Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 19, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, June 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-92).

This thesis is about the relationship between a belief being justified and it being true. It defends a version of the view that the fundamental point of having a justified belief is to have a true one. The particular version of that view it defends is the claim that belief is subject to a truth norm – i.e. a norm or standard that says that one should believe something if and only if it’s true. It claims that belief being subject to such a truth norm can explain which beliefs count as justified and which do not. After introducing the idea of a truth norm (Ch. 1), the argument of my thesis involves two main stages. Part One of the thesis (Chs. 2-3) contains the first stage, in which I argue that my way of arguing for a truth norm, on the basis of its explanatory role in epistemology, is much more likely to be successful than a more popular way of arguing for a truth norm, on the basis of its explanatory role in the philosophy of mind. Part Two (Chs. 4-7) contains the second stage, in which I argue that the truth norm can indeed explain justification in the way I’ve outlined. I do this by answering four criticisms that have been made of the claim that belief is subject to a truth norm. These criticisms claim that a truth norm should be rejected because, in turn, a truth norm cannot guide belief formation (Ch. 4), because a truth norm prescribes believing all the truths (Ch. 5), because a truth norm never prescribes suspending judgement (Ch. 6), and because a truth norm in some cases prescribes making problematic trade-offs of having one false belief for the sake of having many true beliefs (Ch. 7). I argue that all of these criticisms fail. But it is through answering these criticisms that we can see the contours of a defensible explanation of justification in terms of the truth norm.

Whether they are gracing movie screens, tweeting about the size of their baby bump, or being photographed by the paparazzi in their swimwear accidently on purpose, celebrities compel consumers to care. Despite the pervasive consumer interest in celebrities, the fundamental process of how and when consumers develop relationships with and attachments to them is a subject that has been underexplored by marketing scholars, a discipline whose activities are often turbocharged by celebrities. In this research project, celebrities are viewed as brands in and of themselves, and accordingly, are examined through the prism of marketing's brand relationship literature. Drawing upon that literature and narrative transportation theory, a theoretical model of the celebrity brand attachment process is developed and empirically tested over the course of four online experiments. Results indicate that narratives about celebrity brands transport consumers to a place where they feel and behave as if they are in a communal-like relationship with the celebrity brand, despite their awareness of the contrary. These feelings and behaviors are lasting and manifest themselves back in the real world with increases in attachment and intention to consume more celebrity brand narratives. Furthermore, differences in the narrative type (on-stage vs. off-stage) and celebrity brand type (achieved vs. attributed) are found to impact the relationship between narratives and attachment level, while brand type and attachment style type are not found to significantly impact the narrative - attachment relationship.

Contrairement à l'hypothèse conventionnelle d'égoïsme avancée par la théorie standard, il est largement reconnu que les gens se comportent systématiquement de manière prosociale et, en outre, que la propension à le faire est sensible à plusieurs éléments du contexte décisionnel, qui autrefois étaient systématiquement relégués au second plan. Notre thèse s'intéresse particulièrement au fait que les préférences sociales constituent des éléments contextuels décisifs et examine la mesure dans laquelle les normes sociales peuvent expliquer des déviations comportementales qui autrement pourraient sembler irrationnelles. Dans un contexte où les budgets publics sont limités et ou les défis sociaux et environnementaux sont de plus en plus pressants, les interventions basées sur des approches comportementales peuvent constituer des instruments politiques attrayants, notamment du fait de leur moindre coût en comparaison des mesures basées sur descontraintes réglementaires et/ou sur des incitations économiques. Étant donné que les normes sociales peuvent être un déterminant important des performances globales d'une société dans des domaines très variés, nous étudions plusieurs aspects liés à la conception optimale de ces interventions comportementales qui exploitent les considérations normatives, ainsi que de la dynamique entre les normes sociales et les mesures institutionnelles formelles. Nous réalisons également une revue de la littérature relative à l'impact des interventions basées sur les normes sociales sur les comportementsenvironnementaux ainsi qu'aux mécanismes théoriques sous-jacents permettant d'expliciter le le rôle de ces normes dans le processus décisionnel. / A growing body of empirical evidence demonstrates that decision-making is embedded within complex personal, cognitive, and social contexts that call for a richer understanding of behavior than that described by traditional neoclassical economic theory. Contrary to the conventional selfishness assumption advanced by standard theory, it has now been established that people systematically behave in prosocial ways and furthermore, that the propensity to do so is sensitive to a variety of elements of decision context that have historically been considered irrelevant. We examine the assumptions that social preferences are outcome-regarding and consistent, and the extent to which social norms may be implicated in the divergences from these assumptions.This work has a strong applied focus. In an environment of limited public budgets and increasingly pressing social and environmental challenges, interventions based on behavioral insights can be appealing policy instruments, as they are often more economical than traditional command-and-control or incentive-based tools, and have the potential to generate reliable and immediate behavior change. Given that social norms can be an important determinant of aggregate societal outcomes in a diverse range of contexts, we investigate several aspects of the optimal design of behavioral interventions that leverage normative considerations, as well as the dynamics between social norms and formal institutional measures. These works are complemented by a review of the literature regarding the impact of social norm interventions on proenvironmental behaviors and of several theoretical accounts of the role that social norms play in the decision-making process.Through the use of both laboratory and online experiments (via Amazon Mechanical Turk and the NSF-funded Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences), the experimental studies that comprise the thesis examine the impact of valence framing on the effectiveness of a normative intervention, the capacity for a single normative intervention to generate heterogeneous behavioral impacts, and the effectiveness of certain informal norm-enforcement mechanisms and their interaction with formal institutional sanctions. From these studies, we draw a number of policy-relevant implications and identify the need for future work on a number of specific issues related to the role of social norms in behavior and accordingly, to the design of effective behavioral interventions that leverage social norms.

Master of Science / Department of Horticulture and Natural Resources / Ryan L. Sharp / Visual-based methods are vital tools within outdoor recreation management. This method allows researchers to develop an empirical evaluation of social norms of outdoor recreationists. To better understand visitor’s perceptions, and provide usable information to site managers, researchers must better understand their methodology. This study assessed whether photograph order, within a visually-based method, in a field setting, creates differential results relative to a lab setting by comparing our results to previous literature. To accomplish this, a study was conducted at Buffalo National River (BUFF), Arkansas, USA. Visual-based methods were used in a field setting to determine whether there are order effects in perceptions of crowding between sequential and non-sequential photograph presentation order. Results indicated that study setting may influence whether order effects are present. This research will contribute to the growing body of work in the study of research methods for protected area and visitor use management.

Abstract The aim of this essay is to examine if children’s, in this case girls and boys between four and six year old, experiences and perceptions of various occupations follow a gender stereotypical pattern that is distinguishable in the society and that is evidenced by a gender distributed list presented by the Central Bureau of Statistics (SCB 2016). These children’s experiences and perceptions are examined in relation to family and surroundings. The central question is how they describe occupations and occupational-related activities offered in a school and preschool environment from a gender perspective. These children’s experiences and perceptions are also examined in relation to how they describe their career-related aspirations. Our study is theoretically based upon two different alignments of the gender theory that describe the social construction of gender. The data collection is based on 7 group interviews with 31 children from one preschool class and two different preschools. The results of our study indicate that the children have occupational experience that they relate to family members and/or to their immediate surroundings. The majority of the children’s experiences show that chores are distributed equally within the family and are therefore described as genus neutral. However, the majority of the children's occupational experience is gender-influenced, thus following the gender segregated labor market outlined by Central Bureau of Statistics (2016) list. Their own occupational aspirations also show that they follow this gender stereotypical pattern. The study emphasizes that the children are active agents in their development of gender identity and that their gender identity appears more clearly in specific contexts. On the other hand, we see that girls are more eager to extend the limits of the female arena. Another important aspect that the study shows is that the occupational activities offered in the school and preschool activities have a positive impact on how children distinguish their own ability. This can increase their ability to feel that they can do it if they really want to!

Title: Nudging towards gender equality: An application of social norms to explain female increasement in corporate boards.   Authors: Freja Redder Petersson & Ida Eklund   Level: Master thesis, 30 hp    Keywords: Nudging, Social norms, Gender equality, Corporate boards Background: Sweden is regarded as one of the leading countries when it comes to gender equality, but women are still underrepresented in corporate boards in the private sector. Research argues that increasing the female representation is beneficial for companies, and it seems as if the people in the boards need to change their behavior in order to better themselves in the matter. To change behavior, social norms can be used, and in relation to this, the concept of nudgingas a way of changing behavior is a new and interesting field to look at, particularly in relationship to increasing female representation in boards.    Research question: What is affecting corporate boards in the private sector to increase their female representation and to what extent is this connected to nudging?   Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe how corporate boards view gender equality, explain important factors in the process of gender equality work. Further, the aim is to develop and broaden the academic field of nudging by uncovering nudge-related influences in regard to an increasement of women in corporate boards.   Method: A qualitative research method was used in this study, by semi-structured interviews with ten respondents from various boards in the private sector in Sweden, and one expert in the research field. The respondent companies were chosen because of their gender equal boards.    Theoretical Framework: Theories about how corporate boards function, gender equality work and effects of women entrance in boards are presented. Followed by behavioral economic-theories focusing on rational and irrational behaviors which derived the concept of nudging that are lastly discussed. Within nudging, choice architecture, social norms and loss aversion are addressed.      Findings: In this study, the findings of what is affecting corporate boards in the private sector to increase their female representation is divided into two approaches. The first implies that the so-called nudge-related influences are affecting the boards, primarily with the factors of choice architecture, social norms and legal norms. These factors have been found to be greatly connected to nudging. The second approach shows the finding that two other influences, power and competence, also affects corporate boards to increase their female representation and move towards gender equality.