Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Arts and Humanities (7)
- International and Area Studies (6)
- Linguistics (5)
- Sociology (5)
- Economics (4)
-
- Political Science (4)
- Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies (4)
- Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration (3)
- Anthropology (2)
- Education (2)
- Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (2)
- Physical Sciences and Mathematics (2)
- Psychology (2)
- Applied Mathematics (1)
- Business (1)
- English Language and Literature (1)
- History (1)
- Jewish Studies (1)
- Statistics and Probability (1)
- Keyword
-
- Climate change (3)
- United States (3)
- Gender (2)
- Hong Kong (2)
- Japan (2)
-
- Racism (2)
- "more is better" (1)
- 1992 Los Angeles uprising (1)
- 2007-2008 Financial Crisis (1)
- 2020 general election (1)
- ASVAB (1)
- Abortion (1)
- Adolf Brand (1)
- African American English (1)
- Age (1)
- Algeria (1)
- Alt-right (1)
- Angela King (1)
- Anticolonial activism (1)
- Antisemitism (1)
- Appalachian English (1)
- Applicative Phrase (1)
- Arsenic (1)
- Art (1)
- Auto industry (1)
- Bangladesh (1)
- Bank stock returns (1)
- Bible (1)
- Biblical Hebrew (1)
- Black Lives Matter (1)
Articles 1 - 30 of 36
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
An Upstander Is A Person In Your Neighborhood: Children, Sesame Street, And Race In 2020, Gemma Yoo
An Upstander Is A Person In Your Neighborhood: Children, Sesame Street, And Race In 2020, Gemma Yoo
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Educational children’s media, such as the program Sesame Street, may be the most accessible format for teaching young children about race and racism in the United States. Throughout its history, Sesame Street has attempted to confront racism through its diverse cast and, in the summer of 2020, by directly addressing the topic with children and families. However, both its passive representation and active discussion fall short of what is needed to confront systemic racism. This paper addresses Sesame Street’s past and present role as a leader in children’s educational media, and advocates that the program employ Critical Race Theory to …
The Conscience Of The Dollar: Are Religious Donors Sensitive To Moral Infractions?, Bradley Yam
The Conscience Of The Dollar: Are Religious Donors Sensitive To Moral Infractions?, Bradley Yam
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Do religious donors give strategically or idealistically? The entanglement between the conservative Republican party and religious groups, particularly evangelical Christianity, on issues of abortion, sexual mores, and family values makes it difficult to analyze this question along voting lines. Regardless of how one votes, citizens and organizations can still punish their political leaders for moral infractions by voting with their wallets. This study aims to discern if there is a relationship between political scandals and religious donations.
Canines And Commons: An Institutional Analysis, Andy Xie
Canines And Commons: An Institutional Analysis, Andy Xie
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
This paper applies Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development Framework to explain how a local dog park – the Montrose – is able to overcome communal degradation in the absence of a centralized power. In the first half of this piece, I elucidate the rules, participants, and systems that characterize this specific social-ecological system. In the second half, through a combination of park-goer interviews and analyses of online reviews, I find that the existence of high degrees of social capital between participants, repeated interactions, entwined utilities, and the institutional diversity of a polycentric system serve to explain the effective maintenance, …
Shadow Banks, Money Market Funds, And Regulation: How Much Is Too Much?, Ainsley Weber
Shadow Banks, Money Market Funds, And Regulation: How Much Is Too Much?, Ainsley Weber
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
This paper examines the development of the shadow banking sector in the US leading up to the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Shadow banking, or nonbank financial intermediation, consists of credit intermediation that takes place outside of the traditional banking sector. This can include off-balance sheet operations at banks and finance holding companies as well as operations at other nonbank financial companies. The paper reviews how shadow banking emerged as a result of regulatory arbitrage and the search for higher returns before considering how it contributed to the buildup of systemic risk leading up to the crisis. It specifically inspects …
The Morality Of Pronoun Flexibility: Connections Between Language And Cognitive Identity Alignment, Mafalda Von Alvensleben
The Morality Of Pronoun Flexibility: Connections Between Language And Cognitive Identity Alignment, Mafalda Von Alvensleben
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The power of words we use to refer to one another is gaining recognition in contemporary socio-political discourse. Yet, interplay between language and complex cognitive processes, including moral judgments and identity formation, largely remains a subject of philosophical and theoretical debate. In order to begin examining the existence of such interactions empirically, this paper investigates the syntactic shift of the third person plural pronoun they/them to the third person singular, used to refer to gender non-binary/gender nonconforming individuals. Using grammaticality acceptance ratings and the Worthen 2016 moral attitudes test, administered under timed pressure, this study measures both intuitions surrounding the …
Access To Drinking Water And The Empowerment Of Women In The Southwest Coast Of Bangladesh: Intersections Of Gender, Class, And Space, Sunehra Subah
Access To Drinking Water And The Empowerment Of Women In The Southwest Coast Of Bangladesh: Intersections Of Gender, Class, And Space, Sunehra Subah
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The low-lying southwest coast in Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable areas to the effects of climate change, with great water scarcity and high levels of arsenic and salinity. Women are the main accessors and users of water in this area due to their restriction to work in domestic spaces. Their gendered relationships to water in this area play a role in their empowerment and powerlessness. These relationships can be looked at through four examples of power: power over the body, power over mobility, power over decisions, and power over finances. It’s critical to consider the intersections of gender, …
Decolonization: The Litmus Test Of The Human Rights Framework, Isiuwa Omoigui
Decolonization: The Litmus Test Of The Human Rights Framework, Isiuwa Omoigui
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
This literature review examines the complicated relationship between anticolonial activism and the human rights framework that emerged in the wake of the Second World War. I contextualize the scholarly debate on the tension between conceptions of human rights as an individual entitlement and the collectivist nature of African anticolonial struggles. The universalism of the human rights framework endures the harsh light of critique, given its emergence from the twentieth-century European experience of genocide and great powers’ competing commitments to democracy and empire. The crimes against humanity committed in the name of colonial conquest and rule challenge the great powers’ moral …
Social Media And The Construction And Propagation Of Populist-Nationalist Discourse, Paula Pineda
Social Media And The Construction And Propagation Of Populist-Nationalist Discourse, Paula Pineda
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The growing overlap between three important phenomena—the increasingly widespread use of social media (especially as a tool for political communication), the current populist zeitgeist (as described by Cas Mudde), and the rise of right-wing nationalism—make the question of how social media can be employed as a platform for the amplification of populist-nationalist discourse particularly pressing. This paper explores the affordances of social media that allow for its employment in the creation and propagation of populist-nationalist discourse, particularly the elective affinity between social media and populism, the way that social media can provide a platform for the emotive element of populist-nationalist …
Art As Protest: How Creative Activism Shaped “Black Lives Matter” In Richmond, Virginia, Anaheed Mobaraki
Art As Protest: How Creative Activism Shaped “Black Lives Matter” In Richmond, Virginia, Anaheed Mobaraki
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Unrest spurred by the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States has flowed throughout the city of Richmond, Virginia. Unique forms of protest have proliferated across the city, encompassing several artistic tactics such as graffiti art, oral storytelling, graphic design, and movement art. This paper will explore the effectiveness of art as protest by analyzing its impacts on several foundational aspects of social movements. Combining my personal observations, scholarly literature, and research on other social movements, I have developed my own findings regarding the use of art in Richmond’s Black Lives Matter movement. I posit that …
“Our Neighbors In The Americas”: Obama, Empathy, And The Cuban Thaw, Sarah Mckinnis
“Our Neighbors In The Americas”: Obama, Empathy, And The Cuban Thaw, Sarah Mckinnis
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
In the study of International Relations, there is growing research and consideration of the significance of empathy in political communications and nation-to-nation relationships. This article examines cognitive empathy, the ability to understand the perspectives and feelings of another, in the case of the Cuban Thaw, the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and The United States. It traces President Obama’s use of empathy in publicly communicating intentions towards Cubans and Americans, a rhetoric that marks a contrast from the previous U.S. administrations’ attitudes toward Cuba. This article then analyzes the efficacy of that rhetoric, finding that though there are indications …
Troubles Of The Coast: Industrialization, Climate Change, Marginality, And Collective Action Among Fishing Communities In Kerala, India, Abigail Maher
Troubles Of The Coast: Industrialization, Climate Change, Marginality, And Collective Action Among Fishing Communities In Kerala, India, Abigail Maher
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
This paper explores the ways in which small-scale fishing communities in Kerala, India are affected by both industrialization and climate change, how they respond to these challenges, and the spatial, political, and social context in which these communities are situated. In order to do this, a combination of primary source materials and scholarly work is utilized. Construction of small-scale fishing communities as culturally “primitive”, as well as caste prejudice on the part of the government and industrial fishers, has resulted in increased marginalization of fishing communities and increased difficulty in adapting to the adverse changes associated with both climate change …
Sounding The Alarm: Down-Ballot Setback For The Democrats In 2020, Yaakov Huba
Sounding The Alarm: Down-Ballot Setback For The Democrats In 2020, Yaakov Huba
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The 2020 general election turned out more American voters than any other election, its monumental stakes commanding the attention of the world. While the focus in the race’s aftermath has primarily been the top of the ticket, the rebuke of President Trump’s time in office, the equally important down-ballot races have been largely passed over. Many major political analysts like the Cook Political Report predicted that Democrats would expand their House majority by 5-10 seats. Yet, the Democratic Party ended up losing 10 seats1. During the certification of election results, I collected data on incumbents in the US House of …
The Cuban Vote: How A Very Unreligious Group Votes For A Very Religiously Affiliated Party, Kelly Gouin
The Cuban Vote: How A Very Unreligious Group Votes For A Very Religiously Affiliated Party, Kelly Gouin
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
While there is a strong recorded correlation between religiosity and Republican Party affiliation, Cuban Americans report low religiosity but strong support for the GOP (58% of Cuban Americans are affiliated with the GOP). This is only one way in which this community is an outlier: Cuban Americans do not behave like other Hispanics; do not vote like other religious groups; are more liberal than the average Republican voter; and have not experienced the religious revival often observed in citizens of former communist regimes. These particularities suggest that Cuban Americans’ reaction is very specific to the combination of their experiences in …
The Impact Of Climate Change On Security In The Middle East: A Review Of The Literature, Yara El-Khatib
The Impact Of Climate Change On Security In The Middle East: A Review Of The Literature, Yara El-Khatib
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The Middle East, which is already plagued by a series of security threats–such as terrorism, religious conflict, political instability, and more–is also an increasingly water-scarce and climate-vulnerable region. In this review, I examine the most recent and relevant literature on the debate of: how will, and how has climate change affected security in the Middle East? I examine five articles and one book that tackle this question, and I organize these sources based on the extent to which they argue that climate change is a determinant of insecurity in the region. While a few authors argue that climate change has …
“Developing” Gender Equality: A Transnational Feminist Critique Of International Development Theory And Practice, Caroline Crystal
“Developing” Gender Equality: A Transnational Feminist Critique Of International Development Theory And Practice, Caroline Crystal
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Gender equality is increasingly understood as fundamental to international development, despite how the field differs from feminism in its intellectual tradition and ultimate goals. However, legitimacy, gender and understandings of gender equality are transnational and not global modalities, and even the most well-meaning institutions are not absent from global power relations or individual subjectivities. Often located in the “West,” international development organizations frequently make assumptions shaped by Western hegemony and therefore reproduce the very inequalities they claim to address. I explore the overlaps and asymmetries between transnational feminism and the gender equality programs of international development organizations such as the …
An Indigenous-Informed Archaeological Approach To Dating The Taos Pueblo, Cameron Chacon
An Indigenous-Informed Archaeological Approach To Dating The Taos Pueblo, Cameron Chacon
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
This paper sets out a theoretical proposal for obtaining an absolute date for the Taos Pueblo, a living archaeological site that may be the oldest continuously occupied structure in North America. The paper first explores the history and current state of archaeological and anthropological study at the Taos Pueblo and within the larger Taos community, determining that past academic studies have not fully aligned with the goals of the community itself, and have done harm in relationships between archaeologists and members of the Pueblo. I propose that the living heritage framework, as described in Trujillo (2019) and in accordance with …
Xenophobia In The ‘Rainbow Nation’: An Analysis Of Intergroup Conflict In Contemporary South Africa, Rachel Calcott
Xenophobia In The ‘Rainbow Nation’: An Analysis Of Intergroup Conflict In Contemporary South Africa, Rachel Calcott
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Since the inception of democracy in South Africa, the nation has been touted as an example of racial reconciliation and harmonious diversity. However, the xenophobic violence that has plagued the state since 2008 and resulted in hundreds of fatalities reveals deep and ongoing intergroup divides. Dehumanizing rhetoric around immigration is propagated by both elected officials and the media, and non-natives are frequently characterized as ‘parasitic’ and ‘criminal.’ In this paper I suggest that the xenophobic violence observed in contemporary South Africa may be explained via a three-pronged analysis: the construction of an ‘exceptional’ South African social identity during the early …
Returning To The Gender Gap In College Major: How Much Can Pre- College Skills Explain?, Nathalie Beauchamps
Returning To The Gender Gap In College Major: How Much Can Pre- College Skills Explain?, Nathalie Beauchamps
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The gender wage gap in the United States is a well-known phenomenon and researchers across many disciplines have tried to pinpoint its cause. One popular explanation is the gender gap in college major choice; however, it is still unknown why women tend to major in so-called soft sciences and men in hard sciences. This paper builds upon Speer (2017)’s work studying the gender gap in major choice as explained by test scores. Rather than utilizing OLS regressions, I employ a Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, which also shows how unspecified discrimination works for or against women (or men) in how much their …
The Run On Repo And Bank Stock Returns, Madison Battaglia
The Run On Repo And Bank Stock Returns, Madison Battaglia
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The run on the sale and repurchase market (“run on repo”) was at the nexus of the Financial Crisis of 2007- 2009. Up until now, the economics literature has not studied the effect of sale and repurchase agreement (“repo”) haircuts on bank stock returns using an empirical economic approach. I utilize private repo haircut data from 2007Q1-2009Q1 supplemented with bank stock returns, total reserve balances, and market rate of returns and risk-free rate of returns data to trace the path of crisis from repurchase agreements into a market that had no connection to housing. In linear model regressions, I find …
Optimal Information Design In Two-Sided Trade, Pradhi Aggarwal
Optimal Information Design In Two-Sided Trade, Pradhi Aggarwal
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
In a two-sided market with a broker, the broker can influence the buyer’s and seller’s optimal trading behaviour through strategic information design. We study the impact of information about waiting times on riders and drivers in a rideshare market. We consider three information regimes: the first in which no information about time is revealed, the second in which true waiting times are communicated, and finally an intermediate regime in which agents are only told whether their waiting time falls within a high or low category. We evaluate the optimality of each information regime by maximizing welfare and revenue for each …
Tabula Rasa: Mechanism, Intelligence, And The Blank Slate In Computing And Urbanism, Claire Gorman
Tabula Rasa: Mechanism, Intelligence, And The Blank Slate In Computing And Urbanism, Claire Gorman
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
No abstract provided.
Examining Variations In Community Benefit Generation Across Namibian Conservancies, Amanda Zhang
Examining Variations In Community Benefit Generation Across Namibian Conservancies, Amanda Zhang
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Centered around Namibia’s Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program, this analysis explores varying levels of community benefit generation across 51 of Namibia’s conservancies by comparing benefits across four conservancy subsets and using multiple linear regressions (MLRs) to examine relationships between selected conservancy characteristics and benefit generation. The statistically significant models predict that the presence of one additional major species is linked to an additional $N 1.458 in meat value per capita, $N 0.543 in conservancy wage per employee, and 0.661 in community game guard employment. While there appears to be a positive correlation between the number of species and …
Environmental Determinism And Spurious Correlation: Just-So Stories In Phonology, Jeremiah Jewell
Environmental Determinism And Spurious Correlation: Just-So Stories In Phonology, Jeremiah Jewell
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The sounds and sound structures of languages often pattern in geographic clusters. Most accounts of this phenomenon rely on language contact and common descent as the principal causes of areal features. Modern linguistics rejects the notion that the nature of the location in which a language is spoken affects its phonological system. Nonetheless, some have argued that climate, topography, and other aspects of the ambient environment causally affect phonologies. The aim of this paper is to assess recent attempts in linguistics literature to broaden the view of what motivates geographically correlated phonological structures. I focus on the realms of phonology …
Social Movements In The Information Communication Technology Age: The Case Of Hong Kong, Justin Jin
Social Movements In The Information Communication Technology Age: The Case Of Hong Kong, Justin Jin
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
This paper develops current understandings of social movements by incorporating research on state formation and counterinsurgency, expanding political process theory by introducing the concepts of legibility and capacity. It then considers the changes caused by widespread use of Internet communications technologies (ICTs). The paper conceptualizes state-movement contention as a competition for access to civil society and its resources. Movements and states attempt to maximize their access, otherwise known as capacity, and minimize that of their rival. The legibility of society to either side impacts their success. Success, or lack thereof, determines future capacity. Increased usage of ICTs and digital surveillance …
The Dark Side Of Variety: An Economic Model Of Choice Overload, Teeger Li Blasheck, Jawwad Noor
The Dark Side Of Variety: An Economic Model Of Choice Overload, Teeger Li Blasheck, Jawwad Noor
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Choice Overload is a phenomenon well studied in psychology. It goes against the classical ³more is better´ dogma and describes the behavior of an agent when presented with too many options, in which instance an agent may either experience a decrease in satisfaction or end up deferring the choice all together. The standard Utility Maximization model of economics, however, largely follows the classical dogma and is unable to accommodate the behaviors of Choice Overload. This paper seeks to offer two possible economic models for Choice Overload based on the two mechanisms put forward by the psychological literature: search cost and …
Children's Reasoning About In-Group And Out-Group Obligations, Karli Cecil, Julia Marshall, Paul Bloom
Children's Reasoning About In-Group And Out-Group Obligations, Karli Cecil, Julia Marshall, Paul Bloom
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
We examined whether children (ages 4-9 years) show in-group bias in expectations to help others as well as obligations to help others. We showed participants vignettes featuring two novel groups and a variety of scenarios where one character is in need and another is a bystander who notices this. Younger children did not show in-group bias in terms of expectations to help others, but an in-group bias was present in older children. For obligations, however, we did not find an interaction between age and group: children think you have to help in-group members more than out-group members, regardless of age. …
The Keiretsu Advantage: How Japanese Automakers Thwarted American Competition, Jasper Boers
The Keiretsu Advantage: How Japanese Automakers Thwarted American Competition, Jasper Boers
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
Today, Japan’s auto industry is renowned for its dominance of foreign markets. Japanese cars are cheap and fuel-efficient, undercutting larger, more expensive automobiles from Europe and America. Scholarship on recent Japanese industrial development tends to prioritize a ‘developmental state’ and robust industrial policy in shielding Japanese manufacturers from trade liberalization. This paper will argue that, while the industrial policy steered by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) played a significant role in advancing the interests of the Japanese auto industry, it was ultimately the unique trust-based keiretsu conglomerate structure that gave Japanese auto producers a comparative advantage vis-à-vis …
“Hong-Kong Style Cultural Revolution” — Weaponization Of The Cultural Revolution In The 2019 Hong Kong Protests, Yat Fung
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong started in June 2019 received international attention as clashes prolonged. A peculiar phenomenon has been observed in the textual space of both the pro-democracy camp and the pro-government camp, which is a shared set of terms surrounding the Chinese Cultural Revolution amid the camps’ antagonism. This essay thus investigates the comparisons between either the pro-democracy protests or the pro-government movement, with the Cultural Revolution, made by Hong Kong writers who position differently in the political spectrum. This essay aims to analyze the use of the Cultural Revolution as an idiomatic weapon to attack the …
Resisting Gentrification: Everyday Politics & Collective Action From Oakland To Madrid, Caitlyn Clark, Stephanie Redden, Sakena Abedin
Resisting Gentrification: Everyday Politics & Collective Action From Oakland To Madrid, Caitlyn Clark, Stephanie Redden, Sakena Abedin
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
!is paper utilizes case studies in resistance to housing insecurity and neoliberalism to demonstrate the successful combinations of everyday resistance with collective action. Presenting the case studies as illustrations of two modes of analysis (Feminist Everyday International Political Economy and Marxism) previously thought of as somewhat contradictory, this paper argues that these models can strengthen one another. Using the examples of the Moms 4 Housing movement to resist gentrification and affordability crisis in Oakland, CA, and the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) that followed the Spanish housing and eviction crises, this paper addresses the possibility to combine the …
Co-Opted By U.S. Capital: A Diachronic Study Of Korean Americans’ Relation To The Model Minority Myth, Hannah Kwak
Co-Opted By U.S. Capital: A Diachronic Study Of Korean Americans’ Relation To The Model Minority Myth, Hannah Kwak
The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal
This paper examines the historical conditions within which Korean Americans became a “model minority,” linking transnational Korean history to the diasporic formations around the model minority stereotypes. It advances that Korean Americans’ conceptualization of their economic success borrows heavily from the narrative of Korea’s postwar economic development, which itself resulted from the nation’s desire to overcome the past of Japanese colonialism. For instance, the Korean American small business owners interviewed in Sai-I-Gu, a documentary about the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, emphasize the values of hard work, thrift, and sacrifice when telling their immigrant stories, echoing media representations of Korea’s postwar …