Matching Items (91)
Description
Infectious diseases have been a major threat to survival throughout human history. Humans have developed a behavioral immune system to prevent infection by causing individuals to avoid people, food, and objects that could be contaminated. This current project investigates how ambient temperature affects the activation of this system. Because temperature is positively correlated with the prevalence of many deadly diseases, I predict that temperature moderates the behavioral immune system, such that a disease prime will have a stronger effect in a hot environment compared to a neutral environment and one's avoidant behaviors will be more extreme. Participants were placed in a hot room (M = 85F) or a neutral room (M = 77F) and shown a disease prime slide show or a neutral slide show. Disgust sensitivity and perceived vulnerability surveys were used to measure an increased perceived risk to disease. A taste test between a disgusting food item (gummy bugs) and a neutral food item (gummy animals) measured food avoidance. There was no significant avoidance of the gummy and no significant difference in ratings of disgust sensitivity or perceived vulnerability as a function of temperature conditions. There were no significant interactions between temperature and disease. The conclusion is that this study did not provide evidence that temperature moderates the effect of disease cues on behavior.
ContributorsOsborne, Elizabeth (Author) / Cohen, Adam B. (Thesis advisor) / Kwan, Sau (Committee member) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The present study explored the relationship between desired purchasing behavior and individual differences using two nationally-representative, longitudinal samples of the U.S. population early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Past research has shown that individual differences provide information about how one might respond to threat. Therefore, we predicted changes in desired purchasing behavior across different sociodemographic variables that might reflect those differences. Specifically, we investigated hypotheses related to political orientation, age, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and whether or not the participant had children. We measured participants’ reported desired purchasing behavior across eleven categories of goods and investigated the connection between specific demographic variables and desired purchasing behavior. We found that conservatives desired to purchase more basic protection goods (guns/ammunition, cash, gas) and that older people desired to purchase more cleaning supplies and toiletries. These findings illustrate possible explanations for purchasing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and reveal directions for marketing designed to influence purchasing behavior.
ContributorsZeider, Justyn (Author) / Varnum, Michael (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
I travelled and worked in international fisheries policy for 7 months in preparation for this thesis. During this time I completed one internship in Rome, Italy with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UNFAO) and another internship on the island of Pohnpei with the Secretariat of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). From these experiences, I selected the subject of this thesis. My thesis analyzes the management system for South Pacific albacore tuna, the source stock for brands like "Chicken of the Sea" and "Starkist". South Pacific albacore tuna pass through international waters and the waters of several Pacific Island countries and territories, necessitating States to cooperate and coordinate to sustain the future viability of the stock. A case study for transboundary natural resource management, I discuss the institutional complexity that arises from managing such a resource. I use common-pool resource (CPR) theory to describe this complexity, which frames natural resource management as a collective-action problem among resource users. I first conceptualize the management system as having multiple institutional scales and multiple levels of organization. Then, employing Ostrom's 8 design principles for successful CPR management, I conduct a multi-institution analysis of the international, regional, and subregional institutions that participate in the management system. Finally, I also conduct a cross-institution analysis by examining the interactions between these institutions. I find that significant space for theoretical development exists in CPR theory for understanding complex management systems for transboundary natural resources. Furthermore, I find that interactions between institutions create linkages that could be retooled to improve the performance of the South Pacific albacore tuna management system.
ContributorsAbolhassani, Angela Maryam (Author) / Abbott, Kenneth (Thesis director) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Regular instances of employee and petty theft seem to suggest that stealing is common. Certain situations make stealing an advantageous opportunity, and studies show that most people will steal under the right conditions. However, these "right conditions" vary widely among individuals and are a combination of biological, social, psychological, and situational factors. In an attempt to better understand the rationality of stealing, our research team applied evolutionary psychology principles to a social experiment involving gift card theft. To find trends in how people will steal when given the opportunity, we attempted to create these "right conditions" (which we believed would encourage theft by minimizing cost) so that we could measure how a random sample of subjects (male students on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University) responded to variation in benefit. We predicted that if the cost was kept low, and if some gift cards conferred greater advantages than others (by possession greater value or utility), then the more advantageous gift cards would be stolen at a higher frequency from the sample pool than less advantageous ones. The results show that our assumptions were wrong. Theft almost never occurred and the few cards that were stolen were not the more "rational" choices as predicted. The experimental design indicates a flawed understanding of how the subjects weighed the benefits and costs of stealing gift cards. One major issue is that we failed to consider pro-social behavior as the norm. We also neglected the evolutionary benefits of cooperative behavior while overemphasizing the evolutionary benefits of theft. A more thorough and nuanced examination of the literature must be performed to avoid these fundamental flaws in the experiment in the future. The experiment also suffered from issues which might have inadvertently discouraged theft including the location, population, presence of other students, and time given to contemplate theft. If we wish to truly examine trends in theft to see if there is a trend towards the rational theft model we proposed, we must work with a population in which individuals already have a propensity to steal, the benefit is sufficiently high, and social pressures to be cooperative are low.
ContributorsKumar, Davina Sangitha (Author) / Angilletta, Michael (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This paper explores two areas of study: Colony Collapse Disorder and urban apiculture--the practice of keeping bees in urban areas. Additionally, this paper discusses the ways in which Colony Collapse Disorder has encouraged an increase in urban beekeeping, and the possible role of urban apiculture as a means of combatting the negative effects of Colony Collapse Disorder. The symptoms, history, and possible causes of Colony Collapse Disorder are presented, as well as the important role that honey bees play in human agriculture. Following the discussion of Colony Collapse Disorder is a description of my urban beekeeping apprenticeship at Desert Marigold School where I kept bees, researched various hives, attended a beekeeping workshop in Tucson, and eventually built a hive and established a colony with my mentor. This paper includes a guide to beekeeping basics, as well as a guide to starting a hive based upon the lessons learned during my apprenticeship.
ContributorsRomero, Madelyn Rattan (Author) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis director) / Silcox, Holly (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
South Mountain is the largest municipal park in the nation. It is a bundled amenity, providing a series of linked services to the surrounding communities. A dataset of 19,209 homes in 155 neighborhoods within three miles of the park was utilized in order to complete a hedonic estimation for two nearby urban villages, Ahwatukee Foothills and South Mountain Village. Measures of access include proximity to the park, trailhead access, and adjacency to the park. Two regressions were estimated, the first including lot characteristics and subdivision fixed effects and the second using the coefficients for each subdivision as the dependent variable. These estimates describe how the location of a house in a subdivision contributes to its conditional mean price. As a result they offer a direct basis for capturing amenities measured at the neighborhood scale on home values. Park proximity, trailhead access and adjacency were found to significantly influence the price of homes at the 5% confidence level in Ahwatukee, but not in South Mountain Village. The results of this study can be applied to issues of environmental justice and park access in determining which areas and attributes of the park are associated with a high premium. Though South Mountain was preserved some time ago, development and future preservation in the City of Phoenix can be informed by such studies.
ContributorsRamakrishna, Saritha Kambhampati (Author) / Abbott, Joshua (Thesis director) / Smith, V. Kerry (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Hiking and Hegemony: Destabilizing the nature/culture and gender binaries through outdoor recreation
Description
This paper explores the contested relationships between nature, culture, and gender. In order to analyze these relationships, we look specifically at outdoor recreation. Furthermore, we employ poststructuralist feminist theory in order to produce three frameworks; the first of which is titled Mother Nature’s Promiscuous Past. Rooted in Old World and colonial values, this framework illustrates the flawed feminization of nature by masculinity, and its subsequent extortion of anything related to femininity — including women and nature itself. This belief barred women from nature, resulting in a lack of access for women to outdoor recreation.
Our second framework, titled The Pleasurable Potential of Outdoor Recreation, cites second-wave feminism as a catalyst for women’s participation in wilderness exploration and outdoor recreation. The work of radical feminists and the women’s liberation movement in 1960s and 1970s empowered women at home, in the workplace, and eventually, in the outdoors; women reclaimed their wilderness, yet they continued to employ Framework One’s feminization of nature. Ecofeminsim brought together nature and women, seeking to bring justice to two groups wronged by the same entity: masculinity. In this context, outdoor recreation is empowering for women.
Despite the potential of Framework Two to reinscribe and better the experiences of women in outdoor recreation, we argue that both Frameworks One and Two perpetuate the gender binary and the nature/culture binary, because they are based upon the notion that women are in fact fundamentally different and separate from men, the notion that nature is an entity separate from culture, or human society, as well as the notion that nature is in fact a feminine entity.
Our third framework, Deer Pay No Mind to Your Genitals, engages poststructuralism, asserting that outdoor recreation and activities that occur in nature can serve to destabilize and deconstruct notions of the gender binary. However, we argue that care must be exercised during this process as not to perpetuate the problematic nature/culture binary, a phenomenon that is unproductive in terms of both sustainability and gender liberation. Outdoor recreation has been used by many as a tool to deconstruct numerous societal constraints, including the gender binary; this, however, continues to attribute escapist and isolationist qualities toward nature, and therefore perpetuating the nature/culture divide. Ultimately, we argue outdoor recreation can and should be used as a tool deconstruct the gender binary, however needs to account for the fact that if nature is helping to construct elements of culture, then the two cannot be separate.
Our second framework, titled The Pleasurable Potential of Outdoor Recreation, cites second-wave feminism as a catalyst for women’s participation in wilderness exploration and outdoor recreation. The work of radical feminists and the women’s liberation movement in 1960s and 1970s empowered women at home, in the workplace, and eventually, in the outdoors; women reclaimed their wilderness, yet they continued to employ Framework One’s feminization of nature. Ecofeminsim brought together nature and women, seeking to bring justice to two groups wronged by the same entity: masculinity. In this context, outdoor recreation is empowering for women.
Despite the potential of Framework Two to reinscribe and better the experiences of women in outdoor recreation, we argue that both Frameworks One and Two perpetuate the gender binary and the nature/culture binary, because they are based upon the notion that women are in fact fundamentally different and separate from men, the notion that nature is an entity separate from culture, or human society, as well as the notion that nature is in fact a feminine entity.
Our third framework, Deer Pay No Mind to Your Genitals, engages poststructuralism, asserting that outdoor recreation and activities that occur in nature can serve to destabilize and deconstruct notions of the gender binary. However, we argue that care must be exercised during this process as not to perpetuate the problematic nature/culture binary, a phenomenon that is unproductive in terms of both sustainability and gender liberation. Outdoor recreation has been used by many as a tool to deconstruct numerous societal constraints, including the gender binary; this, however, continues to attribute escapist and isolationist qualities toward nature, and therefore perpetuating the nature/culture divide. Ultimately, we argue outdoor recreation can and should be used as a tool deconstruct the gender binary, however needs to account for the fact that if nature is helping to construct elements of culture, then the two cannot be separate.
ContributorsPolick-Kirkpatrick, Kaelyn (Co-author) / Downing, Haley Marie (Co-author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Contextual cues can impact how statements are perceived. Specifically, they may be perceived as more aggressive than they otherwise would be. For the study, both medium of communication (in-person versus online) as well as how competitive the context was (non-competitive or competitive) were examined, with a bit of focus on gender. 130 Arizona State University students enrolled in Psychology 101 were surveyed; the mean age was 19.32 (SD = 1.43). A 2x2 factorial design was used, consisting of four possible conditions: In-person/Competitive, Online/Competitive, In-person/Non-Competitive, and Online/Non-Competitive. Participants read two scenarios, each featuring a target character who says an ambiguous statement, and each scenario with one of the four conditions at random. One scenario involved earning a promotion, and the other involved trying to win a voucher via mini-golf. After, participants answered questions regarding how they felt about the intent of the ambiguous statement, how the participant would feel in the scenario, and what kind of person the participant felt the target character was. Exploratory Factor Analysis with Principal Axis Factoring and Direct Oblimin Rotation was used to find outcome variables. We hypothesized that Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion would be higher in both the competitive condition as well as the online condition, and that Perceived Agreeableness would be higher in both the non-competitive condition as well as the in-person condition; this applied for both scenarios. The results were mostly not statistically significant, and contrary to the hypotheses, Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion were higher in the in-person condition than the online condition. However, as predicted, Perceived Agreeableness was higher for the in-person condition, and the competitive led to higher levels of Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion, along with lower levels of Perceived Agreeableness, as opposed to the non-competitive condition. Limitations included a small age range and only one type of online communication (instant messaging), along with the fact that the study was a survey. Future studies are needed to examine what factors affect perception of aggression, as very few have been conducted.
ContributorsRobins, Alexander Eric (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Lani) (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Danvers, Alexander (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In the current study, the author investigated whether sociosexual orientation interacted with an experimental manipulation of sex ratios previously used by Li et al. (2010) which showed that men and women report greater religiosity after viewing profiles of attractive members of their own sex. The author predicted that only people of restricted sociosexual orientation would be reporting greater religiosity after viewing profiles of attractive members of their own sex. A sample of 171 undergraduate students (85 men, Mage = 19.5) from a large Southwestern university participated in the study for course credit. Participants were first administered the Sociosexual Orientation Index (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991). Then, under the pretense of assisting psychology faculty in designing a dating website for incoming students, participants viewed a set of profiles (photo and description) of either attractive men or attractive women, after which they answered a series of questions on a religiosity scale developed for the current study. Results showed that sociosexual orientation did not interact significantly with the experimental manipulation. Additionally, the results of the current study failed to replicate those of Li et al. (2010). The author discusses possibilities for why the results of the current study failed to replicate the results of Li et al., and for alternative explanations of the potential role of sociosexual orientation in responding to shifting sex ratios.
ContributorsCottengaim, Isaiah John (Author) / Cohen, Adam (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-05
DescriptionA small-scale aquaponic system was created to demonstrate the sustainable properties of the system as well as the effectiveness of raising fish and plants symbiotically.
ContributorsSerna, Desiree Marie (Author) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis director) / Peterson, Greg (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-05