Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Substituting The End For The Whole: Why Voters Respond Primarily To The Election-Year Economy, Andrew Healy, Gabriel S. Lenz

Economics Faculty Works

According to numerous studies, the election-year economy influences presidential election results far more than cumulative growth throughout the term. Here we describe a series of surveys and experiments that point to an intriguing explanation for voter behavior that runs contrary to the standard explanations political science has offered, but one that accords with a large psychological literature. Voters, we find, actually intend to judge presidents on cumulative growth. However, since that characteristic is not readily available to them, voters inadvertently substitute election-year performance because it is more easily accessible. This “end-heuristic” explanation for voters’ election-year emphasis reflects a general tendency …

Industry Contagion In Loan Spreads, Michael G. Hertzel, Micah S. Officer

Finance Faculty Works

Spreads on new and renegotiated corporate loans are significantly higher when the loan originates (or is renegotiated) in the two years surrounding bankruptcy filings by industry rivals. This industry-specific contagion is particularly severe in the middle of industry bankruptcy waves. Furthermore, this contagion in loan spreads is mitigated in concentrated industries, consistent with the hypothesis and evidence in Lang and Stulz (1992) that bankruptcy filings in concentrated industries can have positive consequences for rivals (increased market share and/or power). There is also some evidence that contagion affects non-spread terms in loan contracts.

The Health And Wealth Of A Nation: Employer-Based Health Insurance And The Affordable Care Act, Nan L. Maxwell

Upjohn Press

This research examines the behaviors of firms with respect to their provision of health care prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) deliberations and uses those behaviors to assess changes in employer-sponsored health insurance that might occur once the ACA is fully implemented.

Fragmented Ethnopolitical Social Representations Of A Territorial Peace Agreement: The Mindanao Peace Talks, Cristina Jayme Montiel, Ma. Elizabeth J. Macapagal, Judith M. De Guzman

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

This article examines fractures in the social representations of a contested peace agreement in the longstanding territorial conflict of Mindanao. We compared representational structures and discourses about the peace talks among Muslims and Christians. Study One used an open-ended survey of 420 Christians and Muslims from two Mindanao cities identified with different Islamised tribes, and employed the hierarchical evocation method to provide representational structures of the peace agreement. Study Two contrasted discourses about the Memorandum of Agreement between two Muslim liberation fronts identified with separate Islamised tribes in Mindanao. Findings show unified Christians’ social representations about the peace agreement. However, …

Social Representations Of Foreign Aid: Exploring Meaning-Making In Aid Practice In Sulu, Southern Philippines, Judith M. De Guzman, Cristina Jayme Montiel

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

Conceptualising foreign aid as a controversial social object, this study utilised Social Representations Theory as a social constructionist framework to understand the meanings that arise from people's social interactions in relation to foreign aid practice in a particular historical, political and social context such as the province of Sulu in Southern Philippines. Key informant interviews and group discussions with representatives of various social groups involved in the practice of foreign aid in Sulu were conducted. Research data were examined using thematic analysis. Results showed two interrelated representational systems about foreign aid in the province. First, foreign aid was understood as …

Parental Efficacy, Experience Of Stressful Life Events, And Child Externalizing Behavior As Predictors Of Filipino Mothers' And Fathers' Parental Hostility And Aggression., Aileen S. Garcia, Liane Peña Alampay

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

This study assessed relations of parental efficacy, experience of stressful life events, and child externalizing behavior to Filipino mothers and fathers’ parental hostility and aggression. Orally-administered surveys were conducted with 117 mothers and 98 fathers for the first year of data collection, and again a year later with 107 mothers and 83 fathers. Path analyses showed that mothers’ report of child externalizing behavior predicted subsequent parental hostility and aggression. For fathers, child externalizing behavior and experience of stressful life events predicted parental hostility and aggression. Additionally, fathers’ parental efficacy was found to moderate the relationship between experience of stressful life …

E Pluribus Urbes: Interest Group Organization’S Effect On The Fragmentation And Governance Of American Urban Areas, Matthew L. Howell

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

American cities have proliferated in the post-War era. More than 2,000 new cities were founded between 1950 and 2000. While the history of the local government boom has been documented, research into urban fragmentation has explored why there is no consolidation of metropolitan areas rather than exploring why Americans chose fragmentation initially.

This dissertation proposes that individuals create new jurisdictions because individuals prefer to have governments which give them the services individuals desire, even if they could have similar (but not perfect) services cheaper in a larger jurisdiction. Individuals, however, must balance the benefit they get from better fitting cities …

Voter Ideology, Tax Exporting, And State And Local Tax Structure, John M. Foster

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

State and local governments play an important role in financing and delivering public services in the United States. In 2008, state and local governments collected 57 percent of total federal, state, and local revenue (Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, Tax Policy Center, 2009). The decentralization of fiscal responsibility has enabled a high degree of variation in state and local tax structures to emerge. This dissertation presents two empirical studies that extend the positive literature on state and local tax policy.

The extant literature contains evidence of a direct relationship between voter ideology and state and local tax progressivity. However, the …

The Individual Psychology Of Group Hate, Willa Michener

Journal of Hate Studies

Revenge is often taken against people who were not perpetrators of the original offense, provided that they belong to the perpetrator’s group. People react as if they believed that if one member of a group attacked, then they all did or would. Groups are culturally defined, though the tendency to relate to them is universal. It is proposed that “the enemy” is an inherited category while the identity of the groups placed into that category is learned. Enemies are subject to hate, fear, and coldness (the inhibition of empathy). We are prepared to experience an entire outgroup as “enemy” if …

Irrationalism: The Foundation Of Hate Propaganda, Robert Lanning

Journal of Hate Studies

This article proposes that hate propaganda be examined in terms of its basis in irrationalism as a philosophical orientation. In the first part of the paper, irrationalism is discussed from the perspectives of various 20th century philosophers engaged against the rise of fascism or responding to it. In the second part, selected examples of contemporary propaganda are discussed, demonstrating continuity in the use of irrationalism as a limitation to thought and analysis.

Italian Fascism’S Soviet Enemy And The Propaganda Of Hate, 1941-1943, Marla Stone

Journal of Hate Studies

In conjunction with the war against the Soviet Union which began in June 1941, the Italian Fascist regime promulgated a virulent brand of anti-communism and oversaw a campaign of hate-mongering propaganda targeted at its Soviet enemy. This propaganda produced to justify the war highlighted the Manichean struggle against the Soviet Union and the special horrors of the Soviet communist enemy. Using longstanding stereotypes about a Russian lack of civilization, 19th-century ideas about racially expressed biological difference, and more recent tropes about Bolshevik barbarism and immorality, official representations of Fascism’s historic enemy—the communist—put forward a racially degenerate, godless peril from the …

Blood On The Tongue: Reading Abjection In Nationalist Blood Libels From Nazi Germany To Hamas And The British National Party, Damon T. Berry

Journal of Hate Studies

The blood libel is usually known as the Medieval European legend about Jews killing Christians to consume their blood or otherwise use it in rituals. However, in this paper I explore more recent instances of the blood libel that have emerged in nationalist contexts. What I call the nationalist blood libel is more overtly politicized than its predecessors, as there is a relationship between the accusatory portrayals of groups signified as alien and what Arjun Appadurai in Fear of Small Numbers (2006) called an “anxiety of incompletion” inherent in the modern nation-state as a result of the political discourses of …

The New Politics Of Hate? An Assessment Of The Appeal Of The English Defence League Amongst Disadvantaged White Working- Class Communities In England, Jon Garland, James Treadwell

Journal of Hate Studies

Since the summer of 2009 in the United Kingdom there have been a number of violent clashes amongst white and south Asian males, antifascist demonstrators, and the police. These disturbances have centred around the activities of a new far-right grouping, the English Defence League (EDL), which claims to oppose ‘radical Islam’. This article charts the growth of the EDL and examines its motivations and ideologies. It argues that the increasing influence of this organisation reflects wider socio-economic and political processes, and in particular needs to be understood in light of the contemporary state of ‘post-politics’ in which the UK is …

Combating Hate Through Young Adult Literature, Rachel Dean-Ruzicka

Journal of Hate Studies

Young adult literature can help readers look beyond tolerance toward a cosmopolitan ethics of difference as a more sophisticated position for combating hatred. In popular discourse, the ideal of tolerance is generally presented uncritically and deployed as the best response to a perceived difference in another. However, the ideal of tolerance presents many problems. Rather than discouraging hatred, tolerance merely asks us not to act upon related feelings. Additionally, tolerance is often deployed not only as an idealized set of behaviors, but also as a moral imperative. Thus tolerance encourages cultural relativism where we are expected to be tolerant of …

Defining Characteristics And Politicising Victims: A Legal Perspective, Jennifer Schweppe

Journal of Hate Studies

Legislatures worldwide experience the same problem in drafting or amending hate crimes statutes: How is it possible to discriminate between victim groups, and which groups are worthy of legislative protection? This article explores some of the experiences of legislatures, highlighting the political inconsistencies which go on to shape the legal system. It focusses on the experience of a number of common law jurisdictions, and seeks to establish a normative platform from which hate crimes statutes can be based, drawing on the legislative experiences of the United States. This platform draws on two other areas of law, particularly the criminal defence …

Book Reviews: Arthur Goldwag’S The New Hate: A History Of Fear And Loathing On The Populist Right & Thomas R. Pegram’S One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth And Decline Of The Ku Klux Klan In The 1920s, Rebecca Barrett-Fox

Journal of Hate Studies

As reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the number of hate groups in the United States has continually risen since 2000 in response to three factors: the election of the nation’s first African American president, economic turmoil, and undocumented immigration (Potok, 2011). While these structural changes might feel painful for those native-born white Americans who view signs of increasing pluralism as worrisome and who believe that their economic losses are due to the gains of minority groups, they are not new challenges—nor are the hate-filled responses to them new. In both One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and …

Environmental Justice And Hydraulic Fracturing: The Ascendancy Of Grassroots Populism In Policy Determination, Nancy C. Carre

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

Exploration and development of natural gas resources includes the use of hydraulic fracturing, a process that can potentially contaminate domestic water sources. While industry seeks access to BLM leases for new wells, their proximity to communities can have serious negative consequences on their health and life style, raising questions of how sites are selected and concerns about environmental justice. This case scenario explores the manner in which the residents of Delta County, Colorado, organized in response to proposed lease sales, and how grassroots mobilization uses technology and proactive mechanisms to affect public policy.

2012 Annual Disability Statistics Compendium, Andrew Houtenville, Tony Ruiz

Institute on Disability

The Annual Disability Statistics Compendium is a publication of statistics on people with disabilities and government programs that serve the population with disabilities and is modeled after the Statistical Abstracts of the United States, published yearly by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Compendium is designed to serve as a reference guide to government publications. At the bottom of each table, the source of data appearing in each table is presented. These referenced sources contain additional statistical and information about the way the underlying data were collected and the statistics were generated. Each year, the Compendium is updated to reflect …

An Assessment Of The Impact Of Hafting On Paleoindian Point Variability, B. Buchanan, Michael J. O'Brien, J. D. Kilby, B. B. Huckell, M. Collard

History Faculty Publications (Archived)

It has long been argued that the form of North American Paleoindian points was affected by hafting. According to this hypothesis, hafting constrained point bases such that they are less variable than point blades. The results of several studies have been claimed to be consistent with this hypothesis. However, there are reasons to be skeptical of these results. None of the studies employed statistical tests, and all of them focused on points recovered from kill and camp sites, which makes it difficult to be certain that the differences in variability are the result of hafting rather than a consequence of …

Word Diffusion And Climate Science, R. A. Bentley, P. Garnett, Michael J. O'Brien, W. A. Brock

History Faculty Publications (Archived)

As public and political debates often demonstrate, a substantial disjoint can exist between the findings of science and the impact it has on the public. Using climate-change science as a case example, we reconsider the role of scientists in the information-dissemination process, our hypothesis being that important keywords used in climate science follow "boom and bust" fashion cycles in public usage. Representing this public usage through extraordinary new data on word frequencies in books published up to the year 2008, we show that a classic two-parameter social-diffusion model closely fits the comings and goings of many keywords over generational or …

A Quick Response: Qr Code Use At The Harold B. Lee Library, Michael J. Whitchurch

Faculty Publications

The use of quick response (QR) codes in libraries is just beginning to evolve, with a varied and vast future. At the Harold B. Lee Library of Brigham Young University, two projects that use QR codes have been implemented. This article presents details of these implementations and briefly describes QR code uses at other libraries. In addition, some pros and cons, cautions, and potential implementation issues are discussed.

School, Family, And Faith: Social Influences On Educational Outcomes Of Nonmetropolitan Sexual Minority Students, Christopher J. Stapel

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Social institutions in rural communities tend to be highly interrelated and social ties tend to be dense and multiplex. Human ecological theoretical models posit that all institutions in which an individual is embedded interact in complex ways. As such, this dissertation examines the influences of school, faith, family, and risk contexts on the grade point averages of students who attended school in nonmetropolitan counties in Appalachian Kentucky. Using data disaggregated by gender from nearly 5,000 adolescents, I identified risk and protective factors on grade point averages by attraction type (exclusively opposite-sex attracted, same-sex attracted, and unsure of attraction), identified differences …

Explaining Benefit Utilization Variability In Fmnp In Kentucky: An Application Of Pierre Bourdieu’S Theory, Stephanie M. Holcomb-Kreiner

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Research has demonstrated the crucial role fresh fruit and vegetable consumption plays in maintaining good health. However, most Americans do not consume adequate amounts, and low-income Americans consume the lowest quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables. The Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) and Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP) attempts to rectify this situation by providing vouchers to low-income women, children, and elders that can be used only at farmers’ markets for the purchase of locally grown, fresh fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, FMNP and SFMNP exhibit variable and often low benefit utilization. This variable and often low benefit utilization is …

Multiracial Churches: An Unusual Arrangement, David John Luke

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

It is commonly said that 11:00 A.M. Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. The contact theory explains how interracial contact can help to ameliorate racism - and this type of interaction can easily be fostered in a church environment. Durkheim's idea of the "collective effervescence" felt in ritual experiences would be beneficial for crossing racial lines and improving race relations in the U.S. in multiracial churches. A great deal of recent sociological work has focused on the phenomenon of church segregation on a nationwide scale. This paper compares characteristics found in nationwide religious congregation surveys and case …

“What Do You Do With A Student Like That?”: Defiance, Disrespect And Lack Of Motivation In The High School Classroom, Cynthia Stallard Glass

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Educators face multiple forms of misbehavior in the classroom on a regular basis. Quantitative data in the academic literature indicates that some subgroups, particularly minority students, lower income students and boys, face higher rates of disciplinary actions than their peers. Whether this indicates that those students misbehave more often, whether their actions are perceived differently by educators, or whether they are punished more harshly for their misbehavior are issues that are not well-settled by academic research. This research project addresses this gap in the literature, by addressing how the overrepresentation of subgroups may occur and by addressing the decision-making process …

Graduate Employees’ Work And Organizing In Today’S University: A New Social Movement Theory Approach To Internal And External Struggles, Michael Carl Ide

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

This is a mixed-methods comparative study of union and non-union graduate employees’ work experiences, following Wicken’s (2008) call for additional research into the graduate union movement. I used focus group interviews, finding that nonunionized participants had significantly more negative views of their work and faculty members than unionized participants. Non-unionized participants were also more likely to display greater internalization of neoliberal views and neoliberal subjectivity, and were more likely to see their problems in fatalistic terms. I found increased activity with the union to be associated with both decreased fear and anxiety as well as an increased sense of personal …

Making Boundaries And Linking Globally: “Material Politics” Of Phytosanitary Regulation On Mexican Mangos, Kiyohiko Sakamoto

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

This dissertation illuminates how phytosanitary (PS) regulations enable mango exportation from Mexico to the United States. PS regulations are technical and legal measures to prevent plant pests from proliferating or being transported to other places and are important regulatory mechanisms enabling the globalization of agriculture. My case study investigates how PS regulations enable Mexican mango exportation as an aspect of the globalization of agriculture, illustrating the consequences of PS regulations to humans and non-humans. More specifically, three research questions are posed: (1) How does the PS regulation network operate to draw distinctions between pest/non-pest, thereby enabling the export of Mexican …

Middle-Class Crisis In The Colonization Transition: Comparing Catalysts And Consequences In Taiwan, 1988-2008, Jui-Chang Jao

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

The Taiwanese middle class has experienced two waves of crisis over the past three decades in the context of a colonization transition involving globalization and democratization as primary catalysts. On the economic front, Taiwan’s economy has become increasingly integrated into the Chinese market, resulting approximately one million of the Taiwanese middle class relocating to China. Moreover, neoliberal economic reforms have led to a downsized state sector of the Taiwanese economy. These economic changes affect the growth and stability of the Taiwanese middle class. Meanwhile, on the political front, an ongoing democratic consolidation and decolonization efforts have brought about significant political …

Attentional Bias And Alcohol Abuse, Jessica Jane Weafer

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Selective attention towards alcohol-related cues (i.e., “attentional bias”) is thought to reflect increased incentive motivational value of alcohol and alcohol cues acquired through a history of heavy alcohol use, and as such attentional bias is considered to be a clinically relevant factor contributing to alcohol use disorders. This dissertation consists of two studies that investigated specific mechanisms through which attentional bias might serve to promote alcohol abuse. Study 1 compared magnitude of attentional bias in heavy (n = 20) and light (n = 20) drinkers following placebo and two doses of alcohol (0.45 g/kg and 0.65 g/kg). Heavy drinkers displayed …

Is Tdr In Virginia Doa? A Study Of The State Of Transfer Of Development Rights Programs In Virginia, Alissa Akins

Theses and Dissertations

Transfer of development rights has been approved as a tool to manage growth in Virginia since 2006, yet it has not been widely employed. This tool can be used to direct growth and development at little or no cost to society while simultaneously preserving land for future generations. In an effort to understand the limited use of transfer of development rights programs in Virginia, this research collected information regarding obstacles and limitations to TDR program development and implementation, from every locality in the Commonwealth authorized to employ this tool. Based on findings of pertinent TDR literature, this research outlines the …