Committee Chair

Hood, Ralph W., Jr., 1942-

Committee Member

Shelton, Jill; Walker, Ruth; Silver, Chris F.

Department

Dept. of Psychology

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

At the heart of Psychology is the search for understanding — understanding ourselves, understanding others, and understanding our places in the world. At one point or another a person comes to ask themselves fundamental questions about human life, like “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?” and “What will happen to me?” Although these questions are not usually asked out loud, these attempts to make meaning of our lives serve as a reference for our worldviews. In part 1, I take a theory-driven approach to address the questions “What is a worldview?”, and “How is worldview studied psychologically?” In part 2, I introduce a new measure of worldview — The Philosophical Worldview Questionnaire (PWQ) — given to 159 students and address how they describe their worldview using worldview statements, what the benefits of taking the PWQ are, and how well the PWQ fits as a measure of worldview, with directions for the future.

Acknowledgments

My appreciation goes out to all my friends and family who have endured my long, and often unsolicited, philosophical discussions about life. Without all of you, I wouldn’t be who I am today. To my advisors, Dr. Ralph Hood and Dr. Jill Shelton, thank you for blessing me with so many opportunities here at UTC, and for always allowing me to pursue my dreams with your guidance. To Dr. Ruth Walker, I cannot begin to thank you enough for teaching me qualitative methods and for your assistance with analyzing my thesis data. To Dr. Chris Silver, thank you for your help with data collection for this thesis, and for always being a mentor and friend when I needed it most. Thank you to the psychology department at UTC for helping support me through my graduate education.

Degree

M. S.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science.

Date

8-2022

Subject

Belief and doubt; Existential psychology; Identity (Psychology)--Testing

Keyword

Worldview; beliefs; culture; existential; morality; values

Discipline

Psychology

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

xi, 96 leaves

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Psychology Commons

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