Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii, 1966. / Bibliography: leaves [92]-95. / viii, 95 l tables

Thesis of (M.A.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on August 25, 2009). "Fall, 2009." At head of title: University of Alberta. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduates Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-37). Also available via the Internet from the Humboldt Digital Scholar web site.

This study explores the perceptions toward immigrant criminality in Utah of four distinct social groups: state legislators, immigrants, law enforcement personnel, and incarcerated immigrants. Each group was examined separately and found to have a variety of perceptions among their members. Themes emerged that provided insight into the overlap and complexity of these differences across social groups. Legislators appeared the most dichotomous: some believed immigration and crime to be positively correlated, especially for undocumented immigrants, while others perceived no such connection. Among immigrants, perceptions were extremely diverse, but generally represented by reference to an unsubstantiated stereotype that immigrants committed crime at a higher rate than non-immigrants, though there were wide gaps in other areas within this group. For law enforcement, perceptions varied according to social distance and the degree of interaction with immigrants: those officers who dealt more intimately with immigrants had more sympathetic and nuanced perceptions. Incarcerated immigrants represented a diversity of perceptions with complexities similar to those manifested in the immigrant group; but overall, most did not consider themselves to be criminal. Future research is suggested and recommended.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted nearly everyone around the world, and it has led to a unique opportunity to draw new conclusions regarding social behavior. During the international COVID-19 pandemic, many recommendations have been established as potential mitigations to prevent the spread of the virus, perhaps most controversial, mask wearing. The present study aimed to identify the extent to which the degree of social discounting correlates with lower probabilities of mask wearing in individuals. It was hypothesized that the greater the social discounting, the less likely subjects would be to wear masks and conversely, the lower the social discounting the more likely subjects would be to wear masks.

The study was conducted to investigate the result of three differential seating arrangements in college classrooms on anxiety level, acquaintance volume, and perceived social distance among students.

As the world becomes increasingly interdependent, mutual understanding becomes increasingly important. Therefore, it is essential that people strive for reductions in social distance on an international level. Study abroad is one of the ways to approach internationalization and promote understanding among different peoples and cultures. Prior research has been done on the degrees of social distance between people from different cultures; however, little research has been done regarding changes that cultural immersion produces among those who reside in different cultures. Studies about study abroad programs have focused on cultural sensitivity and adaptability, yet few have combined the study abroad experience with the perceptions of self and other cultural groups. This study presents a framework for understanding people through intercultural activities. It studied social distance and attitude changes brought about in social distance as an artifact of cultural immersion. The study took place both in China and in the United States. It focused on the social distance among American undergraduate students who participated in a China Study Abroad program sponsored by the University of North Texas. The study measured before and after social distance of a group of American students who studied abroad in China. The study abroad program itself was the intervention and lasted for three weeks. A mixed methods research design was used in the study. Social distance data were collected before and after students studied abroad in China. Both inferential statistics and descriptive statistics were used. Qualitative data were also collected and analyzed in the study. Most of the sample population were close to the Chinese people to begin with. Some participants positively changed their social distance and attitudes towards the Chinese people after the study abroad program, even though the changes were not statistically significant. This study merits replication among randomly selected samples. Study abroad programs should be promoted and supported. More research needs to be done that explores the quality of cultural immersion study abroad programs. Studies also need to be done to examine attitude changes among peoples in host countries.

<p>Sociologists often depict demographic categories as socially constructed, non-essential, and fluid. The language of fluid, contingent categories has not, however, translated very well into the practice of describing social change in a population. There are notable exceptions, but the typical approach is still to take fixed demographic categories, such as Black/White, and follow their outcomes over time. The first goal of this dissertation is to bridge the gap between theory and practice by offering a formal framework for measuring categorical fluidity. The second goal is to use changes in categorical meaning to explore the macro features of a social system.</p><p>First, I develop a model of categorical change rooted in interaction patterns, such as marriage or friendship rates. Interaction patterns offer an ideal metric to measure fluid demographic categories: they concretely capture social distinctions without relying solely on pre-defined labels. I consider two categories to be equivalent if the observed behavioral implications of group membership are the same, even if the labels are different. If College graduates now interact in the same manner as High School graduates used to, then College is the new HS. To formalize this idea, I place categories into social locations based on observed rates of interaction. Categories are close if interaction is likely and far if interaction is unlikely. I then ask which categories occupy the same locations over time, or have the same range of interaction partners. </p><p>Second, I apply this model to the question of racial change in America. I interpret two macro level changes, one demographic and one political, through the lens of categorical change. Demographically, there have been large increases in the number of Hispanics identifying as Other racially, as opposed to White or Black. Using Census marriage data, I find that this increase in Other-Hispanics reflects a schism in the meaning of Hispanic. The shifts in social locations point to a growing divide between those that see Hispanic as another race and those that do not. Politically, there have been large changes in the measurement of race, with individuals now allowed to claim multiple races in the census. I ask how these "new" mixed race categories fit into the existing racial order. I find that the Hispanic mixed race categories create distinct categories in a way that the mixing of traditional racial/ethnic categories does not. </p><p>Third, I use the model of categorical change to test theories of power and influence. I argue that the meaning of a category amongst one part of the population may be shaped by the experience, or changing conditions, of another part of the population. This asymmetry serves as the measure of aggregate level influence. Substantively, I apply this approach to racial stratification in the US, where I use joint changes in educational meaning and attainment to characterize systems of racial stratification from 1940-2000. Using Census data on race and education, I find that the US is characterized by a system of hegemony, where changes in attainment amongst the majority drive the meaning of education for other racial groups.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis aims to design an appropriate human-following solution for a mobile robot. The research can be characterised as interactive model building for a Human Robot Interaction (HRI) scenario. It studies possible proposals for the robot system that learns to accomplish the task autonomously, based on the human preference about the positions and movements of the robot during the interaction. A multilayered feedforward network framework with backpropagation is the adopted learning strategy. The research breaks the task of following a human into three independent behaviours: social positioning, human avoidance and obstacle avoidance. Social positioning is the behaviour that moves the robot, via reasonable paths, to the most appropriate location to follow the human. Both the location and the paths reflect the preference of the human, which varies by individual. The main body of the research therefore proposes a using-while-learning system for this behaviour such that the robot can adapt to the human’s preference autonomously. This research investigated multilayered feedforward networks with backpropagation learning to fulfil the social learning task. This learning model is less used in HRI because a complete set of correct training data doesn’t exist as the human preference is initially unknown. The research proposes a novel method to generate the training data during the operation of learning and introduces the concept of adaptive and reactive learning. A novel training scheme that combines the two learning threads has been proposed, in which the learning is fast, robust and able to adapt to new features of the human preference online. The system enables the behaviour to be a real using-while-learning system as no pre-training of any form is needed to ensure the successful performance of the behaviour. Extensive simulations and interactive experiments with humans have also been conducted to prove the robustness of the system.

<p>This study examined if social distance, i.e. in- vs. out-group membership, had an effect on moral judgments of acts vs. omissions. 164 participants judged the morality of acts vs. omissions of lethal harm, that affected an in- vs. out-group member of the participant, in order to save five other people. The results showed that acts of lethal, but utilitarian, harm were judged more immoral than omissions of equivalent harm. It was also shown that if the victim was an in- group member of the participant the behavior was judged more immoral than if the victim was an out-group member of the participant. However, the acts and omissions of harm were not judged differently when the victim was an in.- vs. out-group member of the participant, indicating that this kind of social distance might not influence the moral judgment of acts and omissions.</p><p> </p>