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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Role Of Psychological Distance On The Antecedents And Consequences Of Political Outgroup Moral Derogation, Phillip P. Mcgarry May 2024

The Role Of Psychological Distance On The Antecedents And Consequences Of Political Outgroup Moral Derogation, Phillip P. Mcgarry

Doctoral Dissertations

Political polarization in the United States has continually increased at least across the past 40 years. Political partisans now regard out-party members as immoral. I employed three experiments (Experiment 1: n = 1070; Experiment 2: n = 402; Experiment 3: n = 392) to explore the antecedents and consequences of moral derogation in an inter-party context using the Ultimatum Game (UG) paradigm. Psychological distance was manipulated in Experiment 3, by randomly assigning participants to play the UG either in the same room or an adjacent room as a confederate. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 were conducted online and served as …


Collective Autonomy Restriction: A Theoretical Model And Empirical Investigations, Adrian Rivera-Rodriguez Nov 2023

Collective Autonomy Restriction: A Theoretical Model And Empirical Investigations, Adrian Rivera-Rodriguez

Doctoral Dissertations

Collective autonomy refers to a group’s freedom to define and practice their own cultural and social identity without interference from other groups. According to the “threat and defense” hypothesis of collective autonomy restriction, group members are motivated to defend their collective autonomy from outside restriction. However, the psychological processes that influence advantaged vs. disadvantaged group members perceptions of collective autonomy, as well as the specific strategies they use to protect collective autonomy, have yet to be articulated. This dissertation presents three manuscripts that examine the social conditions and psychological processes that shape advantaged and disadvantaged group members’ perceptions of collective …


Alternative Power: The Politics Of Denmark's Renewable Energy Transition, Robert Darrow Nov 2023

Alternative Power: The Politics Of Denmark's Renewable Energy Transition, Robert Darrow

Doctoral Dissertations

Global climate change is one of the defining political challenges and opportunities of the current era. Experts widely agree that technical means already exist for making the necessary transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy; the obstacles to doing so are primarily political. Careful observers also recognize that this period of transition creates an opening for political innovation and development. How can the political will be generated to take action to prevent climate catastrophe? And what will the process of transitioning mean for the political systems that have been built on cheap and abundant oil? Political scientists have largely ignored …


"The Land That Feminism Forgot": Birthzillas, Madwives, And The Politics Of Chilbirth, Amber Vayo Aug 2023

"The Land That Feminism Forgot": Birthzillas, Madwives, And The Politics Of Chilbirth, Amber Vayo

Doctoral Dissertations

“The Land that Feminism Forgot” is an in-depth exploration of the politics of childbirth that draws together qualitative and quantitative evidence to theorize the connections between treatment in childbirth and maternal mortality. Situating the qualitative research in the larger national context, the second chapter offers a State Reproductive Autonomy Index that provides an overview of the reproductive policy landscape at the national level. The dissertation then explores the role of institutionalized childbirth, medical mistrust, and obstetric violence in the U.S.’s longstanding maternal mortality crisis and offers policy suggestions in key public health areas. Through 120 qualitative interviews with people who …


Examining Shifts In Racial Attitudes In The Aftermath Of George Floyd’S Death And The 2020 Blm Protests, Se Min Suh Aug 2023

Examining Shifts In Racial Attitudes In The Aftermath Of George Floyd’S Death And The 2020 Blm Protests, Se Min Suh

Doctoral Dissertations

The killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 instigated one of the largest social movements in the United States history. Despite the wealth of research that has evaluated the efficacy of social movements using different social outcomes (Andrews, 1997; Biggs & Andrews, 2015; Branton et al., 2015; Enos et al., 2019; Gillion, 2012; Schwartz, 2016), less attention has been given to how social movements that concern racial issues impact racial attitudes (Riley & Peterson, 2020). Thus, the current research aimed to examine how Americans’ racial attitudes shifted in the period immediately following the onset of BLM protests. We …


The Impact Of Guaranteed Income On Political Participation, Daniel Horn Aug 2023

The Impact Of Guaranteed Income On Political Participation, Daniel Horn

Doctoral Dissertations

This three-paper dissertation examines the impact of guaranteed income (GI) and cash transfer (CT) programs on political participation, aiming to contribute to understanding how social policies can shape civic engagement. The first paper provides a comprehensive literature review on GI and CT programs, focusing on their potential effects on political participation. By analyzing existing studies, this paper identifies key findings and gaps in the literature, setting the stage for further empirical investigation. The second paper develops and tests a new instrument called the Brief Political Participation Scale (BPPS), designed to measure political participation concisely and reliably. The third paper presents …


The Impact Of Rebel Group Structure On Foreign Fighter Civilian Victimization, Jack Anthony Schwartz Aug 2023

The Impact Of Rebel Group Structure On Foreign Fighter Civilian Victimization, Jack Anthony Schwartz

Doctoral Dissertations

The modern foreign fighter (FF) came into prominence following the onset of the wars in Iraq and Syria in the early 2010s. The fact that there was a movement of over 20,000 foreign fighters to Ukraine in 2022 shows that this is a phenomenon that is not going away or slowing down. What makes this phenomenon more serious is the negative impact that FFs have on civilians. FFs have been shown to conduct disproportionate violence against the civilian population in the locations that they inhabit. For that reason, it is vital to not only understand the impact of these individuals …


The New Media Frontier: How Social Media Affects Partisan Attachments, Candidate Evaluations, And Political Emotions, Justin Allen Rose May 2023

The New Media Frontier: How Social Media Affects Partisan Attachments, Candidate Evaluations, And Political Emotions, Justin Allen Rose

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to further our understanding of individual social media use on polarization, evaluation of political candidates, and political emotions. Three separate articles are utilized to illuminate the effects of individual social media use. The first article pushes forward a theory which argues that social media is uniquely positioned to affect partisan feelings due to its propensity to lead individuals into echo chambers—online places that reinforce their existing opinions and attitudes. The second argues that social media plays into the hyper-partisan nature of the American political landscape, and by way, putting forward an atmosphere which will lead individuals to …


The Violence Of Nostalgia: Conspiracy Theorism, White Nationalism, And Restoring American Exceptionalism, Candice K. Travis Apr 2023

The Violence Of Nostalgia: Conspiracy Theorism, White Nationalism, And Restoring American Exceptionalism, Candice K. Travis

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation serves three interconnected ends: (1) highlight the connections between nationalism, nostalgia, mythology, and conspiracy, (2) research and articulate the deeper story behind the resurgence of conspiracy fueled white nationalism, and (3) analyze increasing popular support for racialized hatred across the United States as coalesced through the nostalgic desire to restore “our lost great America.” I adapt John Dewey’s pragmatism to interpret how publics take political action in response to evolving technologies and cultural shifts, and accordingly develop a typology of groups on the right wing of American politics. The Proud Boys are chauvinist white nationalists, Patriot Prayer are …


Election Day Registration And Same Day Registration In State Legislative Districts, Rachel Fuentes Dec 2022

Election Day Registration And Same Day Registration In State Legislative Districts, Rachel Fuentes

Doctoral Dissertations

Decades of research into the effects of voter registration requirements on turnout has found that voter registration disproportionately suppresses turnout among marginalized racial and socioeconomic groups that traditionally are represented by the Democratic Party. Research also shows that enacting Same Day or Election Day Registration (EDR/SDR) increases voter turnout for Democratic candidates in national elections. The conclusion drawn has been that EDR/SDR increases the representation of marginalized groups. The study in this paper challenges these findings in three ways. First, although EDR/SDR results in a larger total democratic vote, the claims of increased representation may be overstated. This study of …


Conscientious Acceptance: The Impact Of Public Support On Conscription, Simon Rotzer Dec 2022

Conscientious Acceptance: The Impact Of Public Support On Conscription, Simon Rotzer

Doctoral Dissertations

“What makes a state maintain conscription, especially during peacetime?” – Conventional wisdom argues that forced recruitment is a practical and efficient tool to increase a country’s security, especially during episodes of high threat. However, the policy loses its appeal in times of peace when its downsides become more evident. Consequentially, it should be expected that states would rid themselves of the draft when there are no security-related reasons to keep it. Yet, empirical reality paints a different picture, with more than half of all conscription cases existing under no active threat. This dissertation proposes that it is the support of …


Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez Oct 2022

Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is organized into three essays. The second essay provides a historical overview of the CFA franc and explores why the CFA franc has survived for so long. It argues that a historical and dialectical materialist analysis of the CFA’s history can best explain both its extraordinary longevity and the periodic major reforms to its functioning. The third essay assesses whether the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has an independent monetary policy by examining the relationships between BCEAO’s foreign reserves and base money, and between BCEAO and the European Central Banks’s policy rates. The fourth essay evaluates …


Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo Oct 2022

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I advance a political ethnography of critical infrastructure to better understand terminal capitalism, in which the waste products of commodification and resource depletion are destroying the ecological systems that support life. My object of study is the massive disjuncture between individual knowledge and intention, and these catastrophic collective planetary outcomes. Theoretically, I develop critical infrastructure theory to diagnose these destructive structures. By “infrastructure,” I mean systems of material and discursive flows fundamental to sedentary human organization, connecting local actions with global systems. Such infrastructure is “critical” in three senses: A) denoting the most important forms of infrastructure …


Leader Type And Responses To State-Sponsored Terrorism, Arjun Banerjee Aug 2022

Leader Type And Responses To State-Sponsored Terrorism, Arjun Banerjee

Doctoral Dissertations

State-sponsored terrorism (SST) has for long been used as a tool by countries to inflict costs on rival states without direct confrontation, as the latter risks inviting limited to full-scale war. The literature on SST has so far focused primarily on the motivations, facilitating factors, and the timing of state sponsorship. What has been insufficiently studied, however, are the responses of victim states to SST. Why does state response to SST vary spatio-temporally in different countries, under different governments, and even under different leaders of the same ruling political dispensation in a country? Under what conditions does a state respond …


State Technological Power And Interstate Trade Relations And Conflict, Tianjing Liao Aug 2022

State Technological Power And Interstate Trade Relations And Conflict, Tianjing Liao

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines roles of state technology capacity in determining national power, whether and in what ways international trade affects between-state tech power transition, as well as how state tech power position influences their trade policy. This research argues that technology is an increasingly important component of national power in the modern era; state trade dependence on another is likely to cause unfavorable tech power transition; states tend to initiate trade conflict against its trade partner that is technologically catching up toward it, attempting to prevent further dyadic tech power convergence or even surpassing. A variety of analytical methods, including …


Another Postcolonialism: Innovating Sovereignty From Below Through The Responsibility To Protect, Gabriel P. Mares Jun 2022

Another Postcolonialism: Innovating Sovereignty From Below Through The Responsibility To Protect, Gabriel P. Mares

Doctoral Dissertations

I focus on the work of civil society actors, scholars, and diplomats from the Global South, in particular the South Sudanese anthropologist and diplomat Francis Deng, and the ways in which they attempt to remake sovereignty through institutions. Using sovereignty-as-responsibility and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as problem spaces, I recover an alternate vision of sovereignty and the community of states that emerged in response to defenses of non-intervention by postcolonial state actors. Focusing on sovereignty allows these agents to simultaneously critique and innovate that which is “above” (the international state system) and that which is “below” (the sovereign state). …


Autocracies As Mediators In Conflicts, Jonathan A. S. Honig May 2022

Autocracies As Mediators In Conflicts, Jonathan A. S. Honig

Doctoral Dissertations

It is puzzling why autocracies, which typically are not renowned for their human rights record or their observance of international norms related to human rights and are frequently inured in their own violent conflicts, would choose to take on the seemingly humanitarian role of peacemaker as often as democracies in the conflicts of other states in the absence of such things as a former colonial relationship or shared geographic proximity with them. I argue that autocracies will offer more often to mediate when they are subjected to international scrutiny, sanctioning, and/or condemnation, as well as materially and immaterially benefitting from …


Critical Political Thinking: An Analysis Of Undergraduate Students’ Higher-Order Thinking Skills And Preferred Political Values, Labels, And Leadership Traits, Maya Mingo Dec 2021

Critical Political Thinking: An Analysis Of Undergraduate Students’ Higher-Order Thinking Skills And Preferred Political Values, Labels, And Leadership Traits, Maya Mingo

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study details the political values of students enrolled in an entry-level, multi-section educational psychology course at a large, southeastern United States university during the fall semester of 2017 (N = 167). Survey data were collected to identify the following: which political values and personality traits undergraduate students give the most priority when making political decisions, whether or not the political labels participants identified as most important to them are consistent with those common to their families, close friends, and childhood geographical regions, the quality of respondents’ self-reported label-value congruence, and the relation between the students’ critical thinking …


Horizontal Cultural Inequalities, Grievances, And Civil Conflict: Ethnonationalist Mobilization In Reaction To Assimilationist Educational Language Policies, Burak Demir Dec 2021

Horizontal Cultural Inequalities, Grievances, And Civil Conflict: Ethnonationalist Mobilization In Reaction To Assimilationist Educational Language Policies, Burak Demir

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies in the literature on intrastate conflict onset have focused on opportunities and material grievances whereas non-material issues have not been given sufficient attention. The increasing importance of the ethnic dimension of intrastate conflicts since the mid-1970s suggests a growing prominence of ethnonationalist ideologies as a cause. Following constructivist and institutionalist theories on nationalism, this study argues that assimilationist policies, mainly centered around educational languages, induce the spread of minority ethnonationalism to the masses. This spread results from assimilationist policies being perceived as attacks on their dignity by the members of a discriminated minority group who, as a result, feel …


Benevolent Patriots? Public Service Motivation Theory In A Military-Veteran Context, Jesse R. Cragwall Dec 2021

Benevolent Patriots? Public Service Motivation Theory In A Military-Veteran Context, Jesse R. Cragwall

Doctoral Dissertations

This study expands on previous work that focused on explaining motivations for joining the military in the United States. Using the prominent theory of public service motivation (PSM) found in public administration, I surveyed American military veterans currently pursuing post-secondary education to see if this theory helps explain why people join the military in much the same way that the theory helps explain why people join the civil service. My research includes multiple demographics, including those who served in the different military branches within the Department of Defense; those who served active duty, reserve, and national guard; officers vs. enlisted …


Who Mediates Matters: The Impact Of Individual Mediator Competency Skills On Individual And Civil Conflict Mediation, Erin V. Rowland Dec 2021

Who Mediates Matters: The Impact Of Individual Mediator Competency Skills On Individual And Civil Conflict Mediation, Erin V. Rowland

Doctoral Dissertations

Until this point, research in the field of conflict mediation concerning how third-party entities impact mediation outcomes has largely focused on the macrolevel factors of those entities and the disputing parties – geographic proximity of the mediating states to the disputants, the presence of alliances, the existence of enduring rivalries, etc. However, even when macrolevel factors are relatively similar, differences still exist in mediation outcome. This research proposes that some differences in mediation outcome are due to the impact of individual mediator factors, more specifically individual mediator competency skills in the form of Knowledge, Know-how, and Behavioral competencies. Borrowing from …


American Understandings Of U.S. Economic Inequality: Redistribution And Resistance, Jacklyn Stein Oct 2021

American Understandings Of U.S. Economic Inequality: Redistribution And Resistance, Jacklyn Stein

Doctoral Dissertations

Why has economic inequality in the U.S. continued to grow despite widespread and strong public opinion in favor of reducing it? In this dissertation, I argue that Americans are upset by current levels of economic inequality and support downward redistribution as a means to reduce it. At the same time, many have hesitations about or resistance to the mechanisms through which such redistribution might be carried out. This resistance, I found, varied across respondents’ class and race (and, to some extent, gender). Across groups, respondents’ desires for change were stymied by a social and political context of differential visibility that …


Grammars Of Identity: Political Languages Of Activism In Argentina And The United States, Ana M. Ospina Pedraza Oct 2021

Grammars Of Identity: Political Languages Of Activism In Argentina And The United States, Ana M. Ospina Pedraza

Doctoral Dissertations

In recent history, democratic popular assemblies have played a significant role in political organizing worldwide. Contemporary theorists and social movement scholars see a global ethos of collective action in the growth of the assembly form. This dissertation studies the language of collective action in two movements that illustrate the global significance of assemblies: the neighborhood assemblies of Buenos Aires in 2002 and the New York General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street in 2011. These movements were connected by transnational networks of activism and a commitment to internal democracy now prevalent in the global left. This research asks two questions: what …


Targeting Drones: Framing, Vetting, And Power In Transnational Advocacy Issue Networks, Alexandria J. Nylen Oct 2021

Targeting Drones: Framing, Vetting, And Power In Transnational Advocacy Issue Networks, Alexandria J. Nylen

Doctoral Dissertations

Existing international relations literature shows that coherent messaging by advocacy networks is a key component for successful transnational mobilization around human security issues. However, traditional models of transnational advocacy do not fully explain how activists working against armed drones have mobilized over the past two decades. This dissertation explores the case of a transnational advocacy coalition that – despite efforts to do so – was unable to coalesce around a central message: the anti-drone issue network. I ask two interrelated questions: 1) Why have international anti-drone activists not been able to overcome disagreements over framings? and more broadly, 2) How …


Latino Race Cards: Negative Racial Appeals In Contemporary Campaigns And The Bounds Of Racial Priming Theory, Rebecca Lisi Oct 2021

Latino Race Cards: Negative Racial Appeals In Contemporary Campaigns And The Bounds Of Racial Priming Theory, Rebecca Lisi

Doctoral Dissertations

The Implicit Explicit (IE) model of racial priming (Mendelberg 2001) continues to be the dominant theoretical model for understanding the impact of negative racial campaign appeals on white voter mobilization despite significant demographic change in the United States. The theoretical underpinnings of the IE model rest upon a norm of racial equality which emerged in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Given the specific racial and historical context in which this racial norm developed it is unclear whether the IE model can account for the impact of non-Black racial appeals on white voter mobilization. I apply the concept of …


Why Do Policy Frames Change? Rhetorical Construction And Contestation Of Gay Rights In A Contested Regime, Shih-Chan Dai Sep 2021

Why Do Policy Frames Change? Rhetorical Construction And Contestation Of Gay Rights In A Contested Regime, Shih-Chan Dai

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation project, “Why do Policy Frames Change? Rhetorical Construction and Contestation of Gay Rights in a Contested Regime,” examines the impacts of both digitalization and local political contexts on the dynamics of policy framing and issue advocacy. By exploring the patterns of online framing across different types of social actors (pro- and anti-gay rights activists and influencers), it contributes to the fields of LGBT politics, political communication, and social movements. The findings of the second chapter show that similar to Western societies where same-sex marriage has been legalized, pro- and anti-gay rights groups in Taiwan rely on certain types …


Platforms And Power: Transnational Guatemala, Eric Sippert Sep 2021

Platforms And Power: Transnational Guatemala, Eric Sippert

Doctoral Dissertations

Moving beyond studies of social movements and NGOs, this dissertation examines how grassroots groups in Guatemala use transnational flows of goods, ideas, and people to create new organizational forms and types of political action. This case study of an organization of returned migrants, former combatants, and indigenous youth demonstrates how marginalized groups create platforms that facilitate connections between disparate actors across nation-state and identity borders. Drawing on field research in Guatemala’s Western Highlands, I explore how these platforms emerged, threats to them, their effects, and what they can teach us about political organizing in crisis. I begin by tracing the …


Cross-National Variation In Women’S Rights: Europe And Civil War, Nourah Shuaibi Aug 2021

Cross-National Variation In Women’S Rights: Europe And Civil War, Nourah Shuaibi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on Women’s Social, Economic and Political rights in post-Conflict countries. In order to evaluate the relationship with sound causal logic, I set out to study multiple relationships to understand the impact of the variables in question. Looking at the nature of the relationship required an evaluation in 3 ways, which culminated in the writing of 4 separate chapters. Chapter 2 demonstrates the importance of understanding Women’s Rights and their role in economic development and peace building. This places women’s rights in context to set the scene for the rest of …


Roadblocks To Access: Perceptions Of Law And Socioeconomic Problems In South Africa, Kira Tait Jun 2021

Roadblocks To Access: Perceptions Of Law And Socioeconomic Problems In South Africa, Kira Tait

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation explores ordinary Black South Africans' perceptions of the law and how these perceptions impact their views of the desirability and appropriateness of appealing to courts when they have problems accessing constitutionally guaranteed services. Specifically, I study why people choose not to use courts to secure access to water, healthcare, education, and housing when it is both legal and possible to do so. Since it transitioned to democracy, South Africa has become one of the leaders of socioeconomic rights protection through courts. It is globally recognized for its progressive constitution buttressed by an expansive system of rights and a …


Mental Health Outcomes Of Various Types Of Fear Among University Students Who Have An Undocumented Legal Status During The Donald Trump Presidency, Liliana Campos Jun 2021

Mental Health Outcomes Of Various Types Of Fear Among University Students Who Have An Undocumented Legal Status During The Donald Trump Presidency, Liliana Campos

Doctoral Dissertations

Having an undocumented legal status is a risk factor for mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety among university students. Much of the literature on the experiences of university students who hold an undocumented legal status has primarily focused on better understanding the educational, social, financial, and legal challenges among undergraduate students. The literature has addressed how some of these difficulties impact components of their social and mental health wellness. Yet, there is still a dearth of research focused on further understanding the experiences of students who hold an undocumented legal status from a psychological perspective, and specifically, with …