Brady K Jones | University of St. Francis (original) (raw)

Papers by Brady K Jones

Journal of Family Issues , 2023

This paper examines Korean immigrant fathers' lived experiences of their parenting involvement by... more This paper examines Korean immigrant fathers' lived experiences of their parenting involvement by using interpretative phenomenological analysis of seven participants who were recruited through Korean ethnic churches in a Midwestern city. In semi-structured interviews, we explored five main areas affecting Korean immigrant fathers' perceptions and attitudes toward parenting involvement and found the following issues to be especially salient for participants: limited acculturation progress, economic difficulties, low selfesteem, experiences of intergenerational conflict, and involvement in religious faith and church activities. This study contributes to the field's understanding of Korean immigrant fathers' perceptions of intergenerational and intercultural conflicts when raising their Americanized children and underlines for mental health providers the importance of providing culturally competent parenting education on the topic of positive fathering.

Journal of Adult Development, Jul 10, 2013

Through content analysis of adult autobiographies, this study explored possible developmental ant... more Through content analysis of adult autobiographies, this study explored possible developmental antecedents of generativity-an adult's commitment to caring for and contributing to the well-being of future generations. A sample of 158 African-American and Euro-American adults in their late 50s completed self-report measures of generativity and various forms of societal engagement, and then each participant was interviewed in depth to tell the story of his or her life. Replicating past studies, generativity was positively associated with current political and civic engagement and with involvement in religious institutions. For the entire sample, high levels of generativity were predicted by narrative accounts of positive socializing influences coming from the family, teachers and mentors, the education system, and other valued societal institutions. Among the African-American subsample, however, socioeconomic status trumped these positive socializing influences as a strong statistical predictor of generativity, even as African-Americans scored higher than Euro-Americans on both generativity and positive socializing influences. Gender differences also emerged. The results suggest that both social class and positive socializing influences from individuals and institutions may shape generativity for midlife American adults and that these developmental relationships may differ as a function of race/ethnicity and gender.

Ecopsychology, May 10, 2023

In three studies we explore the question: Is the climate one lives in associated with a preferenc... more In three studies we explore the question: Is the climate one lives in associated with a preference for redemptive narratives? Study 1 explores articles (N = 200) from lifestyle magazines from ten American cities. We find that articles from cities with more difficult climates with larger temperature swings include more redemptive themes. In Study 2, we code a bank of oral histories (N = 154) from individuals living in 106 American cities. Likewise, we find evidence that people living in more difficult climates with wide temperature swings give more redemptive accounts of life events. Finally, in Study 3, we find evidence among a sample of individuals (N = 157) living in a single American city with a difficult climate that people include more redemptive themes in their oral histories when interviewed in winter as compared to the other three seasons. These studies suggest that narratives that shape our lives may be influenced by the natural world.

Elsevier eBooks, 2017

Abstract The chapter introduces some of the central themes in the empirical and clinical literatu... more Abstract The chapter introduces some of the central themes in the empirical and clinical literature on reconstructing meaning after trauma. A certain number of especially resilient people may adjust almost seamlessly to extremely negative events in their lives, whereas many others find that the presuppositions about self and world that sustained them in the past have now been undermined. Their efforts to make new meanings in the wake of trauma involve a wide range of interpretive and strategic operations, from trying to explain how and why the trauma occurred (sense making) to construing personal benefits from adversity. In the most successful outcomes, posttraumatic growth entails constructing a redemptive story around personal trauma and integrating that story within a broader, self-defining life narrative. Making meaning out of trauma through life narration is as much a social phenomenon as a personal one, and it is decisively shaped by culture.

Character Lab tips, May 1, 2021

Success Story: Describing wins helps build resilience

Journal of Research in Personality, Dec 1, 2019

This study introduces the concept of the single greatest life challenge-the most subjectively-sig... more This study introduces the concept of the single greatest life challenge-the most subjectively-significant challenge a person has ever faced-and explores its implications for narrative identity. Through content coding of 157 late-midlife community adults' life challenge narratives, we catalogued the distribution of 18 life challenge topics. Through exploratory factor analysis of narrative features, we found a four-factor structure (identity processing, agency/emotion, verbosity/specificity, and scope) largely consistent with the ''big three" narrative identity metastructure. The agency/emotion factor was most closely tied to traits and functioning: it correlated negatively with neuroticism and depression, correlated positively with psychological well-being and life satisfaction, and provided incremental validity in predicting depression. The stories adults tell of their greatest challenges are informative about personality and psychological functioning.

Teachers College Record, Sep 1, 2018

Background: Creating greater stability in the teacher labor force and improving teacher quality i... more Background: Creating greater stability in the teacher labor force and improving teacher quality is an important education policy priority in the United States. While there is a robust literature on the external, environmental reasons teachers stay in or leave the occupation, little is known about the role internal, person-level factors play in teacher retention, especially among academically elite teachers. Focus of Study: This study explores the role of personality, holistically defined, in teacher commitment. Participants: The sample for this study consists of 107 graduates of a single teacher preparation program. They are classified as "academically elite," as this preparation program is very selective and demands high GRE scores. Research Design: Discriminant function and regression analyses are used to test which of a rich set of personality measures, both traditional self-report measures and coded narrative accounts of life and career high points, predict long-term commitment to teaching in this sample. Results: Discriminant function analysis exploring differences between very long-term committers (15+ years) and short-term committers (7-years) suggests that long-term committers are distinguished by a "special kind of ambition": they set goals that are both more difficult and more prosocial than their counterparts with a shorter commitment to the occupation, and in personal narratives they more often show "enlightened self-interest," a combination of self-interest/self-promotion with concern for and connection to others. In addition, regression analyses show that these personality variables significantly predict retention in the sample as a whole, even when controlling for school advantage. Conclusions: These results provide evidence that personality does play an important role in teachers' occupational commitment, call into question pervasive stereotypes in the United States of teachers as unambitious, and suggest ways academically elite teachers might be able to shift the ways they think about their work in order to sustain themselves in the occupation.

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Mar 4, 2021

A robust body of research has documented how expressive writing about difficult or traumatic expe... more A robust body of research has documented how expressive writing about difficult or traumatic experiences can be beneficial across a range of domains. Relatively little research, on the other hand, has documented the impact of expressive writing activities on positive events. In this randomized controlled trial, adolescents (N = 350) beginning ninth grade in three schools serving mostly low‐income students of color participated in a 45‐min writing workshop. They were prompted to write about either a negative or positive life event, then edit their writing to include themes thought to insulate them from the possible threats to identity that can come with the transition to high school. We find evidence that positive expressive writing activities are more academically beneficial than expressive writing about negative events. Compared with students who wrote about a failure and subsequent resilience, students who detailed how they attained an important success showed a more positive trajectory for absences (β = −.417; p = .008) and detentions (β = −.962; p = .034), and those who wrote about a generally happy life event showed a better trajectory for grade point average (β = .622; p = .043). Exploratory analyses also show that, regardless of condition, including themes of the “self as competent” and “savoring” good experiences was associated with improved academic outcomes. Including themes of “resilience” was not, across conditions, associated with improved outcomes unless students at the same time included “self as competent” themes.

Journal of Teacher Education, Sep 27, 2016

Very little is known about the role of person-level qualities, or personality, in the teacher lab... more Very little is known about the role of person-level qualities, or personality, in the teacher labor market. This study explores the role of perfectionism in teacher occupational commitment and retention. One hundred eighteen graduates of a competitive teacher preparation program with widely varying levels of total years commitment to the job completed a measure of three dimensions of perfectionism-standards (holding oneself to high standards), order (valuing neatness, tidiness, and being disciplined), and discrepancy (perceiving a gap between ambitions and abilities)-and gave information about their personal backgrounds and work histories. Results suggest that none of the dimensions of perfectionism predict teacher commitment in the sample as a whole, but that the order dimension significantly predicts long-term commitment to struggling urban versus affluent suburban schools. These results imply that long-term urban teachers may be adept at overlooking difficult and sometimes chaotic circumstances to sustain themselves in the occupation.

Unpublished dissertation, 2015

In this descriptive study, I explore the role of personality in teacher retention. A sample of 11... more In this descriptive study, I explore the role of personality in teacher retention. A sample of 118 graduates of one competitive teacher preparation program with widely varying degrees of commitment to the occupation of teaching filled out a detailed set of qualitative and quantitative measures targeting all three layers of McAdams’ model of personality.

In Chapter 1 I discuss the background, framework, and scope of the study. I argue that most research on teacher retention ignores person-level reasons people commit to or leave the occupation and that personality psychology provides useful tools to better understand this issue.

In Chapter 2, I test whether teachers with a long commitment to the occupation fulfill one of two dominant cultural myths often told about them – the myth of the “special stayer” (long-term teachers are psychologically healthy and generous) or the myth of the “striving leaver” (long-term teachers are unambitious, risk-averse, and focused on career stability). Results from correlational and hierarchical regression analyses indicate that the long-term teachers in this sample look more like a stereotypical “special stayer,” but that neither myth adequately captures their personalities.

In Chapter 3, I step back and examine the role of personality in teacher retention without preset hypotheses. I use stepwise discriminant function analysis to investigate which personality variables best differentiate long-term committers (15+ years total commitment, N=33) from short-term committers (7- years commitment, N=27). I find that long-term committers set goals that are both more generative and more difficult than short-term committers, more often integrate agency and communion in narrative accounts of important high points in their careers and their lives, and, when school environment is taken into consideration, value power less than short-term committers. These results indicate that for the long-term teachers in this sample, integrating the building up of the self with the building up of others is an integral part of their personalities. These long-term teachers aim to “do good, ambitiously.”

In Chapter 4, I explore personality differences between long-term committers in urban schools (N=16) and suburban schools (N=28) using mixed methods: grounded coding of narrative accounts of teaching and life high points and teaching low points as well as chi square and t tests. I find that both urban and suburban long-term teachers perceive their school environments positively, even though long-term urban teachers work in objectively more difficult circumstances. In addition long-term urban teachers tolerate disorder better than long-term suburban teachers, deal more quickly with difficult professional moments, and measure success in terms of outcomes that are tangible rather than abstract and holistic.

In the conclusion, I discuss overall study results, limitations, and implications. This series of studies contributes to the literature on teacher retention in several important ways. First, it provides evidence that personality does play an important role in teacher retention. Second, it demonstrates that the dominant ways Americans tend to think about teachers are too simplistic, and that agency and ambition play a surprisingly strong role in the personalities of long-term teachers in this sample. Finally, it suggests that teachers in schools that are more or less difficult places to work – urban versus suburban schools – might rely on different personal qualities to sustain their commitment to the occupation in their unique work contexts.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 1, 2018

The current studies investigate the power of competence-building narrative themes in adolescents'... more The current studies investigate the power of competence-building narrative themes in adolescents' accounts of failures and successes to improve school outcomes. Study 1 (N = 62) shows a positive association between competence-building themes (agency in successes, redemption in failures) and adolescents' goal persistence and grades. In Study 2 (N = 183), a field experiment randomly assigned a treatment group of ninth-graders to include these competence-building themes in accounts of successes and failures. Compared to the control group, they reported increased persistence several weeks after the study and a better trajectory of academic achievement through the third quarter of the school year. In both studies, persistence mediated the association with grades. Further analyses revealed that these effects faded by the end of the school year. This study demonstrates the power and limitations of narrative to influence academic behaviors.

<jats:p>I majored in Spanish in college, and after graduation, I wasn't sure what to do... more <jats:p>I majored in Spanish in college, and after graduation, I wasn't sure what to do with my degree. One gray winter day toward the end of my senior year, I found myself in Chicago applying for an interpreter position at a law firm. The fast-talking attorney who interviewed me gave me an impromptu test: I had to translate a colleague's words from Spanish to English on the spot, as if she were testifying in court. Flustered, I struggled to keep up. After only a minute or so, the attorney waved her colleague out of the room, then turned to me and said, "I have to be honest. That translation was not sufficient." Ouch. It still hurts to tell that story! And when I remember that day, I don't feel motivated to do the hard work of learning a second language. I feel like running in the other direction. </jats:p>

<jats:p>How do I do it? In this writing activity, you reflect on a time when you succeeded ... more <jats:p>How do I do it? In this writing activity, you reflect on a time when you succeeded and the steps you took to succeed. How does it work? People learn from experience by incorporating their experiences into a coherent story. Researchers found that you grow if your life story extracts the good from the bad and if it emphasizes your agency.</jats:p>

Cognitive Science, 2018

Redemptive narratives are stories of challenge, failure, or adversity that in some way acknowledg... more Redemptive narratives are stories of challenge, failure, or adversity that in some way acknowledge the goodness or personal growth that came of the recounted difficult event. In this paper we use a corpus-statistic based approach to explore the role of cognition and emotion in these narrative arcs. In particular, we trace the shift from negative to positive sentiment (a change in the emotional valence) and vice to virtue (evidence of cognitive, moral processing) within the narrative. Our results suggest that cognitive processes, more than emotion, drive the shift to goodness and growth that is at the core of redemptive narratives. We discuss the implications of these results to both narrative psychology and cognitive

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

Background Creating greater stability in the teacher labor force and improving teacher quality is... more Background Creating greater stability in the teacher labor force and improving teacher quality is an important education policy priority in the United States. While there is a robust literature on the external, environmental reasons teachers stay in or leave the occupation, little is known about the role internal, person-level factors play in teacher retention, especially among academically elite teachers. Focus of Study This study explores the role of personality, holistically defined, in teacher commitment. Participants The sample for this study consists of 107 graduates of a single teacher preparation program. They are classified as “academically elite,” as this preparation program is very selective and demands high GRE scores. Research Design Discriminant function and regression analyses are used to test which of a rich set of personality measures, both traditional self-report measures and coded narrative accounts of life and career high points, predict long-term commitment to t...

Reconstructing Meaning After Trauma

Journal of Research in Personality

Abstract This study introduces the concept of the single greatest life challenge—the most subject... more Abstract This study introduces the concept of the single greatest life challenge—the most subjectively-significant challenge a person has ever faced—and explores its implications for narrative identity. Through content coding of 157 late-midlife community adults’ life challenge narratives, we catalogued the distribution of 18 life challenge topics. Through exploratory factor analysis of narrative features, we found a four-factor structure (identity processing, agency/emotion, verbosity/specificity, and scope) largely consistent with the “big three” narrative identity metastructure. The agency/emotion factor was most closely tied to traits and functioning: it correlated negatively with neuroticism and depression, correlated positively with psychological well-being and life satisfaction, and provided incremental validity in predicting depression. The stories adults tell of their greatest challenges are informative about personality and psychological functioning.

Developmental Psychology, 2016

Expressions of the intent to leave behind something when we die can contain elements of both self... more Expressions of the intent to leave behind something when we die can contain elements of both selflessness and selfishness. In this paper, we identify 3 different types of expressed legacy (personal, broader, and composite), and distinguish between them by examining their correlates (generativity, narcissism, and community involvement), as well as differences in expressed legacies for midlife African Americans and European Americans. Quantitative and qualitative data from surveys and interviews were drawn from the Foley Longitudinal Study of Adulthood (FLSA; N = 138; aged 55-58). We examined the contributions of generativity, narcissism, community involvement, and SES to each legacy, as well as the comparative levels of common significant predictors for each legacy, and the comparative likelihood of expressing particular legacies by race. Quantitative analyses showed that a different constellation of correlates predicted each legacy. Additionally, African Americans were more likely than European Americans to express legacies that indicated community involvement. Qualitative analyses showed that legacy groups (and races) also differed in open-ended responses encompassing personal concerns, talents, and goals. These findings highlight some of the mechanisms and correlates of how the intent to leave a legacy can provide meaning and purpose for midlife African Americans and European Americans. Results are discussed in light of previous research concerning how legacies are transmitted, and potential differences in cultural roots and meaning for African Americans and European Americans. (PsycINFO Database Record

Journal of Applied Social Psychology