Altruistic Punishment Theory and Inter-Group Violence

This dissertation explores the role of altruistic punishment, the act of punishing outsiders perceived to harm members of one\u27s group at a personal cost, in explaining individual motivations to participate in inter-group violence. It first develops a social theory of this type punishment. This theory argues that an egalitarian social logic may be key to understanding motivations of parochial altruism, and that one\u27s social environment may influence thresholds of anger needed to induce punishment behavior. Empirically, it conducts two survey-experimental studies. The first experiment utilizes subject partisan identity in the context of American politics and hypothetical acts of violence to study altruistic punishment behaviors among two different populations in the US. The second experiment utilizes a comparative sample of American, German, and Kurdish participants to assess whether priming for anger tied to acts of political violence by outsiders against their respective in-group increases support for a hypothetical in-group punisher of these outsiders. The results of these studies offer two key findings: (1) anger induced costly punishment of outgroup perpetrators may be conditional on egalitarian attitudes; (2) this relationship is contextual and varies across population. The findings cautiously suggest two conclusions. First, there may be evolutionary and neurological mechanisms that promote participation in inter-group conflict and that superficial characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, and ideology may work in tandem with biological factors. Second, it suggests that social and political environments may be useful for modulating, or exacerbating, the role of anger in the decision to participate in inter-group conflict activities

Incorporating Information Literacy and Site Specific Dance

Selene and Paul explained their collaboration by first giving the history of the Dance major here at UVM and then discussing how they incorporated information literacy skills into their class Site Dance & Performance. They discussed the final projects\u27 locations, parameters, what actually transpired, and finally, the students\u27 thoughts on the whole experience

Re-Framing the American West: Contemporary Artists Engage History

This study examines contemporary artists who revisit, revise, reimagine, reclaim, and otherwise engage directly with art of the American Frontier from 1820-1920. The revision of the historic images calls attention to the myth and ideologies imbedded in the imagery. Likewise, these contemporary images are essentially a framing of western imagery informed by a system of values and interpretive strategies of the present. The re-framing of the historic West opens a dialogue that expands beyond the frame, to look at images and history from different angles. This dissertation examines twentieth- and twenty-first century artists such as the Cowboy Artists of America, Mark Klett, Tony Foster, Byron Wolfe, Stephen Hannock, Bill Schenck, and Kent Monkman alongside historic western American artists such as Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Timothy O’Sullivan, Thomas Moran, W.R. Leigh, and Albert Bierstadt. The goals of the contemporary artists vary greatly, but collectively they challenge the notion of a singular history and interpretation of the American West. They examine the way in which the American West was framed through history, contributing to our understanding of both the nineteenth-century images and the contemporary experience

Three-dimensional view of ultrafast dynamics in photoexcited bacteriorhodopsin in the multiphoton regime and biological relevance

How does chemistry scale in complexity to unerringly direct biological functions? Nass Kovacs et al. have shown that bacteriorhodopsin undergoes structural changes tantalizingly similar to the expected pathway even under excessive excitation. Is the protein structure so highly evolved that it directs all deposited energy into the designed function

The Context and Meaning of Family Strengthening in Indian America

This paper analyzes the challenges of family strengthening in Indian Country and discusses strategies for effective intervention

Bathymetric Mapping Of The Seafloor - A German Contribution To Completing The Map By 2030, Cruise No. MSM88/1 + MSM88/2, November 28, 2019 - January 14, 2020, Mindelo (Cabo Verde) - Mindelo (Cabo Verde) - Bridgetown (Barbados)

Despite over 100 years of acoustic seabed mapping, only around 15% of the seafloor has ever been directly mapped and little of the mapping performed has been systematic or over larger areas. The result is that our knowledge of seafloor structure is rudimentary and our understanding of the processes which form them has, in principle, advanced little since the advent of plate tectonics. Societally, the seafloor plays a vital role in humanity’s "life support system", for example providing habitat for marine organisms, stimulating mixing of ocean water as part of the overturning circulation system and increasingly being the site of industrial installations. It is scientifically and societally imperative that we bring the level of knowledge of the surface of our planet up to that of bodies like Moon and Mars that are mapped with a resolution better than 100 m per pixel. It is also essential that the data are made freely available to all to support research and conservation. The aim of this cruise was to map previously uncharted part of the tropical Atlantic using the ship’s multibeam system and to provide the data to global open databases as well as to acquire magnetic gradient data along the same tracks. Magnetic anomalies from so-called Oceanic Core Complexes challenged the conventional view that marine magnetic anomalies arose in the upper, extrusive layer of the oceanic crust, because the crust has been stripped away at these complexes. We therefore collected magnetic data simultaneously to the multibeam data in order to constrain the interpretation of the observed seabed morphology

Letter Written by Virginia Besaw to the Bryant College Service Club Dated December 19, 1943

[Transcription begins] WOMEN‘S ARMY CORPSCo. 3, Rec. & Sta. BnFt. Des Moines, Ia. 19 December 1943 Bryant Service ClubProvidence, R.I. Dear Club Members-- How nice to hear from you! Your letter pleased me in letting me know I was included in the Bryant Club. I received your package and it was most welcome--by me and others in the barracks. You might like to know that the Post Office has inquired about another package from you, addressed to me, of which only the label was received. It was not from the same box I received as the insurance numbers were different. It was indeed good to hear again of the people I used to know--Lt. Hammond, Miss Krupa and others--and to hear of the safety of some of the alumni. Would that they could all return! My army life is yet too new to include any exciting experiences, but I have enjoyed every minute of it. My assignment as a member of cadre will, I believe, keep me here at the Post for quite some time. Your “newsy” letters will keep me posted on the happenings at Bryant while I am away. Thank you again for your gift, and Merry Christmas to you all. Sincerely, Virginia Besaw, ‘38Pvt., W.A.C. [Transcription ends

Letter Written by Virginia Besaw to the Bryant College Service Club Dated December 12, 1944

Co. 3, Rec & Sta. Bn.Fort DesMoines, Ia.12 December 44 Bryant Service ClubBryant CollegeProvidence, R.I. Hello, Thank you so much for the box you sent. It was both lovely and delicious and met the right spot with several people. The address is the same as it has been for a year and I’m expecting it to remain that way for awhile longer. I do hope those in the farthest places received your packages in time for Christmas and enjoy them as much as I did mine. Sincerely, Virginia Besaw [Transcription ends

Deadly Premonition: Does Terrorist-Leader Psychology Influence Violence Lethality?

This thesis seeks to address a theoretical and empirical gap within terrorism studies, and more specially the study of terrorist-group lethality. This research updates a model of terrorist-group lethality by including terrorist-leader psychology as an individual-level variable in predicting terrorist-group lethality. Terrorist-leader statements were analyzed by using two novel coding schemes called Operational Code and Leadership Trait Analysis to create quantified measurements of leader cognitive beliefs and personality traits. The empirical portion of this study utilizes pooled cross-sectional time-series data within the framework of fixed effects and multi-level estimation models. The results find that terrorist-leader psychology, and more specifically Instrumental (Strategic) Beliefs and Distrust, are significant predictors of subsequent group-lethality