The 9th Annual First-Year Graduate Student Poster Session was held on Monday, December 13th, 2018 on the second floor of the Ketchum Hall West Wing.

Based on faculty voting, this year’s award winners are:

1st place: Hyodong Sohn

Hyodong’s paper focused on what causes pro-environmental behaviors such as driving less, cutting energy costs, recycling, etc. He finds that, though conventional wisdom might suggest that convincing strong Republicans to believe in science more would make them more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviors, the more they trust science to solve the environmental behaviors, the less they report such behaviors because they believe that science is going to come up with a solution. He connects these theories to other practices strong partisans might engage in that have to do with externalizing the locus of control.

2nd place: Zoe Moss 

Zoe’s paper is about what causes people to be more likely to protest or attend rallies (or to a lesser extent, report being likely to protest). She finds some interesting conditional effects related to gender. She finds that when women value being liked, being popular, or being social, they are more likely to protest, but these factors have no impact on men. The idea goes back to the importance of solidary benefits in overcoming collective action problems. Could this tell us why the women’s march was so fun? Ha. But all kidding aside, this might give us some insights into gender differences in political participation.

Thanks and congratulations to all of our first-years for putting together some wonderful posters this year!

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Program of Posters

Max Chernoff
"What Causes Multiculturalism"

Marissa DeOliveira
"Perceiving Threat: The Conditional Effect of Contemporary Informationa Assessments"

Ferdinand Flagstad
"The Causes of Support for the Right to Die"

Alexender Jensen
"Determinants of Partisan Strength"

Zoe Moss
"Is Protest Socially Desirable? Exploring the Social Factors of Political Protest Participation"

Morgan Nadeau
"Moderating Negativity: Attitudes Toward Immigrants"

Hyodong Sohn
"How Trust in Science Can Be Counterproductive to Pro-Envrionmental Behaviors"