Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Oil? On The Interpersonal Effects Of Boredom Expression, Manuel F. Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I explored how people react to employees who express boredom at work. I consider boredom expression as a social signal that the current situation does not adequately stimulate the expresser. The expression may then propel others to help stimulate the expresser, depending partly on others’ initial appraisals and reactions to the expression, and on the surrounding context. In Study 1, using qualitative surveys, I uncovered various affective, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to employees who expressed boredom. In Study 2, using experimental vignettes, I manipulated the emotion expressed by a “subordinate” (boredom, enthusiasm, or no emotion) and the manager’s beliefs about …

“The Gifts Of Enemies”: The Acteal Massacre, Sociedad Civil Las Abejas And Mexico’S Ejército Zapatista De Liberación Nacional And Humanitarian And Development Aid During The Low-Intensity War, 1997–1999, Maria R. Hart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about a faction of the Sociedad Civil Las Abejas who, as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), were housed at the INI IDP camp in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, in 1997-99 after the Acteal massacre on December 22, 1997. This faction is of interest because they protested the remaining members of Sociedad Civil Las Abejas (Civil Society The Bees) social movement at Acteal and the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, often better-known as the Zapatistas), because the movement required them to reject governmental humanitarian aid and development programs or lose their membership in the social …

Do Criminal And Successful (Non-Institutionalized) Psychopaths Differ On Internal, Environmental, And Contextual Characteristics?, Ahmed E. Enaitalla

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by shallow emotions, particularly social emotions such as guilt, remorse, and empathy, as well as an arrogant and impulsive interpersonal style that involves the manipulation and domination of others. Despite the long history of theory and research on psychopathy, there continues to be a disagreement as to whether antisocial tendencies and criminal behaviors are an inherent part of the construct or are one possible byproduct of the aforementioned traits. In an attempt to resolve this disagreement, some researchers have shifted their efforts towards the study of psychopaths who reside beyond the walls of prisons …

Developmental Predictors Of Adolescent Mental Health Stigma And A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial Of "Ending The Silence" In New York City, Joseph S. Deluca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explored predictors of mental health stigma among adolescents and the effectiveness of a school-based mental health stigma reduction and health promotion program, “Ending the Silence” (ETS), developed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Youth mental health service use is impacted by many factors, but concern about stigma and low mental health knowledge have been consistently identified as leading barriers to help-seeking. Beyond education and contact program components, existing research on how to design a successful adolescent stigma reduction intervention has been inconclusive. A diverse sample of 206 high school students in New York City participated in the …

Oceanic Groundings: Maritime Geographies And Black Internationalism In The Early Twentieth Century, Maegan A. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the shipboard writings, transnational solidarities and vernacular cultures, and spaces of social reproduction among Black and other subaltern seafarers and maritime travelers in the first decades of the twentieth century. I draw upon oral histories, literature, poetry, memoirs, and the archives of leftist political organizations and British colonial officials. Through a practice of close reading across textual genres and transnational spaces, my dissertation develops oceanic groundings as: (1) a constellation of iterative and intentional acts of political learning through the movements of ordinary people, (2) a pedagogical project of listening to and learning from the shifting grounds …

A Re-Evaluation Of The Hyper-Selectivity Perspective: The Case Of Second-Generation Filipinos, Brenda B. Gambol Gavigan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou (2015) argue that the upward mobility of one racial group --- Asian Americans --- in the U.S. can be explained by its “hyper-selectivity”: the Immigration Act of 1965 brought in Asian migrants who are more highly educated than their compatriots back home and the average American. These middle-class immigrants bring with them a success frame based on exceptional achievement and generate ethnic capital (i.e. resources and information available in the community) that ultimately benefits all members of an ethnic group, including the second-generation. In addition, the educational leaps of the second-generation have altered racial …

The Role Of Attentional Processes In The Associations Between Syndemics And Hiv Risk, Raymond L. Moody

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sexual minority men (SMM) remain the group most affected by HIV in the United States. The term “syndemic” has been used to describe high levels of comorbidity and additive effects that some factors—childhood sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, sexual compulsivity, substance use, and depression—have on HIV transmission risk behavior (TRB). Previous research provides support for an HIV syndemic among SMM, but mechanisms linking syndemic factors and driving the association between the factors and TRB are less understood. Some research suggests that executive attention and emotion dysregulation are linked with several syndemic factors. As such, the aims of this dissertation were …

Essays On The Short-Term Impact Of Minimum Unit Pricing Policy In Scotland, Irena P. Xhurxhi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters, and it evaluates the short-term impact of Scotland’s Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) policy on a variety of outcome measures. Excessive alcohol consumption has long been considered one of Scotland’s greatest public health challenges, and in an attempt to change this harmful relationship with alcohol, the Scottish Government proposed an alcohol strategy comprising of over 40 measures, a central part of which was the introduction of a statutory minimum price of 50 pence per unit (10ml/8gr) of alcohol known as Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP). This policy aims to reduce alcohol consumption, and in turn, alcohol …

The Political Aesthetic Of Hannah Arendt: Modernity, Judgment, And Culture, Quixote R. Vassilakis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The plan of this thesis is, first, to interpret Arendt’s critique of the modern age. Next, this paper outlines Arendt’s reconceptualization of Kant’s theory of judgment as the basis for a novel model of the public sphere in light of the conditions of modernity. Finally, this paper explores Arendt’s poetics as a means of activating the faculty of judgment in order to reconcile with the modern world. In order to address the political crises of modernity, Arendt develops a political aesthetic alive to the role of narrative and culture in reconstituting political communities. I argue that Hannah Arendt develops a …

Bilingual Reading Fluency And Prediction: Heritage Language Versus Second Language, Olga Parshina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The thesis presents the first comparative investigation of reading fluency and factors that affect it by examining eye movements in reading by Heritage Speakers (HSs) and L2 learners of Russian. The eye movements of bilingual participants are compared to two control groups, monolingual adults and monolingual children. Following the introductory Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 we present the study that establishes basic eye-movement characteristics in reading for Heritage Speakers and L2 learners in connection to proficiency and linguistics factors of word length and frequency. Contrary to our predictions, we found that all eye-movement characteristics of high-proficiency HSs are different from …

Crumbs To Keep Them Full: Neoliberal Spectacle At The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Lisa Gueldenzopf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been a fall staple in the U.S. for nearly a century. This event has the potential to make a significant impact on national culture due to its immersion in long-held traditions, the extent of media consumption, and the role of advertising. Unlike many other parades and cultural festivals in the world, opposing values and points of view are placed side by side, meant to be consumed as a single package. This thesis argues that today neoliberal ideology engulfs the annual event, as seen in part through token representation of marginalized identities. The parade of …

Mitigating Gender Bias In Neural Machine Translation Using Counterfactual Data, Alan Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent advances in deep learning have greatly improved the ability of researchers to develop effective machine translation systems. In particular, the application of modern neural architectures, such as the Transformer, has achieved state-of-the-art BLEU scores in many translation tasks. However, it has been found that even state-of-the-art neural machine translation models can suffer from certain implicit biases, such as gender bias (Lu et al., 2019). In response to this issue, researchers have proposed various potential solutions: some have proposed approaches that inject missing gender information into models, while others have attempted modifying the training data itself. We focus on mitigating …

Spheres Of Identity: Theorizing Social Categorization And The Legitimacy Of Criminal Justice Officials, Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Identity is of central importance in the subjective experience of justice and assessments of legitimacy. In this study, the researcher explores whether perceptions of legitimacy are constructed differently across social group identity, particularly where social groups differ in relation to government (e.g., outgroup or ingroup). The analyses are conducted using data from a procedural justice study conducted in two U. S. cities. The findings suggest evidence of a generally similar construction of legitimacy though with important dissimilarities based on social group. Additionally, certain respondents’ narratives follow common narrative scripts in describing interactions with police, suggestive of a shared master narrative …

Being And Becoming: Voice And The Performance Of Self By Black And Brown Women Members Of An Educational Space Organized In Whiteness, Anamaria Correa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation joins the voices of experiences of Black and Brown individuals in elite white spaces of independent schools. As a qualitative research project this study utilizes narrative, I Poems, and art-ifacts to create an ecology of experiences illustrating the past and the resiliency of the present. This research disrupts status quo narratives of lauded diversity efforts of excellent private school education and is a call to action for accountability in anti-racist owning up and restructuring of independent school spaces, leadership, governance and cultural practices. Undergirded by Critical Race Feminist Theory as the theoretical framework this dissertation presents the intersectional, …

Thrown Off Course: School Suspension And Its Consequences For Students’ Educational Trajectories And Outcomes, Celina Cuevas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Purpose: The literature on exclusionary school discipline has repeatedly documented disparities in its use and its relationship to various negative outcomes, causing the use of suspensions to become a pressing concern in the United States. The goal of this dissertation is to add this body of literature by being the first to examine the educational trajectories youth take after first being suspended, and how the effect of school punishment on trajectories may be more severe for subgroups of students disproportionately affected by school discipline and often underserved in school settings.

Methods: New York City Department of Education data is used …

Thoughts Of Becoming: Negotiating Modernity And Identity In Bangladesh, Humayun Kabir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs a history and conducts an analysis of Bangladeshi political thought with the aim to better understand the thought-world and political subjectivities in Bangladesh. The dissertation argues that political thought in Bangladesh has been profoundly structured by colonial and other encounters with modernity and by concerns about constructing a national identity. Negotiations between the incomplete and continuous projects of modernization and identity formation have produced certain anxieties about becoming that permeates political consciousness and ideas in the country. Though such anxieties of becoming are also shared by other postcolonial countries, the specific, though not necessarily exclusive, character of …

False Cures Of U.S. Nationalism: The Border Wall – A Raucous Call From The Silent Center, Tatiana N. Browne-Kai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In trying to grasp the authoritarian surge in the U.S. since 2016, political theorists have increasingly turned their focus back to the Studies of the Authoritarian Personality. In response to the risk of these contemporary studies’ use of psychoanalysis in a de-historicized and individualized way, this paper opts for a double historicization of modern mass-formations. In analyzing the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the Minuteman Border Fence and We Build the Wall, civil initiatives that aim at fortifying the U.S.-Mexican border wall (D. Trumps central campaign theme), the current surge to the right is shown to be based on and made …

The Cognitive Thalamus: Source Analysis Of Scene Working Memory Delay Activity, Bernard A. Gomes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Working Memory represents a limited-capacity store for maintaining information and manipulating the store's contents over a short period for the guidance of goal-directed behavior. Working Memory is an essential component of executive functions that are intricately associated with the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC has been implicated in maintaining task-related information online for brief periods in the absence of relevant information. This active maintenance phase is called the delay period that occurs between encoding and retrieval of the stimulus. Previous studies have attempted to understand the relationship between working memory and the PFC, especially during the delay or maintenance phase …

Rehabilitative Movement Approaches And Dance Interventions In Parkinson’S Disease, Cecilia Fontanesi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The scope of this work is to address the functional deficits and symptoms experienced by those living with Parkinson’s Disease through movement interventions.

Chapter 1 offers a brief overview of current pharmacotherapy and rehabilitation approaches in Parkinson’s, focusing on dance in particular as a movement intervention that may be particularly suited to this population.

Chapter 2 focuses on brain plasticity and motor learning in PD, reporting the effects of rTMS applied after the acquisition of a motor skill. In this study, adaptation tested in patients with PD was comparable in the sham and TMS sessions, while retention indices tested on …

The Sounds Of Sikles Gurung: A Phonetic And Phonological Description Of A Tibeto-Burman Language Of Nepal, Danielle Ronkos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation describes the sound system of the Sikles variety of Gurung, or Tamu Kyui, a Tibeto-Burman minority language of Nepal. Drawing on data collected with the help of Sikles Gurung speakers living in Nepal and New York between 2014 and 2018, it presents evidence that the phonetics and phonology of this variety differ from descriptions of other varieties. Major findings include contrastive vowel duration, a 2-category register system rather than the 4-tone system reported for other varieties, and allophonic secondary consonant articulations assigned by the backness of adjacent vowels and glides. The secondary articulation system is linked to the …

Cot In The Act: Ethnicity And Age Affects Phonemic Perception Of The Low-Back Merger In New York City English, Omar Ortiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

ABSTRACT

This paper is an experimental study on how perceptions about a speaker’s age and ethnicity may influence whether listeners perceive the THOUGHT / LOT distinction. The macro-categories of age and ethnicity have been found to correlate with the lowering of raised THOUGHT (Wong 2012, Becker 2010) and the favoring of the merged vowels in perception (Haddican et al. 2016). This thesis examines whether images of faces associated with different age and ethnicity categories condition perception of auditory stimuli as belonging to either the LOT or THOUGHT class. This thesis builds on previous results suggesting that non-linguistic information influences speech …

Processing Coercion In A First, Non-Dominant Language: Mandarin-English Heritage Bilinguals, Christina N. Dadurian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent work in heritage language grammars has shown variability in L1 competence, despite high proficiency in both languages. While sources of variation have been debated, little attention has been given to the role of language dominance. This thesis uses a self-paced listening task to explicitly investigate the roles of language dominance and pragmatic competence in how heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese process aspectual coercion in their non-dominant home language, as compared to late bilinguals. Specifically, constructions that vary in acceptability and salience in input between Mandarin and English are tested: Iterative coercion, complement event coercion of entity NPs, and perfective …

Is The South (Still) America’S Sacrifice Zone? A Regional Analysis Of Toxic Emissions, 1987–2017, Tanesha A. Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The southern United States has been labeled a “sacrifice zone” for the rest of the nation's toxic waste. In the early days of the environmental justice movement, researchers found that the south contained a disproportionate number of toxic sites, including garbage dumps, landfills, and waste incinerators. These initial studies used different data sources and methodologies, but arrived at the same conclusion: America was dumping in Dixie, a predominantly poor African American region of the country. Since then, researchers have mainly confirmed or called into question the existence of environmental racism within the south. However, none have investigated the south’s environmental …

Grassroots Tales: Journeys Of Inward Healing And Outward Movement Building – “A Story Of Youth Development And Healing”, Andrew Cory Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rooted in Liberation Psychology epistemology, this dissertation was engaged to liberate myself as well as psychology. Positing Healing Justice and Sociopolitical Development as theoretical guides, this dissertation explored a community specific approach of radical healing to develop urban youth’s abilities to sustain (build) spirit and collective hope for grassroot movement building. This dissertation asks, what are the possibilities of bringing urban youth (n=9) together who shared similar realities, dared to dream together (i.e., think tank), and turn those dreams into a Grassroot Movement Building?

The methodological praxis of this dissertation project was politically and theoretically situated to study learnings at …

Learning To Fail? Student Experiences In Remedial Mathematics In Community Colleges, Margaret P. Fay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Referral to remedial coursework in mathematics is a significant barrier to degree attainment for community college students, which in turn has serious consequences for their employment and earning prospects. Students are placed into remediation when they are deemed unprepared to engage in college-level coursework, most often based on a score on a placement test. Nationally, 59% of community college students are placed into remedial math courses. Of these, only 49% complete remediation and gain access to college-level coursework. Because a college-level math course is often a degree requirement, many students who fail to complete remedial math courses are forced to …

A Comparison Of Tribal Sovereignty, Self-Determination, And Environmental Justice At The Epa’S Onondaga Lake And Tar Creek Superfund Sites, Thomas Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program mandates that Native American tribes are afforded the same treatment as states in the implementation of environmental remediation projects; however, the degree of coordination and consultation between the EPA and sovereign tribal governments varies widely between sites. Two of the Superfund program’s highest profile sites with Native American interest, northeast Oklahoma’s Tar Creek and central New York’s Onondaga Lake, are characterized by such a disparity in tribal participation. While Oklahoma’s Quapaw Tribe would ultimately enter into a number of cooperative agreements with the EPA for direct control over remedial projects, New York’s Onondaga Nation …

And Ain’T I A Man: An Examination Of Violence Against African-American Men By Caucasian Men In The United States, Bryan L. Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Various scholars, particularly feminist scholars of color, have examined the experiences of women in the realm of violence perpetrated by men, particularly Caucasian/white men against women of color. Critical Race Theory has proven beneficial to discussing violence perpetrated by Caucasian men in the United States against various communities of color broadly. Using these two premises, this thesis seeks to bring into the conversation the subjugation of men of color by white men. By looking at classical theories concerning the dualities that people of color encounter and struggle with along with womanist theories of feminism, this thesis seeks to spark a …

Holding Both: Witness Aid Workers' Experiences Supporting Intimate Partner Violence Survivors In District Attorney Offices, Ovita Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social workers and advocates practice in district attorney (DA) offices as witness or victim aid workers providing intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors counseling, advocacy, resources and information as they enter the criminal legal system (CLS). Their experiences, in particular how stress and vicarious trauma (VT) manifested for them in this unique setting within the criminal legal system, had not yet been examined. This phenomenological study sought to better understand (1) how social workers and advocates in a prosecutor’s office experience practice with intimate partner violence survivors, (2) their experiences of stress, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and supports, and (3) …

Inferring Research Fields In Administrative Records Using Text Data, Ekaterina Levitskaya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The UMETRICS database (Universities: Measuring the Effects of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Science) contains rich information on grants from sponsored federal and non-federal research for 32 universities over a 15-year period. It is hosted at IRIS (Institute for Research on Innovation and Science, University of Michigan) and serves as a rich source of university administrative data; however, it does not contain information on research fields. Categorizing grants data by research field can help to measure results of investment in research and science and provide evidence for the data-driven policy-making; yet administrative data often lacks this type of categorization. In …

Pre-Report Review Of Body-Worn Camera Footage: An Examination Of Stakeholder Beliefs, Laypeople’S Judgments Of Officer Credibility, And The Consequences For Memory, Kristyn A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Aim: This dissertation examines people’s beliefs about police officer access to body-worn camera footage, people’s judgments of officer credibility as it relates to video footage, and the consequences that review of footage has on reporting accuracy.

Rationale: With escalating police-civilian tensions in 2014, American police departments adopted body-worn camera programs. A majority of departments have policies allowing officers unrestricted access to camera footage. Because officers fear that inconsistencies between reports and videos could result in suspicion of officer deceit, they argue that officers should have access to footage before writing their reports to ensure reports match the footage. Yet, because …