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Cultural Crossings: An Examination of Foreign Culture’s Effect on Support for Immigration*
Get PDFImmigration to the United States has been a prominent concern throughout U.S. history, but foreign culture’s influence on immigration attitudes has largely been ignored in previous research. To explore the tensions between native-born and foreign-born residents in the United States, this study turns to Social Identity Theory. The theory explains ingroup and outgroup relations and how a dichotomy is created to separate the “self” from that of the “other.” Using the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS), this paper examines how believing that foreign films, music, and books damage our national and local cultures influence support for immigration to the United States, controlling for how Republican the respondent is and their highest level of education completed. The sample (n = 1059) is compiled from a nationally representative pool of non-institutionalized U.S. residents aged 18 and older who identify politically as Democratic, Independent, or Republican. Consistent with Social Identity Theory, the findings suggest that respondents who believe foreign culture damages our national and local ways of life are less supportive of increasing immigration to the United States. Although it is a weak relationship, the data show that even after controlling for strength of political affiliation and years of school completed, how the respondents answer the foreign culture question is a statistically significant (p \u3c .01) indicator of their support for immigration. These findings suggest that the arts and familiarity with other cultures have the potential to reduce ingroup bias and xenophobic attitudes
Hiding Hate: A State-Analysis of the Relationship Between White Supremacy and Racially-Motivated Hate Crimes in the Trump Era
Get PDFIs support for Donald Trump correlated with hate? This state-analysis examines the relationship between Donald Trump’s White supremacist rhetoric and rates of racially-motivated hate crimes. This study argues that Trump’s rhetoric was connected to his votes and that those who voted for him agree with and adopted this rhetoric. Further, this study hypothesizes that the increase in support for White Supremacist rhetoric leads to an increase of racially-motivated hate crimes. Using the 2016 U.S. Presidential election results, the FBI’s 2017 Annual Report of Hate Crime Statistics, and the 2017 American Community Survey (N = 50), this study proposes that the higher a state’s percentage of votes for Trump in 2016, the higher a state’s rate of racially motivated hate crimes per capita. The results of the data support the opposite—that is, higher levels of support for Trump correlate to lower levels of hate crime rates. This study ends by discussing the effects of reporting and underreporting on these data, and proposes that what this study found is not that Trump states have less racially-motivated hate crimes, but rather that Trump states are underreporting hate crimes overall
Finding the Origins of Musical Taste
Get PDFWhy do some people claim to “listen to all music” while others prefer one genre? Existing research on musical tastes suggests there is a lot more than mere taste that influences an individual’s opinions of particular musical genres (Benzecry and Collins 2014; Peterson and Simkus 1992; Vuolo, Uggen, and Lageson 2014). To investigate this, I look to the theory of cultural omnivorousness (Peterson and Simkus 1992), which suggests that high status individuals may no longer prefer a select few musical genres, but conversely a broad and eclectic arrangement of genres. Using data on musical preferences likes from the 1993 General Social Survey of 828 respondents, I link literatures on cultural omnivorousness (Peterson and Simkus 1992), cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984), musical taste, and prestige by proposing that the patterns of an individual’s musical preference can be predicted through their educational attainment and income. Controlling for the age of the respondent, the multivariate regression analyses find educational attainment to be the only significant predictor of musical preferences, with neither income nor age having relationships with musical preferences. I suggest, therefore, that the theory of cultural omnivorousness is upheld, as respondents with higher levels of educational attainment liked more musical genres
The Patterns of Women Serial Killers in a Climate of Changing Gender Norms
Get PDFExisting research suggests that patterns of both men and women serial killers are hyper-gendered. In American society, however, gender norms for women have dramatically changed over time. This study proposes that the patterns of women serial killers reflect the femininity ideals of the time period in which they operated in. The shifts in gender norms are operationalized by three time periods representative of the waves of feminism. The Radford/Florida Gulf Coast University’s serial killer database is used to establish a sample of 1,321 serial killers. Using multivariate regression analyses and controlling for age of last kill, which could potentially alter the kill method but be unrelated to gender, women serial killers do appear to be impacted by the femininity ideals of their time period but not as clearly as initially anticipated. Men serial killers were also found to be affected by changes in femininity ideals. Both women and men serial killers had more feminine kill patterns during the first wave of feminism, but men serial killers had a very violent, hyper-masculine peak during the second wave of feminism that women serial killers did not have
Does the Stigma of Hooking Up Predict Sexual Assault at College?
Get PDFThis study examines the relationship between the stigma of hooking up and reported sexual assault. Guided by Goffman’s (1963) social stigma theory and Gagnon and Simon’s (1973) sexual script theory, I propose that 1) the more strongly the respondent agrees he or she would disrespect women who hook up frequently, the fewer times he or she reports nonconsensual sex; 2) the more strongly the respondent agrees he or she would disrespect for men who hook up frequently, the fewer times he or she reports nonconsensual sex; and 3) the more strongly the respondent agrees he or she would be less interested in someone who hooks up frequently as a boyfriend/girlfriend, the fewer times he or she reports nonconsensual sex. Using the Online College Social Life Survey data collected between 2005 and 2011, I analyze the attitudes about and reports of sexual behaviors in a non-probability sample of 16,914 students at 21 U.S. colleges and universities. Controlling for sex, age, current religion preference, and Greek affiliation, disrespect towards women who hook up frequently is positively and significantly related to fewer reports of nonconsensual sex. However, the results do not support the second and third hypotheses as there is no statistically significant relationship between disrespect towards men who hook up frequently as well as the lack of interest in people who hook up frequently and the incidents of reported nonconsensual sex. The findings suggest that the efforts to reduce the stigma of hooking up should be taken into consideration in rape prevention programming
Women Faculty\u27s Perceptions of Departmental Belonging Across Academic Disciplines
Get PDFWomen’s growing numerical representation in gender atypical careers, including the professoriate, has not necessarily meant that they are being accepted, included and integrated in these traditionally male-dominated spaces. This study explores female faculty members’ feelings of isolation within their department across academic disciplines. Drawing on the theory of tokenism, I hypothesize that women faculty members in STEM disciplines, which have been historically male-dominated, are more likely to express a lesser sense of belonging in their department, than women faculty members in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities. I analyzed data from a 2009 online survey administered to tenure-track and tenured faculty at two highly selective liberal arts colleges. After restricting my analysis to women, I controlled for women’s familial responsibilities as well as their position within the academic institution. Unlike previous research at universities, OLS regression analysis showed that women in STEM actually expressed a higher level of fitting in their department than those in other disciplines. Examining the two colleges separately revealed that this result only applied to women at the former men’s college, which had a long history of strong STEM departments. For women faculty at the former women’s college, whose historic strengths were in the Arts and Humanities rather than STEM, there was no statistically significant relationship between being in STEM and fitting in their department. Instead, women who indicated that they were married at the former women’s college expressed greater feelings of belonging than their unmarried female counterparts
Social Media Usage and its Effect on Quality of Adolescent Social Relationships
Get PDFDoes the number of social media platforms that an adolescent uses have an effect on the quality of their social relationships? As social media continues to grow and evolve, sociologists have begun to explore its effect on an individual’s everyday life. I propose that the more social media platforms that an adolescent uses, the more they will experience negative effects on their social relationships. Using survey data from 786 respondents living in the United States, ages 13 to 17 and collected by the Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2015, regression analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between social media usage and its effect on quality of adolescent social relationships, controlling for sex and age. The bivariate results show a statistically significant, positive but weak association between number of social media platforms used and the social relationship experience scale. In the multivariate results, this association was still statistically significant. Additionally, the multivariate results show that the control variables, sex and age, have no significant effect on one’s social relationship experience. Therefore, these results show that the more social media platforms used, the more negative a social relationship experience an adolescent will have. The results support the hypothesis and indicate that adolescents who interact with a higher number of social media platforms will experience an increased negative effect on their social relationships. In future studies, researchers should investigate how specific social media platforms influence social relationships. Additionally, this type of research should not only continue, but should refine its methods as social media continues to quickly grow and evolve
Birthing trends in Sierra Leone: Examining the Factors That Determine Women\u27s Choices during Childbirth
Get PDFStudent-Advisor Matching and Ph.D. Job Market Outcomes
No full textIn the job market for economics Ph.D. graduates, firms rely on students\u27 curriculum vitaes, job market paper, and advisors\u27 reference letters to predict applicants\u27 productivity and make hiring decisions. Advisors play an important role during students\u27 graduate studies. Since the similarity and attraction hypothesis suggests that similarities lead to close relationships, this study explores the impact of gender match and region match between students and advisors on East Asian students\u27 initial placement. After examining economics Ph.D. graduates\u27 curriculum vitaes in the 2016-2017 job market, this study finds that East Asian students working with advisors from the same region obtains academic positions at intuitions which are more productive in research, but the gender match does not have any significant impact on students\u27 initial placement