Meaningful Identity Research Articles

Emotions and Leadership: The Role of Emotional Intelligence

This paper suggests that feelings (moods and emotions) play a central role in the leadership process. More specifically, it is proposed that emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage moods and emotions in the self and others, contributes to effective leadership in organizations. Four major aspects of emotional intelligence, the appraisal and expression of emotion, the use of emotion to enhance cognitive processes and decision making, knowledge about emotions, and management of emotions, are described. Then, I propose how emotional intelligence contributes to effective leadership by focusing on five essential elements of leader effectiveness: development of collective goals and objectives; instilling in others an appreciation of the importance of work activities; generating and maintaining enthusiasm, confidence, optimism, cooperation, and trust; encouraging flexibility in decision making and change; and establishing and maintaining a meaningful identity for an organization.

Developing a Meaningful Identity for People with Disabilities through Serious Leisure Activities

Like other marginal groups, people with disabilities are generally reliant on government support resulting in a lifetime of dependency because they may never work in open employment. One alternative to paid employment is participation in serious leisure experiences (Stebbins, 1992). Serious leisure pursuits are engaged in by a small segment of people in society who are defined as amateurs, hobbyists or career volunteers. Patterson (1997) challenged the assumption that for many people with disabilities, paid employment in the workforce was the only viable option, and he suggested that serious leisure activities can provide similar benefits. For many people with disabilities who have large amounts of free time at their disposal, serious leisure is a work-like activity in the sense that it is challenging, contains a status system, and generates a set of colleagues. Stebbins (1998) further stated that leisure education should focus more on serious leisure activities for people with disabilities, and that counselling sessions should consist mainly of imparting knowledge about its nature, costs and rewards, as well as helping people with disabilities participate in specific serious leisure activities. This paper used a case study approach to select and interview three people with disabilities who are successfully participating in serious leisure activities. As a result, this has given them a sense of purpose to their lives as well as providing them with a positive alternative to paid employment, or given them practice in work skills in a non-threatening environment. The paper suggests that community based agencies involved with people with disabilities seriously consider the implementation of leisure education and counselling services, and the employment of trained leisure counsellors to support people with disabilities in their participation in serious leisure activities.

Human Nature: What We Need to Know about Ourselves in the Twenty‐First Century

The Western worldview that now dominates the planet embodies beliefs about human nature that are inconsistent with our evolutionarily evolved natures. Its “logic” at best ignores and at worst creates the symptoms of the modern world, which if uncorrected predict severe crises in coming centuries: population growth, environmental destruction, economic collapse, and increasing social violence. In contrast, there are numerous communities today creating alternative solutions based on different understandings of human nature and human needs: cooperation rather than competition; meaningful social identity; and respect for and trust in the autonomous behavior of all persons. There exist optimistic future models.

The Promise of the Postmodern Sociologist

To provide illustration for my comments on Stanford Lyman's book on postmodernism and sociology, I will make reference to two anecdotal situations which will place the contrasts between absurdist sociology and a postmodernist sociology in perspective. These anecdotes are concerned chiefly with the ways and means by which individuals in contemporary so ciety attempt to splice together a perceived reality of personal and collec tive "accounts," to borrow Lyman's term, of identity through a process of uniting variously skewed or marginalized social, spiritual, and intellectual orientations. For it is the' very attempt to locate some meaningful identity, solid or fluid, which seems to sit at the heart of the distinction which Lyman is making between an absurdist and a postmodernist sociology. The first anecdote pertains to the recent murder of a middle-aged man, allegedly, by two adolescents in Central Park. The part of the story relevant to the discussion of absurdist versus postmodernist sociology is not the grisly murder itself, but rather the millieux of constructed role-identi fications taken up by relatively wealthy teens in Manhattan's private school circuit which apparently created the social psychological space within which this murder could take place. In the June 1, 1997 issue of New York maga zine, the journalist Nancy Jo Sales attempts to make sense of this sinisterly absurd situation by delving into the adolescent milieu of the Park and de scribing the way teens who frequent Central Park splice dissonant social realities through language and action to combat their experiences of enuui and frustration in everyday privileged life. Sales writes:

Discovering brand magic: the hardness of the softer side of branding

While there is clearly consensus that brands are valuable assets, there is less agreement as to the extent of that value. It might appear that brands have not been flavour of the month since Marlboro Friday, in 1993, when that brand announced a 20 per cent price cut. This article will examine the evidence of the value of brands from a financial point of view. More importantly, however, we will explore a key driver of that financial value which we call ‘Brand magic’. We argue that functional excellence is fast becoming a necessary but not sufficient attribute of strong brands. Instead, we suggest that brand strength depends far more upon developing a unique, vivid and meaningful identity for a brand.

Discovering brand magic: the hardness of the softer side of branding

While there is clearly consensus that brands are valuable assets, there is less agreement as to the extent of that value. It might appear that brands have not been flavour of the month since Marlboro Friday, in 1993, when that brand announced a 20 per cent price cut. This article will examine the evidence of the value of brands from a financial point of view. More importantly, however, we will explore a key driver of that financial value which we call ‘Brand magic’. We argue that functional excellence is fast becoming a necessary but not sufficient attribute of strong brands. Instead, we suggest that brand strength depends far more upon developing a unique, vivid and meaningful identity for a brand.

A cognitive approach to international organization: Perspective and application

Some social psychology literature has suggested that social organization exists in time, not in space. Organization as a living system would not evolve over time, however, unless a meaningful identity had been given to it by interacting members. This view of social organization can be applied to organizations at all levels. This article deals with the search for identity at the individual and the international levels. International organization can be seen as processes of seeking common cause-maps by interacting national leaders. The function of organization is to develop a consistent, self-binding, and shared interpretation of world events by the interacting national representatives serving as information ingestors, distributors, and receivers. This organizational process would congeal the evolution of a supranational living system if congruence among various national role conceptions were to be greatly enhanced through negotiation. The paper discusses the implications of two kinds of national role conceptions to conflict resolution. At the end, the cognitive approach is applied to East Asia to illustrate its analytical utility.

Christian Eschatological Identities and the Nuclear Context

Socially constructed time is an important aspect of both community and individual self understanding. Eschatology refers to the ultimate time frame. Within recent decades of nuclear buildup, the plausibility attached to Liberal versus Fundamentalist types of Christian eschatologies has undergone an historical shift from the former to the latter. Fundamentalist eschatology offers a social psychological context for the formation of meaningful identity and motivation with explicit reference to the nuclear context. This identity may be isomorphic with acceptance of the possibility of nuclear war by contrast with other eschatological identities. The hypothesis that different eschatological identities have affinities for different attitudes toward nuclear war needs further study with samples from the general population and especially people of power.

Law enforcement and political change in post-civil war Nigeria

The impact of law enforcement on political change may be observed in three sets of attitudes by groups and individuals: national consciousness, that is the acceptance of the nation as a meaningful identity symbol; class consciousness, that is identification with a class against other classes; and legitimacy, that is the acceptance of the state as a rightful source of commands. A discussion of general theories of law enforcement and their impact on these attitudes, and of politics and the police in post-civil war Nigeria leads to the conclusion that the police, by the manner in which they enforce the laws, do have an effect on legitimacy orientations, though a weak one. Law enforcement agencies do not contribute significantly to the creation of social and political changes but reflect changes that arise and are fought out in other spheres of societal life.

The role of expressive writing in ego identity formation.

Two studies were conducted to assess the relationship between expressive writing and ego identity development in college students. In both studies, poetry writers were more likely than students not writing poetry to be in the identity achievement status. Poetry writers were less frequently found in the foreclosure status (Study 1) and identity diffusion status (Study 2). No differences in identity development were found between students keeping personal journals and those who had not kept journals. Two studies were conducted to assess the relationship between expressive writing and ego identity development. It is likely that expressive writing on the part of adolescents and youths is begun in response to the psychological turmoil of an ongoing identity crisis. Such writing can serve both to clarify what is taking place and to aid in the exploration of possible resolutions. Bios (1962) theorized that expressive writing can serve as a means of preventing premature heterosexual acting out by permitting experimentation with instinctual forces on a fantasy level. Extending this point, expressive writing may serve as a means by which the person can test out a wide variety of possible identity elements at the level of imagination prior to, or instead of, acting them out on a behavioral level. Such a cognitive testing procedure is very likely to help the person eliminate unpromising alternatives earlier than might otherwise have been the case. Correspondingly, the person may be somewhat more advanced when behaviorally trying the more promising possibilities. If expressive writing serves the function of aiding in the establishing of a meaningful identity, then individuals engaged in such writing should be more frequently found in the identity statuses characterized by past or present identity crises, that is, the identity achievement and moratorium statuses, respectively. Students not engaged in expressive writing would be expected to be

Myopic Perceptions and Textbooks: Chinese Americans' Search for Identity1

Americans have perpetuated inaccurate images and attitudes concerning the Chinese that suggest the operation of social‐psychological anomalies and prevent the growth of healthy human relations. Narrow stereotypic perceptions of and prejudice toward the Chinese have been so pervasive and tenable that Americans of Chinese ancestry do not perceive themselves with a meaningful identity. Examination of American social studies textbooks for elementary and secondary schools shows that Asian studies and the involvement of Asians in American history are barely mentioned or neglected completely; furthermore what information is given reinforces stereotypic illusions. There is rising protest and counterresponse to the restrictive perceptions among younger Asian Americans who seek the identity and acceptance they have been denied by others and themselves.