Posts

Blog Post #10

Abstract: Fraternities are very prevalent organizations in college that offer what most students look for when they get started, a way to “fit in” with everyone else. Although fraternities involve many risks, they help build identity capital within the members of the organization so they are better prepared for life after college. And in turn, have a better chance of being successful. Fraternities help students understand and develop their personality traits, such as self-efficacy, which motivate them to be successful. As a result identity capital is built through unconventional processes of pledging and hazing, as well as social events and networking opportunities. And before they graduate, fraternity members know their purpose due to these self-actualization tactics used by fraternities to develop identity capital. Works Cited: Balderrama, Anthony. “Is Getting a Job Really about Who You Know?” CNN , Cable News Network, 16 Sept. 2010, www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/09/16/cb.who
Post a Comment
Read more

Literature Review #5

Image
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
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Post #9

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
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Post #7

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
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Post #6

Image
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
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Post #5

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
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Post #3

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
Post a Comment
Read more