PHD, Kent State University, 2008, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

The study goal was testing several competing hypotheses regarding how positive and negative friendship qualities and stability relate to early adolescent self-esteem. Hypothesis 1, Consensual Validation Model, proposed participating in higher positive quality friendships enhances self-esteem. Hypothesis 2, Differential Association Model, proposed higher positive quality friendships increases impact of negative quality, resulting in lower self-esteem. Hypothesis 3, Engagement Model, proposed friendships lower in positive and negative quality would lower self-esteem. Hypothesis 4, Embeddedness Model, proposed stable friendships bolster self-esteem through social standing. Hypothesis 5, Moderation Model, proposed stability moderates the relationship between friendship quality and self-esteem, such that the first hypotheses would be supported only if friendship was stable.143 seventh and eighth graders completed questionnaires, in fall and in spring. At Time 1, students reported friendships, friendship quality, and self-esteem. At Time 2, students reported friendship stability, self-esteem, and socially desirable responding. Hypotheses were tested using positive and negative quality and stability of the best friendship predicting global self-esteem. When best friendship quality and stability were used to predict global self-esteem, none of the hypotheses were supported. Post hoc analyses tested the hypotheses using best friendship to predict perceived social acceptance rather than global self-esteem. These subsidiary analyses found best friendship positive quality predicted reporting higher perceived social acceptance. In addition, best friendship negative quality demonstrated a marginal association with lower perceived social acceptance. Best friendship positive quality interacted with best friendship stability to predict higher perceived social acceptance, with stable friendships higher in positive quality reporting highest self-esteem. Additional post hoc analyses w (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kathryn Kerns PhD (Advisor); Josefina Grau PhD (Committee Member); Manfred Van Dulmen PhD (Committee Member); Rhonda Richardson PhD (Committee Member); David Hussey PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Applied Communication Theory and Methodology, Cleveland State University, 2018, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

With the rise of technology it becomes important to measure and analyze the communication patterns that are emerging from these changes. Technologies open up different communication patterns for individuals to use (Tomas & Carlson 2015; Walther, 1996; Wei & Leung, 1999). Thus, this study develops the “ASOHIO” perspective, which incorporates a range of new and old communication patterns, online communication, offline communication, synchronous communication, asynchronous communication, interpersonal communication, and hyperpersonal communication. This work also looks to extend the hyperpersonal model greatly by developing an actual multi-item scale to measure the construct at the individual level. Walther's (1996) basic description of hyperpersonal communication breaks down that there are a lack of non-verbal cues, a sense of strategic communication, and computer-mediated communication. This study takes things a step further, with a breakdown of the components of hyperpersonal taking into account current technologies, as well as using Goffman's “presentation of everyday self“ and “interaction ritual” to help define what hyperpersonal could really mean in the current hybrid communication environment.

Committee: Kimberly Neuendorf Dr. (Committee Chair); Guowei Jian Dr. (Committee Member); Leo Jeffres Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.), Xavier University, 2006, Psychology

The purpose of the current study was to examine the number of reciprocated friendships, social self-efficacy, and depressive symptoms for a group of obese youth in comparison to non-overweight matched controls. In addition, the impact of having a reciprocated friendship on social self-efficacy and depressive symptoms was examined. Gender and race were also explored in relation to these variables. The data for this study were drawn from an existing data set of 78 children and adolescents, ages 8 to 16, seeking behavioral weight-management treatment, and 71 non-overweight classmates of the obese participants. The average body mass index (BMI [k/m2]) for the target group was greater than the 95th percentile (z=2.43). Control participants were not overweight (BMI ≤ 85th percentile, z=-0.02) and were the same gender, race, and closest in age to the target obese child. No significant differences were identified between obese and non-overweight youth in number of reciprocated friendships, levels of social self-efficacy, or levels of depressive symptoms. Further, the association of obesity status with depressive symptoms and social self-efficacy did not vary by whether or not the participant had a reciprocated friendship, or by gender or race. These findings indicate that obese youth who initiate weight management treatment are not experiencing more depressive symptoms or experiencing a lack of confidence to engage in social interactions relative to their non-overweight peers. Furthermore, despite the literature demonstrating that obese youth are less accepted by their peers, these children do not have fewer reciprocated friendships than their non- overweight classmates.

Committee: Janet R. Schultz Ph.D., ABPP (Committee Chair); Meg H. Zeller Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Norman Barry Ph.D., ABPP (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2009, Leadership and Change

There are many ways to lead others, all of which involve a relationship among parties.However, the heartbeat of leadership may be a leader's relational sensibility. This research explored the leader's experience of relational leadership and the extent to which the metaphor of leadership as friendship described its qualities. It also explored whether actual friendship between leaders and followers was possible with this form of leadership. The topic of relational leadership was approached through a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology to explore the lived experiences of six women leaders. Their experience of relational leadership and the degree to which the metaphor of leadership as friendship represented their experience was the vantage point for this study. Using an inverted pyramid structure, in-depth interviews were conducted in three rounds consisting of six, three, and two participants for a total of 11 interviews. This research augments the leadership literature by describing the leader's experience of relational leadership and the degree to which the metaphor of leadership as friendship captures its qualities. This research concluded that leaders can, and do, find ways to lead with friends, to lead with characteristics one finds in friendship, or both. It demonstrated that leaders can have actual friendships (with each other and with their followers or subordinates), provided boundaries are maintained. The electronic version of this dissertation is available in the open-access OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/etd

Committee: Laurien Alexandre PhD (Committee Chair); Carolyn Kenny PhD (Committee Member); Sherwin Davidson PhD (Committee Member); Gerri Perrault PhD (Other) Subjects: Management; Organizational Behavior; Personal Relationships; Womens Studies

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1984, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1969, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, English

Friendship is at the heart of my writing because friendship is at the heart of my life, as well as my politics. This thesis samples from my essay collection All My Friends and poetry collection Block Party. My writing has a queer, utopian streak, insisting on joy and imagination against the grain of relentless suffering.

Committee: Marcus Jackson (Committee Co-Chair); Elissa Washuta (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Fine Arts

MFA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Kids Can Be Cruel is an action Young Adult novel that uses domestic horror and subversive comedy to investigate the connections between people. YA novels cover many different topics, but in distillation, they work to explore relationships between people. Inspired by Daniel Handler's semi-absurdist drama A Series of Unfortunate Events, Bryan Lee O'Malley's very-absurdist action/romance Scott Pilgrim series, and Hiromu Arakawa's politically conscious fantasy adventure Fullmetal Alchemist (among others), Kids aims to emulate these works' bending of genres and conventions — and their relationship themes. Protagonist Maria may not always understand it, but her world is one where relationships are created, tested, and broken in sparks of fire.

Committee: Imad Rahman (Committee Chair); Catherine Wing (Advisor); Christopher Barzak (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1954, Sociology

Committee: Frank F. Miles (Advisor) Subjects: Sociology

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1954, Sociology

Committee: Frank F. Miles (Advisor) Subjects: Sociology

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Cleveland State University, 2022, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Frankie and Drew are two friends, living mundane lives, which are abruptly interrupted by the appearance of the past. A mysterious girl appears in the dumpster outside of Frankie's apartment, and the two form a friendship. It becomes increasingly clear that this girl is not all that she seems. Frankie will be forced to remember a painful memory, and the tragedy that she witnessed and felt responsible for. While at the same time, Drew visits the mother who abandoned him in the hospital. Frankie and Drew are both on a healing journey, that is both painful and necessary, and support one another along the way.

Committee: Mike Geither (Advisor); Hilary Plum (Committee Member); David Giffels (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Fine Arts; Language Arts

PHD, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

Friendships are among the most important interpersonal relationships in emerging adulthood. Indeed, high-quality friendships have been linked to increased happiness (Demir et al., 2015) and better adjustment (Barry et al., 2016). The mechanisms that might predict these high-quality friendship experiences are not yet well-established, however. Buhrmester et al. (1988) proposed five domains of interpersonal competence (conflict management; emotional support provision; initiation; self-assertion; self-disclosure); more recent literature has identified forgiveness and gratitude as possible additional interpersonal competencies that might influence close peer relationships (see Algoe, 2012; Worthington et al., 2017). The current study examines the measurement of these seven proposed interpersonal competencies and whether they are related to emerging adults' friendship quality experiences using both in-lab (global) measures and nightly report (daily) measures. Results provide preliminary evidence suggesting that measures of Buhrmester et al.'s (1988) interpersonal competency domains, and the two additional domains of forgiveness and gratitude, are reliable, valid, and are somewhat distinct. Additionally, each of the domains of interpersonal competence was found to be relevant for the quality of emerging adults' friendship experiences, though the relevance of each domain appears to vary depending on whether one is interested in predicting positive or negative friendship experiences, and whether one examines these experiences through global reports or reports of daily experiences.

Committee: Kathryn Kerns (Advisor); Judith Gere (Committee Co-Chair); Angela Neal-Barnett (Committee Member); Nichole Egbert (Committee Member); Molly Merryman (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

This thesis is a piece of creative nonfiction detailing the narrator's experience as a Black, Latinx, queer, nonbinary person. The essays in this collection cover community, music writing, friendship narratives, and psychedelic drug exploration.

Committee: Michelle Herman Professor (Advisor); Elissa Washuta Professor (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts in English, Youngstown State University, 2020, Department of Languages

When 11-year-old Bradley and his best friends' parents deploy to Afghanistan, life goes on at home on post while they are away. Throughout the deployment, Bradley grows and learns more about himself, his Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the world around him with the assistance of his therapy dog in training, Tank. Through the course of the deployment, each month is a trial they must overcome. Bradley works on remembering his medication, training his dog, and helping his mother. Cadence worries about her father and if he is pushing his luck with this latest in a string of deployments. Bradley and his crew of friends continue their everyday activities and play Minecraft as their coping mechanism, because at least in that world they can control everything. As the families begin to prepare for their loved ones to return, a phone call puts the family readiness group members on high alert and worry sets in. The next morning, every military family's worst nightmare comes true—there's a knock at the door and Cadence's family is notified that Captain March has been Killed in Action. From that moment on everyone's lives change. Bradley, his friends, and their community come to learn how much they need each other during times of struggle. Reveille and Retreat is my love letter to a community and a population of children that often gets overlooked.

Committee: Rebecca Barnhouse PhD (Committee Chair); Terry Benton PhD (Committee Member); Laura Beadling PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Modern Literature

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2020, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology MS

Curmudgeon personality, the extent to which a person dislikes most things, has recently received increased attention from researchers. Existing research has focused on either the relationships between curmudgeon personality and Big Five personality factors (e.g., extraversion, agreeableness) or curmudgeon personality and various workplace outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention). The current research examined whether curmudgeon personality and other personality traits (i.e., extraversion and emotional expressiveness) interact with each other to influence the quality of individuals' social relationships at work. Analyses using an MTurk dataset (N = 529) showed some evidence of these interaction effects though some directions of these interactive effects were interesting and inconsistent with our predictions. These findings extend the existing literature by examining curmudgeon personality's interactions with other personality traits and by examining outcome variables not previously examined within the curmudgeon personality literature.

Committee: Nathan A. Bowling Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Corey E. Miller Ph.D. (Committee Member); David M. LaHuis Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Management; Organizational Behavior; Personality Psychology; Psychology

MFA, Kent State University, 2020, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Learning to Swim by Almost Drowning will be a book of stories, each centering around a different relationship. The thesis as a whole will explore the concept of relationships, mostly romantic, but also platonic, professional, and casual. It will also delve into the idea of identity and how people find who they are in the people with whom they surround themselves. The purpose is to examine the idea of human connection and what it means in everyone's lives.

Committee: Eric Wasserman (Advisor); Catherine Wing (Committee Member); Imad Rahman (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Fine Arts; Literature; Personal Relationships

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Creative Writing/Fiction

Found Family follows the life of Priya, a thirty-year-old woman who hasn't had a job in two years and lives with Amma. Her best and only friend, Keerti, has long moved on from her, and when Priya has sex at Keerti's son's birthday party, it's the last straw for their friendship. While Priya struggles to get it together, complacent and content with her cat and her life on Amma's couch, Amma drops the biggest bomb she could: Priya has a twin sister who was given away in adoption. Priya must now go on a journey with Amma to meet this twin sister who may finally help her feel complete. However, her newfound sister is the exact opposite of everything Priya couldn't even dream of being: She's wildly successful, is in a loving relationship, and even has two cats. Told entirely in the snarky, opinionated voice of Priya and in short vignettes and quick bursts, this novel takes a humorous, at times cheeky, look at female friendships and their evolution over time and major life changes, the meaning of sisterhood, the fragile relationship between a mother and daughter, millennials, and men and dating.

Committee: Lawrence Coates PhD (Advisor); Jackson Bliss PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Psychology

One way individuals can create social connections is through providing and receiving social support (i.e., enacted support). Although both social support and emotion regulation (ER) have been linked to mental health outcomes, the application of an ER framework to the construct of enacted support is relatively unexplored. The current study advances our understanding by examining dyadic reports of the use of ER strategies on symptoms of psychopathology, relationship closeness, and relationship influence in female friend pairs. 121 pairs of undergraduate female friends (Mage = 19 years, SD = 1.32) completed questionnaires assessing their perception of the habitual use of ER strategies with their friend and their friend's habitual use of ER strategies with them (Gross & John, 2003; Treynor et al., 2003), symptoms of psychopathology (Fairburn & Beglin, 1994; Radloff, 1977; Mattick & Clarke, 1998; Spitzer et al., 2006), relationship closeness (Aron, Aron,& Smollan, 1992), and relationship influence (Berscheid et al., 1989). Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (APIM; Cook & Kenny, 2005) were conducted, entering provision and receipt of brooding rumination, expressive suppression, and reappraisal as predictors, and a composite psychopathology score, relationship closeness, and relationship influence as outcomes. I found that an individual's perceptions of providing and receiving brooding rumination and suppression were positively associated with her symptoms of psychopathology (β = .14-.39, all ps < .03). Furthermore, an individual providing brooding rumination to her friend was positively associated with her friend's level of psychopathology (β = .14, p =.02). An individual providing (β = -.17, p = .01) and receiving (β = -.21, p <.01) reappraisal was negatively associated with her friend's level of psychopathology. There were significant positive actor and partner effects for receiving reappraisal when predicting relationship closeness (β = .16, p = .01; β =.14, p =.03). (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael Vasey Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jennifer Cheavens Ph.D. (Committee Member); Dylan Wagner Ph.D. (Committee Member); Katie Maguire-Jack Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology