Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Carolina Gay Association, The Southeastern Gay Conferences, And Gay Liberation In The 1970s South, David Hooper Schultz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores how the successes and failures of local organizing networks in the South shaped national conversations on the rights of queer Americans. Its starting point is 1970 with the Triangle Gay Alliance’s formation in Raleigh, and it ends in 1978 with the third annual Southeastern Gay Conference and repeal of Miami-Dade County’s nondiscrimination ordinance. Paying close attention to the founding of the Carolina Gay Association in 1975 and the subsequent Southeastern Gay Conferences (SEGCs), the thesis connects the attendance at conferences to locally-organized activist groups from North Carolina to Florida to show that rather than being “lonely hunters” …

On The Relationship Between Resilience, Meaning, And Hardiness: A Bi-Factor Exploratory And Confirmatory Analysis, Lauren Weathers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Meaning in life, resilience, and hardiness have been conceptualized in a variety of ways. Some researchers theorize that these constructs share significant overlap. The goal of the current study was to examine how much overlap exists between these concepts. Three thousand and ten participants from a university in the Midwest and a university in the South completed measures of meaning in life, resilience, and hardiness. It was hypothesized that some items from these measures would create a unidimensional model while some items would create multidimensionality. Hypotheses that incorporated both models were important as there is disagreement within the literature with …

Explication Of Moral Disgust: Assessing Physiological And Behavioral Responses To Disgust Eliciting Videos, Sarah Michelle Scott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Results indicate a significant self-reported disgust response among core animal reminder and contamination domains whereas the moral domains elicited both anger and disgust. Physiologically no change was measured in skin conductance; heart rate decrease in response to animal reminder contamination community and autonomy video clips. Significant behavioral avoidance was demonstrated when presented with the core and animal reminder video clips. Further when measuring facial muscle activation the levator labii was significantly activated in response to the core video clip but no others. The current study highlights the difficulty in establishing characteristic responses to disgust stimuli especially within the moral domain. …

The Relationship Between Intra-Cultural Factors And Feedback Seeking Behavior In Supervision Among Counselors-In-Training In Counselor Education Programs, Sumedha Therthani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For this research study a cross-sectional correlational survey research design was utilized. Counselors in training both master and doctoral level currently receiving clinical supervision in counselor education programs (n=123) participated in this study. Participants were administered (a) tolerance of ambiguity scale (b) individual power distance scale (c) feedback-seeking frequency scale (d) feedback-seeking source scale and (e) feedback-seeking style scale. Six research questions were the subject of data analyses in this study. Analyses included conducting multivariate multiple regression and simple regression analyses to understand whether tolerance of ambiguity and status identity predict graduate counselors’ feedback-seeking (a) style (b) source and (c) …

Moral Agency: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Its Scientific Foundations, Makensey Sanders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is a longstanding discussion of what the criteria are to distinguish science from non-science. In section one of this paper, I will focus on four demarcating criteria of a scientific theory: (1) value neutrality; (2) verifiability; (3) falsifiability; and (4) reproducibility. Keeping these criteria in mind, I will turn to the notion of moral agency (focusing on psychopathy, autism, and personal identity) and the question of whether the current way we conceptualize and research it can be deemed as scientific according to the four criteria.

In section two, I will discuss the role psychopathy and autism play in understanding …

Valuation Of Mentorship In Pharmacy Education And The Impact Of Perceived Personal Relevance, Ashley Stubblefield Crumby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mentorship is an important component of personal and professional development for student pharmacists. This research measured the value of mentorship in this population examined potential influencing factors and the likelihood to participate in a mentoring relationship and identified preferences for the mentoring relationship. Data collection involved survey self-report of student pharmacists (P1-P4) at four participating universities. An adapted 29-item Mentoring Functions Scale (MFS) was used to measure value with functions divided into career and psychosocial categories. The highest ranked mentoring functions were psychosocial with an average score of 9 or greater on the 10-point scale. Perceived personal relevance measured using …

Basketball Officials' Training And Development: Links To Retention, Nathan Ferdinand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The sharp decline in retention from year-to-year among sport officials is considered a “crisis” among the officiating community and research has attempted to explore the issue by identifying factors that impact retention (Warner et al. 2013). The seven-factor “Referee Retention Scale” (RRS) seeks to predict the likelihood of retention for officials one factor being officials’ ratings of their continuing education (Ridinger et al. 2017). However there is a lack of study for examining the relationships among methods and outcomes of training continuing education and referee retention across sporting contexts. A cross-sectional design was created using an online survey which combined …

Doing Hard Things In The Context Of Values: Values Intervention As An Establishing Operation For Approach Behavior In The Presence Of Aversive Stimuli, Emmie Hebert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aversive control is an umbrella term for behavioral contingencies influenced by the removal or avoidance of aversive stimuli. When individuals are engaging in behavior that is under aversive control the behavior becomes relatively insensitive to changes in the environment outside of trying to escape or avoid the aversive stimulation. Teaching individuals to increase behavioral and psychological flexibility around potentially aversive stimuli is a goal of a therapeutic perspective called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT therapists and trainers use values to motivate their clients to engage in meaningful behaviors despite ever-changing and often aversive contexts. The aim of the current …

A Brief Acceptance And Commitment Therapy Based Intervention For Distressed Graduate Students, Emily Hannah Katt Jacobson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Graduate students report to experience distress at high rates. Research suggests that self-care behaviors such as sleep exercise and mindfulness practice can helpful for mental health and wellbeing. The current study examined the effectiveness of a brief Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) based intervention on increasing self-care behaviors in distressed graduate students at the University of Mississippi (N=7). The intervention was delivered in three 60-minute individual sessions. The effects of the intervention were examined using a concurrent multiple baseline across participants design. Results indicated that five out of seven participants shoincreases in self-reported self-care behaviors after the start of the …

Essays On Money And Labor, Kwabena Okyere Boateng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The price-specie-flow mechanism (PSFM) is a theory of the adjustment of the balance of trade and gold flows as a result of deviations in relative prices across countries under a gold standard. The PSFM is central to quantity-theoretic discussions of economic fluctuations under a gold standard as well as analysis of whether central banks follo``the rules of the game'' of the gold standard. In short, the PSFM is the standard working assumption when it comes to gold standard adjustment. However, at least since Adam Smith there has been an alternative to the PSFM that has come to be known as …

The Transfer Culture In College Basketball, Ariel Massengale

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2017, 18.5% of female women’s basketball players transferred. That ranked the highest it has ever been, second on the list for women’s sports and higher than any male sport (NCAA.org, 2018). The decision to transfer is a multifaceted issue that involves many reasons from generational differences, social media, technology, among other factors and has been rapidly increasing. For the lack of empirical studies, the foundation of this research was built on studies that focused on student retention because the same reasons a student may be retained could be the very reason a student decides to transfer depending on the …

The Effects Of Differing Optical Stimuli On Depth Perception In Virtual Reality, Mckennon B. Mcmillian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is well documented that egocentric depth perception is underestimated in virtual reality more often than not. Many studies have been done to try and understand why this underestimation happens and what variables affect it. While this underestimation can be shown consistently the degree of underestimation can strongly differ from study to study, with as much as 68% to as low as 6% underestimation, Jones et al. (2011, 2008); Knapp(1999); Richardson and Waller (2007). Many of these same studies use blind walking as a tool to measure depth perception. With no standardized blind walking method for virtual reality existing differing …

Social Identity, Economic Interest, And The Formation Of Host Attitudes Toward Refugees, Jeremy Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly studies of refugee crises have historically focused on the causes of refugee flight, the experience of the refugees themselves, or the impacts of refugees on host countries. More recently, a growing body of literature has examined the interaction of refugees and host populations, and more specifically the orientations of host individuals toward refugees. This study focuses on attitude formation during refugee crises, seeking to better understand the role of social and economic factors in shaping the attitudes of host populations. The core questions for this study are whether and how social identity and economic considerations relate to attitudes. Original …

The Effects Of Market Fragmentation Around Corporate Events, Justin Steven Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Part 1, I investigate the effects of market fragmentation in the liquidity formation of initial public offerings (IPOs). Recent exchange officials cite increases in market fragmentation as a hindrance to the liquidity formation in IPO trading. We find that IPOs are less fragmented at the start of IPO trading relative to later periods in the IPO secondary market. We also discover that more underpriced issues experience greater fragmentation, both lit and dark, at the start of IPO trading. Our study also examines the level of undisplayed liquidity in IPOs, finding more hidden trading at the start of IPO trading …

Shifting Power, Status Quo Dissatisfaction, And Power Parity: Their Effect On The Use Of Coercive Foreign Policy In International Relations, Nathan Alvin Andrew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How do shifts in the distribution of power effect the foreign policy decisions of states? In this dissertation, I argue that shifts in the distribution of power, status quo dissatisfaction, and power parity work together to significantly impact these decisions. Until this time, the conditional effect of these three variables has only been included in studies of major- or regional-power war, within the theoretical framework of power transition theory. To what extent do these correlates of war apply to foreign policy in general? Borrowing the insights of foreign policy substitution and the logic of the bargaining theory of war, I …

Validating Military Culture: The Factor Analysis Of A Military-Related Adaptation Of Acculturation, Mathew A. Tkachuck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The concept of acculturation has a long history, and measures of the construct attempt to assess the degree to which attitudes and behaviors reflect the interaction between different cultures. Berry’s acculturation framework (1997) is arguably the most empirically-supported and well-known model of acculturation. Berry’s model posits that an individual may have difficulty appropriately adapting to a culture different than his or her own depending on how much they are oriented to either culture. Moreover, Searle and Ward (1990) hypothesized that an individual’s acculturation orientation, in addition to how different the dominant and non-dominant cultures are from one another, impacts psychological …

Dear Hubert Creekmore: An Archival Search Into The Life Of A Queer Mississippi Writer, Mary Stanton Knight

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dear Hubert Creekmore: An Archival Search into the Life of a Queer Mississippi Writer examines the life of writer, translator, poet, painter, and trained classical pianist Hiram Hubert Creekmore, Jr. through archival research of collections donated by the author at three public institutions. The thesis explores the private relationships Creekmore had with literary and artistic figures from 1940-1966 and the silence surrounding LGBTQ archives to produce a more extensive biographical work on the author. Creekmore’s relationships with a variety of writers, composers, artists, and publishers is examined in order to discover his circle of friends as well as attempt to …

We Gotta Work With What We Got: School And Community Factors That Contribute To Educational Resilience Among African American Students, Denae Bradley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Black residents in the Mississippi Delta claim and deploy agency and resiliency in a rural community context entrenched in a legacy of oppression. Black, low-income communities are implicitly labeled non-resilient when macro-level community capitals and resiliency literature are applied. However, I find that resiliency is culturally distinctive and oftentimes detected in ritual, daily processes in Black communities. This thesis rejects dominant narratives that Black communities in Mississippi are only poor, backwards, and lacking. It questions the assumption that dominant institutions have created inescapable boundaries for Black people in this region and challenges the notion that the …

Innovation, Ceos, And Ipos, Zhilu Lin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Part 1, I study if CEOs with innovative ability impose a cost upon their firms. I find that while there is a positive effect of a CEO’s innovative ability on firm innovation, the benefit is only when CEO’s innovative ability is useful for the firm. Further, firms with innovator CEOs spend more on R&D projects but with lower efficiency and hold more cash but with lower cash value compared to firms with non-innovator CEOs. These results suggest that innovator CEOs create an overinvestment problem. In Part 2, I study the effects of talent cycling on IPO long-run performance and …

Community Resilience: A Meta-Study Of International Development Rhetoric In Emerging Economies, Rachel Ann Haggard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understood generally, community resilience is the ability of communities to adapt, absorb, mitigate, and recover from shocks and stressors in such a way that facilitates positive future outcomes and reduces overall vulnerability to future shocks and stressors (Adger, 2000; Norris, Stevens, Pfefferbaum, Wyche & Pfefferbaum, 2008; USAID, 2013; Walker et al., 2004). The core of this definition relates to sustainability and the capability of socio-ecological systems and communities to adapt and transform to both day to day fluctuations and stressors as well as major disasters (Milman & Short, 2008; Walker et al., 2004). This meta-study seeks to shed light on …

Behavioral Inhibition And Avoidance: Identifying Vulnerabilities To Avoidant Behavior, Daniel Pineau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Avoidance is characterized as the inability of an individual to interact with a stimulus for the purpose of reducing distress. Avoidance increases the likelihood that distress and symptoms related to anxiety will increase. This may lead to further impairment and anxious pathology across the lifespan. Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) describes a temperamental vulnerability that influences approach (Behavioral Approach System; BAS) and avoidance (Behavioral Inhibition System; BIS) behaviors. The purpose of the study was to identify, using observed behavioral approach tasks, whether or not BIS/BAS influenced avoidant behavior above and beyond other avoidance vulnerabilities (anxiety sensitivity and emotion dysregulation). Participants (N=297) …

The Politics Of Place, The Urban-Rural Divide, And Geographic Identities In American Politics, Daniel Fudge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To test these theories, I conduct a series of empirical tests using survey data from the American National Election Survey (ANES) and an original survey experiment. Chapter two examines how people’s ideological perceptions are moderated by living in a particular area. Using the ANES data, I conduct a regression analysis with an interaction of the respondent’s ideology and the geographic location. Chapter three analyzes how individuals perceive a political candidate based on partisan and geographic information presented to the respondent. Using an original survey experiment, this study seeks to illustrate how individuals across urban and rural America perceive Republican and …

Meaning, Purpose, And Experiential Avoidance As Predictors Of Valued Behavior: An Application Of Ecological Momentary Assessment, Jeffrey Pavlacic

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Values-based interventions in therapeutic settings direct behavior with avoidance and escape functions towards valued domains that are intrinsically reinforcing. This “progression” towards valued domains fluctuates on a daily basis, predicting less psychological stress. Contemporary conceptualizations of meaning in life delineate two primary domains: purpose (goal achievement), and significance or presence of meaning (the extent to which a person perceives themselves as “mattering”). These domains have not been simultaneously and systematically investigated in college students, a population at risk for developing maladaptive coping strategies and negative affect attributed to adjustment-related issues (e.g., binge drinking, depression, increased risk for suicidal ideation). College …

Hurricane Landing: An Analysis Of Site 22la516 In Sardis Lake, Lafayette County, Mississippi, Joshua John Shiers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Site 22LA516, known as Hurricane Landing, is a single mound early Mississippian site located in the middle of Sardis Lake, Lafayette County, Mississippi. As part of a 2015 joint salvage archaeology project between the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) and the Vicksburg District Corp of Engineers, nine pit features were excavated. Analyses of the ceramics and lithic remains recovered from the features, combined with AMS dates, were conducted with the focus of better understanding Hurricane Landing within its North Central Hills region of Mississippi. Hurricane Landing’s 2015 excavation ceramic collection contains shell tempered and grog tempered plainware with several shell …

Predictors Of Behavioral Health Among Firefighters In Their Third Year Of Fire Service, Victoria Alicia Torres

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Employee turnover is expensive, as job training can cost upwards of 30% of an employee’s annual salary (not including additional onboarding expenses; Boushey & Glynn, 2012). This is especially true among high stress, dangerous occupations that require specialized training such as firefighters (Envisage Technologies, 2016; Knoll, 2011; Patterson et al., 2010). Health status is a primary reason for job concerns that may lead to decline in job performance and employment separation (Hourani, Williams, & Kress, 2006; Virtanen, Kivimäki, Vahtera, Elovainio, Sund, Virtanen, & Ferrie, 2006). Two research areas that support this notion include literature on the biopsychosocial model and occupational …

Reward And Punishment: The Neural Correlates Of Reinforcement Feedback During Motor Learning, Christopher Mark Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

‘By the carrot or the stick’ reward or punishment has been contemplated by instructors to motivate their pupils to learn a new motor skill. The reinforcements of reward and punishment have demonstrated dissociable effects on motor learning with punishment enhancing the learning rate and reward increasing retention of the motor task. However it is still unclear how the brain processes reward and punishment during motor learning. This study sought to investigate the role of reinforcement feedback in cortical neural activity associated with motor learning. A novel visuomotor rotation task was employed with reward punishment or null feedback as the participants …

Gender Roles, Sexual Assertiveness, And Sexual Coercion In Lgbtq Individuals, Lavina Ying Ho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sexual violence is a prominent community issue particularly within the LGBTQ+ community. The present study examined the relationships among gender roles sexual assertiveness and sexual victimization as well as sexual perpetration in a LGBTQ+ population. For most severe form of sexual violence victimization in the past year 17.6% reported having been raped. Moderated logistic regression analyses found that both gender roles and sexual assertiveness independently predicted severity of sexual victimization and perpetration. No interactions were found to predict either sexual victimization or sexual perpetration. Specifically the femininity gender role and lower levels of sexual assertiveness predicted greater likelihood for victim …

Examining The Moderating Effects Of Defendant Characteristics On The Relationship Between Crime Type And Prosecutorial Decision Making, Caitlin Marie Howley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The concept of plea bargaining was not compractice until the nineteenth century (Langbein, 1978; Alschuler, 1979). Before that time, criminal defendants lacked representation in the court, leaving the judge to determine sentencing and punishment. Plea bargaining has become the prominent practice, with around 90% of cases, state and federal, resulting in a plea (Rabin, 1972; Lagoy, Senna, & Siegel, 1976; Alschuler, 1979; Alschuler, 1983; Scott & Stuntz, 1992; Schulhofer, 1992; Starkweather, 1992; Ross, 2006; Silveira, 2017). The concept of plea bargaining is inevitably accompanied by discretion, specifically prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutorial discretion grants prosecutors power in deciding what charges they would …

How Ghost Stories Shape The State Of Mississippi And The People, Ana Lauren Martinez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many people chose to brush off the stories and when asked about them they would skip around the story to talk about the history of a place. Those who embraced the stories were not only knowledgable about the stories but also the history. They tended to give both sides with equal enthusiasm and seriousness. Over the years Mississippians have learned about their neighbors through the stories that they told around the campfire or at sleepovers. These stories have been passed down from one generation to the next and have a way of not only identifying a place but also a …

Is It Racism, Colorism, Or A Pigment Of Your Imagination? A Study On The Invisible Color Line, Yolanda Rodriguez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Participants were 324 self-identified ethnic/racial minority adults recruited from a southern university in the United States and an online community (MTurk workers) primarily ranging in age from 18-30 (78.4%). Participants completed a demographic questionnaire and a measure for each of the variables of interest. A moderated mediation analysis was conducted using PROCESS (Hayes 2013) model 8. It was hypothesized that acculturation modality (X) would predict skin lightening behaviors and attitudes (Y) through three mediators (M1: Discrepancy scores M2: Satisfaction with Skin Color and M3: Desire to Change Skin Color). Psychological well-being was predicted to be a moderator (W) of the …