Psychological theories of aggression

This paper aimed to provide a short exposition of the main theories of aggression. The choice of the theories reflected, in part, the historical progression and rising complexity of the theories over time. A brief overview of the following theoretical perspectives on aggression was presented: Freud’s psychoanalytic theory; Lorenz’s ethological theory; Behaviorist theory; Frustration-aggression hypothesis; Cognitive neo-association theory; and Social learning theory. These theories are representatives of the traditional perspective, which posits that by piecing together fragments of data gained through research, we arrive at the truth about aggression. A radically different perspective was offered through the constructivist perspective, which argues that any theory is just one way of organizing the data. Drawing from personal construct theory, a different psychological perspective on aggression was proposed.

EXPLORATORY AND EXPLOITATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT: HOW PRODUCT AND ENGINEERING MANAGERS’ PERCEPTIONS DIFFER: A CASE OF TWO LARGE HIGH-TECH CORPORATIONS

Ambidexterity has been a focus for many researchers in the past few decades, and multiple angles of ambidexterity have been studied to understand how to achieve it, its antecedents, and its impact on organisations. While personal ambidexterity has been studied with respect to the tensions the individuals might experience as they juggle exploratory and exploitative innovation projects, little is known about their individual sensemaking prior to their exercise of ambidexterity. This paper aims at narrowing this gap in the literature by offering an insight, based on personal construct theory, as to why managers from product management and engineering management functions in software organisations may not be applying exploratory techniques on exploratory innovation projects. A key finding from this research indicates that managers do not differentiate between types of project in a sufficiently explicit and propositional manner, and as a result, do not choose techniques appropriate to the situation. Instead, they tend to apply exploitative techniques on exploratory innovation projects with slight variations. Recommendations to practitioners to address the issues uncovered are proposed.

Stories of Life during the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: A Qualitative Study

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on people the need to find meaning in many unprecedented ways. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore how the general Italian population dealt with government restrictions and to understand personal experiences connected with the first wave of the pandemic in light of the personal construct theory (PCT) framework. One hundred and sixteen people (over 18 years old) completed an online survey between May and June 2020. Two independent researchers ran inductive thematic content analysis on data using a specifically developed international codebook. Five major themes were identified in the participants’ narrations: difficulties, emotions, coping with lockdown measures, going back to normal, and change. The results, interpreted within the PCT transitions, showed that the pandemic represented a threat to participants’ life plans, beliefs, and certainties. Some coped with it mainly by waiting for the pandemic to end and remaining firm in their beliefs and certainties, whereas others coped by trying to find alternative ways of giving sense to this experience and reconstructing personal meanings, claiming a change in their life and in society. Differentiating personal experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic is fundamental to designing personalised strategies to promote well-being.

Transforming the Possible intoAction in Colson Whitehead’s Novel “The Intuitionist”

The XXIst century, known among others as a “culture of empiricism,” is a time of accelerated technology and engineering feats, on the one hand and of controversial race problems, on the other. For approaching Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Intuitionist,” where the writer is travelling back and forth between “the naturalist novel of race” and “the imaginative novel of ideas,” George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory will be employed as a methodological device to decode its intricate meaning. Kelly’s socio-psychological theory incorporates vectors of action and perception meant to reveal how the individual construes the world, in Whitehead’s case, how Lila Mae Watson, the city’s first black female elevator inspector, construes herself as the follower of James Fulton, another black person, father of Intuitionism and promoter of vertical thought, meant to give rise to the perfect, new generation elevator in a city marked by pain and the stoicism of black people who look for the ultimate elevator that will take them “up and out.” Kelly’s concept of motivation will be also turned into account through his argument that people act not because of “motive forces,” but because of alternative perspectives that better suit them. Motivation will also grant to Lila MaeWatson the ability “to transform the possible into action and create values” (Alfred Whitehead, qtd in Lavelle, 1997: 146) and it will be commented upon as a prestigious educational device meant to ensure a greater understanding of the communication context present in Whitehead’s novel.

Proposed extended analytic hierarchical process for selecting data science methodologies

Decision making can present a considerable amount of complexity in competitive environments; where methods that support possess great relevance. The article presents an extension of the Hierarchic Analytical Process; complemented with Personal Construct Theory, which purpose is to reduce ambiguity when defining and establishing values for the criteria in a determined problem. In recent years, the scope for decision making based on data has considerably raised, which is why Data Science as a scientific field is rising in popularity; where one of the main activities for data scientists is selecting an adequate methodology to guide a project with this traits. The steps defined in the proposed model guide this task, from establishing and prioritizing criteria based on degrees of compliance, grouping them by levels, completing the hierarchical structure of the problem, performing the correct comparisons through different levels in an ascendant manner, to finally obtaining the definitive priorities of each methodology for each validation case and sorting them by their adequacy percentages. Both disparate cases, one referred to an industrial/commercial field and the other to an academic field, were effective to corroborate the extent of usefulness of the proposed model; for which in both cases MoProPEI obtained the best results.

A reflective essay on experiences and practices of postgraduate supervision in the University of Limpopo : a life history approach

This study investigated the problem of postgraduate supervision that results with students' delayed graduation, low postgraduate students' output and lack of capacity. The purpose of this essay is to reflect on my postgraduate supervision experiences and practices of working in one disadvantaged rural university in South Africa. The study is embedded within interpretivism paradigm, and was informed by Personal Construct Theory and Life History Approach. My autobiography of the period January 2004 and June 2020 was used as primary data. The findings point to the prevalence of delayed graduation and output; adoption of single-handed supervision as an impediment towards attainment of required post-graduate students' skills required to progress in their studies and serve as future independent researchers; mono-supervision created supervision backlog that adds up to pipeline students. I used various models, such as student group supervision, mentoring supervision, and collaborative supervision. Collaborative supervision enhanced student development. This study concludes that supervision of postgraduate students is a crucial aspect for improved learning spaces and the choice of a solid supervision model improves research output. This study recommends that collaborative cohort supervision model be adopted by deprived universities to improve supervision capacity and students through-put.

JASON WALKER’S MOTIVATION TO SURVIVE IN BRANDON MULL’S NOVEL SERIES BEYONDERS: A WORLD WITHOUT HEROES

Literature is a written work that have intellectual and imaginative ideas with a neat and organized structure. Novel as a kind of literary works is a piece of writing in form of prose which has complex attribute such as complicated plots, various settings, and a great variety of characters.One of the best fantasy works is Beyonders series, written by Brandon Mull.Beyonders: A World Without Heroes is the first of Beyonders trilogy series. The story of Beyonders: A World Without Heroes novel is about a thirteen years old boy named Jason Walker who trying to find a way to go back to his world. From Beyonders: A World Without Heroes novel, things that stand out are the story of a struggle to survive and find the way to go back home.Therefore, one of the particular elements to build the story in the novel is motivation of the major character.Motivation helps to achieve something that can make a better circumstance, we will not be able to achieve anything if we do not have any desire to achieve it.This study aimed to analyze Jason Walker’s motivation to survive in Brandon Mull’s novel series Beyonders: A World Without Heroes. This study used Personal Construct Theory (PCT) which classified emotions to analyze Walker’s motivation to survive as to which emotions caused Walker to be motivated to survive. This study found that Walker’s motivation in real world is his interest towards animals was what motivated Walker to study in zoology major. Trapped in unreal world made Walker motivated to survive to find a way home and as setting and conflict influenced, Walker’s motivation has grown to save Lyrian from Maldor. By using Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory (PCT), this study found that anxiety on why Walker was stranded in unreal world, guilt of involving Lyrian’s people and did not want to make his family and friends worried about him, threat from Maldor