Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2017 - 20192

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    Empathy and Electoral Accountability
    (2019) McDonald, Jared; Hanmer, Michael; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this dissertation, I examine the important role empathy has on voting behavior and election outcomes. First, I provide a rationale for why Americans find empathy a desirable trait in a leader. I argue that voters desire an empathetic leader, not because empathy is an inherently desirable trait as the literature so often assumes, but because this form of caring indicates that a politician is uniquely motivated and qualified to help others. And whereas prior scholarship emphasizes partisanship and global evaluations of politicians on support, I show how perceptions of empathy can serve as a heuristic for voters. This heuristic is especially important when voters do not have a partisan affiliation to influence their vote, such as in the case of pure independent voters and partisan voters in primaries. Second, I present a theory to explain why some politicians are perceived as more empathetic than others. Perceptions of empathy, I argue, are shaped largely by the presence of commonalities that link voters with a politician. In discussing the importance of commonalities, I differentiate between sympathy and empathy. I argue that empathy in a politician, or their ability to walk in another’s shoes, is more powerful than sympathy as a motivator of support. When a politician simply claims to “care” for the average American, voters may be skeptical. By demonstrating a common link with the voter, the politician overcomes what I call the “sincerity barrier,” or the tendency of individuals to approach the promises of politicians with skepticism. The key theoretical contribution in this dissertation is a classification scheme for the types of commonalities perceived by voters that lead to stronger perceptions of empathy: 1) a shared experience; 2) a shared emotion; or 3) a shared identity. To support this theory, I rely on a mixed-method approach, using in-depth interviews with political professionals, nationally representative surveys, and behavioral experiments.
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    VOICES TO BE HEARD
    (2017) Benson, Zachariah Chyanne; Sham, Foon; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    My work serves a purpose. I have a desire to build things, as most of my pieces show, to lift people up, to redeem people and to redeem materials. My work captures the aspects of life that I feel need to be highlighted, whether those be hardships, turmoils, conflicts, boldness or civility. Pieces have explored the Syrian refugee crisis, the US/Iraq war, persecution of religious groups, US elections, and faith-based ideas such as Holy Communion and the Ten Commandments. I want my work to inject emotion and possibly even change in my viewer. I have toiled over these aspects of life and society that are concerning, meaningful, or just overwhelming and I want the viewer to have the opportunity to grapple with these ideas as well.