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Browsing by Author "Steger, Michael, advisor"

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    Gratitude and health: a brief intervention to reduce undergraduate stress
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Fitch-Martin, Arissa, author; Steger, Michael, advisor; Dik, Bryan, advisor; Kuk, Linda, committee member; Harman, Jennifer, committee member
    Undergraduate students experience a significant amount of stress that negatively impacts their physical and mental health as well as their academic performance. Attempts to reduce stress and its detrimental effects on the lives of college students have either fallen short, require considerable effort, are not utilized, or have not been sufficiently evaluated. Instead, undergraduate students often turn to unhealthy ways of dealing with their stress such as excessive alcohol use. This study aimed to address the lack of efficient and efficacious stress management resources available to undergraduate students. Three-hundred and sixteen undergraduate students were assigned to a gratitude-list, objects-list, or no-treatment control condition. The gratitude intervention did not have a significant impact on perceived stress. However, results provided further evidence that there is a relationship between gratitude and perceived stress. The impact of gender-role identity and trait gratitude was also explored. Implications for future research on gratitude and stress as well as gratitude in general are discussed and suggestions for clinical practice are offered.
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    Intentions for postsecondary education: meaning in life, school connectedness, and substance use
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Fitch-Martin, Arissa R., author; Dik, Bryan, advisor; Steger, Michael, advisor; Henry, Kimberly, committee member; Youngblade, Lise, committee member
    Attempts to understand what drives some youth to continue their education after high school have mostly been unsuccessful. Persisting education past high school requires sustained commitment and planning, which are theoretically important functions of the psychological construct of meaning in life. Research often has ignored the role that meaning in life plays in educational attainment and thus may be missing an important variable. Youth who report having meaning in their lives have higher well-being, are more resilient, and are more likely to report long-term achievement oriented goals. The current study investigated the relationship between meaning, school connectedness and substance use in order to create a model to better explain college aspirations 12th graders. Participants were seniors in high school and took part in the nationally representative Monitoring the Future project. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the hypothesized model. Results demonstrated that school connectedness and parental education are significant indicators of intentions for postsecondary education. Although not directly related to academic intentions, meaning in life had strong ties to school connectedness and parental education. The current study provides evidence that meaning in life may be an important factor in academic success and persistence. Implications for interventions and future research are discussed.
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    Religious envy: investigating the nonreligious experience
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Underill, Bailey, author; Steger, Michael, advisor; Dik, Bryan, advisor; Hastings, Pat, committee member; Tompkins, Sara Anne, committee member
    Theories of religion identify certain benefits that religion uniquely provides. Furthermore, there is evidence that non-religious individuals not only miss out on these benefits but are penalized for and discriminated against due to their lack of religious affiliation. For these reasons, when non-religious individuals engage in social comparison, they may experience envy toward religious individuals related to the benefits of religious affiliation and the consequences faced for being religiously unaffiliated. This study aims to investigate "religious envy" in the lives of religiously unaffiliated individuals within the United States. Four individuals (ages 22 to 30; three women and one man) who identified as atheists and endorsed experiencing religious envy were interviewed, and transcripts were analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). This analysis developed four domain topics: perceptions and beliefs, previous experiences, religious envy, and reasons for staying nonreligious. Twenty-one themes formed a basis for understanding the phenomenon of religious envy. Themes within the "Religious Envy" domain indicated that participants experienced envying religious individuals due to a perceived sense of community or belonging, coping with grief or loss, existential comfort, and a sense of ethical or moral certainty. This study identifies specific ways that nonreligious individuals may experience religion and its role in their lives and beliefs. Furthermore, this study provides initial exploratory evidence for the existence of religious envy as a phenomenon.
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    Trauma, symptomology, and meaning in life: a comparison between clinical samples and healthy controls
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Barenz, Jennifer Diane, author; Steger, Michael, advisor; Eakman, Aaron, committee member; Henry, Kimberly, committee member
    Research has shown that people who report living meaningful lives are better able to cope with trauma, integrate the past, present, and future into a guiding narrative, and report higher levels of self-esteem and life-satisfaction (Baumeister et al., 2013). Most research to date has examined meaning in life among psychologically healthy individuals, with a very limited number of studies examining meaning in life among psychologically disordered individuals. The current study seeks to address this gap in the literature by comparing levels of meaning in life between a sample of individuals diagnosed with eating disorders and OCD (n=101) and comparing it with data from a nationally representative control group (n=2014). This study also examined how meaning in life related to symptom severity and trauma history within the clinical sample and proposed that presence of meaning may moderate the relationship between trauma history and symptom severity. Results revealed significant differences between the clinical and control group in levels of both presence of meaning and search for meaning. However, meaning in life did not significantly relate to symptom severity or trauma history in this sample. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.