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Yes / Peoples’ judgments and decisions often change when made in their foreign language. Existing research testing this foreign language effect has predominantly used text-based stimuli with little research focusing on the impact of listening to audio stimuli on the effect. The only existing study on this topic found shifts in people’s moral decisions only in the audio modality. Firstly, by reanalyzing the data from this previous study and by collecting data in an additional experiment, we found no consistent effects of using foreign language on moral judgments. Secondly, in both datasets we found no significant language by modality interaction. Overall, our results highlight the need for more robust testing of the foreign language effect, and its boundary conditions. However, modality of presentation does not appear to be a candidate for explaining its variability. Data and materials for this experiment are available at https://osf.io/qbjxn/.

Two studies analyzed the factor structure of the 8-item Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) (Reidenbach and Robin, 1988, 1990), a 30-item MES (the 30 items used to develop the 8-item measure), and a Perceived Moral Intensity Scale. Factor analyses supported a 3-factor structure for the 8-item MES, marginally supported a 5-factor structure (but more strongly suggested a 1-factor structure) for the 30-item MES, and supported a 3-factor structure for the Perceived Moral Intensity Scale. These scales were then used in a third study that examined the effect of manipulated and perceived moral intensity (Jones, 1991) on participants' ethical judgment of actions taken in 18 scenarios of an arguably ethical nature. A within-subject design found that manipulated moral intensity had a significant effect on ethical judgment, but perceived moral intensity did not. When ethical judgment (as measured by the three factors of the 8-item MES) was regressed on age, gender, major, perceived moral intensity factors, and interactions between age, gender, major and perceived moral intensity factors, the variance accounted for (R2) was significant for each of the three ethical judgment factors in both high and low intensity conditions using a between-subjects design, but was only significant for one of the ethical judgment factors (Moral Equity), and this only for low intensity scenarios, using a within-subject design. One explanation for the difference in effect appears to be that the means for the three perceived moral intensity factors were significantly different for the low versus high intensity condition using the between-subjects design, but the means of two of the three factors were not significantly different using the within-subject design. Three explanations for this were suggested: perceived moral intensity may not have reached a necessary threshold due to explicit referents for comparison; cognitive demand may have been greater when two versions of a single scenario were being evaluated; and, the online administration of the study may have introduced greater error variance than the in-person paper-pencil administration. Ethical judgment was found to be a more robust predictor of intention than perceived moral intensity using a within-subject design. Suggestions were made for future research. / Ph. D.

A new approach was taken to identify a specific construct or dimension being measured by a video-based situational judgment test (VBSJT). Appropriate exertion of control was specifically explored in relation to a VBSJT test designed for entry-level selection of law enforcement officers. Ratings from ten law enforcement experts were utilized to identify this construct. The VBSJT items scored toward overexertion of control were significantly related to performance (r = .23) in a sample of 334 incumbent police officers, capturing a large portion of the effective variance of the test which had an overall validity of r = .34. Situational variables within the items were then compared to ratings of exertion of control within a sample of 5426 applicants. General provocation toward overexertion of control and ethnicity significantly affected appropriate exertion of control. Gender and likeability also had significant impact on appropriate exertion, but the practical significance was limited. Specific character manipulations (i.e., rudeness, aggressiveness, pleasantness, cooperativeness, sympathy, and suspiciousness) also had a significant impact on appropriate exertion of control. Specific information manipulations (i.e., warrants, complaints, contemptible crimes and laws being broken) also had an impact on appropriate exertion of control. Some unexpected findings suggest that the character manipulations may actually override the effect of other provocation. The overexertion of control scale was also applied to test hypotheses about the likely behavior of police officers. It was found that the location of the organization had an affect on overexertion of control. Contrary to the hypothesis, suburban locations had more overexertion of control than urban locations. Length of tenure for police officers did not have an effect on overexertion of control. This difference did not affect validity across organizations. Implications and further research are discussed. / Ph. D.

An auditor performing analytical review must typically diagnose material variances of observed client data from his/her own expectations. The auditor may utilize a decision aid to help in generating potential explanations for a variance; it has, however, the capacity to provide many more explanations than are possible using other means. Under the circumstances of budgetary constraints and limited cognitive load for beginning an information search with these explanations, the auditor may consider the lengthy list and arrive at a more manageable sub-list of the most probable explanations. In doing so, the auditor either eliminates those explanations that are less likely or includes those that are more likely into a reduced list for further consideration. While the goal under either approach is the same-to reduce the list-studies in psychology have shown that those including will reduce the list to a much greater extent than those eliminating. If the auditor begins an information search with this reduced list of explanations, then whether the auditor uses inclusion or elimination may have effectiveness and efficiency implications for the remainder of the analytical review process. The auditor must also contend with risk in the audit environment, which also may influence the manner in which the auditor reduces the lengthy list of explanations. A risky audit environment is generally related to heightened auditor skepticism and increased audit effort, as predicted by the audit risk model (SAS 47, AICPA 1983). Each of these translates into the desire to pursue a greater number of plausible explanations in a high risk environment than in a low risk environment. Therefore, an auditor would be expected to reduce a decision-aid-provided list of explanations to a lesser degree in a high risk environment than a low risk environment. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the occurrence of a goal framing effect at varied levels of client risk. Using a two-way between subjects design, auditors in this study either eliminated or included explanations from a decision-aid-provided list in a low risk or high risk analytical review setting. As suggested by the goal framing theory, auditors who eliminated concluded with significantly more explanations than those who included. Furthermore, as suggested by the audit risk model, auditors in a high risk environment concluded with significantly more explanations than auditors in a low risk environment. Because previous auditing literature provides that auditor conservatism, which is heightened in periods of high risk, often mitigates biases and heuristics found in the general decision making or psychology literature, it was also predicted that in the high risk scenario, the influence of high risk in enlarging the set of explanations would overcome the influence of the inclusion goal framing in reducing the set of explanations. No support was found for this interaction. The results of this study have implications for the implementation of decision aids in practice. This study advises that in various client risk settings, auditors evaluating a lengthy decision-aid-provided list of explanations by inclusion may arrive at a significantly smaller number of explanations than by elimination. Given that the subsequent step of analytical review-information search-is planned according to what the auditor believes are the plausible hypotheses, goal framing may have an impact on the overall efficiency and effectiveness of analytical review, in both high and low risk client scenarios. / Ph. D.