Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Asch And Ai: Conformity To Non-Human Intelligence, Andrew Stephen Heim

Masters Theses

Conformity is the process that occurs when we submit to group pressures. These pressures can come from normative social influence, a desire to be liked, and informational social influence, the belief that the group has information that we do not. In the current study, the classic Asch line judgment paradigm is combined with virtual reality technology to study social influence in groups of both humans and artificial intelligences. Additionally, the line judgment task is varied as either unambiguous or ambiguous. The results indicated that participants were more likely to not conform to unambiguous stimuli and artificial intelligence confederates. Response times …

Temembe And Sven: The Ethics Of Racist Mirth, Stephen Wilke

Masters Theses

You walk past a crowd of people at a bar, grouped around one person. He’s in the middle of telling a joke, the kind you wouldn’t tell your parents but is often told in the amenable company of close friends. You realize that the butt of the joke, the punchline, assumes that people of color are lazy and entitled. This is not an assumption you agree wit, but you find yourself with a feeling of mirth while scoffing at the comedian. His timing is well executed, and the turn of phrase is witty. The joke was racist, and yet emotionally …

Borderline Features Mediate The Association Between The Experience Of Childhood Sexual Abuse And Opioid Misuse Among Pregnant Women, Chloe T. Cohen

Masters Theses

The relationship between experiences of childhood sexual abuse and opioid misuse in adults is well documented, specifically among women, but less is known about this association in pregnancy. No studies to date have investigated processes that could be the target of interventions to help women with childhood sexual abuse histories better care for their infants. In the current study, we examined borderline personality disorder features as mediators which may explain the link between childhood sexual abuse and opioid misuse during pregnancy. We sampled N = 93 pregnant women: n = 55 were misusing opioids during their pregnancies and n = …

An Inconsistent God: Attachment To God And Minority Stress Among Sexual Minority Christians, Adam David Anthony Maughan

Masters Theses

Having a secure Attachment to God (ATG) has been found to be related to better mental health and well-being for Christian individuals and has been shown to have a buffering effect against stressful life events for this population. However, the ATG literature has failed to examine the experiences of Christians who also identify as sexual minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, same-sex attracted, or another non-exclusively heterosexual identity). Sexual minority Christians (SMCs) experience unique minority stressors related to prejudice, discrimination, and stigma associated with their sexual identities, and this minority stress has negative implications for their mental health and well-being. …

Emotional Destruction: How Supervisors Can Transform A Subordinate’S Emotions Towards The Workplace, Diane K. Carr

Masters Theses

Workplace emotions have become an increasingly important area for researchers and organizations. Organizational structures and interpersonal interactions activate emotional responses for employees. This emotional strain can lead employees to search for outlets, such as social media, to express their emotions and seek emotional support. This thesis uses a content analysis to examine how macro level policies and procedures and micro level interpersonal interactions between supervisors and subordinates impact the messages expressed on Twitter.

Tweet Diffusion Over Space And Time: A Comparison Of A Winter-Weather And Tornado-Outbreak Case Study, Alyssa Margaret Cannistraci

Masters Theses

Social media allows people to receive, engage in, and share weather information. Users of the social media platform Twitter actively share weather content via tweets, which researchers can acquire through an Application Programming Interface (API). APIs return tweet content, as well as temporal and spatial characteristics (latitude and longitude coordinates). Tweets can then be mapped and studied spatiotemporally through Geographic Information System (GIS) software. For this work, I compared how tweets spread (“diffuse”) over space and time during two natural hazard events in the United States. The first case study is a winter weather event that The Weather Channel named …

Validation Of The College Planning Behaviors Scale, Katherine Danielle Cook

Masters Theses

College preparation is an important topic in the educational attainment for high school students. Much of the research on college planning focuses on the importance and timing of preparing for postsecondary education; however, little research exists that has determined which steps students actually take while preparing for college. The current study utilizes the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; Lent et al., 1994) framework to create a validated measure to assess choice behavior. In this study, college planning behaviors (CPB), which are the concrete behaviors an individual engages in to prepare for college, were considered as choice actions within the SCCT …

Consumer Preferences For Environmentally Friendly Disposable Dinnerware Alternatives, Mackenzie Gill

Masters Theses

In the context of growing concern surrounding the environmental impact of single-use paper and plastic waste, demand for alternatives to conventional disposables has recently increased. This study investigates factors driving consumer preferences for ecofriendly attributes in disposable dinnerware. The study subsequently measures willingness to pay for such an alternative; specifically, dinnerware molded from wheat straw. Data was collected from an online survey of 206 Tennessee consumers aged 18 and older who consider themselves to be the primary household food shopper.

The first part of this investigation uses a Multiple Indicator Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model to estimate the effects of demographics, …

Star Wars, Parasocial Relationships And Breakups, And The Force…Of Fandom, Alexandria P. Sutherland

Masters Theses

As we live our lives in an increasingly growing digital world, like-minds tend to gather. These like-minds, when gathered around a media franchise, become known as a fandom. Fandom culture can often shape an individual’s identity, as they become more heavily engrossed in the lore surrounding the media. Permeating this individual identity is the group identity, which allows for the fandom to be labeled as a community. When belonging to a very popular media’s fandom, such as Star Wars, it is rather easy to become completely engrossed in the characters and their stories, long after the credits roll, and …

Identifying Smokestacks In Remotely Sensed Imagery Via Deep Learning Algorithms, Kenneth Moss

Masters Theses

Locating smokestacks in remote sensing imagery is a crucial first step to calculating smokestack heights, which allows for the accurate modeling of dioxin pollution spread and the study of resulting health impacts. In the interest of automating this process, this thesis examines deep learning networks and how changes in input datasets and network architecture affect image detection accuracy. This initial image detection serves as the first step in automated object recognition and height calculation. While this is applicable to general land use classification, this study specifically addresses detecting smokestack images. Different dataset scenarios are generated from the massive Functional Map …

Efficacy Of Creative Interventions In Virtual Reality, Matthew Thomas Richesin

Masters Theses

Engaging in creative activities is known to increase well-being by reducing levels of stress, anxiety, and improve life satisfaction. Interventions utilizing creative activities have proven to enhance therapeutic results in various mental disorders. Similarly, virtual reality has emerged as an effective method of decreasing negative aspects of mental disorders. While both creative interventions and virtual reality show promise in enhancing well-being, the efficacy of combining the two has not been explored. This study aimed to combine and compare 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional art-making on stress, anxiety, and mood in a non-clinical college student sample. To accomplish this, both physiological and self-report …

Exploring The Effects Of Response Type In A Visual Working Memory Task: An Fnirs Study, Rachel Eddings

Masters Theses

Visual working memory (VWM) allows us to hold visual information in mind to be manipulated for a task. Previous research shows that performance varies based on factors such as stimulus modality and number of distractors. This study aimed to explore the effect of response type on VWM performance in 4.5- and 5.5-year-olds. A single-item probe color change detection task and a cued recall with labeling task were administered. The tasks were identical in structure until the response phase of the trial. Neural data were collected using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Both tasks used set-sizes 1-3 and six canonical colors (red, orange, …

Willing White Flag: Voluntary Militia Disarmament In The Lebanese Civil War, Daniella Maria Khoury

Masters Theses

This study examines the conditions under which militias embroiled in civil war choose to disarm. This study argues that militias more invested in domestic politics rather than engaging in regional rivalries, are more likely to choose to disarm voluntarily. The results show that after examining seven different militias in the context of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), religious affiliation is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to cause the drastic difference in the outcome of voluntary disarmament. The theory is proven correct when accounting for domestic and international relationships and militia commitment to operating within a particular level of analysis.

The Remediation Of Paralinguistic Features For The Construction Of Epistemic Stance In Online Vegan Communities, James R. Shepard Iii

Masters Theses

In this thesis, I examine how members of online vegan communities construct and perform epistemic stance through exploiting the affordances of alphabetic computer-mediated communication (CMC) to remediate paralinguistic features. The data are taken from two exchanges across two different online platforms: Facebook and Reddit. Working within the constraints of alphabetic CMC and the affordances of their respective platforms, interactants discuss vegan activism in ways that mimic traditional oral communication. Utilizing unique linguistic constructions and features of CMC such as emoji and emoticons, interactants are able to clearly perform their affective and epistemic stances as well as demonstrate what McCulloch calls …

Role Of Correlation And Statistical Distribution For Multi-Objective Conservation Investment, Young Gwan Lee

Masters Theses

A growing body of literature suggests a need to incorporate both correlation- and distribution-related information into conservation investment decisions with multiple benefits. This study identifies optimal spatial targets and their budget distributions of payments for ecosystem services (PES), as well as the tradeoff relationships under multiple-objective scenarios of maximizing forest-based carbon sequestration, maximizing forest-dependent biodiversity, and maximizing economic impact. Specifically, this study investigates how the spatial targets, their budget distributions, and tradeoff relationships are affected by correlations among multiple objectives and their statistical distributions in terms of return on investment (ROI) by focusing on 231 counties in the eight states …