Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Deliberative Democracy At The Local Level, Tony Derosa

Honors Theses

This thesis addresses the role that deliberative democracy can play in local politics. Deliberative democracy is a theory that posits discourse among free and equal citizens as a route to better public policy outcomes, a more just society, the fostering of social capital, and the cultivation of civic virtues. While both liberals and civic republicans have endorsed the theory, it stands in direct contrast to the economic theory of democracy. This view equates citizens to consumers, whose private preferences are to be aggregated by the political system. Votes are the equivalent of capital in the market, according to the economic …

Empathy, Group-Level Guilt And Identification : Measuring Their Relationship Through Past American-Cambodian Relations, Laura Musser

Honors Theses

A collective approach to emotions suggests that, in some cases, members of groups may experience collective guilt when they consider the negative actions performed by other members of their group, even when they were not personally involved themselves. Social identity theory suggests that such group-level reactions are more likely when individuals strongly identify with their group, and less likely when their sense of identity is not linked as strongly to their group membership.

This hypothesis was examined by directly manipulating the salience of individuals' collective identities through priming through an identification manipulation. The identification manipulation primed participants to feel more …

The Evolution Of Campaign Finance And Its Reform: An Expoloration And Economic Analysis, Meghan Milloy

Honors Theses

From the blunders of Theodore Roosevelt that initiated much of the debate on campaign finance reform to Bill Bradley's ideas on voting reform as a means to reform campaign finance, this is a topic that has inspired much debate and controversy. My hope is that throughout the following pages, through the history, opinions, and empirical evidence, the reader may formulate his or her own opinions on the good, evil, and necessity — or lack thereof — of reforming the system. History teaches where we have gone wrong. Econometric evidence tells us where we should go next. And opinions for future …

The Language Facilitation Training System: Vocal Verbal Behavior, Maija Graudins

Honors Theses

The Language Facilitation Training System (LFTS) is a subsystem of the Behavioral Research Supervisory System (BRSS). Both of these are contained within BATS, which is the Behavior Analysis Training System. These systems were developed by Dr. Richard Malott in one of the Behavior Analysis programs at Western Michigan University.

Implicit Theories Of Relationships : Prediction Of Dating Strategies And Relationship Initiation, Heather Stone

Honors Theses

The present study aimed to merge research on initial attraction and implicit theories of relationships by examining how beliefs about relationships influence dating strategies. Research has examined role of implicit theories in the functioning of existing relationships but there is much room for growth in the area of initial attraction and dating strategies. Results revealed that destiny theory (theory that relationships are either meant to be or not) predicted increased likelihood of internet dating, a lower frequency of dating, and dating to avoid loneliness and missing opportunities. Growth theory (theory that relationships improve by cultivation and development) predicted dating to …

Coalitions For Victory: The Necessity Of Alliance Creation For Progressive Ballot Initiative Campaigns, Julie Bero

Honors Theses

My paper consists of three sections. In the first, I explain the function of ballot measures and discuss why Americans have supported or opposed the use of direct democracy. I will also offer the history of direct democracy. In the second section, I will discuss the current national state of affairs in direct democracy, specifically analyzing recent ballot measures. I will analyze three cases, focusing on information gathered from the news media and personal interviews with campaign organizers. Finally, I will draw conclusions about these three measures and assert implications for the future of direct democracy.

Social Perceptions Of Underdog Job Applicants, Maggie Place

Honors Theses

Research demonstrates that there are several characteristics that could render someone an underdog as a job applicant, including gender, race, able-bodied or disabled, immigrant status, and age. Study 1 used a between-subjects design to examine support for the underdog and the top dog in a low-consequence and high-consequence scenario. The underdog was given more support in low-consequence than high-consequence scenarios, but most participants indicated a neutral response instead of offering more support for either when asked to choose between the two applicants. Study 2 employed a forced-choice task on SuperLab in which participants chose which applicant they would hire in …

Maternal Experience And Alzheimer's Disease : Degenerative Differences In The Female Rat, Lindsay W. Victoria

Honors Theses

Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative disease found in many aging adults. The presence of amyloid precursor protein (APP) is an early indicator of the onset of Alzheimer’s, primarily in memory-related brain regions like the hippocampus. Hormones accompanying pregnancy, such as estrogen, may provide the female brain with protection against neurodegeneration and deposits of APP. The present study will compare concentrations of APP in the brains of parous and nulliparous animals and examine the interaction of APP with estrogen receptor beta (ERβ). Young and aged animals will also be compared to determine any early effects of APP or ERβ. It is …

The Influence Of Auditory Stimuli On Judgements Of Word Valence, Chris E. Chandler

Honors Theses

The present study examined the link between affect and auditory stimuli in three parts. The first sought to determine the affective norms for the auditory stimuli. The second assessed the influence of a musical note’s register on the evaluation of a positive or negative word, while the third assessed the influence of harmonic musical intervals. Participants were simultaneously presented with auditory stimuli and a word, and their task was to judge as quickly as possible whether the word was positive or negative by pressing a corresponding key. It was hypothesized that congruence between auditory valence and word valence would facilitate …

Competing Visions: The Cia, The Congress For Cultural Freedom And The Non-Communist European Left, 1950-1967, Scott Kamen

Honors Theses

The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that by utilizing cultural influence and adopting Silone's vision, the CCF was able to pursue the support of left-leaning European intellectuals, writers and artists who were often alienated by the policies of both the US and the USSR. The ability of the CCF to reach out to these individuals made it an extremely valuable asset to the CIA and contributed to the CIA's emerging strategy of promoting the NCL as a reliable anti-communist force that would come to be the theoretical foundation of the CIA's political operations against communism over the next …

Market Efficiency : Testing Price Discovery In The Bond And Credit Derivative Markets, Justin M. Polselli

Honors Theses

Recent developments in credit markets over the past few months have seen credit spreads widen dramatically for a range of debt products. Almost overnight, credit spreads for both investment grade and high yield bonds jumped as news continued to worsen about credit quality. The speed with which credit spreads increased this past summer led many investors to ask if markets were efficient in conveying material information, and to see if there were any indications prior to the credit crunch that the market for credit was going to tighten. New products such as credit derivatives have increased the number of indicators …

An Analysis Of Tuition And Enrollment In Higher Education : Measuring Price Elasticity, Adam C. Wright

Honors Theses

The hierarchical nature of higher education, in which schools compete in small enclaves for the best students, and competition for higher rankings among private, non-profit liberal arts colleges has prompted some schools to drastically increase their tuition in order to correspond with the price changes of rival institutions. Since top liberal arts schools operate with sizable excess demand for enrollment spots, significant tuition alterations generally do not affect the quantity of enrolled students at these schools. However, the extent to which increases in tuition affect the quality of enrolled students has not been thoroughly examined. This study directly analyzes the …

Forest Fires In Southern Europe : An Econometric Investigation Of The Existence Of Economic Incentives For Fire Arson, Radoslava Dogandjieva

Honors Theses

Devastating forest fires during the summer of 2007 resulted in an unprecedented level of destruction in the Mediterranean forests, prompting widespread speculation about profit-motivated arson as one of the principal causes of the fires. Forest protection laws essentially create a scarcity of land, making arson potentially profitable in several ways: the clearing of land for development and construction, expansion of farm size, and salvage logging (Economist 2007). This study seeks to evaluate the validity of these accusations by examining the relationship between land, wheat, and timber prices and incidence of forest fires in four countries: Spain, Greece, Italy, and Bulgaria. …

Nuclear Vs. Coal In Bulgaria, Peter B. Manchev

Honors Theses

In early 2005 the government of Bulgaria commissioned the construction of a new nuclear power plant (NPP) near the town of Belene on the Danube border with Romania. The € 4 billion project will be executed by a consortium appointed in October 2006 by the National Electric Company led by the Russian Atomstroyexport. The work will be overseen by the architect-engineer of the plant, the American company WorleyParsons. The endeavor received a “green light” in December 2006 when the Nuclear Regulatory Agency of Bulgaria approved the Belene site for the construction of a new nuclear power plant.

The need for …

Challenging The Plantation Myth: A Comparison Of The Economic Histories And Relative Success Of Three Georgia Plantations From 1820 To 1870, Rachel Devan

Honors Theses

Though popular culture often makes the assumption that showplace plantations were the norm in the antebellum South, plantation archaeologists and historians have observed that the data say otherwise. Many of the Southern plantations that they study fall far short of the showplace ideal. In fact, a key role for plantation historians and archaeologists is to clear up the Americans' misconceptions about antebellum plantations by studying a range of plantation types and sizes. One way to accomplish this goal is to classify plantations under archaeological or historical study as either working plantations or showplace plantations based on economic data and use …

The Interaction Of Nuclear Fiction And Leadership Studies, Kathryn Elberson

Honors Theses

This project is not solely a commentary on leadership studies, nor is its significance exclusive to the field of English. Rather, it is an effort to unite the two fields in a way that offers valuable contributions to both areas of study while pointing out the necessity of further interaction between the topics of leadership and literature. The few works which are traditionally regarded as having something to contribute to leadership studies are those which are either included in the canon of English literature, or those which directly demonstrate a leader-follower relationship and have a particular lesson to teach about …

Integration Of The Stereotype Content Model And Implicit Theories : A Dynamic Understanding Of Stereotyping Against Obese Individuals, Jenna Sorge

Honors Theses

The current paper integrated Fiske and colleague’s (2002) Stereotype Content Model (SCM) with the implicit theoretical approach to investigate the stereotyping process against obese individuals. Two studies evaluated the proposition that implicit theories of weight, the belief that weight is fixed (entity theorist) versus malleable (incremental theorist), and implicit person theories, the belief that human attributes are fixed or malleable, will predict how people categorize and discriminate against obese individuals. A pilot study found that entity and incremental theorists of weight have equal knowledge of societal stereotypes against obese individuals. Study 1 revealed those whose endorse an entity theory of …

An Incumbent's Guide To Reelection: The States And Economic Voting In U.S. Presidential Elections, Kyle Smith

Honors Theses

This study has two chapters. The first uses Ray Fair 's national economic voting model of U.S. presidential elections to pose and answer specific questions about how voting theory works in practice. The results suggest that economic activity in the year of an election is the primary determinant of voters' perceptions of presidential performance on the economy, while earlier years in the administration's term are not important. Also, voters hold the incumbent party responsible for economic conditions whether or not that party controls Congress. Finally, the results suggest that economic voting generally operates symmetrically -a fall in growth affects the …

Demographic Differences In Household Expenditure For Low-Income Families: Evidence From The United States, Joerose Tharakan

Honors Theses

Despite being one of the world’s most prosperous countries, the United States of America was home to roughly 7.7 million households living in poverty in 2006. Of this figure, 53% percent of households were headed by a single mother. What is more disturbing is that a significant majority of these households were those of full time workers, unable to meet the basic needs of their families at federally mandated minimum wage rates. Researchers and activists from a multitude of disciplines have repeatedly called for an overhaul of the current method of estimating poverty in the United States` and further proposed …

The Penguins' Revolution: An Analysis Of Student Response To The Multi-Dimensional Chilean Educational Crisis, Abigail Hall

Honors Theses

Through exploration and analysis of economic, historical and political factors stemming from the authoritarian period (1973-1990) to the present day, this project offers an interdisciplinary explanation of the emergence of the "Penguin's Revolution" in Chile. In May-June 2006, 700,000 high school students paralyzed the Chilean education system by protesting in the streets, taking over schools and not attending classes. Students organized under the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students (ACES) demanded that the government take responsibility for providing universal high quality and equal education. The roots of student discontent lie in the multi-dimensional education crisis, generated by the semi-privatized, decentralized educational …

Stock Markets And Household Wealth: Can A Stock Market Crash Cause A Recession In The U.S. Economy?, Ishan Singh

Honors Theses

Stock market wealth effects on the level of consumption in the United States economy have been constantly debated; there is evidence for arguments for and against its prominence and its symmetry. This paper seeks to investigate the strength of its negative effect by creating models to analyze unexpected shocks to the Standard and Poor's 500 index. First, a transmission mechanism between the stock market and GDP is established through the use of second-order vector autoregressive models. Following which, theory from the life cycle model and adaptations of previous researchers' models are used to create a structural model. This paper finds …

Decisions To Abrogate Personal Liberty: Ethics Of Conscription In The United States, Jacqueline Shuttleworth Grady

Honors Theses

The military draft in the United States has been a controversial public policy in the past. Conscription has been used for six different wars; each draft has differed from the others because of the circumstances of the war for which it was enacted and because of the way in which it was implemented. Today, because of the wars the United States is fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new public policy has developed, called stop loss. Stop loss affects only those people who have already served in the military, forcing them to remain in military service after the originally contracted …

Advocating At The Margins: Women’S Ngos In China, Ling U

Honors Theses

The development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China has been unprecedented in the past fifteen years. The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW) and parallel NGO Forum in Beijing, China, opened the door for the first time for the establishment of women’s NGOs in China. This paper examines the development of Chinese women’s NGOs with a particular focus on two organizations in Beijing for marginalized female populations: one focusing on lesbians and the other helping women with HIV/AIDS. I examine the structure and growth of each NGO; however, on a more personal level and perhaps more importantly, I use …

State Political Action Committee Financing And The 2008 Presidential Election: A Detailed Look At Mitt Romney And The Commonwealth Pacs, Melyn Heckelman

Honors Theses

This study looks at the historical context in which PACs developed, as well as the current legal environment in which they operate. It will also briefly discuss the legal and procedural challenges that candidates face and the ways in which PACs alleviate some of these pressures in ways that presidential committees cannot. An understanding of the strategic dilemmas which cause candidates to seek extraneous structures through which to establish campaign networks is essential to extrapolating the potential future of campaign finance strategy. Furthermore, this study provides an in-depth analysis of the state Commonwealth PACs both in terms of fundraising and …

Competition Or Community? Manifest And Unexpressed Functions Of The No Child Left Behind Act Of 2001, Sara Benjamin

Honors Theses

Any contemporary discussion of the American education system inevitably includes a discussion of current federal policy as set out in The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Signed into law on January 8, 2002, NCLB has sparked tremendous controversy in the field of education. Although the title would suggest otherwise, NCLB does not aim to make sure no child is left behind. Instead, one might argue that it aims to provide quantifiable measures of comparison so as to allow the U.S. to assert educational and economic dominance in the global community. Thus, we can see a distinction between …

Self-Destructive Behaviors Of Adolescent Girls And Boys, Carolyn A. Curtis

Honors Theses

From a social constructionist perspective linked with a feminist standpoint, I examine three forms of adolescent self-destructive behaviors: eating disorders, self-mutilation and substance abuse. The social construction of adolescents’ norms, values, and beliefs, as based upon their interactions with family, peers, and the media, helps explain these self-destructive actions. In addition to a comprehensive literature review, I interviewed five adults who work with adolescents in the state of Maine, and used these professionals’ experiences and knowledge to support the current theories pertaining to these acts of self-harm. To better understand what drives some adolescents to harm their own bodies, I …

In The Absence Of Family: How Ideas Of The Substitute Family In Honduran Children's Homes Shape Perception Of The Needs Of At-Risk Youth, Stephanie Bowman

Honors Theses

Through an interdisciplinary analysis of children’s homes in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, this project reflects on how conceptions of family affect the prioritization of the needs of the homes’ beneficiaries. One consequence of the impoverished nature of Honduras are orphaned, abandoned, mistreated, malnourished, abused, neglected and disowned children who have come to live in group children’s homes that, for the most part, meet their short-term physical needs. But what about children’s developmental, social and educational needs? In this study, we analyze what needs homes meet according to the kind of familial substitute they provide as either a group home or …

"System Of Silence": Philadelphia Orphanages And The Limits Of Benevolence, 1780s-1830s, Brian Sweeney

Honors Theses

In 1831, Mathew Carey, a well-known Philadelphia economist, wrote a city official describing the situation of black children in the city. He called for the creation of an orphanage to aid these children and described the motives for this action as not only the “humanity and benevolence” of Philadelphians, but also “personal interest”, as this class could otherwise turn “lawless”. Unknown to Carey, the Association for the Care of Coloured Orphans had been established in 1822 by a group of benevolent Quaker women dedicated to aiding this destitute class in an effort to promote compensatory justice for generations of oppression …

Language Of Sex: Moral Socialization And Reproductive Education In Public Schools, Melyn Heckelman

Honors Theses

This thesis is the product of my five weeks of ethnography in three classrooms in Waterville, Maine and the surrounding area, in addition to individual and group interviews with both students and the educators themselves. It seeks to understand why, in a culture so saturated with images of sexuality and naked bodies, the teachers I observed were largely unwilling or unable to discuss human sexuality in public schools as anything more than a public health issue. Since the 1960s sex educators have been fighting to teach about contraceptives. Recent longitudinal studies have confirmed what proponents of comprehensive education have been …

The Impact Of The Common Agricultural Policy On Agricultural Productivity, Flemming Schneider Rhode

Honors Theses

In 2004 10 new countries, primarily Eastern European countries, joined the European Union (EU) with much media speculation concerning how this would affect their economies. This paper will look at how the Common Agricultural Program (CAP) affects agricultural productivity by measuring four independent variables and by using the 2004 entry as a natural experiment. The paper will estimate how the CAP affects the average farm size, fallow land area, proportion of farming dedicated to organic farming, and GOP growth. This is expected to impact agricultural productivity through increasing returns to scale, input availability, efficiency of land use and the Environmental …