Browsing by Subject "Self"
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Item An exploratory study of self concepts of Mexican American girls in senior high school homemaking classes(Texas Tech University, 1971-05) Cassel, Ima JeanNot availableItem Attention deployment and conceptual inclusiveness of normals and schizophrenics(Texas Tech University, 1968-08) Sturm, Bessie Betty,Not availableItem A critical appraisal of relational approaches to psychoanalysis(2008-05) Mascialino, Guido; Richardson, Frank C.In the last twenty years, relational psychoanalysis has emerged as an important voice in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Relational approaches operate within the tension between intrapsychic and interpersonal levels of explanation. On the one hand, intrapsychic explanations assume the existence of a private inner life focusing on internal processes such as fantasy, desires, repression, and unconscious motivations. On the other hand, interpersonal explanations focus on transactions with others, the daily give and take of our relationships, and our inextricable participation in the social realm. Schools in the relational movement often struggle to integrate these two poles, but the risk seems to be collapsing one explanatory pole into the other. This work argues that framing this discussion within a wider philosophical horizon can suggest a compelling new way of thinking about these matters. The theoretical psychology of Jack Martin and Jeff Sugarman (1999, 2000), the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1977, 1994), and Martin Heidegger (1993, 1996), offer a view of selfhood that transcends the problematic internal-external dichotomy pervasive in relational approaches.Item Discriminating depression and social anxiety: a self-efficacy analysis(Texas Tech University, 1986-12) Morris, Katherine JoNot availableItem Effects of a TK-3 Housing Project on self-image(Texas Tech University, 1973-08) Delapp, RogerNot availableItem Exploring the mutual influence of self and relationship : a theory of couple identity negotiation(2010-08) Kwang, Tracy Nai; Swann, William B.; Neff, Lisa A.Relationships can shape the self-concept, draw out unique aspects of an individual’s personality, and influence individual perspectives and goals. Yet the self is not a passive player in relationships as self-related goals and motives can also influence how relationships form and develop. While the field is replete with research on the unidirectional influence between self and relationships, surprisingly little has been done on synergistic effect of combined self and relationship influences. I present a new theory of couple identity negotiation that captures how two individuals in a relationship negotiate their independent identities to form a unified couple identity. I hypothesize that the process through which an individual and his/her partner merge to create a new couple identity is crucial in determining relationship longevity and satisfaction. I draw from social identity theory (Turner et al., 1987) and identity fusion theory (Swann et al., 2009) to propose three models of couple identity negotiation: Model A involves the self being subsumed by the partner; Model B involves a negotiation wherein the self and partner both contribute to the couple identity; Model C the self subsuming the partner’s self. Study 1 tests the links between the different models to relationship outcomes, namely relationship satisfaction and commitment. Study 2 explores personality correlates of the models. Results demonstrate that couple identity negotiation models predict different levels of relationship quality. Furthermore, the models are not significantly correlated with personality variables, suggesting that the models are specific to the relationship, and are not driven solely by individual differences.Item Finding the “I” in the “we” : three modes of identity merger in close relationships(2012-05) Kwang, Tracy Nai; Swann, William B.; Gleason, Marci; Gosling, Samuel D.; Neff, Lisa A.; Pennebaker, James W.Upon entering a relationship, individuals merge their identities with their partner’s identities to form a relational self. This proposal draws from the self-expansion and identity fusion theories to suggest three ways in which the identity merger process can unfold, with individuals either: losing their personal identities (forfeited-self mode), disproportionately influencing the relational self (imperialistic-self mode), or integrating their identities with their partner’s identities in a balanced manner (fused-self mode). I describe seven studies that aim to 1) validate a measure of these identity merger modes and explore their unique effects on personal and relational outcomes; and 2) investigate the nature of these identity merger modes. Studies 1, 2, and 3 assess discriminant and criterion validity of these identity merger modes. Studies 2 and 3 also test the hypothesis that feelings of personal agency statistically mediate the association of identity merger modes with relationship quality and responses to relationship threats and difficulties. Study 4 measures the longitudinal effects of identity merger modes in a newlywed sample through tracking how identity merger modes are linked to responses to relationship conflicts over the course of two weeks. Study 5 tests the causal effects of the identity merger modes on experimentally manipulated threats to the relationship and the partner. Study 6 explores how people’s construals about their partners and themselves differ among the identity merger modes using a reaction time task. Finally, Study 7 investigates more ecologically valid evidence of direction of influence within identity merger modes through assessing language use and verbal communication patterns between spouses. I predict that only the fused-self mode will be associated with positive relationship quality and resilience to relationship difficulties due to high personal agency within the relationship. Those in the forfeited-self mode would experience low agency within relationships and consequently internalize relationship difficulties. Finally, I predict that those in the imperialistic-self mode would respond maladaptively to relationship difficulties.Item Majestic presence : narrating the transgender self in 21st-century Tamiḻakam(2016-08) Rajic, Nikola; Selby, Martha Ann; Hyder, Syed Akbar; Stewart, Kathleen; Rudrappa, Sharmila; Freiberger, OliverThe purpose of this dissertation is to document the emergence of a new identity of Tamil transgender women as articulated by transgender women themselves through works of autobiographies (Revathi’s Veḷḷai mōḻi and Living Smile Vidya’s Nān Vityā), fiction (Priya Babu’s novel Mūṉṟām pāliṉ mukam), or scholarship (Priya Babu’s ethnography of her community Aravāṇikaḷ, camūka varaiviyal). I pay special attention to how these women articulate their selfhood and the identity of their community in reaction to the specificities of the South Indian context (association with religious festivals such as the Aravaṉ festival in Koovagam, and other transgender phenomena in the Indian subcontinent). Self-narration, especially for stigmatized people and communities is inextricably linked to overcoming traumatic experiences, and for asserting new identities. Speaking and writing about one’s trauma can be a powerful force for transforming pain and loss into political action, and studying it can help us understand how trauma creates new possibilities of community and public culture that is as attentive to shame and alienation as it is to pride and solidarity. Therefore, I focus on trauma and stigma, as expressed in the aforementioned works, as vehicles for creating unique public cultures and artistic subjectivity.Item The nature and effects of consumer identity fusion in consumer-brand relationships(2012-08) Lin, Jhih-Syuan; Sung, YongjunWhile existing literature describes strong brand relationships along several dimensions, this research sheds light on the identity perspective of brand relationships through the lens of consumer identity fusion, aiming to understand the extent to which consumers incorporate brands into their self-perceptions. Specifically, this research investigates the nature and effects of consumer identity fusion and its motivational consequences following brand transgressions. Study One examines whether consumer identity fusion out-predicts brand identification in estimating the tendency for consumers to endorse pro-relationship behavior with regard to minor or severe transgressions. The results show that highly fused consumers are more likely to undertake constructive coping strategies and are less likely to engage in destructive coping strategies than are weakly fused consumers. The fusion × perceived severity interaction effect is found only for the exit coping strategy. Study Two assesses how consumer identity fusion influences consumers’ responses to personal-related versus societal-related brand transgressions. The findings demonstrate that the effect of consumer identity fusion is stronger than that of brand identification across different behavioral outcomes; it has a greater effect on participants’ relationship-serving responses to personal-related transgressions than to societal-related brand transgressions. However, the fusion × brand transgression types interaction effect is found only for exit responses. Finally, Study Three incorporates an additional self-affirmation manipulation to determine the interplay of consumers’ personal and social identities, aiming to disentangle the source of the motivational machinery needed for consumers’ pro-relationship behaviors. The findings underscore that highly fused consumers in the affirmation condition are less likely to exit the brand relationship than those in the no affirmation condition when facing personal-related brand transgressions, even though self-affirmation should reduce the negative effect of brand transgressions. Nevertheless, the expected relationships are not found for consumers’ change in brand evaluation and other behavioral measures. The findings of this research together suggest that consumer identity fusion is applicable for understanding connections between consumers and the brand relationship partner in consumer-brand relationships. Implications of these findings and directions for refinement and future research are discussed.Item Negative self-concepts in elementary school children are identifiable and to a degree modifiable, under a certain syndrome of teacher-pupil relationships(Texas Tech University, 1968-08) Coleman, George WoodieNot availableItem Radical self-care : performance, activism, and queer people of color(2014-05) McMaster, James Matthew; Gutierrez, Laura G., 1968-Queer people of color in the United States are perpetually under siege politically, psychically, economically, physically, and affectively in the twenty-first century under capitalist white supremacist heteropatriarchy. Radical Self-Care, connects radical artivist performance in Austin, Texas with the theoretical genealogies of queer of color critique, women of color feminism, queer studies, and performance studies in order to propose a program for queer of color survival, sustainment and political revolt. Radical self-care is the holistic praxis that names the confluence of two distinct but inextricable processes developed in the first two chapters of this thesis. In chapter one, I take up the Generic Ensemble Company’s workshop production of What’s Goin’ On? as a case study in order to theorize the ‘performative of sustenance,’ a mechanism of queer worldmaking and queer world sustainment defined by its erotic and utopian affects. Chapter two, through a discussion of reproductive rights activism at the Texas state capitol, reformulates the concept of ‘parrhesia,’ the Socratic practice of ‘free speech’ taken up by Foucault in discussions of the care of the self, into a performance praxis of speaking truth to power with the potential to interrupt hegemonic systems of oppression. The final chapter explicates the ways in which these two mechanisms converge and operate as a dyad in the holistic process of radical self-care through an analysis of Fat: The Play, a devised work that premiered in Austin by and about fat queer femmes. Ultimately, Radical Self- Care aspires to offer queers of color a methodology of queer world sustainment that is also a program of political intervention, grounded in solidarity politics, into those systems of oppression that too often characterize queer of color existence as a project of survival rather than a project of flourishing.Item Self-ideal discrepancy and maladjustment in normal, neurotic and psychotic women(Texas Tech University, 1967-08) Pederson, Nelson HughesPrevious research in self theory indicates disagreement on the validity of self-ideal discrepancy as an indication of maladjustment. There is also confusion regarding the self-ideal discrepancy profiles foujid among individuals with different psychiatric diagnoses. In the present thesis an attempt was made to clarify these two areas of conflict by examining the self structures of normal, neurotic, and psychotic individuals.Item Stuttering and self awareness(Texas Tech University, 1972-12) Rudder, Marynell HeisterNot availableItem Symptomatic identities: lovesickness and the nineteenth-century British novel(Texas A&M University, 2007-09-17) Cheshier, Laura KayLovesickness is a common malady in British literature, but it is also an illness that has been perceived and diagnosed differently in different eras. The nineteenthcentury British novel incorporates a lovesickness that primarily affects women with physical symptoms, including fever, that may end in a female character's death. The fever of female lovesickness includes a delirium that allows a female character to play out the identity crisis she must feel at the loss of a significant relationship and possibly of her social status. Commonly conflated with a type of female madness, the nineteenthcentury novelists often focus less on the delirium and more on the physical symptoms of illness that affect a female character at the loss of love. These physical symptoms require physical care from other characters and often grant the heroine status and comfort. Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens all use subtle variations in lovesickness to identify the presence or absence of a female character's virtue. Jane Austen established lovesickness as a necessary experience for female characters, who choose only if they reveal or conceal their symptoms to a watchful public. Elizabeth Gaskell established both a comic socially constructed lovesickness in which a female character can participate if she is aware of popular culture and a spontaneous lovesickness that affects socially unaware female characters and leads to death. Charles Dickens establishes lovesickness as culturally pervasive by writing a female character who stages lovesickness for the purpose of causing pain to others and a female character who is immune to lovesickness and the rhetoric of love, yet is consistently spoken into others' love stories. Lovesickness becomes a barometer of the soul in several nineteenthcentury novels by which we read a heroine's virtue or lack of virtue and the depth of her loss.Item The communicative self: a clarification of the self concept in speech communication(Texas Tech University, 1971-08) McCorkle, Benjamin RayNot availableItem The Design and Evaluation of a Program to Improve the Self-Concept of Kindergarten Children(Texas Tech University, 1973-08) Meathenia, Peggy SueNot Available.Item Toward an integration of Beck's cognitive theory and Bowlby's attachment theory : self-schema and adult attachment classification in relation to depressive symptoms(2001-08) Sander, Amy Janay Boswell, 1973-; Stark, Kevin Douglas; Jacobvitz, DeborahItem Using the neural level of analysis to understand the computational underpinnings of positivity biases in self-evaluation(2012-05) Hughes, Brent Laurence, 1981-; Beer, Jennifer S., 1974-; Gosling, Samuel D.; Neff, Lisa A.; Preston, Alison A.; Swann, Jr., William B.Decades of research have demonstrated that people sometimes provide self-evaluations that emphasize their most flattering qualities. Different theoretical accounts have been offered to explain the mechanisms underlying positively-biased self-evaluation. Some researchers theorize that positively-biased self-evaluations arise from a self-protection motivation because positivity biases increase in situations of heightened self-esteem threat. Alternative views question whether self-protection motivation is a necessary or even dominant source of positivity bias by demonstrating that positively-biased self-evaluations occur even when threat is not heightened, and that a general judgment approach leads to positivity biases in some domains but also to negativity biases in other domains. One reason for this gap in knowledge is that behavioral measures are limited in their ability to resolve whether the processes underlying positively-biased self-evaluation are the same or different depending on contextual motivators. Neuroimaging methods are well suited to examine whether different mechanisms underlie similar behaviors, specifically similar positively-biased responses in different contexts. The four studies presented here explore the neural mechanisms of positively-biased self-evaluation by first identifying a core set of neural regions associated with positivity bias (Study 1A and 1sB), examining whether a heightened self-protection motivation changes the engagement of those neural systems (Study 2), and specifying the precise mechanisms supported by those regions (Study 3). Studies 1A and 1B revealed evidence for a neural system comprised of medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and, to a lesser extent dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) that was modulated by positivity bias. Study 2 found that a heightened self-protection motivation changes the engagement of medial OFC in positively-biased self-evaluation. Finally, Study 3 found evidence that medial OFC may support a common mechanism in positively-biased judgment that is implemented differently as a function of the motivational context. Taken together, these studies represent a first step toward developing a neural model of positively-biased self-evaluation. The findings provide some preliminary evidence that positivity biases may represent distinct processes in different motivational contexts. This dissertation sets the stage for future work to examine how specific positively-biased cognitive mechanisms may be supported by specific neural systems and computations as a function of motivational contexts.Item What it means to be a good father : a test of identity theory(2008-05) Sasaki, Takayuki, 1977-; Hazen, Nancy LynnThere is a dearth of research focusing on fathering in families of color. The present study argues that ecological factors, especially SES and neighborhood quality, exert a strong influence on racial and ethnic differences in fathering role identity, which in turn affect fathering role performance. The primary goal of the present study is thus to investigate the impact of ecological factors on what it means to be a good father among African American (n = 308), Latino American (n = 598), Asian American (n = 580), and white fathers (n = 2813) by using a nationally representative sample from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), and to test identity theory by examining fathering identity as a primary determinant of fathering role performance. The core premise of identity theory is that society is the main source in shaping self (i.e., identity), and in turn, contributes to the way people behave (Stryker, 1968). The present study tested identity theory by examining the associations between domain-level psychological centralities and domain-specific fathering performances, and also to test whether effects of psychological centralities and contextual factors override those of race and ethnicity. Overall, the results from this study considerably buttressed identity theory. Consistent with the cultural-ecological model (Ogbu, 1981), which posits that ecological conditions shapes culture-specific socialization goals, racial and ethnic differences in the fathering psychological centrality were found because fathers in the same group historically share similar circumstances. However, the heterogeneity of the psychological centrality within each group was remarkable because their current conditions are vastly multifarious. Specifically, the lower their SES, the more likely that they believe that providing for their children is central to their identity as a father. In studying fathers of color, previous approaches often resulted in the unwitting spread of stereotypical images by contrasting minority fathers from at-risk population with middle-class white fathers, because such approaches failed to consider the effects of contextual factors on fathering and to include multiple forms of father involvement. The results from this study clearly show that racial and ethnic differences are subtle once contextual factors are taken into account.