The purpose of this study was to note the effect of certain variables on perceptual closure. Closure has been defined by Mooney (1951) as, "the facility with which individuals can apprehend the structural implications of a confused or incomplete visual configuration." Since research into the effect of variables such as age, sex, and intelligence have yielded few results, it was thought that the field of personality traits might be a lucrative one in which to look for factors affecting closure ability. Authoritarianism was chosen as a possible starting-point because it has been shown that high authoritarians are high in rigidity, a factor having a deterrent effect on closure. (Luchins 1959) The Pensacola Z Scale (Jones 1957) was used as the measure of authoritarian personality, since it consists of four factored, separately scorable, subscales: anxiety; dependency; hostility; and rigidity. The closure phenomenon was measured by Mooney's Closure Test (1951) because it can be administered to either an individual or a group. The sample consisted of fifty volunteer students attending the University of British Columbia summer session. Subjects were divided into two groups for testing purposes; one group received the Closure Test first, and the other received the Pensacola first. The purpose of this procedure was to randomize the effects of the two tests on each other. Analysis of the data yielded a Pearson Product-Moment coefficient of -.345, significant at the 5% level, between Closure and the total Pensacola scores, which supported the original hypothesis that there would be an inverse relationship between scores obtained on a measure of authoritarianism and those obtained on a measure of closure. When Closure was correlated with each of the Pensacola subscales, only two were significant; closure-anxiety (-.32) at 57% level, and closure-dependency (-.40) at the 1% level. The other two coefficients can only be regarded as chance occurrences. The multiple correlation coefficient of -.495 calculated between closure, and anxiety and dependency, indicated the better predictive value of the combined scales of dependency and anxiety over the use of them singly, or over the use of the total Pensacola scale. From this study it was concluded that high authoritarians possess qualities which interfere with the ability necessary for achieving closure. Also, the results of this study point to the fact that one place to look for variables affecting closure is within the field of personality traits. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Claremont Graduate School, 1988. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 283-298).

Abstract: This dissertation asks: Why do autocrats expand the freedoms enjoyed by their domestic media outlets when it would seem to be against their interests to do so? Some research suggests that private capital investments and other non-state sources of revenue are crucial to expanding the bounds of media discourse. I argue that private money alone cannot produce such developments, instead, increased press freedom can be observed when the economic reforms create the opportunity for a new class of entrepreneurs, interested in funding media ventures, to enter government. From this position they may push for opportunities to expand the media environment. Hosni Mubarak’s presidency in Egypt provides a useful lens to study changes in press freedom under autocracy. The introduction of private capital into the Egyptian newspaper industry in two recent decades resulted in different levels of press freedom. In the 1990s press freedom was unaffected by the influx of private money into this sector, but there was a marked increase in press freedom in the 2000s when a wave of new privately-owned dailies joined their state-owned counterparts on Egyptian newsstands. The introduction of economic reforms, especially privatization of state industries, created the opportunities for the expanded class of entrepreneurs to enter politics and the economic incentives to increase the freedom of the press. The dissertation expands our existing understandings of the political and economic context under which economic liberalizations can lead to political liberalizations. It suggests that political science can improve its understanding of these dynamics by considering individual political liberalizations, rather than just democratization, when seeking to understand the impact of economic reforms. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 329-354).

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Thesis (M.A.). / Written for the Dept. of Political Science. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/01/14). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-309).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Also available in print.

Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / This work addresses the globally urgent need to understand the social origins of the recent surge in authoritarian and populist social movements across Europe and the Americas. It analyzes how themes of tribalism, confidence in medical science, and confidence in military violence changed over the years in the retelling of stories in popular culture. The focus is I Am Legend and Day of the Dead – two series of American film remakes of popular science fiction stories that feature pandemic disease and the threat of what are here referred to as “Diseased Others” – the transformed, humanoid Others who have caught the disease. The qualitatively-driven approach exhibits an original methodological contribution to the discipline of sociology, offering several innovations via the coding schemes used and an adaptation of grounded theory for multiple sample sets of films. The data consulted include transcriptions of dialogue from films, reviews in popular news sources, interviews with cast and crew, box office data, and data from the General Social Survey. Within these examples of “Diseased Others” science fiction, themes of tribal morality and confidence in medical science and the military have followed a discernible trajectory. This trajectory is of narrowing moral scope toward loyalty to one’s own in opposition to outside groups, and embracing military violence as a positive solution to threats to the “normal” population. In general, medical science is also increasingly positioned as dangerous and blameworthy (even if also capable of positive intervention). This trajectory thus displays a heightening of what are identified for the present study as three “elements of authoritarian populism”: tribalism, distrust of rational institutions, and willingness to resort to violence. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Masrer of ArtsInternational Relations / The thesis is a contribution to the existing literature on the democratic process in Malawi with specific focus on two areas namely, the factors that led to the opening up of political space and the implementation of multiparty democracy. The thesis argues that multiparty democracy in Malawi, which transpired due to internal and external factors, had been perceived as the means of transforming the oppressive climate created by the Banda regime. However, despite three multiparty elections since the 1990s, the UDF government, which succeeded Banda, has failed to broaden the avenues for the consolidation of democracy in Malawi, leading to disillusionment among the people. Ten years of multiparty democracy have only resulted in the regression to the practices of the very regime it replaced. Currently Malawi is plagued with a lack of independent media, weak civil society, corruption among top government officials and a weak economy to mention a few. The thesis argues that this is because of the nature of the ruling class as well as the issue of ethnicity, which has resulted in the contestation of power.