Liz McGuire and Dr. Daniel Nielson, Political Science Every person has some idea of who they are, but that idea is made up of several identities. A person can be a mother, a sister, an American, a Catholic, an Hispanic, and a friend all at the same time. How we order these identities in dominance […]
Weight-Based Discrimination of Rape Victims
Rachael Howe and Dr. Niwako Yamawaki, Psychology Rape affects approximately one in six women in the United States (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). In addition to direct mental repercussions women experience from rape, they also frequently encounter lack of support, hostility, and isolation from the community, resulting in further psychological distress (Yamawaki & Tschanz, 2005). For […]
Withdrawing to a Virtual World: Associations between Subtypes of Withdrawal, Problematic Media, and Risk Behaviors in Emerging Adults
Emily Howard and Drs. Larry Nelson and Sarah Coyne, School of Family Life Anecdotal evidence suggests that ‘gamers’ tend to be socially withdrawn, keeping to themselves and their PlayStations. However, research connecting withdrawal and media use is conflicting and inconclusive, likely because the varying motivations leading to withdrawal are not fully considered1. An approach-avoidance model […]
Social Norms and the Tragedy of the Commons: Evidence from Everyday Water Conservation
Ryan Hill and Dr. Josh Gubler, Political Science Department Introduction This experiment tested how social norms affect individual incentives to conserve common-pool resources. We have tested this question with a simple field experiment on BYU campus. We observed individuals using public water sources after being treated with different inducements to conserve water. We are interested […]
Increasing Maternal Healthcare use in Rwanda
Hayley Heath and Dr. Renata Forste, Sociology Access to maternal healthcare is seriously deficient in developing countries, particularly in rural areas of Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 515,000 women die each year from pregnancy related causes, and more than half of these deaths occur in Africa (Mavalankar & Rosenfield, 2005). “Safe motherhood […]
Clearing Up the Smoke: How Government Transparency Efforts Affect Political Sentiments in Peru
John Harris and Dr. Darren Hawkins. Political Science Introduction Peru is known for its cynical citizenry. People from all demographics and regions have a negative and oftentimes hopeless perception of their government of all level (regional, municipal and national). This ardent cynicism comes for a legacy of corruption that is deeply embedded into the political […]
Agent External Loss Aversion
David Gordon Introduction There is a vast body of literature that documents the seemingly irrational phenomena called loss aversion, a subset of prospect theory. Loss aversion is the idea that losses loom larger than otherwise equivalent gains, making it so that an agent would be unwilling to give up something currently in their consumption bundle […]
Eyes on the Prize: Affective Dimensions of Marathon Motivation and Performance
Abigail Farr, Jonathan Mietchen, Bryce Tobin, Trammell Cox, and Michael Millard with Dr. Benjamin Ogles, Psychology This study sought to investigate the relationship between motives for participating in a marathonand pre-race mood and their separate and combined influence on marathon running performance. Our goal was to determine whether or not performance may be dependent upon […]
Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Model For Clinical Addiction Treatment
Jordan Davies and Dr. Scott Steffensen, Neuroscience Introduction The goal in my proposal was to study the effects of light stimulation in human brains on the action of the neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) within the nucleus accumbens (NAc), in order to determine its efficacy as a non-invasive method for inducing long-term potentiation of dopamine neurons, restoring […]
Blood in the Water: Where do Loan Sharks Locate?
Taylor Canann and Dr. Richard Evans, Department of Economics Short-term consumer credit lenders, in particular payday, pawn, and car title lenders, are seen as lenders that prey on the weak of society. This study uses a two-stage negative binomial regression to examine the “chum in the water,” determinants of the locations, of these “loan sharks,” […]