Digital Commons Network^™

Racial Microaggressions And Health Status: The Moderating Effect Of Emotion Regulation, Kristin C. Davidoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current study seeks to explore the relationship between racial microaggressions and physical and mental health. Significant racial disparities in health status persist in the United States (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2013). Previous research asserts that racial discrimination negatively impacts physical health (Williams, Neighbors, & Jackson, 2003), and studies of subtle discrimination support an inverse relationship with mental health (Borrell et al., 2006). The immediate process following the commission of a microaggression and the target’s internal response may have significant consequences for physical and mental health. The purpose of the current study is twofold: (1) to examine …

Are You With Me? The Impact Of Losing A Conversation Partner’S Attention To A Mobile Device, Zachary A. Geller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the impact of a cell phone interruption on participants’ emotional experience during a conversation, using the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) (Murray, 1943) as a measurement instrument. The study explored whether or not, after losing their conversation partner’s attention to a cell phone, subjects would: tell stories reflecting less adaptive representations of relationships with oneself and others, as measured using a social cognition and object relations rating, SCORS (Stein et al, 2011); tell stories containing more negative emotional words, as measured using a linguistic inquiry software, LIWC (Pennebaker, 2001); and tell stories containing fewer words total.

Methods: …

The Nucleus Accumbens Core Dopamine D1 And Glutamate Ampa/Nmda Receptors Play A Transient Role In The Performance Of Pavlovian Approach Behavior, Veronica Dobrovitsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The role of the nucleus accumbens core (NAc core) continues to be redefined with newly acquired data on neurochemical mechanisms mediating the learning and performance of behavior. Previous empirical data showed that dopamine transmission at the D1 receptor (D1R) plays a transient role in the expression of learned Pavlovian approach behavior. Here we show that, prior to overtraining, dopamine activity at D1Rs specifically within the NAc core is critical for the performance of approach behavior elicited by the recently-acquired reward-paired cue. Blockade of D1Rs in the NAc core, but not the dorsomedial striatum or NAc shell, disrupted approach responses during …

Does The Career Adaptation Process Change As A Function Of An Employee's Age Or Employment Gaps? An Investigation Of Relationships Among Personal Resources, Contextual Factors, Coping Behaviors, And Career Success, Hilal Erkovan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of the current research was to enhance understanding of the career adaption process by developing and testing a new psychological framework by integrating three contemporary career theories (i.e., Protean, Boundaryless, and Social Cognitive Career (SCCT) theories). All of these career theories emphasize adaptability and agency as central constructs and stress career self-management as part of having a contemporary mindset because taking control of your career is important. To understand the adaptation process, antecedents and consequences of job-related coping behaviors, which are defined as cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands, were investigated. The model …

The Contributions Of Child And Romantic Attachment To Sleep Quality, Karen Estefane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Little is known about the relation between attachment and sleep, although both develop around the first year of life and mutually influence each other. Furthermore, attachment styles and dimensions have been associated with sleep difficulties in both childhood and adulthood. However, these findings have not been consistent, especially among dismissing individuals. In addition, the specific contributions of both child and romantic attachment to sleep quality have not been investigated thus far. This cross-sectional study aims to examine the ways child and romantic attachment are associated with sleep quality. A sample of 671 heterosexual residents of the United States, aged 18 …

Labeling Histories: Mental Disability In American Schooling, Kylah Torre

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of the study is to examine the effect that dominant cultural schemas (norms) had on the educational outcomes and identity formation of students with mental disabilities. Through an examination of histories of psychology and public schooling in the United States, as well as oral history interviews with 7 participants, the research investigates how these cultural schemas have shifted over time and what role students with mental disabilities have played in reproducing or resisting schemas which marked them as deficient. Sewell’s (1992) theory of structure and agency, Disability Studies theory, and theories of labeling and intersectionality are utilized to …

Harm And Victim Age As Factors In The Determination Of Intentionality And Culpability, Donal David Barnard Jr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States criminal justice system, jurors are directed to determine a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by establishing both the act of committing a crime (actus reus) and the culpable mental state of the defendant (mens rea), that is, the defendant’s intentionality. The role of a juror in a criminal case is that of a factfinder, deciding whether the two elements of the crime have been met. Criminal cases where jurors are asked to decide the facts vary in the harm that resulted. The more severe the harm, the greater the perceived injustice. This …

Liberal Translations: Secular Concepts, Law, And Religion In Colonial Egypt, Jeffrey Culang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a conceptual history of Egypt’s national formation between the 1880s and the 1930s. This period involved the convergence of nationalism, colonial rule, missionary activity, and new modes of governance at the national and international levels. Drawing on state and missionary archival material, periodicals, legal compendia, laws, and parliamentary transcripts, and adapting methods developed by Reinhart Koselleck, I trace shifts within Egypt’s socio-political lexicon through processes of translation and demonstrate their effects upon social experience and political aspiration. I focus on a set of liberal-secular concepts critical to national politics—religious freedom, public interest, nationality, and the minority—as they …

The Under-Explored Role Of Tiredness In Alcohol Use And Sexual Risk-Taking Among Gay And Bisexual Men, Brett M. Millar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Numerous factors have been shown to increase the likelihood of risk-taking in the realms of alcohol use and sexual behavior— and many studies have focused on these behaviors among gay and bisexual men (GBM), given the health disparities that exist in substance use and HIV/STI infections. After a brief review of the person- and situation-level variables that have already been identified, I will argue for the relevance of also considering a previously under-explored situation-level factor in alcohol use and sexual risk-taking: sleep-related fatigue, referred to here as tiredness. While tiredness has been shown, in the sleep science literature, to impair …

Psychoanalysis And Modernity: A Failure To Find Relief From Existential Terror, Erin Liat Claridge

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project considers the ways in which culture—the symbols and institutions that guide behavior and provide meaning to the individuals living within a community—serves a defensive function against conscious awareness of existential terror. The term existential terror refers to the cognitive and emotional experience of recognizing the inevitability of death, which is often accompanied by feelings of angst, isolation from others, and awareness of meaninglessness. In this dissertation, I will argue that the broad shift from traditional culture based on Judeo-Christian religious beliefs and communal forms of social life to modernity represents a slow but destabilizing deterioration of the defensive …

Culture And Mental Health: Considering The Role Of The Complex Cultural-History In Irish-American Population, Tiffinie Patricia Sesko

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigates the mental health of Irish immigrants and first generation Irish Americans. As the Irish-American population makes up such a large portion of the entire population of the United States, it is important we acknowledge its origin and take that into account where mental illness and treatment are concerned as the Irish culture has a pronounced effect on mental health. The intended audience of this review are expert and non-expert members of the clinical setting and community who may gain insight on helping a client or family member find a way to understand and express repressed feelings affectively. …

Walking As Ontological Shifter: Thoughts In The Key Of Life, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With walking as ontological shifter I pursue an alternative to the dominant modernist episteme that offers either/or onto-epistemologies of opposition and their reifying engagements. I propose this type of walking is an intentional turning towards a set of radical positions that, as integrative aesthetic and therapeutic practice, brings multiplicity and synchronicity to experience and being in an expanded sociality. This practice facilitates the conditions of possibility for recurring points of contact between the interiority perceived as ‘body’ and the exteriority perceived as ‘world.’ While making evident the self’s at once incoherence with it-self, it opens to a space beyond the …

Approximation Algorithms For Effective Team Formation, George Rabanca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the problem of creating multiple disjoint teams of maximum efficacy from a fixed set of workers. We identify three parameters which directly correlate to the team effectiveness — team expertise, team cohesion and team size — and propose efficient algorithms for optimizing each in various settings. We show that under standard assumptions the problems we explore are not optimally solvable in polynomial time, and thus we focus on developing efficient algorithms with guaranteed worst case approximation bounds. First, we investigate maximizing team expertise in a setting where each worker has different expertise for each job and each …

Song Rhythm Development In Zebra Finches, Julia Hyland Bruno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates song-rhythm learning in songbirds. Songbirds have been studied extensively in mechanistic investigations into the sensorimotor underpinnings of the cultural transmission of learned vocalizations. While several studies identified forebrain song-system neurons that generate rhythmic song patterns, we know little about how song rhythms are learned. The first part of the dissertation describes methods for detecting and analyzing birdsong rhythm patterns, and demonstrates their utility for identifying the role of song rhythms in social interactions. Results suggest that rhythm plasticity in zebra finch song may provide a potential vehicle for communication. Controlled song-learning experiments further found that developing zebra …

Bodies Of Knowledge: An Anatomy And Kinesiology Of The American Prison Nation, 'Human'-Making, And Twenty-First-Century Techno-Gods, Lyndsey Karr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The social production of hegemonic knowledge has historically been legitimized in relation to the sanctioned status of the ‘Human’.[1] Beginning with the American Prison Industrial Complex and what sociologist Beth E. Richie conceptualizes as the “prison nation,” I will show the ‘human’ as a contingent and composite status appearing along a spectrum of Flesh, Body, and ‘Human’ (Flesh-Body-‘Human’) statuses and subjectivity.

Bringing this ‘Human’ continuum into conversation with twenty-first-century media, (micro)computational technologies, and contemporary knowledge and social economies, I expand the notion, reach, and scale of the American “prison nation.” Following Mark Hansen’s treatment of twenty-first-century digital media, I …

Genealogy Of The Concept Of "Hate Crime": The Cultural Implications Of Legal Innovation And Social Change, Roslyn Myers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The term "hate crime" is new to legislative and public discourse, as well as legal and social science scholarship. A decade after the concept of a "hate crime" was introduced in Congress, the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA), to punish criminal actors who target victims because of their characteristics (race, color ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, gender, gender identity, or disability). Using relevant archival sources, this project uses genealogical qualitative methods to examine the interplay of cultural elements manifested in this provocative term, which reflect dominance and subjugation among social groups (In- and Out-Groups) …

An Experimental Investigation Of Emotional Labor Display Rules And Performance In A Human Resources Sexual Harassment Interview Simulation, Jolie M.B. Terrazas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Human Resource (HR) professionals are expected to engage in emotional labor (EL), or, management and control of their own emotions and emotional expression, during sexual harassment (SH) investigations. This EL expectation, or display rule (DR), is dynamic and complex requiring suppression of emotions and expressions of neutral empathy and is thus termed a dynamic neutral-empathic DR. Prior research shows that DRs in other occupations function as job demands that can deplete employees’ personal resources and negatively affect performance. The current study investigates the impact of the dynamic neutral-empathic DR by testing a process model that was developed via an …

Social Media Use And Media Literacy In Relation To Adolescents' Understanding Of The Internet, Kasey L. Powers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Digital media has permeated American culture among users of all ages. By early adolescence, youth are using and consuming media at unprecedented rates. While the majority of content consumed remains largely television and movies, often streamed through new channels like Amazon and YouTube, video games and apps also comprise a portion of the media diet. As youth enter adolescence, their usage of social media, defined as any platform that allows interactive communication in response to online posting, becomes more prevalent.

In this study, I explore Internet and social media use and its impact on adolescents’ understanding of media in three …

A Realization Of Modernity: Case Studies In Connectivity And Time, Mari Gorman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My stated goal in applying to The Graduate Center was to explore my previous research in diverse fields of study. This research, the result of a formal investigation of acting, was and still is centrally focused on the subject of relationship itself, relationships being what actors create. In pursuit of a greater understanding of the essential nature of relationship in practical terms, a self-organizing complex system that constitutes universal relationship was unexpectedly discovered. As such, this system has been shown to offer solutions to many outstanding problems in diverse areas of study. The Liberal Studies program track, Approaches to Modernity …

Behavioral Responses To Pulses Of Light In The Longfin Inshore Squid, Doryteuthis Pealeii (Lesueur, 1821), Stavros P. Hadjisolomou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The coleoid cephalopods (octopus, squid, and cuttlefish) are masters of rapid, adaptive camouflage. Unlike the slower hormonal chromatophore control of flatfish and chameleons, coleoid mollusks can change body patterns in milliseconds. Visual camouflage in coleoids is driven by a sensorimotor system consisting of visual input of their surroundings, a sophisticated central nervous system for information processing, and a neuromuscular control for body patterning. Motor neurons selectively activate millions of muscles, alternately expanding and reducing the pigmented chromatophores to generate visible brown, red, orange and yellow patterns on the skin. Below the chromatophore-layered skin are two types of reflecting cells, iridophores …

Criminal Responsibility: Meta-Analysis And Study Space, Lauren E. Kois

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Criminal responsibility (CR; i.e., sanity) has garnered significant research attention over the years. While some variables predicting insanity outcomes are consistent, others are not. Study-level characteristics, such as sample selection, variability in the operational definition of insanity, or other unknown influences may explain discrepant findings. It is critical to consolidate these variables and systematically assess differences in methodology to understand the state of the literature and to guide future research. As such, I conducted the first meta-analysis and study space analysis (see Malpass et al., 2008) in this area. Only 16 studies met inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis. Summary effects …

Stayin' Alive: Transnational Sanctuary And Insurgency, Matthew Murray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The conventional wisdom of counterinsurgency runs that insurgent groups with bases in neighboring states (transnational sanctuaries) are relatively more difficult to defeat than comparable groups without such bases. Insurgents with transnational sanctuaries benefit from relative protection from attack by counterinsurgents, they may recruit, train, and arm safely in their sanctuaries, transmit propaganda into their target state, and use these sanctuaries as staging points for infiltration or raids into their target state. Counterinsurgents have gone to great lengths to disrupt or destroy insurgent bases in neighboring countries based on the belief that this is necessary to defeating insurgents. However, several groups …

Understanding The Role Of The Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex In Emotional Memory Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation And Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, R. Rachel Weintraub-Brevda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emotional stimuli can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on memory, such that emotional stimuli can be distracting from current neutral working memory goals, while also leading to enhanced episodic memory for the distracting emotional stimuli. Recent evidence suggests that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) has multiple roles in the enhancing effects of emotion on memory through top-down/controlled processes, including 1) coping with negative distraction and 2) elaborative encoding of negative information. Additionally, previous research has alluded to hemispheric differences in the VLPFC (Chapter 1). However, previous research has been correlational, with no strong laterality tests of the VLPFC. Two …

Roles Of Gabab, Muscarinic And Nicotinic Receptor Signaling In The Acquisition And Expression Of Fructose And Fat-Conditioned Flavor Preferences And Acquisition Of Quinine-Conditioned Flavor Avoidances In Rats, Francis M. Rotella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In addition to increased intake of sweet solutions by mammals, learning, particularly classically-conditioned “Pavlovian-like” learning, also plays an important role. An orosensory conditioned flavor preference (CFP) can be elicited by pairing one novel flavor (conditioned stimulus, CS+) with a fructose solution and a second novel flavor (CS-) with a saccharin solution. Rats will prefer the CS+ flavor in a subsequent 2-bottle choice test with both flavors mixed in saccharin. Previous pharmacological analyses revealed that systemic administration of dopamine (DA) D1 and D2 as well as NMDA, but not opioid, receptor antagonists eliminated the acquisition (learning) of fructose-CFP. Further, expression of …

Gender And Financial Risk Aversion, Efstathia Korkou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The primary goal of this dissertation is the study and measurement of the effect of gender in the process of financial decision making and investment decision making in particular, under uncertainty. In terms of investment decisions, researchers have linked investors’ risk aversion to several individual characteristics of theirs, such as their age, their income or their financial knowledge. However, an investor’s characteristic, somehow overlooked or not properly investigated, has been the investor’s gender, and the latter’s bearing on investment decision making. Research from the 1990s suggested that once individuals are called to allocate their wealth and make investment decisions, women …

Mapping How Culture In New York City And London Influences Respectively The Iconic Fashion Brands Of Kors And Mcqueen: A Case Study, Carol Brathwaite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is an explanatory case study that applies geographic information systems (GIS) data, biographical data, and other secondary data. It includes mainly qualitative data collection and analysis; furthermore, the study examines quantitative data on the cultural events offered within each city. Overall, this case study adopts a theoretical perspective. The two individual cases (based on a multiple, holistic case-study design framework) of fashion culture in New York City and London, as per Michael Kors and Alexander McQueen respectively, represent ‘confirmatory cases or presumed replications of the same phenomenon’ (Yin 2014:59). Each describes the house’s fashion aesthetics as well as …

Individual Levels Of Bias And Immigration Policies In The United States: A Test And Extension Of The Dual Processing Model Of Bias, Lorraine Phillips

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study was a test and extension of the Dual Process Model of bias on attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy in the United States. The Dual Process Model predicts that people who score higher on either the Social Dominance Orientation scale or the Right Wing Authoritarian scale will hold more negative attitudes toward immigrants, particularly if immigrants are viewed as a threat. A sample of 315 participants from across the United States was recruited using Amazon’s M Turk site. This study used a combination of attitudinal measures, policy scales, and experimental vignettes. The study found that the Dual …

Thinking About The Self While Talking To Someone Else: Investigating Self-Focus In Conversation, Carrie Dimatteo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although research has shown that self-focus brings attention to how one is doing relative to standards and changes behavior to better meet those standards (Carver & Scheier, 1981; Duval & Wicklund, 1972), this process has rarely been tested within conversations. Three experiments tested (1) whether state self-focus, measured by looking at oneself on-screen during online video chats, varied as a function of changing self-standard discrepancies (manipulated by conversation topics) or by traits related to self-focus (self-esteem, social anxiety, and self-consciousness) and (2) how state self-focus, manipulated by the presence or absence of the self on the video chat screen, and/or …

From Targets To Agents: Women's Perceptions Of Their Vulnerability And The Strategies They Use To Resist, Alexis Halkovic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Women in the U.S. are sexually victimized at high rates and are socialized to believe they are unable to defend themselves. While there is ample evidence that women can successfully fight off assailants using physical force (Clay-Warner, 2002; Ullman, 2007), women’s self-defense training initiatives are not funded by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) or any national anti-violence organizations (Carlson, 2014). The NRA, on the other hand, tailors programs to instruct women to use guns for self-defense leaving them as the only national organization promoting women’s right to defend themselves (Carlson, 2014). This project interrogates how women think about their …

Ecologies Of Embodied Minds Embedded: Radical Romantic Perspectives On Architectures Of Technology, Sharmaine Browne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores Romantic responses to the role of architectural technologies in the development of material being, consciousness, and culture by applying a critical approach in which I combine radical embodied cognitive theory, ecocritical perspectives, and a phenomenological lens to select Romantic texts written from 1789 to 1884 in response to industrial modernity. While scholarship has thoroughly explored technology as a cultural force which inevitably shapes consciousness, I propose that a slight shift of emphasis from technology’s external influence to the material internalization of its influence allows for new perspectives—particularly in light of recent proposals in cognitive philosophy which assert …