ScholarWorks@Georgia State University
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Publication Restricted The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Mental Health: The Moderating Role of Social Support in Emerging Adults(2026)A considerable number of adults in the United States have a history of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). A history of ACEs is associated with numerous deleterious outcomes such as poorer physical and mental health. This study examined the impact of ACEs on symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety and explored the role of social support (i.e. familial support and peer support) as a probable protective factor. One hundred fifty-two emerging adults between the ages of 18 to 25 completed online self-report measures. A history of ACEs predicted symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Social support did not moderate the relationship between ACEs and greater symptoms of mental health issues. These findings build on the existing body of literature on the implications of ACEs on adult mental health outcomes. Psychological support services that employ a trauma-informed approach are warranted to identify and enhance protective factors in populations exposed to ACEs.Publication Open Access From Disruption to Development: Affective and Recursive Mechanisms of Global Competence Development(2026)As global business environments grow increasingly reliant on virtual collaboration and international mobility, understanding how affect can impact intercultural competence development has become a pressing theoretical and practical concern. This three-paper dissertation advances a unified argument: affect is not a byproduct of intercultural encounters but can serve as a mechanism through which individuals develop intercultural competencies. The first study introduces affective retooling as the mechanism through which emotionally charged cross-cultural encounters in global virtual teams result in intercultural sensitivity and performance gains. The second study argues for mindfulness as a micro-foundational mechanism explaining how structurally similar international business travel experiences can generate different competence outcomes. The third study introduces recursive sensemaking to help explain how intercultural competence continues to amplify long after an international experience, with longitudinal evidence showing delayed developmental gains surging over time. Together, these studies reconceptualize intercultural competence as a dynamic, affect-driven, and longitudinally recursive developmental process, offering theoretical contributions to contact theory, trigger event theory, and cultural retooling, with implications for global leadership development.Publication Embargo Dancing Or Disciplining Religion: Covenant In Conflict In Black Protestant Subjectivity Within Nineteenth Century African American Literature(2026)The complex riffs of early Black Protestantism in African American literature are often reduced to monolithic readings. When this restrictive lens is not employed, the alternative analysis is often rooted in overstated fixed dichotomies of the otherworldly and this-worldly, the low and the high, or the passive and the radical. By way of contrast, to enable a closer analysis of the cultural and public politics of its representation in nineteenth-century African American literature, my project disrupts readings of Black Protestantism as a monolithic or simplistic binary. More specifically, this study calls for a more critical examination of uplift informed Northern Black Protestantism of an elite minority that sought to eradicate the folk rooted ecstatic experience of covenant. While this elitist initiative is too often heralded as the brainchild of Black covenantalism on a literary level, this was not the ground level reality. Considering Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, Martin Delany's Blake; or, the Huts of America, Frances Harper's Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted, and Charles Chesnutt’s “Dave’s Neckliss,” my work analyzes these antebellum and postbellum Black writers’ negotiation of an unstable covenant discourse rooted in distinct yet complementary visions of racial activism within Northern and Southern Black Protestantism. Most importantly, my work explores the encounter between the embodied liturgies of Southern Black Protestantism oriented in memories of an African past and the modern performing spectacle of Northern Black Protestantism oriented in dreams of assimilation as a dialectical relationship harnessed for race progress in the early Black literary aesthetic.Publication Open Access Intercultural Trust Dynamics in Immigrant Employment Integration(2026-04-17)The integration of immigrants into labor markets is central to the functioning of the global economy, yet persistent employment disparities suggest that factors beyond human capital and formal institutions shape this process. Trust is widely recognized as a mechanism that facilitates economic exchange under uncertainty, but international business research has paid limited attention to how different forms of trust operate in immigrant labor market integration and whether trust translates into employment outcomes across contexts. This dissertation develops a multilevel framework of intercultural trust dynamics by integrating cross-national quantitative evidence with in-depth qualitative analysis. Essay 1 draws on data from the World Values Survey and the European Social Survey to examine how generalized trust, institutional trust, and host-country trust climates relate to employment outcomes. Using multilevel logistic regression models, the findings show that trust does not consistently translate into employment. Generalized trust is negatively associated with employment, institutional trust exhibits weak and inconsistent relationships, and high-trust contexts are associated with lower employment probabilities. Cultural distance further moderates the relationship between generalized trust and employment, indicating that trust operates differently across institutional and cultural contexts. Essay 2 develops the Brokered Intercultural Trust (BIT) framework based on interviews with highly skilled refugees, employers, and intermediaries in the United States. The findings show that trust does not emerge automatically but must be actively constructed and mediated. Affective trust is established prior to cognitive evaluation, creating the conditions for assessment and cooperation. Intermediaries broker trust between refugees and employers by providing distinct forms of affective assurance to each side, translating credentials, and transferring credibility to enable hiring under uncertainty. Together, the essays demonstrate that trust is not a uniformly beneficial resource, but a conditional and context-dependent mechanism. By linking structural patterns with relational processes, this dissertation advances international business research by specifying when, how, and through what mechanisms trust shapes labor market integration in global contexts.Publication Embargo Transgenerational Trauma: Developing a Mixed Methods Measure(2026)Objective: Transgenerational trauma (TT) occurs when trauma exposed parents transfer the effects of trauma to their descendants. While empirical evidence informs that TT exists, clarity is needed to distinguish TT from other specific traumas and to better understand how trauma responses transfer to future generations. TT research tends to focus on particular groups (e.g., Holocaust survivors and their offspring). Considering contextual factors associated with TT is important; but shared aspects of TT across groups may also occur. Comprehensively identifying and quantifying TT would aid in effectively developing and assessing programs to mitigate adverse effects of TT exposure. Thus, this research aimed to develop and evaluate the Family Impact Scale (FIS), a measure being developed to assess TT. Method: This mixed methods online study included 301 participants ages 18 to 25. Respondents represented a community (82%) and college (18%) sample and completed three measures, the FIS, the Posttraumatic Stress Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), and a sociodemographic questionnaire. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used for data analysis. Results: Factor analysis of the 26 quantitative FIS items revealed five factors: dangerous place, overprotection, role reversal, perception of parental inadequacy, and perception of impact on participant. Factor and qualitative data analyses supported the removal of three items. Two items related to the importance of exposure to things outside of one’s community, and one item aimed to capture using parental behavior to determine what to and not to do. Omega coefficients and a polychoric correlation (one factor had two items) suggest good internal reliability for all factors, except dangerous place. The dangerous place factor may be acceptable, given this research’s exploratory nature, but is uncertain. The perception of parental inadequacy and perception of impact on participant factors were moderately related to PCL-5 scores. Conclusion: In this study, the FIS items supported a five factor model, adding insight regarding factors related to TT. Moreover, the factors less prominently discussed in the reviewed literature, perception of parental inadequacy and perception of impact on participant factors, showed an association with symptoms of traumatic stress. Thus, this research evidences promise for further FIS development.
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