This study examines gender differences in the perception and utilization of social support in traditional female- and male workplaces. This study confirms results from earlier studies which suggest that there are gender differences. The survey instrument measures four types of social support: informational, instrumental, appraisal and emotional among 314 working women and men. Women report higher levels of social support on all four types. There is a significant difference in instrumental support between women working in female dominated workplaces compared to men working in male-dominated workplaces and between some of the trades.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate emotions and collective identity in the handicraftmovement. Which are the collective identities of craft movement, and is it possible to speak ofan over all collective identity among the handicraft people? I will also examine the emotion workboth on individual and group level.Eight qualitative interviews were conducted to achieve the aim of this thesis. Research haspreviously drawn attention to handicraft from a gender and a historical perspective but neverfrom an emotional one. The theoretical framework derives from an emotion sociologicalperspective where Collins interaction rituals, emotional energy and Hochschild?s emotionmanagement is the main theses.

Family members need a great deal of support during palliative care. It is vital for the family that nursing contacts are accessible all day and night. The nurse can support the family members by sharing a professional knowledge and adapt the information to the recipient, by being present and also encourage them by not only focus on death. The support should be adapted to each individual and also have the possibility to be adjusted in each case. The aim of the study was to illustrate family members experiences of support in a late stage of palliative care.

The purpose is to explore and describe norms and values concerning emotions and emotional expression inSweden and Greece from an emotionsociological perspective. Do emotional regimes on a national level existand if they do, how do they differ? To answer this question qualitative interviews have been conducted withnine Greek/Swedes, men and women of different ages, who have lived in both countries and who speak bothlanguages. A quantitative survey study, employing a survey previously used in a Swedish study about emotions,has also been undertaken. Previous studies have shown that emotional regimes do differ historically and acrosscultures, but no study so far has focused on the differences between examples of North European and SouthEuropean cultures.The theoretical framework consists mainly of Hochschild´s theories about feeling/display rules and emotionwork, but the analysis also draws on Collin´s theory of interaction ritual chains and on Sociology of Emotionsmore broadly.The results suggest that different national regimes can be distinguished primarily in terms of display rules andin the skills of emotional alternations.

This is a study of how emotional engagement can be measured and be taken into account in the development of websites. We believe that emotions become relevant only when viewed in correlation to how users experiencing a webpage. In this study, we developed a tool for use together with user tests where the information about the user's emotional engagement can add new value to the evaluation. The tool allows the user to mark, on the website, his/her emotions and level of engagement represented by colored circles, generating quantiative data on how users feel about the website. The tool is part of a method for evaluating the emotional engagement that we have developed which consists of user testing supported by the tool and accompanied by interviews..

The focus of this essay is to further investigate and describe psychological strains experienced by child welfare workers. The method used was qualitative interviews, two group interviews. The research aimed to understand how child welfare workers were affected and handled the psychological strains generated by work through theory of coping and symbolic interactionism where humans are viewed as pragmatic actors. The research showed, as previous studies shown, that the child welfare workers experience a great deal of psychological strains generated by high turnover in staff and pressuring work demands. The child welfare workers felt inadequate and alone in their work tasks and experienced stress and anxiety.

The aim of the study is to get a better understanding of leader's reactions in a crisis situation, and to examine whether locus of control and coping strategies can be related to leaders need for social support. The role of a leader in a crisis situation is complex and includes several aspects which must be illustrated to understand the leader's situation. Four leaders have participated in the study. The methods that have been used are questionnaires for measuring locus of control and coping and semi-structured interviews. The results show that search for social support cannot be seen as an outcome of a specific locus of control or coping strategy.

It is common that patients experience emotional reactions as agony and anxiety after an acute myocardial infarction. Only a few studies related to the support in the acute stage have been made. The aim was to describe how nurses declared their support to patients with acute myocardial infarction in the acute stage. The used method was semi structured interviews with seven nurses in an Emergency ward in South of Sweden. The material was processed and analysed with inspiration from content analysis and produced two main themes.

Collective collapse occurs when a majority of players in a team suddenly perform below expected level in a match of great, often decisive, importance in spite of a normal or good start of the match or when a team underperforms right from the start of the match. The aim of this study is to investigate collective collapse, focusing on emotional contagion. The study is a qualitative study based on semistructured interviews with nine handball players in an elite team. The results show six factors presented as themes. These are Preparations, The coach and leadership, Emotional contagion, Communication, Role Acceptance and Incongurence.

In this paper respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was examined in relation to two kinds of threatening pictures, biological and nonbiological. Based on the results of prior research the hypothesis was claimed to note a difference between the two types of pictures regarding RSA and gender differences regarding cardiac activity due to the emotional stimulus. ECG and respiration were collected from 36 adults, 17 women and 19 men. There were no significant relationship between the different types of threatening pictorial stimuli, and no significant effects of gender were found. The results support some of the prior research on the topic but are in conflict with other.

The purpose of this Bachelors thesis is to investigate teachers' work and attitude to life in relation to the curriculum. Furthermore, how teachers look at students' emotional/social development in their general development. The thesis also reviews the criticism from The Swedish School of Authority on various programs primarily SET (social and emotional training)Three qualitative interviews and four observations at three different schools with teachers have been conducted. Using theories of social constructivism, deliberative conversation and social and emotional skills, the intention is to interpret the gathered material.The results show that the teachers see knowledge of life in school as important in the foundation of students´ emotional/social development. One teacher follows the SET program and two teachers? took inspiration from various other programs and ideas.

This study intends to illuminate women?s experiences of their own self-harm. Self-harm is mostly associated with women and research shows that women mostly are over-represented. This study describes women?s experiences about their self-harm but also how they perceive the elements around them during their illness.

The forgotten group: A study of support for relatives of incarcerated individuals. The daily lives of relatives of an incarcerated individual are affected and changed by the fact that their kin has become incarcerated. This made us want to research what kind of support these individuals are in need of and what kind of support the society is offering them today. Because of their kins behaviour, these individuals are also often exposed to feelings of shame and stigma. Therefore we have, with Goffmans theory of stigma in mind, looked into how this affects the relatives daily lives.

Humans have always been fascinated by the thought of bringing non living objects to life. We wanted to explore the possibilities of trying to create an artefact that the audience would consider possess emotional states and have a life of its own. TaS is a interactive chair that functions as a social entity. The idea is to try and enhance the bond between human and artefact, based upon the emotional connection. We try and produce, enhance and maintain this bond through curiosity based interaction. Bachelor thesis in Interaction Design by Andreas Eriksson, Johanna Lund and Fredrik Lundh, spring term 2008, Malmö University, K3 School of Arts & Communication..

How can the object based art help us, as viewers and as makers, to access a supplanted emotional state?One way of positioning yourself within the corpus-field is to step outside the traditional borders of the field and aim for other values within the objects, such as a visible working process, a storytelling or an emotional relationship to the object.  It is a way of taking a step from the traditional silversmithing towards some kind of free undefined corpus-art.  To reach for suppressed feelings is one way to find an importance within the artistic work, to give it a purpose.By investigating the concept of the sublime and the surrealist movement I try to find examples on how you, both as a viewer and as a maker, can put yourself in an emotional/intuitive state.  Through interviews with Jewellery and corpus artists I get a maker?s perspective which I compare with my own reactions to their work.Works of art can be used as a catalyst to reach, and maybe also to process, unattended feelings. This creates a strong emotional connection to the work.  As a maker you can, for example, do this by working with it as a theme, or by using an intuitive working method.