confidence, religion and the experience of frustration. The self-concept ,questionnaire (consisting of 46 items) was issued to 100 children. These children were identified in conjunction with the guidance teacher and they were subdivided into two groups namely those with a predominantly high self-concept and children with a predominantly low selfconcept. Children had to complete a questionnaire and see to it that the respective parents also complete questionnaires. Questionnaire items were drawn up, based on existing literature and research findings...

This thesis aims to disentangle the concept of culture; more specifically it identifies different facets of cultural orientations. It looks at how cultural and national groups differ on these dimensions and their impact on individuals and societies. It is argued that we need a more nuanced and multifaceted understanding of culture that goes beyond focusing on values. Chapter 1 discusses definitions of culture and identifies three significant facets of culture—values, beliefs and constructions of the self. It is noted that research into the latter two facets is far less developed. Chapter 2 outlines research into cross-cultural variation in beliefs, more specifically beliefs about personhood, and notes that little is known about beliefs that define individualism-collectivism (I-C). Chapter 3 reviews self-construal theory and highlights a range of remaining issues which point to the need to explore self-construals further. Chapter 4 provides a methodological overview of the research. Chapter 5 reports results from two large-scale cross-cultural questionnaire studies and presents the construct, and a measure, of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of the context in understanding people. Contextualism is shown to be a facet of cultural collectivism and a predictor of national variation in ingroup favouritism, trust and corruption. Chapter 6 presents a new seven-dimensional model of self-construals, which can be organised into three higher-order dimensions at the cultural level of analysis: self-differentiation, other-focus and self-containment. Variation in self-differentiation is shown to be best explained by differences in I-C, other-focus by differences in national wealth and self-containment by religious heritage. Based on a smaller study in four nations, Chapter 7 investigates the seven self-construal dimensions at the individual level and tests how they differentially predict outcomes related to socio-emotional adjustment. Chapter 8 summarises the findings and discusses implications and directions for future research.

Hands convey important social information, such as an individual’s emotions, goals, and desires, are used to direct attention through pointing, and are a major organ for haptic perception. However, very little is known about infants’ representation of human hands. In Experiment 1, infants tested in a familiarization/novelty preference task discriminated between images of intact hands and images that contained first-order structure distortions (i.e., with locations of fingers altered to result in an unnatural configuration). In Experiment 2, infants tested in a spontaneous preference task exhibited a preference for scrambled hand images over intact images, indicating that 3.5-month-olds have gained sufficient sensitivity to the configural properties of hands to discriminate between intact versus scrambled images without any training in the laboratory. In both procedures, infants’ performance was disrupted by the inversion of images, suggesting that infants’ performance in upright conditions was not based on low-level features. These results indicate that sensitivity to the structure of hands develops early in life. This may lay the foundation for the development of the functional use of hand information for social communication.

Thesis (M.A. (Clinical Psychology)) --University of Limpopo, 2013 / The study is aimed at investigating societal perception towards the hearing impaired and their psychological implications. The study concentrated on how the hearing impaired thought the hearing public perceived them and, also identified the psychological implications of these (perceived) societal perceptions on the hearing impaired. The research design is qualitative in nature, wherein, a convenient and purposive sample of ten hearing-impaired participants was used. Video recorded interviews of open-ended questions and questionnaires were used in combination to gather information. The Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was applied as the method of data analysis. Three super-ordinate themes were identified. These themes primarily indicated that the hearing impaired hold the view that they are negatively perceived by the hearing society. The findings of the study were that negative societal perceptions result in negative self-perceptions and discourage social interactions between the hearing impaired and the hearing communities.

Les odeurs affectent nos jugements, nos perceptions voire nos comportements, et plus particulièrement les comportements d’aide spontanés (Baron, 1997), même si ce champ de recherches reste peu exploré en psychologie sociale. Dans une première série de recherches, nous avons tout d’abord répliqué l’effet de l’odeur (vanille versus camphre, toutes deux pré-testées comme des odeurs agréables) d’un demandeur sur les comportements d’aide subséquents. Puis dans une seconde série de recherches, nous avons exploré expérimentalement l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’humeur médiatise la relation odeur-comportement, dans le paradigme de soumission sans pression du pied-dans-la-porte (Freedman & Fraser, 1966) avec demande implicite (Uranowitz, 1975). Rappelons que le pied-dans-la-porte (cf. méta-analyse) est une procédure éprouvée consistant à faire précéder une requête-cible généralement coûteuse d’une requête dite préparatoire qui l’est moins. Les effets de pied-dans-la-porte sont classiquement interprétés en termes d’engagement (Kiesler, 1971) ou en termes d’auto-perception (Bem, 1966, 1972). Les résultats obtenus dans ce paradigme attestent que l’efficacité du pied-dans-la-porte est affectée par l’odeur portée par le demandeur : lorsque celui-ci porte une odeur de camphre, les effets de pied-dans-la-porte ne sont plus observés, sans pour autant valider que l’odeur a un impact sur l’humeur des sujets. Difficilement interprétables en termes d’engagement ou d’auto-perception, nous avons exploré dans une troisième série de recherches une interprétation alternative de nos résultats : l’odeur d’autrui véhicule per se des informations sociales et ce sont ces informations qui orientent les comportements d’aide, et qui peuvent sous certaines conditions contrecarrer les effets pourtant robustes du pied-dans-la-porte. Pris globalement, les résultats recueillis auprès de mil-quatre-cents sujets pour la plupart en milieu écologique, articulés à une méta-analyse actualisant celle plus ancienne (Burger, 1999) nous ont amené à proposer un modèle intégratif permettant de rendre compte de l’impact des caractéristiques des demandeurs sur l’efficacité du pied-dans-la-porte. / Although this field of research remains poorly investigated in social psychology, some data indicates that odors modify our judgments, our perceptions, our behaviors, and more particularly our spontaneous helping behaviors (Baron, 1997). In a first series of experiments, we replicated a study aimed at evaluating the effect of a perfumed experimenter (vanilla versus camphor, both pre-tested as pleasant odors) on helping behaviors. In a second series of studies, we experimentally investigated the hypothesis according to which mood is a mediator variable of odors influence on helping behavior, in the foot-in-the-door paradigm without pressure compliance (Freedman & Fraser, 1966) with implicit demand (Uranowitz, 1975). Foot-in-the-door paradigm (cf. meta-analysis) is a well-tested procedure consisting in asking for a small request, and then asking for a larger one. Foot-in-the-door effects are classically interpreted in terms of commitment (Kiesler, 1971) or self-perception (Bem, 1966, 1972). Results obtained in this paradigm give evidence that the foot-in-the-door efficiency is affected by the experimenter’s odor: when the experimenter is perfumed with camphor, classical foot-in-the-door effects are not observed any more. However, the results do not confirm the hypothesis according to which odor influence subject’s mood. Neither the self-perception theory nor the commitment theory can account for these results. Thus, in a third series of experiments, we investigated an alternative interpretation: other people’s odors serve as social informations, which influence helping behaviors, which can cancel, under some requirements, the strong foot-in-the-door effects. An update of a meta-analysis (Burger, 1999), conducted on the data collected over four hundred thousand subjects in a naturalistic setting, lead us to propose an integrative model that would explain the influences of the experimenter’s characteristics on the foot-in-the-door efficiency.

While the cognitive disturbances that frequently follow severe TBI are relatively well understood, the ways in which these affect the psychosocial functioning of people with TBI are yet to be determined and have thus received little attention in treatment research. Growing evidence indicates that that a significant proportion of individuals with TBI demonstrate deficits in the perception of affective information from the face, voice, bodily movement and posture. As accurate evaluation of emotion in others is critical for the successful negotiation of social interactions, effective treatments are necessary. Until recently, however, there have been no rehabilitation efforts in this area with TBI groups. The present research aims to redress this absence. The literature on emotion perception deficits in TBI is examined, and a theoretical rationale for intervention is presented. Several lines of research are reviewed which suggest that rehabilitation targeting such deficits is tenable. These include research on emotion perception remediation with other cognitively impaired populations, findings from cognitive neuroscience suggesting the potential for neuronal restoration after brain damage, and the successful applications of remediation techniques, in particular errorless learning and self-instruction, for treating other cognitive deficits in a range of neurological disorders and TBI. Discussion of this research is followed by a description of two randomised controlled trials aimed at improving emotion perception in individuals with TBI. The findings are discussed with reference to useful theoretical models of rehabilitation, learning and emotion perception. Suggestions for future directions of research are outlined together with relevant design issues.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Speech Pathology and Audiology, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 28-30).

Although age-related differences in the correspondence bias are often attributed to cognitive decline, the present study found that age-related differences in the correspondence bias were differentially influenced by the participants mood states. Young and older participants completed an attitude-attribution task after having been induced to experience a positive, neutral, or negative mood. Whereas older adults demonstrated the correspondence bias more strongly in the negative mood condition relative to the positive mood condition, young adults exhibited the exact opposite pattern of results. Interestingly, the positive mood manipulation led older adults to be no more dispositionally biased than their younger counterparts. Further, mood and age-related differences in attributional confidence were not eliminated after controlling for individual differences in cognitive functioning.

No matter what domain, the judgment of performance occupies a key area of investment. Experts are trained and societal institutions are constructed to judge performance, and to identify, develop, and reward the highest levels of achievement. This research demonstrates that experts are just as vulnerable as novices to being confounded by the vision heuristic--the dominance of visual information over more relevant evaluation metrics. Using a multi-method approach spanning laboratory experiments, surveys, interviews, and field data, this research explores the impact of visual information on judgment and decision making in performance contexts. The first paper indicates that professional musicians use primarily visual information to judge music performance, even when they report that sound is most important to their evaluations. The second paper highlights the underlying mechanisms that account for the dominance of visual information. Additional work elaborates on the generalizability of the vision heuristic to management domains. The third paper suggests that visible cues about leadership and team dynamics matter more to expert judges than the group performances themselves. In another set of studies, venture capitalists and investors are found to neglect the content of entrepreneur pitches, instead overweighting dynamic visual cues. Finally, the latest study demonstrates that the visual performance cues displayed by firm managers can lead financial analysts to make less accurate forecasts of firm performance. In sum, this research shows that both laymen and experts rely heavily on visual information in their judgments; this dominance extends to organizational contexts, where it can strongly bias performance assessments. These findings have implications for the optimal design of processes for professional selection and advancement, and communication in organizations.

Depuis l'avènement du Projet de génome humain, les progrès biotechnologiques déboulent à un rythme effréné. Or, les développements en matière de génétique humaine, riches de promesses pour améliorer la santé et le bien-être, pourraient être utilisés à des fins désastreuses, à savoir la possibilité de discrimination fondée sur les caractéristiques génétiques. Dans le domaine de l'emploi, et particulièrement au stade de la pré-embauche, une telle discrimination pourrait se manifester par le refus d'emploi ou l'offre de moins bonnes conditions d'emploi. En conséquence, l'information génétique utilisée à des fins discriminatoires pourrait considérablement ralentir l'acceptation des nouvelles technologies génétiques. Il faut déterminer si l'encadrement actuel est adéquat compte tenu des problématiques soulevées par l'utilisation du test génétique lors de la préembauche. Ce mémoire présente de façon simplifiée les éléments scientifiques liés à la génétique, fournit de l'information sur le Projet de génome humain, expose les applications actuelles du test génétique dans le milieu de travail et examine les enjeux économiques et éthiques soulevés par ce sujet. Par la suite, nous analysons les avantages et les inconvénients des trois approches relatives aux politiques d'encadrement à la discrimination génétique lors du recrutement des futurs employés. Cette analyse est suivie d'un compte rendu de la situation au Québec pour enfin proposer quelques recommandations de manière à encourager l'élaboration d'une politique d'encadrement satisfaisante. / Since the advent of the Ruman Genome Project, discoveries in the field of human genetics have been prolific. As a result of these scientific developments, new genetic tests are now available for a variety of disorders. Although advances in genetic research promise dramatic progress in the treatment and prevention of genetic diseases, they raise concerns about the protection of human rights of individuals such as the possibility of genetic discrimination by employers. With regards to the workplace, genetic information will surely influence hiring praetices. Therefore, such practices will affect public acceptance of new genetic technologies. Considering the issues raised with regards to genetic testing, is the current legislative framework suitable to avoid genetic discrimination in the hiring process? This thesis will attempt to answer this question. We will begin by an overview of genetics and the Ruman Genome Project. We will examine the ethical and legal implications of genetic testing in the workplace. The thesis will focus on three public policy approaches in dealing with genetic discrimination for employment purposes. After outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, we will analyse the state of the law in the province of Québec. At the end of our discussion, we will propose recommendations to deal more efficiently with the increasing fear of genetic discrimination in the workplace and to limit the adverse effects of genetic information in the hiring process. / "Mémoire présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures En vue de l'obtention du grade de maîtrise en droit"