Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- All Subjects: Resilience
Description
Generativity was first described by Erikson (1963) as an adult's concern for and commitment to promoting the welfare and development of future generations. Generativity is juxtaposed by stagnation in Erikson's stage of midlife (35-65 years old). The developmental hurdle faced at this point in the developmental cycle is whether a person will produce something of real value, both in the present and impacting future generations. Generative adults seek to give something back to society, generally behaving in a way to make the world a better place for others with no personal gain attached. The goal of the current study was to assess differences in levels of generativity at the final stage of adult life, and the potential functions that generativity can serve individuals. Results suggest that lowly generative individuals in older adult life tend to experience doubts about the impact they have had on the world and the lack of legacy they are leaving behind. Themes of highly generative participants included having felt they lived a purposeful and meaningful life, along with feeling fortunate and lucky in their lives. Also highly generative participants seemed to feel confident in the legacy they will leave behind after death. Results are discussed in light of the theories and findings of Erikson and McAdams.
ContributorsHauser, David (Author) / Kinnier, Richard T. (Thesis advisor) / Homer, Judith (Committee member) / Arciniega, Guillermo M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Sometimes difficult life events challenge our existing resources in such a way that routinized responses are inadequate to handle the challenge. Some individuals will persist in habitual, automatic behavior, regardless of environmental cues that indicate a mismatch between coping strategy and the demands of the stressor. Other individuals will marshal adaptive resources to construct new courses of action and reconceptualize the problem, associated goals and/or values. A mixed methods approach was used to describe and operationalize cognitive shift, a relatively unexplored construct in existing literature. The study was conducted using secondary data from a parent multi-year cross-sectional study of resilience with eight hundred mid-aged adults from the Phoenix metro area. Semi-structured telephone interviews were analyzed using a purposive sample (n=136) chosen by type of life event. Participants' beliefs, assumptions, and experiences were examined to understand how they shaped adaptation to adversity. An adaptive mechanism, "cognitive shift," was theorized as the transition from automatic coping to effortful cognitive processes aimed at novel resolution of issues. Aims included understanding when and how cognitive shift emerges and manifests. Cognitive shift was scored as a binary variable and triangulated through correlational and logistic regression analyses. Interaction effects revealed that positive personality attributes influence cognitive shift most when people suffered early adversity. This finding indicates that a certain complexity, self-awareness and flexibility of mind may lead to a greater capacity to find meaning in adversity. This work bridges an acknowledged gap in literature and provides new insights into resilience.
ContributorsRivers, Crystal T (Author) / Zautra, Alex (Thesis advisor) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Kurpius, Sharon (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts or actions are on the rise in adolescents (National Institute of Mental Health, 2015; Bridge, Asti, & Horowitz, 2015). Parents, school administrators, and therapists are searching for resiliency factors with in at-risk groups to aid students in need. In previous work, Luthar and Zigler (1992) reported that intelligent youth are more resilient than less intelligent youth under low stress conditions but they lose their advantage under high stress conditions. This study examined whether intelligence (reflected in grade point average; GPA) and maladaptive (internalizing and externalizing symptoms) behaviors are negatively related in adolescents, and tested whether level of stress, reflected in emotion regulation and friendship quality, moderated that association. It also probed whether the relationships differ by gender. Sixth-graders (N=506) were recruited with active parental consent from three middle schools. Adolescents completed self-report questionnaires Regarding demo graphics, maladaptive behaviors, emotion regulation, and friendship quality, and GPA data were collected from the school. Regression analyses found that GPA was negatively related to externalizing symptoms. Girls with poor friendship communication report significantly higher maladaptive behaviors. This relation was more pronounced for girls with high GPAs, as predicted. Results support the theory that intelligent female adolescents are more reactive under adverse circumstances. Future efforts should follow students through middle school into high school to evaluate whether friendships remain important to adjustment, hold for boys as well as girls, and have implications for relationship interventions.
ContributorsGonzales, Ashlyn Carol (Author) / Luthar, Suniya (Thesis director) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Infurna, Frank (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Positive psychology focuses on the promotion of well-being (Seligman, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Positive psychology interventions (PPIs) have been developed to help facilitate the development of skills needed to flourish and current research suggests that PPIs can help individuals improve their happiness, reduce stress, and become more resilient (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). National surveys highlight that students in higher education are in dire need of interventions aimed at helping them cope with the negative impact of stress (Douce & Keeling, 2014; Marks & Wade, 2015). Research among the graduate student population is scant even though they report high levels of stress and work even more hours than undergraduate students (Wyatt & Oswalt, 2013). PPIs implemented in the graduate student population focus heavily on psychologically-based programs, like psychology and social work, whose students may already be receiving assistance in self-care (Botta, Cadet, & Maramaldi, 2015; Burkhart, 2014; Nelson, Dell'Oliver, Koch, & Buckler, 2001). Thus, this current study is a randomized controlled trial testing an online PPI, adapted from Achor's work in the business industry (2012, 2014), compared with an online informative stress group and a wait list control group among graduate students from various disciplines at a large, public university in the Southwest. Participants were administered pre-, post-, and three-month follow-up tests to determine the impact of the interventions on their levels of perceived stress, happiness, and resilience. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used with covariates of age, gender, race, program of study, and graduate level of study (masters versus doctoral). The main findings of the study included: the students in the PPI group reported significantly higher resilience at the end of the three weeks than did the students in the informative stress or wait list control groups, even though measures of happiness or perceived stress were not impacted; and students from psychologically based programs received the most benefit from treatment, especially from the PPI intervention. All findings, implications, and suggestions for future directions are discussed.
ContributorsVenieris, Pauline (Author) / Kinnier, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Rund, James (Committee member) / Homer, Judith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017