Social Psychology and Interaction Commons^™

Experiences In Coexistence And Anti-Normalization Phenomenological Case Study: Arab Alumni Of The Arava, Lauren Rauch

Capstone Collection

Many Arabs are confronted with the accusation that they are “normalizing with the Zionist enemy” when they participate in people-to-people programs with Israeli Jews. This paper explores the phenomenon of Arab participation in the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies, an academic coexistence program in Israel, and how the participants relate their experiences to the anti-normalization discourse. At the Arava Institute, Palestinian and Jordanians study and live alongside Israelis; Arab participants are often labeled “normalizers” within their society, a term associated with being a traitor or collaborator. From an anti-normalization perspective, people-to-people programs promote a positive public image of Israel and …

A Theory Of Mental Credit, Jason Soll

CMC Senior Theses

Many philosophical subjects attempt to analyze the basis of human welfare. Theories of desert, distribution of property, and happiness tend to dominate philosophical discourse. Mental credit, which is the mental acquisition of credit for one’s accomplishments and the satisfaction one derives from this credit, is absent from this discourse despite its underlying role in the way people think about their lives. Mental credit is an eternal cognitive good that deserves thoughtful attention and pious decisions for implementation. The following theory of mental credit seeks to serve as a unifying theory for the mental calculations that guide life’s most imperative decisions, …

Attitudes, William A. Cunningham, Ingrid J. Haas, Andrew Jahn

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

This chapter reviews social neuroscience research that links social psychological attitudes and evaluative processes to their presumed neural bases. The chapter is organized into four parts. The first section discusses how attitude representations are transformed into evaluative states that can be used to guide thought and action. The next two sections address the related processes of attitude learning and change. The final section discusses applications of these concepts for the study of prejudice and political behavior.

Distress Among Indigenous North Americans: Generalized And Culturally Relevant Stressors, Melissa L. Walls, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Stress process and life-course models of mental distress emphasize socio-cultural and historical processes that influence stress exposure and the impact of stress on mental health outcomes. Drawing from these theoretical orientations as well as concepts from the historical trauma literature, we examine the effects of culturally relevant and more generalized sources of stress on distress among North American Indigenous adults, and tests for the potential cumulative and interactive effects of stress on distress across the life-course via self-reported early childhood and adult/contemporary stressors. Results of OLS regression analyses reveal positive, significant associations between general stressors and distress as well as …

Variation In Distress Among Women With Infertility: Evidence From A Population-Based Sample, Arthur L. Greil, Karina M. Shreffler, Lone Schmidt, Julia Mcquillan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND We examine variation in fertility-specific distress (FSD) and general distress according to different experiences of infertility among 1027 US women who have experienced infertility within the previous 10 years.

METHODS General distress was measured by a short form of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression. Multiple regression analysis was conducted on self-report data (based on a telephone interview) from a probability-based sample of US women aged 25–45 years. We compare women with infertility who have had a prior pregnancy (secondary infertility, n = 628) to women with infertility with no prior pregnancies (primary infertility, n = 399). We further distinguish …

Are Prior Pregnancy Outcomes Relevant For Models Of Fertility-Specific Distress Or Infertility Helpseeking?, Arthur L. Greil, Katherine M. Johnson, Julia Mcquillan, Naomi L Lacy

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Women with prior pregnancy but no live birth are inconsistently termed as either ‘primary infertile’ or ‘secondary infertile’ in psychosocial studies of infertile women. The goal of this study was to discover whether infertile women who had experienced pregnancies but no live births were more similar in attitudes and behavior to infertile women who had not experienced pregnancies or to those who had live births. We used the National Survey of Fertility Barriers (NSFB), which contains self-reported data from a probability-based sample of US women aged between 25 and 45, to accomplish our goal. In this cross-sectional analysis, infertile women …

Alcohol Use Trajectories And Problem Drinking Over The Course Of Adolescence: A Study Of North American Indigenous Youth And Their Caretakers, Jacob E. Cheadle, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the links between alcohol use trajectories and problem drinking (DSM-IV abuse/dependence) using five waves of data from 727 North American Indigenous adolescents between 10–17 years from eight reservations sharing a common language and culture. Growth mixture models linking fundamental causes, social stressors, support, and psychosocial pathways to problem drinking via alcohol use trajectories over the early life course were estimated. Results indicated that 20% of the adolescents began drinking at 11–12 years of age and that another 20% began drinking shortly thereafter. These early drinkers were at greatly elevated risk for problem drinking, as were those who …

Introduction: Charlotte Perkins Gilman On The Sociology Of Families, Marriages, And Children, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Charlotte Perkins Gilman died in 1935, but she remains today a provocative sociological writer; she makes us think, argue, and question our preconceptions, especially with regard to marriage and family. Several posthumous volumes of Gilman’s work have been produced and it has been my pleasure to help present three of Gilman’s (1997, 2002, 2004) major sociological writings to new generations of readers in English. As noted in the preface, it has been a special honor to acquaint an audience of Italian readers with a selection of her powerful writings on families, marriages, and children.1 The present volume joins a small …

Queryarch3d: Querying And Visualising 3d Models Of A Maya Archaeological Site In A Web-Based Interface, Giorgio Agugiaro, Fabio Remondino, Gabrio Girardi, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Raffaele De Amicis

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Constant improvements in the field of surveying, computing and distribution of digital-content are reshaping the way Cultural Heritage can be digitised and virtually accessed, even remotely via web. A traditional 2D approach for data access, exploration, retrieval and exploration may generally suffice, however more complex analyses concerning spatial and temporal features require 3D tools, which, in some cases, have not yet been implemented or are not yet generally commercially available. Efficient organisation and integration strategies applicable to the wide array of heterogeneous data in the field of Cultural Heritage represent a hot research topic nowadays. This article presents a visualisation …

Pregnancy And Mental Health Of Young Homeless Women, Devan M. Crawford, Emily C. Trotter, Kelley J. Sittner Hartshorn, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Pregnancy rates among women in the U.S. who are homeless are much higher than rates among women who are housed (Greene & Ringwalt, 1998). Yet little research has addressed mental health, risk and resilience among young mothers who are homeless. This study utilizes a sample of women from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Homeless Adolescents (MLSHA) to investigate pregnancy and motherhood over three years among unaccompanied homeless young mothers. Our data are supplemented by in-depth interviews with a subset of these women. Results show that almost half of sexually active young women (n = 222, μ age = 17.2) had …

Maturation, Peer Context, And Indigenous Girls' Early-Onset Substance Use, Melissa L. Walls, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper examines a biosocial model of the impact of puberty on Indigenous girls' early-onset substance use by considering the potential mediating role of peer context (i.e. mixed-sex peer groups and substance use prototypes) on the puberty and substance use relationship. Data include responses from 360 girls of a common Indigenous cultural group residing on reservations/reserves in the upper Midwest and Canada. Results of structural equation modeling revealed that the statistically significant relationship between girls' pubertal development and early-onset substance use was mediated by both mixed-sex/romantic peer groups and favorable social definitions of substance use. Implications for substance use prevention …

Archival Methods And The Veil Of Sociology, Mary Jo Deegan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Archival methods of research are crucial to reconstruct. interpret. and evaluate contributions of early sociologists that are hidden behind the veiIs of racism and sexism. Many of these founding sociologists profoundly shaped their communities and created important organizations to combat social inequality and injustice. Their lives as intellectuals were frequently controversial. which made them political anathemas to mainstream sociologists, usually white males working in prestigious universities who wanted money. fame, and prestige for the new discipline and its leaders.

In this chapter, [recount how r began a career using historical research to understand the rich. alternative history of the profession. …

The Social Construction Of Infertility, Arthur L. Greil, Julia Mcquillan, Kathleen S. Slauson-Blevins

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Health and illness are not objective states but socially constructed categories. We focus here on infertility, a phenomenon that has shifted from being seen as a private problem of couples to being seen as a medical condition. Studying infertility provides an ideal vantage point from which to study such features of health care as inter-societal and cross-cultural disparities in health care, the relationship between identity and health, gender roles, and social and cultural variations in the process of medicalization. Infertility is stratified, both globally and within Western societies. Access to care is extremely limited for many women in developing societies …

Heterogeneity And Its Impact On Thermal Robustness And Attractor Density, Yuri Cantor, Bilal Khan, Kirk Dombrowski

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

There is considerable research relating the structure of Boolean networks to their state space dynamics. In this paper, we extend the standard model to include the effects of thermal noise, which has the potential to deflect the trajectory of a dynamical system within its state space, sending it from one stable attractor to another. We introduce a new “thermal robustness” measure, which quantifies a Boolean network’s resilience to such deflections. In particular, we investigate the impact of structural homogeneity on two dynamical properties: thermal robustness and attractor density. Through computational experiments on cyclic Boolean networks, we ascertain that as a …

[Introduction To] For The Greater Good Of All: Perspectives On Individualism, Society, And Leadership, Donelson R. Forsyth, Crystal L. Hoyt

Bookshelf

At every turn the variations in individual perspectives on human rights and potentials, contrasting philosophies on social justice and political structure, and even debates over the best solutions to pressing social problems reflect the vital tension between the one and the many. Are humans, as a species, motivated more by selfish desires or by a commitment to helping others? Can society require that individuals contribute to a common good, even when they will not personally benefit from it? Is a commitment to a common good that will benefit generations to come more morally laudable than working diligently to achieve personal …

“I Would Feel Uncomfortable If My Child’S Teacher Were Gay”: Examining The Role Of Symbolic Homophobia And Political Affiliation, Michael Moore, Amy C. Moors

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Symbolic homophobia is a general negative disposition towards lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals, which is demonstrated in symbolic forms of prejudice rather than overt actions. Stigma towards lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals has transformed from overt forms of prejudice to slightly less blatant more subtle forms in recent years (Schafer & Shaw, 2009). Based on previous research, it is has also been shown that conservatives will have higher levels of symbolic homophobia. (Linneman, 2004), Thus, in order to assess the more nuanced forms of prejudice in relation to political affiliation, Study 1 created a scale to assess symbolic homophobia. …

Dmitri Shalin Interview With Sherri Cavan About Erving Goffman Entitled "Remembering Goffman", Dmitri N. Shalin, Sherri Cavan

Bios Sociologicus: The Erving Goffman Archives

Letter from Dmitri Shalin

After High Holidays Erving Made Up Excuses Rather Than Admit That He Missed School Because He Was Jewish, Avron Katz

Bios Sociologicus: The Erving Goffman Archives

This interview with Avron Katz was conducted in 2001 by his daughter Syva-Lee Wildenmann and presented as a student paper for the class on "Social Psychology from a Sociological Perspective" taught by Dr. Daniel Albas, professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba.

Developmental Bibliotherapy In Practice: A Study Of Bibliotherapy Effects On Kindergarten Behavior, Courtney Hawley

Graduate Theses

Bibliotherapy is the use of books and other print media for the purpose of instructing the audience about a certain topic. Developmental bibliotherapy is a form of bibliotherapy in which a teacher or other facilitator presents a book to a group in order to help instruct a desired behavior. This study was conducted to determine the effects of developmental bibliotherapy instruction over the course of a six weeks time period in the Kindergarten classroom. I wanted to determine the effectiveness of the bibliotherapy program as it related to teaching problem solving behaviors for a small group of students. The students …

Beliefs About Alcohol And The College Experience As Moderators Of The Effects Of Perceived Drinking Norms On Student Alcohol Use, Lizabeth A. Crawford, Katherine B. Novak

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Many students view the abuse of alcohol as integral to the student role. Thus, they feel entitled to drink heavily without sanction. OLS regression was used to assess the extent to which these beliefs about alcohol and the college experience moderate the effects of descriptive and injunctive campus drinking norms on students’ levels of alcohol consumption. Overall, respondents who perceived that same-sex students on their campus drank heavily tended to drink heavily themselves. This relationship was, however, strongest among individuals who viewed the abuse of alcohol as part of being a student. Although general injunctive norms were not themselves associated …