Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item EMOTIONS AND COPING IN THE CONTEXT OF TEACHING: REFLECTIONS OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS(2021) Briody, Jill Margaret; Teglasi, Hedwig; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Teaching is an emotional roller coaster. Not enough pre-service teachers are prepared for the daily barrage of emotions they will experience when they enter the professional world or for the critical need they will have to effectively manage those emotions. Limited awareness of the role of emotions and management thereof may lead to reduced effectiveness in the classroom and higher rates of burnout. The current mixed methods study explored how pre-service teachers from an elementary education undergraduate program at a large Mid-Atlantic public University think about their emotions and the management of those emotions in the context of teaching. Emotions are a difficult construct to accurately capture and research often relies on self-report measures to do so. In addition to self-report measures, this study employed narratives, about significant teaching experiences to examine more deeply pre-service teachers’ emotions, the situations that elicit those emotions, and the management of those emotions through coping. Results indicated that pre-service teachers reflect on a range of emotions, with 95% mentioning negative emotions when writing about a classroom experience and 96% mentioning positive emotions. The most frequently used category of emotion words was “fear,” by almost 70% of participants. Furthermore, almost 60% of pre-service teachers agreed that they regularly experience waves of strong feelings about their teaching experience, when responding to items on the Impact of Event Scale-Adapted. Yet almost 60% of pre-service teachers described coping that was coded as unrealistic or non-coping in at least one of their narratives. While almost all pre-service teachers included emotions in writing about significant teaching experiences, very few reported emotions or coping as a concern when asked explicitly what they were worried about. Among the situations that elicited the most negative emotions and/or were reported as most worrisome were the shift in responsibility from mentor teacher to pre-service teacher, lesson planning, time management, individual student social-emotional well-being, and whole class behavior/classroom management. The current study illustrated the importance of using multiple methods to capture the complexities of multifaceted constructs like emotions and coping. Implications for pre-service teachers, educator preparation programs, and researchers are discussed.Item When Love Becomes Hate(?): The Interplay Between Consumer-Brand Relationships and Crisis Situations(2016) Ma, Liang; Toth, Elizabeth L; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study had three purposes. First, it aimed to re-conceptualize organization-public relationships (OPRs) in public relations and crisis communication. This OPR re-conceptualization helps find out when the OPR buffering effect or the OPR love-becomes-hate effect happens. Second, it aimed to examine how consumer emotions are influenced by OPRs and influence consumer behavioral intentions. Third, it aimed to address the current problematic operationalization of the concept of consumer. Three pilot studies and one main study were conducted. Apple and Whole Foods were the two brands examined. One crisis that undermined the self-defining attributes shared between the brand and its consumers and another crisis that did not were examined for each brand. Almost 500 Apple consumers and 400 Whole Foods consumers provided usable questionnaires. This study had several major findings. First, non-identifying relationship and identifying relationship were different constructs. Moreover, trust, satisfaction, and commitment were not conceptually separate dimensions of OPRs. Second, the non-identifying relationships offered buffering effects by increasing positive attitudes and tempering anger and disappointment. The identifying relationships primarily offered the love-becomes-hate effects by increasing anger and disappointment. Third, if the crisis was relevant to consumers’ daily lives, brand response strategies were less effective at mitigating consumer negative reactions. Moreover, apology-compensation-reminder strategy was more effective compared to no-comment strategy. However, the apology-compensation-reminder strategy was no more effective than other strategies as long as brands compensate to the victims. Identifying relationships increased the effectiveness of response strategies. If the crisis did not undermine the self-defining attributes shared between consumers and brands, the response strategies worked even better. This study contributes to crisis communication research in multiple ways. First, it advances the OPR conceptualization by demonstrating that non-identifying relationship and identifying relationship are different concepts. More importantly, it advances the theory building of OPRs’ influences on crises by finding out when the buffering effect and the love-becomes-hate effect happen. Second, it adds to emotion research by demonstrating that strong OPRs can lead to negative emotions and positive emotions can have negative behavioral consequences on organizations. Third, the precise operationalization of the concept of consumer gives more insights about consumer reactions to crises.Item "Passion is Catching": Emotional Contagion and Affective Action in Select Works by Shakespeare(2011) Wheelock, Angelique Marie; Cartwright, Kent; Mack, Maynard; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Growing out of recent scholarship on humoral theory and emotions in early modern literary texts, this dissertation explores the idea that Shakespearean emotions are contagious. Tears, rage, compassion, fear, affection, horror, and laughter travel invisible pathways from character to character in his texts, reinforcing an implicit scheme of emotional transmission harkening back to Plato and Aristotle. Whether generated internally or imposed from the outside, these passions have the ability to wreak havoc on individuals, communities, and even countries, because passions can, and often do, lead to action. This work examines three of Shakespeare's tragic works, the poem Rape of Lucrece and two plays: Othello and Julius Caesar. In the chapter on Rape of Lucrece, beauty is the root of the violent, contagious action driving the tale. Tarquin himself is ravished by Lucrece's beauty. Overwhelmed by a “rage of lust,” the prince must exorcise his excess humors through rape to regain equilibrium. Lucrece is infected with his “load of lust” during the rape and then kills herself, passing on Tarquin's beauty–inspired violence to Collatine and the nobles in a mutated form—the lust for vengeance. Through her act of self–violence, Lucrece transforms the original contagion into a force which purges Rome of the Tarquins' rule. For Julius Caesar, I trace Shakespeare's descriptions of environmental events in Julian Rome and how these correspond to the emotional complexion of the agents in the play. I identify fear as the main emotional vector in this play and illustrate how the imagination takes on a crucial role in the misregulation of the humors, a situation that, in turn, creates the ideal environment for violent action. The chapter dedicated to Othello examines the false transmission of emotion perpetrated by Iago to destroy Othello. Iago develops false emotional paradigms, reframing his hatred for the general with trappings of love; successfully communicating the degree of his passion without the content, Iago is able to fool Othello into believing Desdemona is false. Despite his demand for “ocular proof,” the Moor becomes overwhelmed by the force of Iago's emotions and becomes an instrument of “honest” Iago's virulent hate.Item PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP COMMITMENT, POSITIVE AND ANXIOUS EMOTIONAL AROUSAL, AND COMMUNICATION IN CLINIC COUPLES(2009) Mena, Leidy Magdalena; Esptein, Norman B.; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examined relationships among partners' relationship commitment, positive and anxious forms of emotional arousal prior to engaging in a discussion of a conflictual relationship issue, and subsequent communication behavior, in a sample of clinical couples who had experienced psychologically and mild to moderate physically abusive interactions. A secondary analysis was conducted with data from 68 couples who had sought therapy for relationship problems. Results indicated that men and women with higher commitment experienced less anxious arousal and more positive emotional arousal prior to engaging in problem-solving. Greater commitment in men was associated with more constructive communication behaviors, and women with higher levels of anxiety engaged in more negative communication. Men's positive emotional arousal was associated with more positive communication behavior and less negative communication behavior. Men's positive emotional arousal mediated between commitment and constructive communication behaviors; however, anxious emotional arousal did not. Implications for couple therapy are discussed.Item Affect and Cognition as Antecedents of Intergroup Attitudes: The Role of Applicability and Judged Usability(2009) Leary, Scott; Stangor, Charles; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)When making intergroup evaluations we experience cognitive and affective responses. Given that the content of the cognitions or affective reactions are applicable and judged usable, each has the potential to influence one's attitudes towards that group. In a Pilot Study participants reported significantly more disgust than fear when thinking about gay men, and significantly more fear than disgust when thinking about African-Americans. Studies 1 and 2 provided initial support that these specific emotional responses to social groups are moderated by the extent to which that information is judged as usable. Data from Study 3 did not fully support my hypotheses, as personal relevance did not moderate the extent to which affect was related to social distance. Implications and limitations are discussed.Item Preschoolers' Emotional Understanding of Others Who Are Ethnically the Same or Different(2004-11-22) Mende, Linda; Strein, William; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)According to Mayer and Salovey (1997), emotional understanding is the ability to "label emotions and recognize relations among the words and the emotions themselves". While children at an early age are aware of racial differences, do children understand emotions differently for others of another ethnic group? This study considered the potential impact of race on understanding the emotions of others, by focusing on children's accuracy in inferring story characters' emotional response during emotion-eliciting situations. The cultural component involved the racial match between the participant and the story character. Study findings indicate that preschoolers understood others' emotions similarly, regardless of racial background. Study results also examined children's overall accuracy and assignment of emotional intensity. Similar to previous emotional understanding results, preschoolers found happy emotions the most easily identifiable and the most intense. In contrast, angry emotions were the most difficult to identify and the least intense emotion.