Nitish Mogilisetty - College 201

For my final literature review, I will be looking at a study, conducted by Jon G. Thompson Jr., Crystal D. Oberle, and Jennifer L. Lilley, in "Self-Efficacy and Learning in Sorority and Fraternity Students." This study looks past the fact that self-efficacy is affects academics with students, but goes even further to see how it affects greek students specifically. The results were, "Greek students had lower GPAs and test scores, but higher learning effort ratings, test efforts ratings, and self-efficacy scores." This explains that although fraternity members might not get higher grades on average, they are more motivated to do better and try harder than those not in a fraternity. Also another correlation that found to go into my hypothesis for my final paper is that "... more importantly, self-efficacy was positively correlated with both effort to learn information and effort to do well on the test of that information." This clearly shows that there is

Argument: My main argument is that fraternities help build identity capital through pledging, social involvement, networking opportunities, and to a certain extent, hazing. All of these aspects of a fraternity are unique to the organizations. Pledging and hazing are very unique to fraternities and these processes aren't present in any other organization on campus. And although there are networking opportunities throughout other organizations, the sense of "brotherhood" is what drives the fraternity experience to be better. Counter-Argument: The main argument against this hypothesis is the dangerous risks that are associated with the same processes that help build identity capital. Pledging and hazing have led to deaths across the U.S and an argument can be made that processes that have this kind of downside are not worth the rewards that an individual might gain. This is a very valid argument to have and the only way to avoid these dangers is through better risk man

Academic Frame: The idea of identity capital is something that is very open to interpretation and a lot of segments can fall under this term. The closest theory to this term is the self-efficacy theory which states that self-efficacy plays a major role in how one approaches goals and tasks. If an individual has high self-efficacy, they are more open to approaching new tasks and challenges and more likely to succeed in accomplishing and being successful at them. There is a study conducted by Meera Komarraju and Christopher Dial shows that those who are more academically motivated have higher self-efficacy while those who are more socially motivated have lower self-efficacy. This is important because a lot of people generally believe fraternities to be very social driven but in fact, those who join fraternities have a higher graduation rate than regular college students. This is because students in fraternities want all of their members to be successful in the future because eventual

This is a graphical representation of a study which shows that those in greek organizations prepare college students for life after college compared to students that go though college without being in a fraternity or sorority. This shows that there are certain experiences that fraternities offer college students that distinguish these organizations from all others offered by universities. These experiences include pledging, social events, and in some cases hazing. Although some of these practices involve risks to its potential members, they have certain characteristics that make an individual gain self-efficacy. As shown by the graph, these experiences directly correlate with how successful a person might be because of how prepared they feel to go into the real world

Bibliography: Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” Readings in Economic Sociology , pp. 280–291., doi:10.1002/9780470755679.ch15. Burrow, Anthony L., and Patrick L. Hill. “Purpose as a Form of Identity Capital for Positive Youth Adjustment.” Developmental Psychology , vol. 47, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1196–1206., doi:10.1037/a0023818. Jacobs, Tom. “Study: Fraternity, Sorority Members More Likely to Graduate on Time.” Pacific Standard , 4 Mar. 2014, psmag.com/social-justice/fraternity-sorority-members-likely-graduate-time-greek-women-75861. Jay, Meg. The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now . Canongate, 2016. Komarraju, Meera, and Christopher Dial. “Academic Identity, Self-Efficacy, and Self-Esteem Predict Self-Determined Motivation and Goals.” Learning and Individual Differences , vol. 32, 2014, pp. 1–8., doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2014.02.004. Syrett, Nicholas L. The Company He Keeps: a History of White College Fraternities . Uni

My three academic sources that I have looked at so far are: 1.  The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities , written by Nicholas L. Syrett The Company He Keeps will help me look the history of fraternities and their purpose in colleges today. Fraternities were first made because there was a missing sense of belongingness when young adults first left for college. These individuals wanted a purpose and be successful with other while socializing with others while in college. 2.  The Defining Decade , written by Meg Jay The Defining Decade  has helped me figure out what my paper will be about, which is identity capital. This is a term that isn't used very often but is crucial in the development of young individual in their twenties. Identity capital is what my paper will focus in because it is something that I believe is developed with the help of a fraternity for college students. 3. "Academic Identity, Self-Efficacy, and Self-Esteem Predict Self-Det

Working Title: Building of human capital through fraternities Topic : I will be addressing the effects of fraternities on college students and how it creates human capital through strange, and sometimes harmful, ways. Human capital is defined in Cooper’s “In Loco Parentis” as a necessary investment for the future of the economy and this belief is one of the main reasons that colleges are looked at as a necessity in today’s society. I want to explore whether those who join Greek organizations offer the same, or greater, growth as a regular college student in order to the create more influential human capital. Research Question: Do fraternities help build human capital within its members? Theoretical Frame: Primarily, fraternities personify the freedom that colleges are meant to offer. As summarized in the article, “The Dark Power of Fraternities” by Caitlin Flanagan, the reason fraternities were first introduced was because a group of students realized that they wanted t

For my fourth source I will be using an article written by Anthony L. Burrow titled "Purpose a Form of Identity Capital for Positive Youth Adjustment." Burrow is a a professor of human development and the director of the purpose and identity processes laboratory where he conducted many researches. He talks about identity capital as a theory and states that " Identity capital, then, represents aspects of who one is that can be invested to successfully navigate key tasks and to capitalize on experiences." This can be tied to my last literature review and the idea of self-efficacy where an individual's experiences affect their motivation through self efficacy.  I will be using this information to connect with my research question of whether fraternities help build identity capital by using the different aspects that Burrow talks about involving identity capital. Burrow mainly talks about purpose and I believe that a fraternity can help bring purpose to the thin

For my third scholarly source I will be looking a scholarly article written by Meera Komarraju and Christopher Dial titled "Academic Identity, Self-Efficacy, and Self-Esteem Predict Self-Determined Motivation and Goals." Both these authors hold doctorate degrees in psychology and are very knowledgeable when conducting  their studies. This article describes how ones self-efficacy can be directly related to their motivation and attitude when facing tasks or challenges. The authors state " High academic self-efficacy and implicit beliefs about the changeable/malleable quality of intelligence are associated with stronger motivation, greater concentration, and deeper processing of study material. " So when talking about an individuals college experience, it is greatly affected by the self-efficacy that they possess.  I will use this information to apply to fraternities and their pledging processes. Pledging is a process that most fraternity members have to go through

My main scholarly source that I would like to use is the written by Meg Jay about the importance and impact that their age has on an individual and their future when they're in their twenties. Meg Jay can be trusted when talking about topics such as this because she has a PhD in psychology is currently a successful and influential clinical psychologist with many studies that she has conducted herself. She wrote the novel  The Defining Decade,  which focuses on three important aspects on one's life when in their twenties: work, love, and the brain/body. Since most college students start their twenties during their time in college, this book can be applied directly to college students. My main focus when approaching this book is when Meg Jay defines the term "Identity Capital", which is what my research question will be on. Identity capital is defined in this book as "... a collection of personal assets- a repertoire of individual resources that we assemble ove

To start off my research paper, I am first going to look at the history of fraternities and why they came about to be. I will be using the first chapter of the book The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities , written by Nicholas L. Syrett to give a general history of fraternities and what their purpose is. Nicholas L. Syrett is a professor at the University of Kansas who teaches in gender and sexuality studies which means he can be reliable when talking about the topics of adolescent young men. He also taught of years in the history department which means he must knowledge of research sources relating to the history of fraternities because he wrote a book on it. The reason I will only be using the first chapter is because I plan on having a positive perspective towards fraternities and if I use other parts of the book, it wouldn't be that helpful because it has more of a negative undertone. To start off, the first ever fraternity, Kappa Alpha, was first intr