University of Massachusetts Boston
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From Trust to Overreliance: Understanding the Evolution of Human-AI Interactions and the Role of AI Explainability
No full textAs artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly engage users in autonomous, personalized, and relational ways, human-AI interaction has evolved beyond traditional human-computer paradigms. This dissertation offers a human-centered investigation into the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes underlying engagement with AI technologies. Drawing on socio-technical and psychological frameworks, it examines how users interact with, trust, and sometimes over-rely on AI systems, highlighting the need for theories that account for the interpersonal and persuasive dimensions of AI, as well as strategies for mitigating negative consequences.
Comprising three essays, the dissertation examines AI interactivity, trust development, and over-reliance using behavioral science methods. The first essay applies the interactivity model to AI voice assistants, demonstrating how AI features and user sociability influence perceptions of interaction quality and the intention to use. The second essay combines trust theories and the emotion of awe to explain how positive and negative perceptions interact in a nonlinear and synergistic way in trust formation. The third essay explores the effect of AI explainability on users\u27 cognitive processing in AI recommender systems, considering how personal relevance, context, and dispositional factors play a role. It shows that overreliance may continue even with high explainability, while identifying conditions under which it can be reduced. Overall, the essays help redefine human-AI interaction as a complex and dynamic process, providing both theoretical and practical insights for designing AI systems that promote appropriate trust and responsible user behavior
Policy Aspects of Mitigation and Adaptation to Glacier Melt
No full textGlobal warming is causing irreversible glacier retreat. This phenomenon will have major consequences for the environment and human systems, particularly in terms of water availability, increased natural hazards, slope and valley stability, hydroelectric power generation, tourism, culture, and local lifestyles. Only a drastic and rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could slow this phenomenon, but this reduction is slow in coming. Countries are experimenting with different approaches to mitigate ice melt, including integrated management of glacial and periglacial ecosystems and the local application of technologies. These technologies raise scientific questions about their effectiveness in a warming climate, and policy questions, particularly about their governance and cost. Proactive and sustainable adaptation to glacier retreat therefore remains the only realistic and effective approach to minimize the risks associated with glacier melt. Reports provided by countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement (PA) provide interesting insights into the mitigation and adaptation policies and measures they are implementing or planning, highlighting the limitations imposed by the availability of capacity and finance, as well as by the limits of adaptation. The disaster that occurred on May 28, 2025 in the Swiss Alpine village of Blatten, which was buried under a landslide of ice and rock, and its handling offer useful lessons for adaptation to a glacier disaster. The laudable idea of the United Nations General Assembly to declare 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation must primarily serve the goal of adaptation, rather than the apparent illusion that glacier melt can be prevented in the face of global warming. This article focuses on the policy aspects of mitigating and adapting to glacier melt
Limitations due to Occupational Credentialing for Immigrants in Massachusetts: Survey Report
Full text linkThe Gastón Institute began investigating occupational credentialing because of a previous research project with English for New Bostonians, which had found that many people in its ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes complained that lack of an occupational credential had caused them to suffer unemployment or underemployment. The Latino Equity Fund at the Boston Foundation provided the funding for a study addressing the problem of determining the extent to which Massachusetts immigrants are having trouble in the labor market because they lack the proper occupational credentials. The study has two complementary components: a qualitative study with interviews of immigrants, presented as an accompanying report (Vega-Martinez et al., 2025) and a quantitative study, which is based on a survey whose methods and results are presented in this report
We Walk the Same Path but Have on Different Shoes: Wounded Healers and a Halfway House in Boston, MA
Full text linkThis study explores the processes, procedures, and relationships in a women’s reentry house, the New Hope Home (NHH), in the Grove Hall neighborhood of Boston, MA while also examining the evolution of the home and the relationships within the NHH. This project is based on interview and participant observation data of the staff and residents of the home to ascertain multiple viewpoints and experiences of people critical to the home’s existence and success or struggles. The home opened in April 2022. This research begins at the grand opening of the home and continues through early 2025. Finally, neighborhood resident interviews and participant observation in the community provided insight into the sentiments of the neighborhoods surrounding the home, neighborhood crime, and primary concerns in the neighborhood and community life. At its core, though, this research applies wounded healer and professional “ex” literature to the staff and director of the home who, as street-level bureaucrats, impact how the organization functions and its evolution through the first few years of operation
human conditions
No full textA collection exploring linguistic redaction through existentialist themes as they appear in our daily lives
Breathing, Its Own Feast
No full textA collection traversing life, death, and what presence means as we breathe through the ups and downs of our complicated lives
Everyone Talks About the Sky
No full textEveryone Talks About the Sky borrows its title from the opening line of the last story in this collection, “Still Friends,” about two women who narrate the slow fracture of their friendship between 9/11 and January 6th. In some way, each of these stories explores fracture and belonging. Reoccurring themes also include female friendship, motherhood, gender roles, class stratifications, aging, beauty, and the body. I’m drawn to specific and vivid milieux including 1990s Cape Cod, early aughts tech and the blogosphere, the American yoga boom, and our present-day political and climate crises
Making Tabby, Making Place: Examining a Gullah Geechee Wattle and Tabby Daub Dwelling Through Thin Section Analysis
Full text linkTabby is a building material made from lime, sand, oyster shell, and water that is geographically associated with the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. This material was used from the early 18th century to end of the American Civil War to construct all-manner of buildings in the Sea Islands region. Enslaved African descendant communities constructed wattle and tabby daub dwellings within plantation landscapes, and these settlements are interpreted as spaces where enslaved people exercised greater spatial autonomy.
This thesis analyzes the remains of a wattle and tabby daub structure located on what was once Old Fort Plantation in Port Royal, South Carolina. The chaîne opératoire of wattle and tabby daub is investigated to examine the procurement of raw materials and the investment of time and labor into the structure’s construction. Visual analysis, petrographic thin sections, binder-aggregate separation, and sieve testing were used to explore the composition and physical properties of the tabby daub, offering insight into how the wattle and tabby daub structure was created by Old Fort Plantation’s enslaved community. The interpretation of these results indicates the plantation’s enslaved community utilized their knowledge of tabby-making, despite limitations over time and labor, to create of a sense of place within the plantation’s landscape as part of a broader strategy of resistance to planter hegemony. Such strategies were integral to the formation of the Gullah Geechee, the modern descendants of enslaved African Americans that lived and labored on the plantations of the South Carolina and Georgia coast
Political and Psychological Effects of Political Public Art in Conflict Zones
Full text linkThis article will explore the topic of conflict-related visual-political media displayed in public in Israel and Northern Ireland, such as posters, banners, and murals. We will discuss examples of such political public art, looking at graphic characteristics as well as several multi-faceted topics that tend to appear: first, the topic of victim / victimizer, art expressing feelings of aggression, blaming, injustice, or pain; second, cross-cultural similarities and differences in the art expression; third, art promoting peace. We will reflect on these from a psychotherapy perspective, noting themes of trauma and dis/empowerment. We will discuss visual art and war, their interaction, and their influence on society, the individual, and the collective, and question to what extent such art forms are helpful or not