Social Sciences – Page 19 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Social Sciences

Detroit Contractor Ecosystem

Bridging Neighborhoods (BN) was formed to support the optional relocation or retrofitting of houses for the residents of the Del Ray neighborhood due to the construction of an international bridge between Canada and the United States. To conduct activities, BN relies upon attracting local contractors and subcontractors to the program so the residents can opt into the relocation or retrofitting process with confidence. My role is to research contractor programs and outreach strategies in thirty cities nationwide and assist in reaching out to contractors and subcontractors in Detroit. These tasks were achieved through internet research and calling 150+ potential contractors for the 2021 Construction Conference. The purpose of this research is to highlight contractor programs or outreach strategies that the City of Detroit can implement in the future, and the outreach calls have increased the number of contractor connections BN possesses.

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Business + Tech Initiative

There is currently a large divide between the integration of technology and business among students enrolled in universities across the country. As a result, through the leadership of entrepreneur Phillip Brabbs and a team of MBA students and undergraduate researchers, the Ross Digital + Tech Initiative was born. The goal of the Initiative is to align and integrate Digital Business activities to develop business leaders for a digital world; influence digital business practices through data and research, and build connections with industry and policy to shape the future of business. The approach to expanding the Initiative deals with aligning and integrating the Digital Business content, stakeholder engagement and brand in a reinforcing way to amplify and expand the Ross Digital Business reputation through synergies across the 3 areas. The areas span across topics including tech literacy, tech mastery, and tech competency. This study utilizes bi-weekly meetings with fellow tech scholars, weekly meetings with MBA mentors, and bi-weekly all-hands meetings to ensure cohesiveness across the project. Along with that, by utilizing applications such as Basecamp and Excel, we are able to organize data, stay in communication, and create content for the online database. This study is just the beginning of a long journey to equip leaders with tech to build a better world. Although no immediate conclusions have been drawn, long-term goals for the future of the Initiative range from the continued execution of annual Datathons to launching a Tech Founder Speaker Series to establishing the Ross Tech Scholar Program.

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The Impact of Smart Home Technology on Children

With the prevalence of smart home devices in family homes, children are impacted in different aspects regarding their privacy, security, safety, well-being, routine, etc. To better understand how parents react to and mediate these potential smart home impacts on children, we conducted interviews with 23 parents, with children from ages 1 to 10, to ask them a series of questions about smart home devices within their houses. We present findings on the factors that lead parents to enable parental controls on devices or to leave them be depending on children’s level of access to smart home technologies and the parent’s view of technology. We found that parents who opt to not activate parental controls tend to view technology more as a toy and give their children more access to technology in general. Our findings provide design and policy implications for tech companies and policymakers to better consider children as important stakeholders of smart home technologies.

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White employers’ perceptions of same-race referrals

Jenely Delgado Pronouns: She/Her Research Mentor(s): Fabiana Silva, Assistant Professor Research Mentor School/College/Department: Public Policy, Ford School of Public Policy Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021 Session: Session 3 (1pm-1:50pm) Breakout Room: Room 4 Presenter: 1 Event Link Abstract For privacy concerns this abstract cannot be published at this time. Authors: Jenely Delgado Research Method:

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Social comparison and self-esteem: A vicious cycle

Why are some people exasperated by social comparisons while others find comparisons negligible? Past research has identified self-esteem as a key individual difference coloring the experience of social comparison. This research reveals that social comparison and low self-esteem share a vicious, circular relationship: people with low self-esteem are more inclined to compare themselves to others, and upward comparisons tend to lower people’s self-esteem (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999; Hoffman et al., 1954; Tesser, 1989; Wood et al., 1985). Yet, it remains unclear what psychological processes perpetuate this process; why do people with low self-esteem engage in social comparison? We propose that people with low self-esteem have both less motivation to regulate their emotions and a smaller toolkit for regulation (Gross, 2015). Accordingly, people with low self-esteem may be more likely to enter environments where comparisons are likely (e.g, social media), fixate on available comparisons, and perceive comparisons as meaningful. We report two studies examining how emotion regulation processes shape the experience of social comparison among people with low self-esteem. Study 1 examines whether emotion regulation capacity and regulatory flexibility mediate the relationship between social comparison orientation and self-esteem. Study 2 employs an experimental design to test whether one can mitigate or nullify the negative relationship between social comparison and self-esteem via a brief reappraisal exercise. This research will shed light on how best to intervene in the cycle that perpetuates low self-esteem.

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Career and Educational Concerns Over Time

History serves us in many ways as a society. It allows researchers to peel back decades and peer into what could have never been seen without careful documenting and archiving. The Center for the Education of Women is home to a wealth of information dating from 1964 until now that paints a picture of the life’s women led at a time when education was not as welcoming or as accessible as it is now. The first and foremost goal of this project was to dust off all of the old files and give them new life in a database that was designed to lend ease of access to future researchers. As one can probably imagine, this task was a lot easier said then done. Sifting through decades worth of counseling records, scholarship applications, and many other types of documents was a tedious and time-consuming task that required a concise plan of attack and well-designed spreadsheets. But, through plenty of hard work and determination our team was able to preserve history for many years to come.

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Follow the Leader? Rethinking Leadership and Hierarchy in the Workplace

Previous research has demonstrated that information sharing is important to group and organization functioning and performance. However, leaders and managers often have the option to withhold information from their subordinates or other lower-level employees. Leaders and managers are privy to information about organizational issues, challenges, successes, and opportunities that their subordinates are not. Although this information might be useful or beneficial to disseminate, leaders often keep information from their subordinates, especially in times of crisis. In this research, we explore leader information withholding, which we define as the intentional suppression of information from a subordinate that a leader has on group, organizational, or other contextual circumstances. For this project, our objectives are to explore (1) what types of information do leaders withhold (2) when and why leaders withhold information, specifically in times of crisis, and (3) the effects of leader information withholding on group or organizational dynamics and performance. We will conduct, transcribe, and codify interviews with various organizational leaders and managers, in conjunction with analyzing preexisting research to determine when leaders withhold information, placing emphasis on information dissemination during times of crisis. We hope to observe whether there is a difference between what leaders tend to do and what is actually beneficial to organizational performance.

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Follow the Leader? Rethinking Leadership and Hierarchy in the Workplace

Mitchell Davidson Pronouns: he/him/his Research Mentor(s): Elizabeth Trinh, PhD Student Research Mentor School/College/Department: Management and Organizations, Ross School of Business Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021 Session: Session 3 (1pm-1:50pm) Breakout Room: Room 3 Presenter: 1 Event Link Abstract For privacy concerns this abstract cannot be published at this time. Authors: Elizabeth Trinh, Helen Devine,

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The Effect of Uncertainty on Competitive Behavior

How does cosmic uncertainty “” the general feeling that the world lacks a higher power, order, or meaning “” affect social decision-making? Some prior studies suggest that whether conditions are certain or uncertain, people default to cooperative behavior (Zuckerman 1975; Torii & Hidaka, 2015); yet, there too exists research which suggests that uncertainty leads to more competitive behavior (Burleigh & Meegan, 2017). These conflicting findings create a gap in our understanding of how circumstances of uncertainty impact competitive behavior. In order to resolve this conflict, we will conduct two studies wherein we differentiate between task uncertainty and a more global (cosmic) sense of uncertainty. The first study will examine the relationship between two dispositional forms of (un)certainty “” belief in a just world and ambiguity tolerance “” and competitive behavior. We have already recruited data from participants (N = 153) who engaged in a prisoner’s dilemma task; data will be analyzed in a multiple logistic regression predicting a person’s decision to cooperate/compete from each individual difference measure. Following data analysis, we will follow this exploratory study with a confirmatory study in which we experimentally manipulate belief in a just world and/or outcome ambiguity to test the effect more rigorously. In sum, we aim to shed light on how people’s beliefs about the world drive their decisions to compete or cooperate.

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Ross Digital Business and Technology: Michigan Sports Business and Technology

The multi-billion dollar sports industry captivates millions of fans around the world and intersects with a multitude of various other industries from business, to health, to technology. Within these industrial vertices lie opportunities for growth and changed within sports, and mark intellectual territory ready to be explored. The Ross Business and Technology Scholars Group is devoted to examining the ways in which technology can improve the development of obtaining, and ease of using, data and statistical information. We are looking at the various ways these new technologies and data synthesis platforms can be leveraged to advance and aid professional and collegiate sports.

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