Browsing by department "Institutionen för beteendevetenskaper"

Aim. The aim of this Thesis was to find out what kind of needs for well-being the working-age Finns have and how they experience work-engagement. The Research problem was that even though the well-being need have been proved to be universal it is motivated to study the connection between well-being and work-engagement out of a subjective perspective on needs. The Classical Well-being model the Subjective Well-being Theory, SWB and Self-Determination Theory, SDT were used as the Theoretical Reference frame of this Thesis. Methods. The study was conducted in a qualitative manner. Eight people took part in this study and were interviewed. The respondents were interviewed and filled in a questionnaire regarding their background information. The interviews were conducted using a half-structured theme interview. The data was coded with the Atlas.ti programme and analyzed with the theory bound content analysis method. Results. The results confirmed that the pursuit of well-being is a value of great meaning to the respondents in this study. The results showed that well-being according to the respondents consists mainly of the satisfaction of basic needs like nurture and rest - but also of satisfying the higher level needs like self-fulfillment. Part of the basic needs were seen even as important as the higher-level needs hence, diet and working out were given a lot of attention. Work engagement was mostly affected by how one sees oneself or how other people see oneself. The results even showed that most of the working-aged people have experienced exhaustion or burnout at some point of their lives.

Aims. The Behavioural Inhibition/Behavioural Approach System (BIS/BAS) is a neurological approach-avoidance system, where BIS depicts inhibition, anxiety, and fear of failure. The BAS system was in this study divided into BAS Inter (seeking social approval and rewards), BAS Impulse (impulsivity, immediate rewards), and BAS Intra (excitement at novel situations, own successes as a reward). Achievement goal orientations describe motivational tendencies to choose certain types of goals in a learning situation. Of the achievement goal orientations, mastery intrinsic describes the aim to learn with subjective, and mastery extrinsic with absolute criteria of success, performance approach the aim to outperform others and performance avoidance to avoid situations where one can fail. The avoidance orientation describes a disinterest in academic achievements and the goal of exerting as little effort as possible on school. The aim of the study was to examine how dispositional sensitivities affect the motivational aims of students. The research hypothesis is that BIS/BAS sensitivities predict the achievement goal orientations students adopt and exhibit. The research task is to examine how the Motivation and Sensitivity to Reward and Punishment questionnaire (MSRP) not yet used in published research succeeds in defining and measuring aspects of BIS/BAS. Method. The data was collected from five classes of eighth-graders in a school in Helsinki (N=78) in 2008 as a self-response survey, where BIS/BAS was measured using the new MSRP questionnaire, and achievement goal orientations with the achievement goal orientation questionnaire. The effects of BIS/BAS on the achievement goal orientations were examined by means of regression analyses. The MSRP was evaluated by examining the construct validity of the measurement, considering its descriptive capacity in relation to the background theories, and comparing the results with those from research conducted with other instruments. Results. The MSRP functioned relatively well. The mastery orientations were related to a tendency for low impulsivity, mastery intrinsic also to sensitivity to enjoy novel situations and challenges. The performance-approach orientation was predicted by the tendency to seek social approval, and performance-avoidance was connected to the punishment-sensitive inhibitory system. The avoidance orientation was linked with high impulsivity and low levels of excitement in personal successes and novelty in situations. Dispositional tendencies and sensitivities have a predictive effect on motivational achievement goal orientations, and generalised attitudes towards learning at school are to some degree affected by individuals' inherent qualities. These effects should be considered in school practices, to support and meet the needs of students of all dispositions.

The aim of this study was to examine how temperamental sensitivities and self-worth contingency predict achievement goal orientations. In this study, BIS and BAS were used for measuring temperamental sensitivities. BIS/BAS theorization refers to individual's dispositional sensitivity to reward and non-reward and punishment and non-punishment. Contingency of self-worth reflects the domains in which success or failure leads to increases or decreases in self-esteem. In this study, self-worth contingency on academic competence was measured. Achievement goal orientations refers to individuals' generalized tendencies' to aim and favor for certain goals and end results in achievement situation. In this study, the purpose was gain more information about the possible factors that influence individuals' goal choices in achievement situations.In this study, there were 506 participants (434 females and 72 males) and three different scales were used for measuring BIS/BAS, contingency of self-worth and achievement goal orientations. Sensitivity for BAS was divided into three sub-scales: BAS Novelty seeking, BAS Social Reward, and BAS Positive expressiveness. After preliminary analysis, a series of hierarchical analysis were run for examining the effects of BIS/BAS on achievement goal orientations in the first step, and the additional prediction of contingency of self-worth the second step. As expected, BIS/BAS sensitivities were related to achievement goal orientations. Mastery intrinsic orientation was predicted by BAS Novelty seeking, performance-approach orientation was predicted by BIS and avoidance orientation was predicted by BAS Social Reward. Contingency of self-worth was found to significantly increase the explained share of BIS/BAS relations on achievement goal orientations. Contingency of self-worth also had a direct effect on all achievement goal orientations, except for performance-avoidance orientation. Results point out, that dispositional differences are of importance, when considering individual differences in achievement-related motivation. As a practical implication, the results suggest that the learning culture should be failure permissive and encourage learning for learning's sake.

Aims: Embodied practices among people with aphasia remain relatively little known until now. The aim of this study was to describe free conversation interaction between a seriously aphasic speaker and his wife. This study aims to explore what kinds of nonverbal elements appear during the conversation of the aphasic person, and how the nonverbal elements arise in different conversational turns. The main focus of this study is on the substitutive and the complementary gestures of the speech. Earlier studies on aphasia interaction suggest that gestures are an important resource to construct meanings in turns of an aphasic speaker. Data and methods: This is a qualitative study where conversational analysis is used as a research method. Data consists of two videotaped recordings of the couples' free conversation at home settings. Results and conclusions: Several nonverbal elements, which had a significant influence for the conversation interaction of this couple, appeared in the data of this study. The wife interpreted aphasic person's nonverbal elements in the conversation as meaningful elements. The wife gave time and space for the aphasic person to participate in conversation. The aphasic speaker took advantage of the gestures in order to compensate speech loss. In fact, he almost completely relied on the substitutive and complementary gestures in conversation. He used the gestures in many ways and combined gestures skillfully to his limited verbal elements. A significant result in the study was that the aphasic speaker hardly showed any signs for verbal word search before expressing nonverbal elements. He started gesturing often seamlessly just before of his typical turn initiator verbal expressions yeah yes and yeah but or simultaneously with them. Aphasic person's expression were built fast and effortlessly despite the loss of speech. It can be said that aphasic person had adapted to his handicap caused by aphasia by taking advantage from gesturing.

This study examines the experiences of students with chronic illnesses in higher education. I chose to study rheumatic and other musculoskeletal diseases because they are group of diseases that are nationally significant in Finland. From students experiences I do interpretation of their agency. My research problems are: What kind of obstacles and possibilities student with chronic illness experiences in studying? What kind of obstacles illness set up for the agency or does it set any? How agency of student with chronic illness shows in the context of the university? I collected the data by using interview and focus group method. Additionally I had different kinds of documents of accessibility and equality in the university. Interviews were like halfstructured theme and open interviews. Focus group method I have applied. All the people that participated in the study were students from the university of Helsinki. They all have rheumatic or other musculoskeletal diseases. I have five interviewees and the group consisted of two people and the researcher. In the data analysis I use categorizing by the themes. Students that participated in my study spoke about their pain related experiences of their illness which also connected to their experiences of the higher education. Students agencies were limited the more they experienced pain. Pain forces students to certain activity - one actions avoidance and another's favouring. If part-time studying would have been possible economically, it would have made the life easier for a part of the students. Students were aware of the available resources of their body - for some of the students illness and life control set challenge and for some it set conditions. Students thought that university education is more possible to them than vocational education. Students didn't feel their own body limited in the context of university that emphasize intellectual and knowledge connected values and some of the students had reversed their illness as a resource of studying. However students felt their illness as a private matter and they considered illness profit and disadvantage before telling about it, which I interpreted limiting students agencies. In the university terms of students agencies were bond to individuality that came up in positive and negative. Freedom of studying was positive but official and individual study accommodations made agency bounded. Majority of the students didn't see possibilities to do differently in the university's practice but some of the students had recognised values underneath the practices that made it possible to reflect them, do differently and made space for agency.

The purpose of this study was to examine how adult social work’s expertise appears in the narratives of social workers. Further, the purpose was to examine how social workers narrate and perform their expertise. The context of adult social work is changing and the most noticeable change is still the transfer of supplementary benefit from municipalities to the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela). The changing context places the social workers in a challenging position. The conception of expertise has changed from individual-based knowing. The emphasis is now more on collaboration and expertise is seen to be shared and negotiated. My study was a qualitative research. I conducted seven interviews with social workers who work in adult social work. I analysed the data with narrative methods. In narrative approach story-telling is seen as a natural part of human life. The stories are an expression of the individual life but also the social context where story-telling takes place. My main interest in this study was in narrative episodes which occur in the narration of the social workers. In the narration of the social workers, expertise seemed to be challenging to explain. Expertise was impacted by structural conditions and multi-professional collaboration where adult social work’s expertise is often seen as inferior. Expertise was experienced in the context of changes and continuities. Adult social work’s expertise seems to be personal and emotion-related. Because of the diversity of the adult social work, the social workers were required to use various forms of expertise in their work.

Educational capital has a strong significance on a person's status in the society. The possibilities for individual choices in the field of education have increased and decisions concerning education are expected at a very early stage. Educational choices are mainly seen to be a phenomenon among the middle class: the lower social classes have less cultural capital to make choices. The study approached the topic of educational choices from low-educated parents' point of view. The purpose of this study was to understand how low-educated parents describe the principles and values that affect their educational choices. The descriptions are understood as life politics. Life politics include parents' understanding of the significance of education as well as the future scenarios the parents create for their children. This study participates in the discussion of social class and education, and suggests the use of the concept of life politics in the educational research. The research data includes ten thematic interviews carried out to sixth-graders parents' in the city of Espoo. The interviews were implemented as a part of the research project Parents and School Choice (PASC). The data has been analyzed with discourse analytical tools. The results of the study can be summarized in four discourses which can be understood as parents' life politics. First discourse emphasizes the significance of attitude in life, the second one sees education as a way to professional qualification and employment, the third discourse understands education as a way to social mobility and the fourth discourse defines education as an arena for personal development. Discourses include different conceptions of the importance of education and different future scenarios the parents create for their children. The study concludes that the concept of life politics is a useful tool for studying and describing families' educational strategies and the underlying principles and values. Life politics broadens the possibilities to understand the mechanisms of educational choices among parents: it pays attention to the individual life decisions. The concept also supports the former research on social class and education.

Objectives: Optimism is usually defined as a stable outcome expectancy. Optimism is known to be positively connected to well-being and health but there are few studies to examine the development of optimism. Traumatic experiences are known to have various negative effects on well-being and mental health. There are also studies that show an association between traumas and personality development and change. Because optimism and pessimism are thought to be concepts similar to personality traits, it is justifiable to study if traumas are also related to optimism and/or pessimism. There are no studies to investigate this earlier. The aim of this study is to examine whether lifetime trauma experiences are associated with optimism-pessimism in early adulthood and whether different traumas or the age of trauma experience have differential effects. Methods: This study is part of the Arvo Ylppö Longitudinal Study (AYLS). All newborns born between 1985 and 1986 in the county of Uusimaa, Finland, who needed hospital care during ten days after birth were invited to participate. Also controls not admitted to the hospital wards were recruited. The current 25-year-old follow-up study consisted of 902 participants who completed a self-report questionnaire for optimism (LOT-R) and a retrospective self-report for traumatic experiences (TEC). The associations between lifetime traumas and optimism-pessimism in early adulthood were analyzed statistically using linear regression and analysis of variance and t tests when examining different groups for the amount of traumas and for different age groups. Results and conclusions: Reporting of any traumatic experience was associated to lower optimism and higher pessimism. The more traumatic experiences one had the lower was optimism and the higher was pessimism. By contrast, the age of traumatic experiences was not statistically significantly associated with the trait of optimism-pessimism. These results remained after controlling demographic variables. However, after controlling neuroticism, only the connection between emotional traumas and optimism-pessimism remained statistically significant. Because optimism and pessimism are known to have an impact on well-being and coping in future adversities, the association between traumas and optimism-pessimism can be considered noteworthy. The results of this study give ground for discussion about whether optimism interventions could be targeted to people who have experienced traumatic events to reduce the negative effects of trauma.

Negative child-rearing environment has been associated with substance use in previous studies. Although, temperament has been shown to moderate the effects of parenting, only few studies have taken this into account when examining the relationship between family environment and substance use. Participants (n=1878; 56,8 % women) were selected from the longitudinal Young Finns study that began in 1980. The association between temperament trait emotionality and three child rearing attitudes dimensions (i.e., tolerance, significance and discipline) with alcohol consumption and smoking were examined using multinomial and logistic regression analysis. Higher emotionality and negative child rearing attitudes were associated with increased risk of smoking. Interaction between emotionality and tolerance was found: negative tolerance was associated with increased risk of drinking among boys who were high in emotionality. The results indicate that parenting has far-reaching consequences for substance use. The effect is partly moderated by emotionality, which helps to understand why people in the same kind of growth environment drift into different pathways.

Goals: The emphatizing-systemizing theory (E-S theory) states that emphatizing and systemizing helps us understand gender differences in normal population and the causes of autism spectrum disorders. Emphatizing is the capacity to recognize and predict other people's emotions and thoughts and to respond appropriately. Systemizing is the drive to analyze nonagentive systems and create if-then rules in order to predict their behavior. In general, women have a stronger drive to emphatize and men have a stronger drive to systemize. Extreme male brain theory (EMB Theory) is an extension to the E-S theory. According to the EMB Theory, autism is a result of the extreme of the normal male cognitive profile. In recent years, it has been noticed that autistic traits can also be found in normal population. One might expect that the relationship between emphatizing, systemizing and autistic traits would also be found in healthy individuals. However, not much research has been done on this subject and the results have been somewhat mixed. There have also been some weaknesses in the methods used in previous research. In this paper, I examine the relationship between emphatizing, systemizing and autistic traits in normal population using a wide variety of measurements. The hypothesis is that low emphatizing and high systemizing are related to the amount of autistic traits. Method: 3084 participants took part in an online study. The study consisted of questionnaires and computerized tests. Results and Discussion: Low emphatizing and high systemizing were related to the amount of autistic traits. The negative relationship between emphatizing and autistic traits was bigger than the relationship between systemizing and autistic traits. Tests that measured emphatizing and systemizing abilities correlated only weakly to the amount of autistic traits. Low emphatizing was related to autism's social difficulties. High systemizing was related to the interest toward numbers and patterns associated with autism. It seems that emphatizing and systemizing are linked to different parts of the autistic phenotype.