This thesis studies the benefits that a religious organization acquires from its identification of, and reaction to, deviants within it. If an organization is to continue growing while still maintaining a unique identity, periodically it must have deviant movements within it. Theoretically, I apply insights from sociologists of deviance (particularly Durkheim and Erikson) about the functional benefits of deviance labeling for several aspects of group functioning, such as beliefs and the means of disseminating them, structure and hierarchy, internal policies, and leadership styles. I studied the Seventh-day Adventist organization, applying Festingers cognitive dissonance theory to it, in order to better illuminate its history and reaction to dissenters. I focused on three Adventist dissenters; Dudley Canright, John Harvey Kellogg, and the threat posed by Ellet J. Waggoner and Alonzo T. Jones, showing how the organization reinforced its boundaries and maintained control of its members by identifying and punishing these supposed deviants.

The purpose of this content analysis research was to develop a biblical-theological model of Cognitive Dissonance Theory applicable to pedagogy. Evidence of cognitive dissonance found in Scripture was used to infer a purpose for the innate drive toward consonance. This inferred purpose was incorporated into a model that improves the descriptive fidelity of previous research observations and extends the prescriptive facility of Cognitive Dissonance Theory. The qualitative research design consisted of five phases. In the first phase, individual cases were identified by examining every verb in the New American Standard Bible for potential evidence of cognitive dissonance. In the second phase, the primary researcher examined every case isolated in Phase One for the elements of cognitive dissonance using criteria from the cognitive dissonance research literature. In the third phase, outside coders repeated coding of a stratified, random sample of cases, and intercoder reliability was established. In the fourth phase, the results were analyzed and evaluated. In the final phase, a biblical-theological model was proposed. There was an apparent progression in the type of cognitive tension experienced by people in Scripture. In the Old Testament, most cases of cognitive tension included a commitment to a decision consistent with Leon Festinger's description of cognitive dissonance. In the New Testament, particularly after Pentecost, the cognitive tension seems to have changed so that Christ-followers no longer demonstrated a commitment to a decision before experiencing cognitive tension. This change revealed cognitive tension consistent with both Piaget and Hegel. Alternatives were offered to explain the apparent progression in cognitive tension and a model was proposed that described Cognitive Dissonance Theory as a metatheory of cognitive tension that allows for subtypes of tension recognized by other researchers. Cognitive tension in Scripture seemed to be related to a sapiential drive manifested as learning aimed at orthodoxy--rightly aligned propositional wisdom, orthopathy--rightly aligned dispositional wisdom, and orthopraxy--rightly aligned enacted wisdom. The implications and applications of these conclusions were discussed.

Dissonant Voices has a twofold aspiration. First, it is a philosophical treatment of everyday pedagogical interactions between children and their elders, between teachers and pupils. More specifically it is an exploration of the possibilities to go on with dissonant voices that interrupt established practices – our attunement – in behaviour, practice and thinking. Voices that are incomprehensible or expressions that are unacceptable, morally or otherwise. The text works on a tension between two inclinations: an inclination to wave off, discourage, or change an expression that is unacceptable or unintelligible; and an inclination to be tolerant and accept the dissonant expression as doing something worthwhile, but different. The second aspiration is a philosophical engagement with children’s literature. Reading children’s literature becomes a form of philosophising, a way to explore the complexity of a range of philosophical issues. This turn to literature marks a dissatisfaction with what philosophy can accomplish through argumentation and what philosophy can do with a particular and limited set of concepts for a subject, such as ethics. It is a way to go beyond philosophising as the founding of theories that justify particular responses. The philosophy of dissonance and children’s literature becomes a way to destabilise justifications of our established practices and ways of interacting. The philosophical investigations of dissonance are meant to make manifest the possibilities and risks of engaging in interactions beyond established agreement or attunements. Thinking of the dissonant voice as an expression beyond established practices calls for improvisation. Such improvisations become a perfectionist education where both the child and the elder, the teacher and the student, search for as yet unattained forms of interaction and take responsibility for every word and action of the interaction. The investigation goes through a number of picture books and novels for children such as Harry Potter, Garmann’s Summer, and books by Shaun Tan, Astrid Lindgren and Dr. Seuss as well narratives by J.R.R. Tolkien, Henrik Ibsen, Jane Austen and Henry David Thoreau. These works of fiction are read in conversation with philosophical works of, and inspired by, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, their moral perfectionism and ordinary language philosophy.

Because of the popularity of the internet, consumers make purchase decision based on online word-of-mouth recommendation. However, this is risky. Many consumer find that what they buy is not quite the same as the online word-of-mouth recommends. Consumers may therefore generate Cognitive dissonance. Despite the bad experience, Internet users still make purchase decision based on word-of-mouth recommendation afterward. This study investigates the relationships among cognitive dissonance of online word-of-mouth users, the risk relieve strategies, and trust. The results find that consumers with inertia prefer store image as risk relieve strategy the most, consumers with over-confidence prefer shopping the most. It is found that inertia and over-confidence positively affect trust. This research contributes to theory by applying the theory of cognitive dissonance in the finance management field to consumer online word-of-mouth behavior and by designing the questionnaire, this paper also provides empirical evidence to support the validity and credibility of the construct items. It makes acaedemic contribution by examining effects of cognitive dissonance on risk strategy and trust.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on Dec. 28, 2009). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Religious Studies, [Department of Religious Studies], University of Alberta." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Dissonant Voices has a twofold aspiration. First, it is a philosophical treatment of everyday pedagogical interactions between children and their elders, between teachers and pupils. More specifically it is an exploration of the possibilities to go on with dissonant voices that interrupt established practices – our attunement – in behaviour, practice and thinking. Voices that are incomprehensible or expressions that are unacceptable, morally or otherwise. The text works on a tension between two inclinations: an inclination to wave off, discourage, or change an expression that is unacceptable or unintelligible; and an inclination to be tolerant and accept the dissonant expression as doing something worthwhile, but different. The second aspiration is a philosophical engagement with children’s literature. Reading children’s literature becomes a form of philosophising, a way to explore the complexity of a range of philosophical issues. This turn to literature marks a dissatisfaction with what philosophy can accomplish through argumentation and what philosophy can do with a particular and limited set of concepts for a subject, such as ethics. It is a way to go beyond philosophising as the founding of theories that justify particular responses. The philosophy of dissonance and children’s literature becomes a way to destabilise justifications of our established practices and ways of interacting. The philosophical investigations of dissonance are meant to make manifest the possibilities and risks of engaging in interactions beyond established agreement or attunements. Thinking of the dissonant voice as an expression beyond established practices calls for improvisation. Such improvisations become a perfectionist education where both the child and the elder, the teacher and the student, search for as yet unattained forms of interaction and take responsibility for every word and action of the interaction. The investigation goes through a number of picture books and novels for children such as Harry Potter, Garmann’s Summer, and books by Shaun Tan, Astrid Lindgren and Dr. Seuss as well narratives by J.R.R. Tolkien, Henrik Ibsen, Jane Austen and Henry David Thoreau. These works of fiction are read in conversation with philosophical works of, and inspired by, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, their moral perfectionism and ordinary language philosophy.

This thesis provides some evidence of variability in cognitive style, and refutes the notion of it being a stable, generalisable personality trait. The study is statistical in nature and uses the cognitive style construct tolerance/intolerance of ambiguity as the main dependent variable. The main independent variables are context, content, ideological conservatism and ideological commitment. The theoretical context for this thesis is the long.,.standing debate about the nature of cognitive style within the field of social psychological research. The four major theories constituting this context are the theory of authoritarianism, the theory of extremism, context theory and value pluralism theory. However, these appear to be inadequate to explain the contextual variability of value conflict. Hence an attempt has been made to develop a new theory, tentatively named the contextual value conflict theory. The founding hypothesis of contextual value conflict theory is that the different characteristics of the manipulated contexts would present subjects with different levels of contextual value conflict, thus resulting in the expression of different levels of tolerance of ambiguity. The assumption was that higher conflict leads to higher attitudinal ambiguity tolerance and lower conflict to lower attitudinal ambiguity tolerance. The quantitative part of the research is constituted by two studies in which the Attitudinal Ambiguity Tolerance (AAT) Scale (Durrheim, 1995) was used to measure cross-context and crosscontent variations in tolerancelintolerance of ambiguity. This was done by first administering the scale across two different contexts with a fixed university student sample. This procedure was repeated in a follow-up study in two different contexts with a fixed church sample. The AAT scale was used in conjunction with 3 scales measuring ideological conservatism/ideological belief, and two scales measuring ideological commitment. These were the Subtle Racism scale (Duckitt, 1991), the Conservatism scale (Durrheim & Foster, 1997) and the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale (Duckitt, 1990). Scales measuring ideological commitment included the Religiosity Scale (Rohrbaugh & Jessor, 1975) and the Political Interest scale (an adaptation of the one used by Sidanius, 1988b). Results have indicated that it is important to distinguish between the various dimensions of ideological conservatism as the shape and direction of the relationship with attitudinal ambiguity tolerance depend on these dimensions. Although contextual value conflict has managed to better account for the vast variability in patterns of associations than any of the four other theories mentioned above, it too has its limitations. It was found that conflict caused by context is difficult to control and pre-define, and future studies need to address this shortfall by finding ways of determining more efficiently the level of contextual value conflict inherent in different situations. A recommendation for further research is that an attempt be made to develop an instrument for quantifying the level of contextual value conflict present in a particular situation. These shortfalls resulted in the major limitation of this study, i.e. the post hoc nature of explanations offered for the results. Thus, although contextual value conflict theory was not confirmed without contradiction, this thesis did uncover a degree of support for it. Due to the small sample size in both studies, but in particular that of the church study it is important, however, to treat the findings with caution. In conclusion, although the support for contextual value conflict was not conclusive, some confIrmation was found. What was most strongly evidenced though, was that tolerance of ambiguity cannot be seen as a stable, generalisable personality trait, but should rather be seen as performance in context that is fluid in nature. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

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The purpose of the study was to measure the extent to which superintendents would manifest observable leader behavior change after having received increased feedback relative toactual and ideal behavior expected of the head administrator as perceived by elementary school principals. Consideration was also given to whether the age of superintendents, number of years in the present position as superintendents, time interval between feedback and reassessment, as well as the form in which the information was presented to superintendents related to perceived behavioral change.