Individual and collective behaviour is the focus of three PhDs and a professional doctorate to be awarded at the Faculty of Arts graduation ceremonies at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Bathurst on Wednesday 18 December. PhDs to be awarded at the 1.30 pm graduation ceremony include:

 

Dr Justin Harrison, for his thesis, 'Right on Time': On the Relationships between Moral Concepts and Temporal Discounting. The study examines the connections between morality, religious ideas and impulsiveness. Dr Harrison's thesis concluded that experimental studies appearing to show that moral and religious ideas reduce impulsivity could be explained by social concerns. Exposure to religious and moral ideas makes social reputation especially important, and encourage behaviours that enhance it. The thesis adds to evidence that religious and moral concerns don't reduce impulsivity or increase stores of self-control, but increase motivation to behave in socially desirable ways.

 

Dr Brona Nic Giolla Easpaig, for her thesis, Gazing Back: Collectively Resisting Gendered Power, Heteronormativity and Cisgenderism. In the area of community psychology, a participatory research project was undertaken in order to understand and address the ways through which gender and sexual identities were experienced in the day-to-day. An important facet of the research was in the development and engagement with collaborative qualitative methodological practices. The findings contribute to bodies of knowledge, and have implications for practice, in the cross-disciplinary areas of community practice, the psychology of gender and sexuality, participatory methods and analytical practices.

 

Dr Carolyn Teal, for her thesis, Predicting Organisational Citizenship Behaviour: More than Job Satisfaction and Personality. Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is an important workplace behaviour that has been shown to directly and indirectly affect an organisation's bottom line. The study aimed to develop and test a model of organisational citizenship behaviour that included the traditional predictors of organisational citizenship behaviour together with personality variables. The results of the study involving 200 naval personnel indicated that interpersonal skills were clearly the most important predictor of organisational citizenship behaviour, followed by motivational factors.