Consumer impulsivity accounts for a large percentage of purchases yet this aspect of personality is measured with a variety of instruments. Three studies were conducted to examine how measures of consumer impulsiveness relate to each other, other measures of trait level impulsivity, and a variety of decisions and judgments. These studies looked at the relationship between biases resulting from motivated reasoning and the trait of impulsiveness. Motivated reasoning and impulsiveness was considered within the context of consumer and other choice decisions. Consumer impulsivity was found to be related to both general measures of trait level impulsivity as well as containing a lot of content overlap among the three measures considered here. One measure was distinct and formed its own factor in a factor analysis suggesting it may be the most specific measure of consumer impulsivity. The other measures of consumer impulsivity overlapped quite a bit with general impulsivity. The Iowa Gambling Task was used to measure both choice behavior and anticipatory SCR, however no significant results were found. The cups task, a risky decision making task, was also administered and results mirrored classic findings such that participants were more risk averse in the domain of gains than losses. Additionally, both expected value and outcome magnitude influenced results. Individuals who scored higher on the UPPS urgency subscale made more risk advantageous choices when looking at sensitivity to expected value. The third task assessed differences in purchase time for hedonic and utilitarian items. Impulsive consumers reported they would purchase both hedonic and utilitarian items sooner than their less impulsive counterparts.

There is contention surrounding two major questions in regard to voting behavior in American politics. First, are political advertisements efficacious? Second, do partisans interpret political information in a different way than those who do not identify with a political bias — that is, do partisans engage in partisan-motivated reasoning? As billions of dollars each American presidential election cycle are spent, and fierce competition pervades the elections, shedding light on these two questions is more essential than ever. This project focuses on coupling these questions together to investigate if individuals who identify with a political party reason in a partisan-motivated manner in response to political advertisements. Utilizing a novel survey instrument and originally designed political advertisements featuring the candidates of the 2020 Presidential election, I surveyed over 900 individuals to discern if partisan-motivated reasoning was operative. I found three key results. First, partisan-motivated reasoning was utilized by those who identified as Republican or Democratic, but not for those who did not identify as being a partisan of one of the major political parties. Second, Republicans and Democrats reason in distinct, separate manners. Republicans did not modify their responses after exposure to partisan-conforming political advertisements (Trump-source advertisements) but did modify their responses after receiving partisan-nonconforming political advertisements (Biden-source advertisements). Oppositely, Democrats did modify their responses after exposure to partisan-conforming political advertisements (Biden-source advertisements) but did not modify their responses after receiving partisan-nonconforming political advertisements (Trump-source advertisements). Third, and more broadly, political advertisements are indeed effective; over 85% of individuals changed their first responses after exposure to the political advertisements. Moreover, across treatments, more than 31% of individuals updated their first answers and submitted updated responses as the same statistic presented in the advertisement. In sum, this thesis helps to elucidate an understanding of how partisans understand political information, specifically in the format of a political advertisement.

This study examines the effects of reputation threats and anonymous whistle-blowing channels on Chief Audit Executives’ (CAEs) decisions to investigate whistle-blowing allegations. Participants were 94 CAEs and Deputy CAEs from publicly traded companies in the eastern half of the United States. Participants received whistle-blowing reports from either an anonymous or a non-anonymous source. In the high reputation threat condition the whistle-blowing report alleged that the wrongdoing was perpetrated by the exploitation of substantial weaknesses in internal controls that had been previously evaluated by external auditors and the internal audit function. The report in the lower threat condition alleged that the wrongdoing was accomplished by the circumvention of internal controls. Findings show that CAEs found anonymous whistle-blowing reports to be significantly less credible than non-anonymous reports. Although CAEs assessed lower credibility ratings for the reports alleging wrongdoing by the exploitation of substantial weaknesses in internal controls, they perceived greater personal and departmental responsibility in this condition. CAEs did not, however, perceive a significant reputation threat in either the Exploitation or Circumvention condition. Regardless of report source credibility, perceived reputation threat, or felt responsibility, CAEs’ resource allocation decisions consistently demonstrated a determination to thoroughly investigate the allegations of wrongdoing and uncover the truth.

This dissertation seeks to understand how the need for orientation (NFO) and motivated reasoning influence the agenda-setting process at the level of the individual by examining whether and to what extent the two types of motivations guide individuals to process information differently, thereby resulting in differences in the second level of agenda-setting effects. The first motivation, the need for orientation (NFO), was developed as part of the agenda-setting theory in communication studies, while the other set of motivations (i.e., accuracy and directional goals) was introduced by the theory of motivated reasoning that was developed in the field of psychology. By combining the two motivations - NFO and motivated reasoning - this study demonstrated that the role of NFO on the agenda setting process was moderated by motivated reasoning, accuracy and directional goals. In other words, participants with High-NFO who used accuracy goals that motivated them to seek information in accurate ways searched for more news about unemployment which was manipulated as the most salient attribute. Their information seeking behaviors, in turn, led to higher agenda-setting effects. By comparison, participants with High-NFO who used directional goals to seek information that was congruent with their prior perspectives or perceptions were less likely to seek information about unemployment and showed lower agenda-setting effects. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that individuals’ motivation to seek more information about an issue (NFO) may not always result in higher agenda-setting effects: if their motivations are biased by strong prior perceptions or perspectives, then their eagerness to seek information may blind them to what the media cover. Individuals’ motivations are expected to play an increasingly important role in their information seeking behaviors in the new media environment where people have unprecedented opportunities to access a broad range of information that varies in content as well as perspectives. Implications for the findings of this study and for the role of the media in a democratic society are also discussed. / text

Political scientists have largely overlooked the issue of effort. It is a seemingly simple concept with great implications for the study of political behavior. With intuition alone we can often classify behaviors as more or less effortful. And many of the behaviors that interest political scientists concern this fundamental concept, but, somehow, we have failed to formally incorporate effort into our theories. Indeed, normatively speaking, citizens will engage the democratic process effortfully, not effortlessly. But what makes a behavior more or less effortful? How does the amount of effort expended in pursuit of a behavior affect the likelihood of actualizing that behavior? To answer these questions I have developed a resource model of political cognition which posits that effortful behaviors are essentially fueled by a limited, but renewable, supply of cognitive resources. In this dissertation I report the results of a series of experiments in which I apply the resource model to collective action behaviors as well as information processing. The results suggest that these behaviors, and mostly likely others as well, are, to a significant degree, dependent upon the sufficient availability of cognitive resources.

When conducting integrated audits, auditors are susceptible to motivated judgment biases that may negatively affect their judgment quality. In a 2012 report, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board found evidence of auditor judgment failures during their quality inspections of audit firms. In this experimental study with 160 senior auditors, I explore the effects motivated reasoning (outcome goal vs. no outcome goal) and accountability (outcome accountability vs. judgment accountability) have on determining internal control effectiveness. I posit that AS No. 5 encourages auditors to have an outcome-motivated goal when conducting internal control audits, which encourages information seeking behaviors. These information seeking behaviors encourage the auditor to attend more to confirmatory information that supports their motivated goal more than information that conflicts with the motivated goal. I hypothesize that auditors who conduct integrated audits are more likely to rate internal control effectiveness higher compared to auditors conducting a non-integrated audit. I also hypothesize that having a judgment based accountability will help to mitigate the biased effects when auditors have outcome-motivated goals.

No description available.

A large disconnect exists between the general public's acceptance of human-caused climate change and the prevailing consensus of actively publishing scientists. Previous research has examined both political and economic motivated reasoning, media influence in print and television, conspiracy ideation as a predictor of science rejection, and the role of the social construction of scientific knowledge in science rejection. Using these previously studied justifications for climate change rejection as a starting point, this research examines 212 written responses to a prompt at Climate Etc. asking the community to explain their acceptance / rejection of climate change. Using a textual content analysis, this study finds that media choice, motivated reasoning, conspiracy ideation, and the scientific construction of knowledge all play important roles in explanations for climate science rejection. Work and educational background, as well as a reframing of the scientific consensus as a "religion," add new analytical perspectives to the motivated reasoning explanations offered in prior research. This analysis also finds that the explanations for climate science denial given by respondents are often complex, falling into two or more of the explanation types suggesting that science rejection may be a more complex social process than previously thought.

No description available.

abstract: Prior research suggests that people ignore evidence that is inconsistent with what they want to believe. However, this research on motivated reasoning has focused on how people reason about familiar topics and in situations where the evidence presented interacts with strongly-held prior beliefs (e.g., the effectiveness of the death penalty as a crime deterrent). This makes it difficult to objectively assess how biased people are in motivated-reasoning contexts. Indeed, recent work by Jern and colleagues (2014) suggests that apparent instances of motivated reasoning may actually be instances of rational belief-updating. Inspired by this new account, the current studies reexamined motivated reasoning using a controlled categorization task and tested whether people assimilate evidence differently when they are motivated to maintain a certain belief versus when they are not. Contrary to earlier research on motivated reasoning, six studies with children and adults (N = 1295) suggest that participants’ motivations did not affect their information search and their beliefs were driven primarily by the evidence, even when the evidence was incongruent with their motivations. This work provides initial evidence for the account proposed by Jern and colleagues. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2019