UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Children's Developing Conceptions of Fairness: The Role of Status in Children's Responses to Inequalities(2018) Rizzo, Michael Thomas; Killen, Melanie; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The moral concern for fairness is a core element of social life throughout the lifespan. Concerns about fairness arise in multiple contexts, and one very salient context is the allocation of resources. Understanding the harmful consequences of unfair resource allocations, for example, is essential to ensuring social harmony and protecting the welfare of all individuals. This study investigated how 3- to 8-year-old children (N = 176) perceived of, and responded to, resource inequalities based on their status within the inequality (advantaged or disadvantaged) and whether the allocation was based on differences in individual merit or gender biases. Across a range of assessments, the present study documented how children’s status within individual and gender based inequalities had a profound influence on how they perceived a context of resource inequality. Children’s status and the type of inequality were related to their perceptions of the inequality in several ways. Children who were disadvantaged by an inequality judged it to be more unfair than children who were advantaged by it. However, both advantaged and disadvantaged children judged gender based allocations to be more unfair than individually based inequalities. Further, children who were advantaged by the inequality were more likely to support redistributing the resources when they expected that a fellow – advantaged – ingroup member initiated the redistribution. Finally, children were more likely to rectify a gender based inequality than an individual one, whereas they were more likely to perpetuate an individual inequality than a gender based one. Children’s intra- and intergroup attitudes and inclusion decisions were also related to their status and the type of inequality that they experienced. Although children were more favorable towards gender ingroup than outgroup members, with age, children preferentially included gender outgroup peers that performed well at the activities. Evidence was also found to support the argument that children’s experiences with resource inequalities are related to their conceptions of fairness in subsequent contexts. Children who were personally disadvantaged by an inequality evaluated rectifying a separate, third-person, inequality more favorably and were also more likely to rectify the third-person inequality. Finally, children’s ToM competence was revealed as an important developmental mechanism for children’s developing conceptions of fairness. Children with a more advanced understanding of others’ mental states judged rectifying gender based inequalities more positively and were more likely to include gender outgroup peers who performed well at the activities (controlling for age). Interestingly, children’s status within the inequality was also related to their ToM performance. Children who were advantaged by the inequality were less likely to pass subsequent ToM assessments compared to those who were disadvantaged by the inequality. Overall, results provide novel insights into children’s developing conceptions of fairness. Specifically, results detail the critical role of children’s perspective within a context in their perceptions of, and responses to, the context. Results also have implications for fostering positive intergroup relationships, improving children’s concern for rectifying first and third-person inequalities, and for our understanding of how children’s position within a context relates to their ability to understand others’ mental states.Item What Matters: An Analysis of Victim Satisfaction in a Procedural Justice Framework(2014) Fisher, Cortney; Simpson, Sally S; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The discipline of criminology and criminal justice tends to focus on the offender. However, the victim's cooperation with authorities, which often begins with a willingness to report the crime, is central to a successful investigation and prosecution. Yet, the crime victim exists today on the outskirts of the criminal justice system, limited in their role by the same authorities that need them to help. Despite increasingly retributive policies toward offenders, victims remain as unsatisfied with the criminal justice system as they were prior to the policy changes. This study explores the different policies and practices of criminal justice system actors that contribute to satisfaction for the victim. Using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, elements of procedural justice are examined to determine if providing victims with procedure and a consistent sense of process creates satisfaction. Procedural justice is then examined in conjunction with distributive justice to determine if there are independent or interactive effects between the two. Study participants included 1,308 victims of violent crime, who experienced a range of violent crimes. Victim satisfaction was measured as a scale variable, averaging the victim's level of satisfaction across four distinct periods of the criminal investigation and prosecution. As expected, components of the system that granted the victim representation and a sense of accuracy in the process created a higher level of satisfaction for the victim. Also as expected, these variables remained important to the victim's satisfaction even when distributive justice variables were included. Unexpectedly, however, the variables that measured ethicality were unrelated to the victim's satisfaction, nor was sentence severity. Theoretical and policy implications, as well as directions for future research, are offered. Study limitations, including the limited generalizability of the sample, also are discussed.Item Meritocracy and Americans' Views on Distributive Justice(2007-02-08) Longoria, Richard; Gimpel, James; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The dissertation analyzes Americans' views on distributive justice and asks whether and to what extent Americans support meritocratic ideals. The project finds that Americans are ambivalent in their views towards meritocracy. They believe that intelligence and hard work should be rewarded, but they also support inherited wealth, seniority pay, and the distribution of educational opportunities through the market. This project contributes much to the existing literature on public opinion and meritocracy because it finds that Americans are not as meritocratic as other studies have found. For example, Lipset and others have found that Americans support meritocratic ideals. It has also been shown that Americans believe that the US is a meritocratic society where intelligence and hard work is actually rewarded. Data from the International Social Justice Project, General Social Survey, World Values Survey and many public opinion polls are used in this project and confirm the previous findings. However, the data also show that Americans are ambivalent when it comes to their support of meritocratic ideals. Americans support the distribution of wealth by heredity, of income by seniority, and believe it is fair for educational opportunities to be distributed via the market where the wealthy can purchase superior opportunities for their children. In short, Americans are not strictly meritocratic in their distributive preferences. They often consider items other than merit to be legitimate reasons for inegalitarian modes of distribution. Hochschild's qualitative study on distributive justice found that Americans are inegalitarian in the economic domain but egalitarian in the political and social domains. Analyzing the data from the data sets listed above more or less confirmed that Hochschild was correct about Americans' attitudes in the economic and political domains. However, Americans are not social egalitarians. The analysis in this dissertation has found that Americans believe it is perfectly just and fair for people to be given greater levels of respect and deference and to have higher social status if their jobs require great amounts of skill or if they make the most of the opportunities they had in life.