Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Investigating The Chickadee Ethos., David L. Book

Doctoral Dissertations

Morality, as used within this dissertation, is conceptualized as having two distinct components – a shared, norm-based, cultural component and a subjective, character-based, emotion-based component. Using this dual-aspect model of morality, we examine the roots of morality using a comparative, 5th-Aim Ethological framework. This ethological framework was applied to study possible emotional states of the Carolina chickadees. Three experiments are presented which attempt to identify the most likely proximate emotion for the general call of the foraging chickadees. These studies examined food presence, food type and volume, and vocal cues of predator presence. Our data suggest that a homeostatic-related emotion …

Essays In Behavioral Economics, Jing Li

Doctoral Dissertations

In chapter one, I propose a model consolidating the norm- and preferences-based approaches to explain laboratory bargaining outcomes. Social norms are identified by the axioms of cooperative bargaining theory, and other-regarding preferences are captured using Fehr and Schmidt's inequity aversion utility function. The model applies to bargaining situations where other-regarding agents abide by social norms in their decision-making. Preferences and norms interact to determine bargaining outcomes, and their interaction undermines the recoverability of the other-regarding preference parameters based on observations from the lab.

In chapter two, I employ a lab experiment to study whether men receive lucrative tasks more often …

The Role Of Family Endorsement In Venture Creation And Sustainability, Thomas Daniel White

Doctoral Dissertations

Entrepreneurship research has shown that family social support is an important factor in an entrepreneur’s venture creation and sustainability efforts, yet little is known about the nature and impact of family processes that occur prior to venture start, or how early endorsement of a venture impacts the entrepreneur. These processes are important to consider, because they may facilitate or inhibit ongoing family social support and influence the entrepreneur’s venture creation and sustainability decisions. Utilizing a family systems theoretical framework, I draw on theories of self-perception, social support and conservation of resources to address three issues. First, I introduce the construct …

An Examination Of Music Majors' Perceived Barriers To Complying With An Exercise Program, Matthew William Seitz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focused on a mixed-methods exploration of the barriers and motivation to exercise in a sample of music majors at a large southeastern university. Due to dietary concerns and other obstacles to engaging in regular exercise, musicians are at a greater dietary and cardiovascular risk than the general population. Previous research has revealed music majors, in general, do not identify as exercisers. This comes with its obvious health risks. Self-determination theory and exercise identity literature posits individuals who more strongly identify as exercisers and who are more intrinsically motivated to exercise will workout more often and more consistently than …

Can Text Analysis Of Tat Protocols Differentiate Patients Operating At Neurotic, Borderline, And Psychotic Levels Of Personality Organization?, Paul H. Tullis

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined whether computerized text analysis of Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) protocols could differentiate patients operating at neurotic, borderline, and psychotic levels of personality organization (LPO). From a large University psychological clinic archival database, I identified fifty-­‐two (N = 52) patients whose files: a) contained verbatim TAT responses; and b) included diagnosis indicative of neurotic, borderline, or psychotic LPO. Verbatim TAT transcriptions were input and analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) software. I hypothesized that 1) The use of cognitive words would be more common among the TAT protocols of the neurotic patients than among the protocols of …

Variation In Cortical Bone Distribution In The Aging Adult Appendicular Skeleton, Alice Fazlollah Gooding

Doctoral Dissertations

This study considers the effects of age on the distribution of bone in the adult skeleton. Age effects on the skeleton have been studied for diagnosis of osteoporosis or as mechanical compensatory changes to bone shape with loss in density. However, adult skeletal morphology is the result of a lifetime of genetic, dietary, activity, and biochemical factors. With these influences, it unclear at what age(s) bone geometry shifts to adapt to the physiological and mechanical demands placed on it, or, how these adaptations vary within and between bones.

This research addresses these questions by examining skeletal data obtained from the …

Mediation And Moderation Of Intergenerational Epigenetic Effects Of Trauma, Stefanie Renee Pilkay

Doctoral Dissertations

Trauma and early-life stress have been linked to poor mental and physical health outcomes. In fact, research has identified trauma and stress can influence epigenetic marks on genes that can alter gene activity. It is suspected that epigenetically altered gene activity is involved in behavior and mental health. This may help explain why some individuals don’t experience great benefit from treatment for the effects of stress, and severe mental health symptoms can be chronic for decades or a lifetime. Moreover, some trauma-related mental health symptoms have shown generational patterns that appear linked to epigenetic marks. Therefore, this study sought to …

Activism, Not Passivism: Identity, Experience, And Emotion, Victoria Hallie Rose Webb

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Survival And Habitat Selection Of Golden-Winged Warblers (Vermivora Chrysoptera) During Nesting And Post-Fledging Periods At North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area, Tennessee, Justin Andrew Lehman

Masters Theses

Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera) populations in the Appalachian Mountains have declined precipitously over the past 50 years. To better understand the decline, I studied two important aspects of the reproductive cycle: the nesting and post-fledging periods on reclaimed surface mines and recent timber harvest sites at North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area (NCWMA), Tennessee from 2013 to 2015. Nestlings were radio-marked with a 30-day transmitter two days before their scheduled fledge date and monitored daily once they fledged. Vegetation data were collected at the nest site and daily fledgling locations points along with paired random points. Vegetation characteristics most …

The Influence Of Body Size On Sexual Dimorphism, Haley Elizabeth Horbaly

Masters Theses

Accurate sex estimation of human skeletal remains is imperative for skeletal biologists, and relies upon the sexual dimorphism between males and females in a population. The degree of dimorphism, and hence the accuracy of sex estimation methods, are known to vary among populations, and while such global patterns have been well studied, the underlying causes of this variation are relatively unclear. Body size—a sexually dimorphic trait that also varies among populations—has previously been shown to affect skeletal morphology, yet whether specific body size parameters, such as stature and body mass, influence the expression of traits used for nonmetric sex estimation …

Assessing The Feasibility Of Nutrient-Related Water Quality Trading In Tennessee, Ayuska Ojha

Masters Theses

Continuous efforts have been made to restore and maintain water quality in the United States (U.S.) since the enactment of the “Clean Water Act” (CWA) in 1972. However, water quality impairment is still a prominent issue. Many water bodies in Tennessee remain impaired and unable to support their intended uses. Water Quality Trading (WQT) has been promoted as a flexible mechanism to reduce water quality impairment at lower cost. However, the results of trading programs, to date, are not encouraging. Given the inherent geographic restrictions of WQT programs, the spatial locations of impairments and of potential buyers and sellers of …

Impact Of College Pen Pal Program On Fourth Grade Writing Attitudes And Skills, Gretchen Lorena Roberts, Merilee Mccurdy

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Legal Analysis Of Ncaa Student-Athletes Worker's Compensation Status, James M. Long

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A History Of Welfare Policy In The United States: To Feed Or Blame The Hungry?, Lauren Ann Kataja

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Social Connection In Numbers, Heather M. Smith 9341528

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Social Contexts Of Development In Natural Outdoor Environments: Children’S Motor Activities, Personal Challenges And Peer Interactions At The River And The Creek, Cara Megan King Mcclain

Masters Theses

This study examined the influence of spending time outdoors on young children’s physical and socioemotional development. We observed preschoolers’ activities in two naturally provisioned outdoor environments over the course of one year. Eleven preschoolers were videotaped continuously for 16 days at a local river and 9 days at a creek adjacent to the school. In addition to the quantitative analyses of children’s behaviors, a case study of three children’s experiences over the course of the year was conducted. Both the river and the creek settings encouraged a multitude of physical and play behaviors with similar types of affordances, including flat …

Automation, Work, And Ideology: The Next Industrial Revolution And The Transformation Of "Labor", Anthony Jack Knowles Ii

Masters Theses

Over the last several decades, scholars and commentators from a variety of different fields, expertise, and ideological positions have written on automation technologies and their potential to cause technological unemployment. As a sociological analysis and critical examination of how experts ideologically frame these issues, this thesis demonstrates that ideology plays a crucial role in the revived debate over automation and technological displacement. Weberian ideal types are developed to demonstrate how three major ideological positions—liberal, conservative, and radical—approach and frame the link between automation, technological displacement, and the potential for technological unemployment. The qualitative tools of ideal type construction and theme …

Developing A Platform For Integrating Disability Issues Into City Municipality Decisions; Case Study: City Of Knoxville, Sravanthi Pamu

Masters Theses

The People with Disabilities (PWD) & Senior Citizen (SC) are isolated from the mainstream society, and they face several barriers in everyday life. There is no communication platform for them to express their concerns, in turn, participate in the city municipality policy decisions related to PWD- & SC-friendly city development. The purpose of this research is to integrate disability and senior citizen issues in the city of Knoxville to the city council decisions. The comprehensive literature search is done to identify the frequently mentioned disability and age-friendly city factors. An effective survey was designed to identify the issues in collaboration …

Twenty-­‐First Century Deindustrialization And Uneven Development In Appalachia, Katherine Custis Gerlaugh

Doctoral Dissertations

The causes and consequences of deindustrialization in the United States are myriad and have created a dire situation for millions of working class people as blue-­collar jobs have mostly vanished. This reality has been particularly hard in places like Appalachia, where manufacturing and extraction were the largest, and often only, employers for most of the 20th Century. Especially for rural areas with little appeal for new markets, tourism often appears to be one way to attract people to the area to spend money, but it is unclear whether or not this strategy is helpful to local economies. In this study, …

Never Forget: The Meaning Of The Global War On Terror In Post-9/11 U.S. Presidential Discourse, Landon Shane Bevier

Doctoral Dissertations

Framed by cultural criminology, this project examines the discursive construction of the U.S. state and the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in 190 public speeches and statements made by U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Whereas cultural criminology's focus on the politics of meaning and transgression in deviant subcultures is often criticized for glorifying deviance and ignoring real harm (O'Brien 2005; Hall and Winlow 2007), this project instead uses the framework to analyze the cultural practices of the state in regard to the waging of war. A key contribution of this work is thus the development of a …

Capitalist Organizing And Organizations: The Case Of The American Petroleum Institute, Elizabeth Ashley East

Doctoral Dissertations

Sociologists have underestimated the importance and power of organizations established to unify capitalist firms and interests. Existing research on trade associations tends to take one of two approaches, either atheoretical studies developing typologies of trade association activities or cultural sociological approaches overemphasizing the cultural significance of these organizations for business communities. Utilizing Marxian organizational theory, this dissertation conceptualizes trade associations as inherently capitalist organizations created to build and maintain the interests of the capitalist class. This perspective is applied to build an historical sociological case study of the formation and subsequent activities of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest …

The Three Dimensions Of Political Action In United States Democracy: Corporations As Political Actors And "Franchise Governments", Steven Alfonso Panageotou

Doctoral Dissertations

A tension has persisted in the United States between the principles of democracy and the capitalist economy. At its core, democracy refers to the ideal that people should govern themselves. Democracy is indeterminate, its future open. But the open-ended principle of democracy collides with the authoritarian nature of corporations that centralize power within bureaucratic institutions designed to rationalize and augment capital accumulation. The purpose of this dissertation is to explain why democratic aspirations to realize a system of ‘rule by the people’ have been confounded by corporate political power. To do so, I delineate how polit ical theorists have envisioned …

Preparing The Workforce For Integrated Healthcare, Denise Ratliff Black

Doctoral Dissertations

Integrated healthcare is recommended to deliver care to individuals with co-occurring medical and mental health conditions. Identifying the knowledge necessary for behavioral health providers to practice in integrated settings, and determining whether a computer application is an effective strategy to disseminate this knowledge, are essential steps to transitioning these individuals to integrated healthcare delivery systems. A literature review of U.S. based publications from 1999 to 2015 identified 68 articles that met inclusion criteria and identified specific knowledge for integrated healthcare settings. A survey completed by 154 behavioral health providers working in integrated healthcare settings examined the extent to which respondents …

Effects Of Gatekeeping On The Diffusion Of Information, Rebecca Anderson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study proposes a theoretical model of information diffusion using the conceptual framework of Gatekeeping Theory (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). Diffusion is a process by which elements are distributed through a social system (Rogers, 2003; Kadushin, 2012). This model builds on previous diffusion research and incorporates constructs of authority and vivid information, novel to the domain. To test the fit of the model, Twitter data derived using data mining techniques are utilized. Specifically, messages posted to Twitter relating to the 2013 Consumer Electronics (CES) conference are mined. Essentially, this study focuses on the diffusion of technology information through a popular …

Essays In Applied Health Economics, Bongkyun Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

I study how change in environmental factors and information provision about environmental risk effect on human capitals and individuals' behavior.

Psychological maternal stress is thought to be a factor in poor infant health, but direct evidence is difficult to obtain. In first chapter, we posit that the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, California provides a natural test of the effect of mothers' stress on infants' birth weight and gestation. The Northridge disaster featured a low rate of injury and a quick recovery, but long-lasting and well documented consequences for mental health. Difference-in-difference results show that infants born closest to …

The Impact Of Photography On Tourism: Photography Construction Perspective, Justin Kaewnopparat

Doctoral Dissertations

Photographs are crucial elements that marketers integrate into all their marketing communication tools. As we can see from many brochures, websites, and billboards, many travel destinations portray the beauty of their locations through photographs aiming to attract more travelers to visit their destinations. In the same vein, tourists also use photographs as references for their decisions about where to spend their vacations. Due to this significant impact of photographs on tourism, marketers invest greatly in this visual stimulation tool. However, the impact of elements appearing in each photograph such as objects and color tones are overlooked. This experimental study investigates …

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Bilal Celik

Doctoral Dissertations

First chapter studies the impacts of large natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and storms have on economic activity by using nighttime light intensity data. On a local level, using the data of three large earthquakes within a 200-mile radius from the earthquake’s epicenter, I found that when the distance from the epicenter increases, the nighttime light intensity decreases. By using the synthetic control approach, on a national level, I found that while three of nine large natural disasters have a positive impact on economic activity, one natural disaster has a negative impact. When aggregating all nine large natural disasters, …

Gender, Lithics, And Perishable Technology: Searching For Evidence Of Split-Cane Technology In The Archaeological Record At The Mussel Beach Site (40mi70), Megan M. King

Doctoral Dissertations

Perishable artifacts made from plants and fibers were likely an integral part of daily life in the prehistoric Southeast. While these items rarely survive in the archaeological record, their manufacture may be identified through the examination of non-perishable tools, specifically lithic artifacts. Observations by ethnographers, travelers, and missionaries in the Southeast have cross-culturally identified women as the primary harvesters and collectors of plant materials for both subsistence and material culture production. While most accounts leave out specific details regarding the tools utilized in production of perishable objects, there is reason to suspect that lithic artifacts were used in various plant …

Evaluation Of Increased Targeted Enforcement And Community-Based Outreach And Education Programs To Increase Nighttime Seatbelt Use In East Tennessee, Kwaku Frimpong Boakye

Doctoral Dissertations

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among people aged 1-54 in the United Sates. In 2015, the number of motor-vehicle deaths on U.S. roadways totaled 35,092, a 7% increase from 2014 (32,744). Though lower gas prices and increased vehicle mileage combined with risky driving behaviors (e.g. speeding, driving while texting) account for the increased fatality rate, seatbelt non-use has been a significant contributory factor. It is estimated that nearly half (48%) of passenger vehicle occupants involved in fatal crashes each year are unrestrained.

In a recent 2014 report …

Therapeutic Aspects Of Tattoo Acquisition: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into The Connection Between Psychological Trauma And The Writing Of Stories Into Flesh, Everett W. Painter

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the start of recorded history, accounts are replete of individuals being subjected to unthinkable experiences that possess the power to fundamentally disrupt their lives. Survivors of psychological trauma encounter numerous obstacles on the pathway to recovery (Briere & Scott, 2015). Counselors working with this population continue to search for effective strategies in support of restoration (Boxer & Sloan-Power, 2013). One possibility often discussed by trauma survivors in popular media as helpful is tattoo acquisition. However, our understanding of this body modification practice is incomplete due to a social history of stigma and bias (Stein, 2011). The purpose of this …