VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Power to the Powerless: Interpersonal Influence through Sympathy Appeals

In this dissertation I examine the elicitation of sympathy as an influence strategy to overcome weak positioning in mixed-motive interactions. I show that by making appeals to sympathy, low power individuals can mitigate their disadvantage, and can claim more value in mixed-motive situations. This dissertation makes two contributions to the literature. First, attempts to elicit emotions in others is as of yet, an underexplored area of the emotions literature. The field has examined how experiencing emotions affect our judgment and behavior, and how our emotional expressions affect others' judgment and behavior, but with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Fulmer & Barry, 2004; Kilduff, Chiaburu & Menges, 2010; Mayer & Salovey, 1997), researchers have barely scratched the surface on the idea that individuals can elicit and manage the emotional experiences of others. Thus, this dissertation explores the idea that individuals can elicit sympathy in others for their own instrumental gain. Sympathy is particularly interesting to examine, because the experience of sympathy can motivate the sympathizer to help the disadvantaged--thus showing potential as a valuable emotion to elicit in others. Second, I explore the connection between the psychology of power, and the effectiveness of appeals to sympathy. Thus far the literature on power has focused primarily on individuals in positions of power, and while notable exceptions exist (e.g. Simpson, Markovsky, & Steketee, 2011; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), I seek to contribute to the literature on power by examining a heretofore unexplored low power influence strategy. I explore these topics in eight studies which vary in methodology and participant population, and conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of my findings, and by presenting a number of potential avenues for future research.

Advisor: Kray, Laura J.
Moral Judgment and Historical Understanding

Philosophers, historians, and social scientists often suppose that our moral judgments are insulated from our historical understanding, and vice versa. That is, they generally assume that while our moral judgments appraise social and historical facts, they do not constrain our predictions and explanations of those facts; conversely, our historical accounts describe and explain social phenomena, including ethical phenomena, but they are separate from our evaluations of those phenomena. I challenge both of these assumptions, in arguing that our historical understanding is wrapped up in certain inextricable ways with our moral outlook. More specifically, I contend that some of our moral judgments presuppose assumptions about history and the social world; and also that our social and historical accounts can be informed by our views about morality. In short, our moral and historical views are interdependent./nThese general claims are defended through an investigation of three cases of interaction between our moral judgments and historical understanding. In the first case, I explore how assumptions about the causal dependence of present moral practices on past activities have implications for retrospective evaluations of those past activities. More specifically, I grapple with the possibility and evaluative implications of there being large-scale past activities that are both unjust but also necessary causal conditions for the historical emergence of modern liberalism. In the second case, I examine how the presupposition of universal validity in our moral outlook constrains our explanations of the historically distant. More specifically, I consider whether, and how, liberal universalism, the widely-held view that liberal values are universally valid, can provide a plausible "theory of error" to account for the non-liberal tendencies of past societies. In the final case, I reflect on how assumptions about the cultural or normative distance between other social worlds and our own inform our character assessments. More specifically, I try to make sense of why our character assessment of someone who did something morally wrong is influenced by where we locate the wrongdoer in history.

Advisor: Sluga, Hans
Wallace, R. Jay
The Role of Wnt Signaling in C. elegans Neuronal Development

Cellular polarization is critical for many stages of neuronal development, including the asymmetric division of the neuroblast and the axon-dendrite specification of the mature neuron. In C. elegans, Wnt glycoproteins control the polarization of the ALM mechanosensory neurons, but the molecules that mediate Wnt signaling are unclear. I found that the Ror kinase CAM-1, which has been shown to bind to Wnts, is required for ALM polarity. CAM-1 acts in the ALM to promote its polarity and CAM-1 may also have a non-autonomous function in sequestering Wnts. Furthermore, I implicated actin regulators unc-34 and two known components of the Rac pathway, ced-10/Rac and mig-10/lamellipodin, in ALM polarity. Expression of unc-34 and mig-10 from a neuron-specific promoter unc-86 significantly rescued the ALM polarity defect, indicating these genes can function in the neurons. Lastly, I identified that the MIG-15 kinase, a member of the Ste20 kinase superfamily, and potential components of a MIG-15 signaling pathway that might be novel Wnt effectors in neuronal polarity./nWnts also regulate the asymmetric cell divisions (ACD) of many non-neuronal cell types and the Q neuroblast lineage (Teuliere & Garriga, unpublished observation). The molecules that mediate Wnt signaling in ACD in the Q lineage are unclear. One possible candidate is PIG-1, which is orthologous to vertebrate MELK and belongs to a family of serine/threonine kinases including PAR-1, SAD-1 and AMPK (Cordes et al., 2006). This group of kinases can be phosphorylated and activated by the polarity-regulating kinase LKB1. LKB1 kinase, along with its binding partners STRAD and MO25, have been shown to be master regulators of polarity in many different contexts, and I find that C. elegans orthologs of LKB1, STRAD and MO25 regulate the asymmetric cell division of the Q.p lineage and are potential regulators of PIG-1 in this process.

Advisor: Garriga, Gian
States and Terrorist Groups that Collaborate: Strong Bonds, Sensitive Transfers and the Issue of Control

Cooperative relationships between states and terrorist groups have remained a constant source of concern for policymakers since the 1970s, but especially over recent years as the potential for high consequence transfers of state support to terrorists emerged as a primary focus of attention and a justification for war. Strangely though, despite their prominent place on the international political landscape, little real understanding exists about these relationships or state decision-making regarding allocations of support. Using documents captured in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, interviews, and other historical evidence, this dissertation addresses this significant gap in knowledge, providing important new understanding of the dynamics that shape state relationships with, and resource transfers to, terrorist groups./nThe simple yet powerful insight this dissertation research uncovers is that the quality of support states are willing to provide to terrorist groups increases as the degree of control that states maintain over terrorist groups--or in rare cases, that terrorist groups maintain over states--increases. For states, control is the mechanism that narrows the gap between how a state wants a terrorist group to behave and what the terrorist group actually does. Control, however, is not inherent, cheap, or easy for states to acquire. This means that states face critical trade-offs when deciding how much control to seek. By highlighting those trade-offs and the key variables that cause control to rise and fall, this study provides an important new window into the often opaque relationships between these actors and states' calculus for allocating different levels of support to individual terrorist groups./nThis research fills an important gap in the scholarly literature. It also holds enormous practical value for national security analysts and policymakers. Rather than treat cooperative relationships between states and terrorist groups in either a sui generis or homogeneous fashion, it creates a theoretical framework that can be used to parse the actual threat posed by specific relationships, including by identifying some of the circumstances that could produce high consequence state transfers of support. In addition, these findings suggest a number of principles that can be employed to enhance the effectiveness of international efforts to diminish the threat of high consequence terrorism.

Advisor: Weber, Steven
Competing Visions of the Modern: Urban Transformation and Social Change of Changchun, 1932-1957

Examining the urban development and social change of Changchun during the period 1932-1957, this project covers three political regimes in Changchun (the Japanese, the Nationalist, and the Communist), and explores how political agendas operated and evolved as a local phenomenon in this city. I aim to reveal connections between the colonial past and socialist "present". I also aim to reveal both the idiosyncrasies of Japanese colonialism vis-à-vis Western colonialism from the perspective of the built environment, and the similarities and connections of urban construction between the colonial and socialist regime, despite antithetically propagandist banners, to unfold the shared value of anti-capitalist pursuit of exploring new visions of and different paths to the modern./nThe first three chapters relate to colonial period (1932-1945), each exploring one facet of the idiosyncrasies of Japanese colonialism in relation to Changchun's urbanism. Chapter One deals with the idiosyncrasies of Japanese colonialism as manifested in planning Changchun are the subject of the next chapter. Chapter Two charts out the plurality of architectural styles in the city, and analyzes the diversities, ambivalences, and ambiguities in the practice of statecraft and urban construction. Chapter Three gives a picture of how the downtown of Changchun was reconstructed to meet new political agenda when Socialist Realism took sway of aesthetic program. I also examine in this chapter the nature of Japanese colonialism in Manchukuo from the perspective of rituals and pubic pageantries, by using Yamamuro's analogy of the client state to a hybrid beast of chimera./nThe last two chapters examine Changchun's development since 1945. Chapter Four pictures how the downtown of Changchun was reconstructed to meet new political agenda. Chapter Five explores Changchun's urban expansion under Maoism: the construction of the First Automobile Works, a key project of Maoist industrialization. The purposes of the dissertation have been anchored by an overall objective to fill up this vacancy from the perspective of urban construction and urban life./nThis dissertation has unfolded a proliferation of competing formulations of the modern in Changchun's urban history, some inspired by Western creations but more competing with Western concerns. In the competition for the dominance of the world, Japanese colonialism in Manchukuo and Chinese socialism both represented massive anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist qualities.

Advisor: AlSayyad, Nezar
Yeh, Wen-hsin
A Measurement of the Relative Branching Ratio BR(B- -> D0 K-)/BR(B- ->D0 pi-) in Three D0 Decay Modes

Using 1.3 fb^-1 of data from p-pbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV collected with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron, we have measured the relative branching ratio BR(B^- -> D^0 K^-)/BR(B^- -> D^0 pi^-) and its charge conjugate in the D^0 flavor decay mode D^0_f -> K^-pi^+ and the CP-even decay modes D^0 -> K^-K^+ and D^0 -> pi^-pi^+. From these measurements, we derive:/nR = (7.99 +- 0.33(stat.) +- 0.38(sys.)) %,/nR_{CP+} = 1.15 +- 0.17(stat.) +- 0.02(sys.),/nA_{CP+} = 0.10 +- 0.15(stat.) +- 0.02(sys.)./nThese values are consistent with Standard Model expectations.

Advisor: Shapiro, Marjorie D
Travel Dialogues Under Counter-Reformation Pressure: A New Vehicle for Polemics in 16th Century Hispanic Literature

This dissertation considers two literary texts in dialogue form: the anonymous Viaje de Turquía written in the 1550's about a Spaniard's experiences as an ex-captive of the Turks and his travels back to Spain through Greece and Italy; and Pedro de Quiroga's c. 1565 Coloquios de la verdad, about the experiences of an indigenous Peruvian who witnesses the process of colonization and the failed evangelization of the natives firsthand. Both texts contain a large amount of ethnographic detail (from the manner in which people pray, raise their families and celebrate, to the rituals surrounding the chewing of the coca leaf and the degustation of Turkish yogurt). The texts justify themselves in an introductory section (prologue) where the "authors" extol the virtues of knowing about other world cultures and praise the veracity of eye-witness reports. I argue that although these dialogues present themselves as travel narratives that offer the Spanish crown useful ethnographic portraits of non-Christian cultures, their ulterior motive, and ultimate effect, is a critique of Christian Spain. Using genre theory as developed by Frederic Jameson and Claudio Guillén, I review how the dialogues are criss-crossed by other genres that contribute to their literary and thematic force./nChapter One introduces the texts, describes the theoretical framework and method of analysis that is used; and reviews the dissertation's structure. Chapter Two contextualizes the two dialogues, placing them within their historical times and places; and shows how the manuscripts' history, the play between interlocutors and their control of the narrative, the sort of portrait drawn of the non-Spanish culture, and other literary issues related to both form and the content reflect historical, philosophical, religious, and political realities. Chapter Three brings into play genre theory in order to identify the models for the dialogues under discussion, namely travel narratives (Marco Polo and John Mandeville), Plato's philosophical dialogues, and Lucian's satiric dialogues; and the other genres that they incorporate: other travel narratives of the period, autobiography, and picaresque.

Advisor: Hampton, Timothy
Applications of Semi-parametric Estimation Methods in Causal Inference and Prediction

In this thesis, we argue for the use of loss-based semi-parametric estimation methods as an alternative to traditional parametric models in causal inference and prediction. We present a brief discussion on "black box" epidemiology in the first chapter and argue that risk factor epidemiology can be improved by using semi-parametric estimation methods. We demonstrate the use of semi-parametric methods by applying them to two different problems: one in causal inference and another in prediction. In each case, we demonstrate the process one would follow to define the question of interest, parameterize this question, and estimate it using semi-parametric methods. In the second chapter we introduce a formal concept of a perception effect, and define unmasking and placebo effects in the context of randomized trials. We employ modern tools from causal inference to derive semi-parametric estimators of such effects. The methods are illustrated on a motivating example from a recent pain trial where the occurrence of treatment-related side effects acts as a proxy for unmasking. In the third chapter, we redefine perception and unmasking effects for a longitudinal setting, and explore various causal graphs for the gabapentin trial. We demonstrate application of the semi-parametric methods in this more general setting by assuming a more complicated causal graph. To estimate the parameters, we use Maximum Likelihood Estimation and two different versions of Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Finally, in chapter four, we approach coronary heart disease risk prediction modeling from a semi-parametric perspective using data from the Framingham study. The "super learner" is used with a library of machine learning algorithms to create an ensemble risk prediction model for coronary heart disease. We define relative risk importance parameters for various risk factors and estimate them with semi-parametric methods used in earlier chapters. The results are compared to the Framingham study and those obtained by fitting a parametric model to the Framingham dataset.

Advisor: Jewell, Nicholas P
The Exponent of Breath: The Role of Foreign Evangelical Organizations in Combating Japan's Tuberculosis Epidemic of the Early 20th Century

Tuberculosis existed in Japan long before the arrival of the first medical missionaries, and it would survive them all. Still, the epidemic during the period from 1890 until the 1920s proved salient because of the questions it answered. This dissertation analyzes how, through the actions of the government, scientists, foreign evangelical leaders, and the tubercular themselves, a nation defined itself and its obligations to its subjects, and how foreign evangelical organizations, including the Young Men's Christian Association (the Y.M.C.A.) and The Salvation Army, sought to utilize, as much as to assist, those in their care. With both Japanese government officials and foreign evangelical leaders employing moral entrepreneurism in their approach to the victims of the nation's epidemic, the tubercular became pawns in the relationships between the Meiji and Taishō governments, the Y.M.C.A., The Salvation Army, St. Luke's Hospital, and the Omi Mission. Within this analytical framework, this dissertation also examines such issues as how Protestantism allowed some of the disease's victims to withstand societal stigma, and how its proponents viewed their obligation to their fellow man; how concepts of public health changed when faced with a disease with no known cure, and how much of the attempts to respond to the disease fell victim to partisan politics and personality disputes; how gender affected national, societal, and religious rights, and how disease affected perceptions of gendered behavior. Finally, this work analyzes how the value of human life was parsed and differentiated, particularly vis-à-vis utility to both the Japanese nation and the state of Protestantism in the early 20th century.

Advisor: Barshay, Andrew E
Mayors, Markets and Municipal Reform: The Politics of Water Delivery in Mexico

The dissertation examines the political challenges of public utility reform through the analysis of urban water and sanitation services in Mexico. Decentralization of services to municipal governments was coupled with promotion of "market-based" policies in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the unpopularity of these policies provided political obstacles for mayors now charged with reforming the sector because many consumers were not accustomed to paying for water services. These policies--increased water prices, rigorous fee collection practices, and service suspension for non-payment--were political costs felt in the short-term, whereas the benefits of reform were long-term service improvements in water quality and quantity, reduced environmental pollution, and increased economic and social development. This problem of time inconsistency is a challenge even for pro-reform mayors because mayors in Mexico have a narrow window of time within which to enact policy. Mayoral administrations are three years long with no immediate re-election, and bureaucratic administrators follow the electoral cycle, which further exacerbates the challenge of long-term policymaking./nBased on a comparative analysis of nine Mexican municipalities, I argue that mayors whose constituent base is primarily composed of middle and upper income consumers and business are more likely to reform because these groups are more able to pay short-term costs for long-term service improvements than the urban poor. With the support of a pro-reform mayor, reform is likely under two conditions: a) the presence of a water intensive industry and b) institutional support from the state government. Water intensive industry prioritizes improvement in service delivery, calculates costs based on the long run, and, further, has long-term financial and professional ties in the community. Water intensive industry is well positioned to support the policy process over time by participating in the leadership of the water utility board of directors. Also, water intensive industry can help offset the costs of reform because it pays more per cubic meter through a block tariff pricing scheme, a policy that subsidizes domestic consumers and helps to finance the reform agenda. Therefore, water intensive industry can lengthen the political problems of imposing costs in the short-term for mayors, lowering the costs to consumers before the long-term benefits of service improvements appear. Finally, state governments can provide legal, fiscal and technical resources that can help shorten the learning curve of incoming mayoral administrations. As such, state government can shorten the long-term planning of the reform process to make it more consistent with the shorter electoral cycle found at the municipal level./nThis research advances debates on policy adoption and implementation, highlighting the importance of political-business coalitional support as well as the role of inter-tier relations in maintaining policies over time.

Advisor: Collier, Ruth B
Post, Alison E