Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
Browse
20 results
Search Results
Item EFFECTS OF GROUP STATUS AND IDENTITY ALIGNMENT ON SOCIAL INFLUENCE(2024) Beavan, Kelly Ann; Lucas, Jeffrey W; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A series of three studies examine effects of social identity alignment versus social status on influence within task groups. Status Characteristics Theory (SCT) predicts that deference will be given to high-status members, and Social Identity Theory (SIT) predicts deference to in-group members. This dissertation investigates conditions under which social status or identity alignment might be more predictive of deference by examining status characteristics that also constitute significant identities or memberships to a social in-group (e.g., race, gender). By discerning when social identity or status holds greater sway in task groups, results of three experimental studies shed light on influence dynamics and the interplay of status and social identity. The studies tested three mechanisms—degree of in-group identification, identity threat, and task importance—expected to be impactful in affecting the influence of high-/low-status, in-/out-group partners under varying conditions. Study 1 examines these processes in a minimal group setting (based on abstract groups based on “cognitive association styles”), and Studies 2 and 3 use more naturally-occurring social groups (e.g., home state in Study 2), such as those attached to an overarching status hierarchy (e.g., gender and race in Study 3). Each experiment had participants work with two (simulated) partners to complete a series of trials on an uncertain group task. This setting met the scope conditions for the theories I am applying to establish group structures: Participants were task and collectively oriented (SCT), were working on a task with no immediate feedback about performance and were explicitly told of categorical group differences between themselves and their partners (SIT). The instructions for Study 1 assigned participants to minimal groups based on bogus cognitive association styles. Study 2 used self-reported home state as a group-differentiating characteristic, and finally, Study 3 tested theorized processes with gender and race. Hypothesis 1 predicted that high-status partners would exert more influence than low-status partners and found partial support in Studies 2 and 3, primarily driven by the influence of high-status (in-group) partners over subjects. Hypothesis 2 predicted that in-group partners would have more influence than out-group partners, and results generally supported this by revealing strong influence from in-group partners, regardless of status (although in-group high-status partners were most influential in Studies 2 and 3). Hypothesis 3, which expected heightened task importance to increase deference to high-status others, did not receive strong empirical or theoretical support and was only directly manipulated in Study 1. Hypothesis 4 predicted that under threat to group identity, the effects of group membership on influence would increase relative to that of status. Contrary to expectations, results revealed that identity threat significantly increased the influence levels of high-status partners, even when that high-status meant out-group membership. These findings suggested that identity threat did not heighten the SIT-based effects on social influence (i.e., in-group influence), as predicted, and in some ways point to an SCT-based explanation (i.e., high-status influence) under threat. Hypothesis 5, predicting that identification to the in-group would increase the impact of group membership, relative to that of status, on outcomes of social influence, was strongly supported in Studies 1 and 3. Participants who more highly identified with their in-group accepted greater influence from their in-group (compared to out-group) partners, regardless of that in-group’s relative (high- or low-) status. An SIT interpretation of this finding suggests that low-status in-group members who more highly identify with their (e.g., racial, gender) in-group may not necessarily be more influenced by similar in-group others simply because of their shared group membership. They do, however, appear to be significantly less influenced by out-group others (even when that out-group is higher-status), a finding consistent with my predictions on in-group identification. Finally, Hypothesis 6, predicting in-group identification to moderate the relationships between task importance (6a) and identity threat (6b) on social influence, found mixed support. More highly-identified participants were more influenced by in-group partners (compared to their out-group counterparts), and in-group identification significantly and directly predicted influence above and beyond effects from experimental manipulations. Results from the three studies show that subtle features of the group context (identity threat and heightened in-group identification) affect how much influence (high- and low-status) group members exert over individuals. Findings from this research highlight the complex interplay between status, group membership, identification and threat in shaping social influence dynamics, and I conclude by using these results to evaluate the relative strength of status-based (SCT) versus identity-based (SIT) processes in driving outcomes of social influence.Item WARRIORS, GUARDIANS, WOLVES, AND SHEEP: OFFICER PERCEPTIONS OF POLICE-CIVILIAN IDENTITIES AND THE PERSISTENCE OF ORGANIZED INEQUITY(2024) Powelson, Connor Reed; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Despite nearly a decade of community engagement and police reform efforts guided by the Warrior/Guardian paradigm, there remains little evidence of police culture change and rates of racially disproportionate police misconduct remain a social problem. In this work, I bring officers into this conversation and leverage the Warrior/Guardian paradigm as a starting point for an exploration of how identity structures constitute police organizational culture and practice, its consequences, and its potential for change. The present work contributes to the public and scholarly discourse on police culture and the role of identity processes in the reproduction of organizational practices. I characterize police culture as a set of identity schemas that connect people, practices, and social resources. I chart three domains of symbolic interaction that characterize the intersection of police structure, police culture, and public culture and account for police organizational rules and practices that distribute law enforcement outcomes and pattern organized inequity.Item Collective Racial Emotion and Whites' Reactions to Demands for Racial Equity(2021) Genter, Shaun; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research has shown that white people in the United States support the principle of racial equity, but oppose most practical efforts to advance it. Less is known about how whites respond to social actors who push for these efforts. Building on theories of racial policy attitudes, this research addresses the following questions: How do whites respond emotionally to actors who push for (and against) racial equity? Does the race of the actor matter? And what influence, if any, do these reactions have on subsequent policy evaluations?To begin answering these questions, I conducted three experiments (n = 1255) with self-identified white respondents recruited from Prolific Inc. In each of the studies, respondents reported their emotional reactions to an article designed to look like an online opinion piece. In the first and second studies, I varied the author’s race and whether or not the author supported or opposed race-targeted COVID-19 related economic stimulus. In the third experiment, I examined whites’ emotional reactions to Black and white advocates pushing for (or against) a presumably race-neutral policy—carbon taxing. My findings show that the author’s race does influence reactions, particularly when the policy has racial implications. Whites tended to direct more anger toward a Black advocate of the economic relief than they did when a comparable white advocate made the same claim. But whites showed more warmth toward the Black author when he argued against the relief. In both cases, the Black advocate promoted greater opposition to the policy by way of the emotional response. However, when the policy was race-neutral, the advocate’s race did not much influence emotional responses, suggesting that the response is, in part, related to the presumed effect the policy would have on reducing the social gap between Blacks and whites. The results of this research shed light on how white people react to demands for racial equity, and if the race of the messenger has any influence. It extends on previous research by focusing on emotional responses to these demands—both positive and negative—and the influence they have on policy opinions.Item Understanding Values in Organizational Contexts: The Case of Species Conservation(2021) Dewey, Amanda Michelle Milster; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Biodiversity loss poses an existential threat to human life, and human activities both intentionally and unintentionally affect other species. Values provide an important tool for explaining such human behavior. While we have evidence of the causes and consequences of wildlife values at the individual level, much human activity that influences wildlife occurs in organizational settings. This project seeks to uncover the roles and negotiation of values in conservation organizations, filling an important research gap. The project uses a case study approach to illuminate the role and negotiation of values in case studies of three wildlife conservation contexts: national wildlife conservation, red wolf conservation, and horseshoe crab conservation in the mid-Atlantic. Through strategic selection of two organizations in each case, I explore how values function in these varied conservation contexts using interviews with staff and volunteers and content analysis of websites and social media. I argue that a broader typology of value frames exists within wildlife conservation organizations than is traditionally discussed in wildlife value literature. I find that frames include moral conservationist, community-steward, and complex utilitarian values, adding nuance to the previously understood value spectrum of humans versus nature. While findings indicated that values were behavior motivators for volunteers, volunteers were more likely to perceive and attempt to construct value alignment than to actively seeking organizations that were compatible with their values. While organizations proclaimed their values and described using values in determining tactics and approaches, they also did not report consciously attempting to align values in processes of volunteer recruitment. Findings indicated differences in value processes in local versus national organizations, and a complex value framing in organizational settings. Despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is an extremely disruptive social event that was directly tied to wildlife and biodiversity issues, this connection was not highlighted equally by volunteers or organizations, nor did organizations equally or significantly respond to a nationwide call to reckon with racial injustice. I argue that the organizations and volunteers who framed their values and approaches more broadly and included moral value of the wellbeing of both humans and other species were more responsive to changing social contexts.Item LOVE WALKS: THE SOJOURNED SELF, SOCIAL SOLIDARITY, AND PILGRIMAGE(2020) Pratt, Beverly Marie; Marsh, Kris; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My research site is pilgrimage as a space of liminality. I focus on the Camino de Santiago, particularly its Camino Frances route, a 500-mile pilgrimage across northern Spain. Specifically, I explore the experiences of people who participate in this pilgrimage liminality, focusing on both self-concept work and social solidarity formation. In other words, I investigate how people participate in pilgrimage for personal, self-care reasons while simultaneously, and perhaps paradoxically, developing solidarity with others also participating. Tangentially, I also explore how pilgrimage may be related to social justice pursuits such as those embodied in such lived experiences of (in)famous social movement revolutionaries as: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Therefore, my main research questions are:1. How is pilgrimage used to work on the self-concept?, and 2. How does pilgrimage create social solidarity? My peripheral research question is:3. How, if at all, is pilgrimage used as a tool of structural resistance? Three stories appear from my participants on how pilgrimage is used to work on the Self: 1. Participants walk pilgrimage during a transitional life stage, 2. When defining “pilgrimage,” participants do describe a relationship between Self and the Other, and 3. “Good” pilgrimage experiences eclipse “bad” experiences among participants, with substantial illustrations of social connections between the Self and the Other. Three stories that appear regarding how pilgrimage creates social solidarity include: 1. Communitas is experienced among and between participants walking the pilgrimage, 2. Participants describe the common goal of reaching Santiago as a reason for social solidarity, and 3. Participants describe why and how walking pilgrimage is way to make the world a better place. Finally, my peripheral research question about pilgrimage as a structural resistance tool is investigated in the conclusion’s conversation about the act of walking being societal opposition. It is my intention that this dissertation-sojourn provides insight into how pilgrimage creates social solidarity and into the relationship between self-concept, social solidarity, and social justice.Item Factors Contributing to the Experience of State Loneliness(2020) Rinderknecht, Robert Gordon; Lucas, Jeffrey W; Doan, Long; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I examine the factors that contribute to the experience of loneliness in daily life (i.e., state loneliness). In the first study, I propose that being alone is most likely to lead to feelings of loneliness when a person is expected to be social, relative to moments when there is less of an expectation to be social. In the second study, I propose that how people engage with others has implications for how lonely they will feel in a situation, and that the importance of how they engage with others will partly depend on the kinds of people present in the situation. In the third study, I propose that engagement with romantic partners will be less beneficial for avoiding state loneliness when experiencing work-schedule conflict, due to the detriment such conflict may have on relationship quality. The lack of research on state loneliness is related to the difficulty of collecting data during or near the moment in which it is experienced. In this dissertation, I overcome this challenge by developing a platform that allowed participants to conveniently provide the time-diary data utilized in all three studies. In Study 1, I found, as expected, that participants felt loneliest when isolated during normatively social times. Unexpectedly, normatively social activities and locations did not associate with the strongest feelings of state loneliness. Results for Study 2 came out largely as expected—engaging in a shared task (active engagement) associated with lower rates of state loneliness relative to mere co-presence (passive engagement), and the benefit of active over passive engagement was strongest among weak ties and, unexpectedly, family members. Lastly, as expected, results from Study 3 show that work-schedule conflict associated with heightened loneliness when engaging with romantic partners. Unexpectedly, this appears to be less related to relationship quality between romantic partners and more related to the association between work-schedule conflict and participants reporting being generally lonely. Results from these studies show how factors ranging from broad cultural beliefs to small changes in engagement influence the experience of loneliness throughout a day, while unexpected findings highlight the need for further research.Item Race, Politics, and Structural Diversity: How Hate Crimes, Discrimination, White Supremacy, and Art Shape Social Identities During College(2020) Buck-Coleman, Audra; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation offers a longitudinal in-depth view into how students respond to a structurally diverse campus, a series of hate crimes and incidents of racial discrimination and bias, and a distinct set of creative engagement diversity activities. With a focus on racial and political identity differences, I employ social identity theory and symbolic interactionism to look at how these three aspects shape their social identities, their opinions of diverse others, and their opinions of diversity in general during their undergraduate career. To explore this, I engage members of the 2015 incoming freshman class and then analyze results from three data sources administered to them: a four-year online survey (n=170), a paper questionnaire (n=537), and two sets of in-depth interviews (n=62). My findings run counter to those of Pettigrew with and Tropp and others (2015, 2011, 2000, 2006): for this cohort intergroup contact does not reduce prejudice. Students in this study are on the leading end of Generation Z, which looks to be the most accepting of diverse others generation to date. Although this cohort and this campus satisfy Allport’s (1954) conditions for prejudice reduction, this does not occur based on my data. Further, a series of distinct creative engagement diversity training activities has no long-term positive effect on their opinions of diversity and diverse others. Diversity and inclusion endeavors without multifaceted, dedicated efforts do not necessarily lead to positive changes in students' attitudes, identities, behaviors, and experiences. This research holds potential to contribute to the canon of social psychology and diversity training practices.Item POWER AND STATUS IN JUDGING AND PUNISHING IMMORALITY(2018) Ho, Hsiang-Yuan; Lucas, Jeffrey W.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research offers a framework that explains how observers respond to moral violations when considering the amount of power and status held by violators. It follows the group processes literature on the characteristics of power and status. A proposed theory describes that prior to witnessing moral violations, observers develop moral expectations about potential violators on the basis of the levels of power and status attributed to the violators. When the moral violations occur, the moral expectations about the violators, as well as the resources available to the violators, in turn, affect the judgment and punishment decisions of the observers toward the violators. An online vignette study and a laboratory experiment test my predictions based on the proposed theory by varying the relative levels of perceived power and status between evaluation targets (i.e., violators) and evaluators (i.e., observers). Vignettes used in Study 1 described that observers had lower, equal, or higher power/status compared to violators in hypothetical scenarios. In Study 2, observers were assigned with either lower or higher power/status relative to violators in a group interaction setting in which the observers experienced differential risks of retaliation from the violators. Both studies assessed expectations of observers about the moral character of potential violators before exposing the observers to details of a moral violation committed by the designated violators. Punishment decisions of observers examined in Study 1 were attitudinal measures while those in Study 2 were based on behavioral reactions. Results indicate that prior to the immoral incident, observers developed lower moral expectations about violators with greater power and higher moral expectations about violators holding greater status. However, these expectations did not always translate into moral judgment and punishment. While viewing the violation as immoral regardless of power/status held by the violators, depending on the context, observers might or might not penalize the violators differentially across the power/status spectra. Fears of retaliation from violators who utilized resources attached to varied power and status positions did not affect how observers punished the violators. Therefore, results of the studies suggest a resilient power and status hierarchy despite the disruption of moral norms.Item BEYOND HONORARY WHITENESS: IDEOLOGIES OF BELONGING AND KOREAN ADOPTEE IDENTITIES(2018) Laybourn, Wendy Marie; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using Asian Critical Race Theory as a framework, this dissertation examines how Korean adoption contributed to constructions of race – racial meanings and a racial order – and the effects on Korean adoptees’ identity development. This dissertation asks the following questions: What role has Korean adoption played in the U.S. racial formation? What role do various levels of social structure (e.g., media, interpersonal interactions) play in adoptees’ understanding of their belonging, both as it relates to the U.S. and Korea, and how do adoptees resolve any competing messages about their social and national citizenship? And, how do Korean adoptees make-meaning of their adoptee identity? In order to answer these questions, I draw upon three original data sources: 18 months of participant observation, an online survey (N=107), and in-depth interviews (N=37) with Korean adoptee adults.Item EFFECTS OF THREATS TO GROUPS ON INGROUP-PROSOCIAL BEHAVIORS AND ORIENTATIONS(2017) Kerns, Kristin; Lucas, Jeffrey W; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research investigates how threats to people’s ingroups promote ways of thinking and behaving that benefit these groups (ingroup prosociality). Drawing on terror management theory and other relevant literature, I propose that threats promote ingroup prosociality, and that threats play an important role in explaining why members of collectivistic societies (e.g., Eastern) tend to exhibit more ingroup prosociality than members of individualistic societies (e.g., Western). Three experimental studies isolated effects of threats on outcomes I propose reflect ingroup prosociality: holistic versus analytic types of cognitive and social orientations (Study 1), upholding status orders in groups (Study 2), and promoting the legitimacy of power in groups (Study 3). To experimentally manipulate threat, participants wrote about either a threatening or non-threatening situation. In the group studies (2 and 3), the threat situation was also part of the task itself. Study 1 provides some support for increased ingroup prosociality when threatened, and some evidence for differences by culture and type of threat. Though results generally suggest that Americans respond more ingroup prosocially than Indians, they do not provide compelling evidence of consistent cross-cultural patterns as predicted. Study 2 provides only minimal support for threat increasing adherence to status orders. Study 3 provides a great deal of support for threat increasing promotion of the legitimacy of power structures, and results suggest especially strong responses among high-status participants with low-status partners. For each study, I also address some results in the opposite direction predicted. Taken together, the results only somewhat support my proposed ingroup prosociality worldview theory. Alternatively, patterns in results suggest that threatened ingroup members may be motivated to preserve their self-esteem and reduce their anxiety. Though this self-serving explanation is consistent with terror management theory, it is not consistent with the ingroup prosociality worldview initially proposed. Overall, the results provide evidence that threat (1) affects both behaviors and orientations (many proposed to reflect ingroup prosociality), which warrant consideration together as defensive responses to threats, and (2) increases promoting the legitimacy of power based on status in some situations. I discuss limitations, implications for theory and potential leadership interventions, and directions for future work.