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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Religious Self-Identity And Racism, Alexandria Morgan Dec 2023

Religious Self-Identity And Racism, Alexandria Morgan

Honors College

This project is a replication of a study by Johnson, Rowatt, and LaBouff (2010) that subliminally primed American Christian participants to think about Christianity subconsciously and found increased prejudice towards Black Americans. This study is often cited to support the claim that “thinking about religion makes people more prejudiced,” despite not having been replicated effectively. Replicability is crucial to make appropriate claims. We replicated the original study with updated explicit priming methods as well as updated racial prejudice scales with a recruited national sample of 500 white American Christians through Prolific.ac. Participants were randomly assigned to a priming condition, where …


The Role Of Confrontation Effectiveness For Women's Psychological Wellbeing After A Sexist Event, Shelby Helwig Aug 2022

The Role Of Confrontation Effectiveness For Women's Psychological Wellbeing After A Sexist Event, Shelby Helwig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three experimental studies investigating how confronting sexism impacts college-aged women. In Studies 1 and 2, we investigated how confronting effectively versus ineffectively influenced women’s imagined (Study 1) and actual (Study 2) psychological wellbeing. In Study 3, we investigated how imagining the costs and benefits of confronting sexual harassment impacted women’s confrontational behavior and negative affect. All three studies supported the conclusion that an effective confrontation is a goal for most confronters (Study 3) and whether or not a confrontation is effective influences women’s imagined (Study 1) and actual (Study 2) psychological wellbeing. Beyond this, all three studies …


Examining Women's Psychophysiological Responses Under Increasingly Obvious Sexism, Shelby Helwig May 2022

Examining Women's Psychophysiological Responses Under Increasingly Obvious Sexism, Shelby Helwig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When women experience sexism, it may at first be subtle and difficult to label only becoming clearer over time. Sexism is often ambiguous in nature and experienced over an extended period; therefore, studying sexism as it occurs in daily life is crucial to extending our understanding of how women cope with discrimination. Past research has shown that women may experience maladaptive physiological responses when exposed to various forms of sexism. The current study investigated women’s cardiovascular reactivity and recovery responses to prolonged, increasingly obvious sexism. Women evaluated resumes in a mock search committee meeting with two male confederates whose statements …


Confronting Microaggressions: It’S Not Just What You Say, It’S The Way You Say It, Nate Poole Feb 2021

Confronting Microaggressions: It’S Not Just What You Say, It’S The Way You Say It, Nate Poole

Social Justice: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Kamala Harris, the first female, Black and Asian American to serve as the vice president of the United States, has been a near constant presence across media sourcesover the course of a primary and general election cycle, and yet the correct pronunciation of her first name remains a mystery to many. To be clear, it’s pronounced comma-la. It’s not long, not immensely diffocult to remember, and certainly not hard to Google. However, the phonetic complexity of the vice-president’s first name has overwhelmed pundits and politicians alike, including Tucker Carlson, former Georgia Sen. David Perdue, and former President Donald Trump. Colorful …


Muslim Women In From Bangor Share Experiences, Ali Tobey Feb 2019

Muslim Women In From Bangor Share Experiences, Ali Tobey

Social Justice: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

On Wednesday, Feb. 6, the Maine Multicultural Center hosted an event called “Unveiling the Veil: Truths About Muslim Women in Maine.” Dina Yacoubagha and Marwa Elkelani shared their experiences as Muslim women in Maine and discussed common misconceptions surrounding women in their religion.


"They Need To Get Over It..." The Dismissal Of Native American Social Issues, Andrew Tomer May 2017

"They Need To Get Over It..." The Dismissal Of Native American Social Issues, Andrew Tomer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Native Americans face adverse socioeconomic and academic disparities. In addition to these disparities, Native Americans must also contend with unfair stereotypes about their groups. These stereotypes about Native Americans are reinforced through a number of public portrayals including Native American mascots. These mascots reinforce the idea that Native Americans are anachronistically frozen in time, and promote both positive and negative stereotypes about them. Although a national call by the American Psychological Association was made to discontinue use of the mascots, as well as a relatively large body of research suggesting the harm that these portrayals of Native Americans, the use …


The Role Of Threat, Emotion, And Individual Difference Characteristics In Attitudes And Perceptions Of Minority Groups, Aeleah Granger May 2017

The Role Of Threat, Emotion, And Individual Difference Characteristics In Attitudes And Perceptions Of Minority Groups, Aeleah Granger

Honors College

A socio-functional approach to prejudice posits that different out-groups are perceived to pose different types of threats to group success by in-group members. These different types of threats include physical safety/security threats, economic threats, moral threats, etc. Within this framework, each type of threat elicits a different emotional response from in-group members. In the current pair of studies, we investigated the extent to which Arab Americans and Muslim Americans (Study 1), as well as deaf individuals and those with disabilities (Study 2) are attitudinally conflated into the same social category by measuring the emotional responses they elicit from participants, and …


The Devil Of Hell's Kitchen : Social Constructions In The Best Of Us, Sam Tracy Sep 2016

The Devil Of Hell's Kitchen : Social Constructions In The Best Of Us, Sam Tracy

Social Justice: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Cultural norms shape perceptions. This is an unavoidable truth, but one that is rarely acknowledged. It isn’t important whether that lack of acknowledgement is based on a general unawareness or willful ignorance or something else — but simply that it happens. The majority of the mainstream public is in the dark about many prejudices that seep into societal norms. One of the struggles many of us face is putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Majorities have trouble sympathizing with minorities or refuse to try. White people cannot be the target of racism, heterosexuals do not have to live with homophobia …


What Shapes Our Attitudes Toward Outgroups?: Measuring Implicit And Explicit Homosexual Prejudice, Morgan Kinney May 2014

What Shapes Our Attitudes Toward Outgroups?: Measuring Implicit And Explicit Homosexual Prejudice, Morgan Kinney

Honors College

The emotional bases of homosexual prejudice are not completely understood, often times not even by the people who hold the prejudice themselves. Because implicit biases can go undetected even by the person holding them, and because they happen before conscious control of emotions is available, these attitudes may be best measured through physiological measures like startle eye-blink response. My honors thesis measures implicit attitudes toward homosexuals using psychophysiological means and examines the influence of religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism on those non-conscious automatic attitudes. Facial Electromyography (EMG) was used to detect startle responses to an auditory probe while viewing romantic, …


An Investigation Into The Perceptions Of International And Out-Of-State Students On The University Of Maine Campus, Matthew Pinkham Apr 2014

An Investigation Into The Perceptions Of International And Out-Of-State Students On The University Of Maine Campus, Matthew Pinkham

Honors College

The present study was designed to investigate in-state students’ perceptions of two out-groups on the University of Maine campus: out-of-state students and international students and the experiences of international students. Two separate surveys were administered online over two semesters: the first’s goal was to evaluate perceptions host students might have of their peers and if these peers were perceived to be from distinct out-groups, while the second survey was an exploratory survey allowing international students to describe their experiences while studying at UMaine. Two hundred and fifty seven in-state students responded to the first survey. Results from this survey showed …