Acknowledgements Thank you to all of my professors at Scripps who have inspired me to keep asking questions and exploring the world. I am blessed to be surrounded by incredibly brilliant and kind mentors. To Susan Rankaitis and Ken Gonzales-Day, thank you for making all of this possible for me. I could not have done any of this without your constant support and guidance. It has been an absolute...

The present paper considers the perceived emotional weight of the phrase I love you in multilinguals’ different languages. The sample consists of 1459 adult multilinguals speaking a total of 77 different first languages. They filled out an on-line questionnaire with open and closed questions linked to language behavior and emotions. Feedback on the open question related to perceived emotional w...

For her unfailing love, tender care, and steady support. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Whenever acknowledgments are given, there is a danger of leaving someone out or forgetting something they have done. Many people contributed to the success of this dissertation thesis. While I would like to acknowledge individually each by name, I would inevitably leave out deserving colleagues, friends, and relatives....

Psychological studies of Hindu religion and culture routinely stress a difference between "East" and "West." Whether this difference reflects a certain Hindu pathology (Carstairs 1961; Spratt 1966; Masson 1980; Kakar 1981) or normative developments relative to each culture (Roland 1988; Kurtz 1992), the seemingly uncontested consensus is that Hindu India nurtures a "collective self." Though gen...

To my parents who never lacked the support, encouragement, and prayers, and to my sweetheart Abeer who gave me so much love and showed a lot of patience. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Gordon L. Stüber, for his insightful guidance and helpful comments. His hard work and dedication made me a better student and researcher. I would also like to thank the committee mem...