Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-90).

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Diss., 2006

Thesis (doctoral)--La Salle University, 2002. / ProQuest dissertations and theses ; AAT 3108289. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-78).

This study was designed to compare the effects of exposure to two different sets of soluble discrimination problems, an easy set composed of only two- and three-dimensional problems and a more difficult set composed of problems ranging from two to seven dimensions, both immediately after training and at a 10-day posttreatment follow-up. The subjects were 32 depressed male inmates of a federal correctional institution. It was hypothesized that as a result of meeting and mastering progressively more difficult problems, the group given progressively more difficult problems would show a greater reduction in depression and a greater enhancement of performance on a variety of cognitive measures, both immediately after treatment and at the 10-day posttreatment follow-up. The results failed to support these hypotheses. Depression scores decreased significantly from pretreatment to posttreatment, but did so equally for the two groups. One of the cognitive measures, the WAIS Digit-Symbol subtest, showed significant improvements from pretreatment to posttreatment, but did equally for the two groups. Significant relationships were found between the subjects' performances on the cognitive tasks, and measures of their tendencies to attribute successes and failures to stable or unstable factors. Unexpected significant positive relationships were found between depression and performance on the cognitive tasks. The differential effect of the prison environment upon people differing in their intelligence was discussed as a possible explanation of these findings.

Terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET) is a significant component of the energy and water balances at the land surface. However, direct, continuous measurements of ET are spatially limited and only available since the 1990s. Due to this lack of observations, detecting and attributing long-term regional trends in ET remains difficult. This dissertation aims to alleviate the data limitation and detect long-term trends by developing a method to infer ET from data collected at common weather stations, which are spatially and temporally abundant. The methodology used to infer ET from historical meteorological data is based on an emergent relation between the land surface and atmospheric boundary layer. We refer to this methodology as the Evapotranspiration from Relative Humidity at Equilibrium method, or the “ETRHEQ method”. In the first section of this dissertation, we develop the ETRHEQ method for use at common weather stations and demonstrate the utility of the method at twenty eddy covariance sites spanning a wide range of climate and plant functional types. Next, we apply the ETRHEQ method at historical weather stations across the continental U.S. and show that ET estimates obtained via the ETRHEQ method compare well with watershed scale ET, as well as ET estimates from land surface models. From 1961 to 1997, we find negligible or increasing trends in summertime ET over the central U.S. and the west coast and negative trends in the eastern and western U.S. From 1998 to 2014, we find a sharp decline in summertime ET across the entire U.S. We show that this decline is consistent with decreasing transpiration associated with declines in humidity. Lastly, we assess the sensitivity of ET to perturbations in soil moisture and humidity anticipated with climate change. We demonstrate that the response of ET to changing humidity and soil moisture is strongly dependent on the biological and hydrological state of the surface, particularly the degree of water stress and vegetation fraction. In total, this dissertation demonstrates the utility of the ETRHEQ method as a means to estimate ET from weather station data and highlights the critical role of vegetation in modulating ET variability.

To fully comprehend the complex process of news making, we must first understand that the events we read about everyday in the newspaper are not merely a reflection of the world in which we live. News does not just happen. Rather, it is a socially constructed product in which events are “made to mean” (Hall, 1978). Thus, the news plays a fundamental role in shaping our interpretations of reality - our perceptions of the world as we know it. Informed by a structuralist approach to news making, this research provides a detailed ethnographic study of the determinants that shape and produce news in the South African print media. I provide examples of the influence various factors, operating at all levels, exert within the news making process. The research focuses on the news production process at East Cape News Pty. Ltd. (ECN) a small news agency operating in the peripheral news region of South Africa’s Eastern Cape. It considers the journalistic routines and interests of the ECN reporters; how these reporters select events and turn them into news, how they interpret their significance and how they formulate them as news stories. The research also considers the second stage of selection ECN news must pass before it is read by the public - the “gates” of external newspapers. In this section, the study is primarily concerned with which ECN news stories succeed past the gates of national newspapers as these are the newpapers that play an influential role in shaping national perceptions of the marginalised Eastern Cape region. A province burdened with devastating rural poverty, unstable government, and little economic growth, the Eastern Cape warrants little coverage from the national, Johannesburg-based news market. As a result, little news of the Eastern Cape is published nationally, further perpetuating the region’s perceived insignificance on a national level. This point also demonstrates the fact that news both shapes, and is shaped by, our ideologies. News, therefore is ideological (Fishman, 1977). My findings reinforce many of the observations of other media researchers informed by a structuralist approach in the field of news making. However, some elements of news making emerge which appear to be unique in terms of other studies of news making. These elements are primarily a result of ECN’s informal organisational structures which allow the journalists a greater level of autonomy than a larger more bureaucratic organisation might. Thus, in addition to considering the structures that shape the news, I also discuss the role of human agency in making the news.

In this study of causal decision-making, a video game was adapted to explore factors affecting causal judgment in a dynamic setting. In the experiment, participants were presented with groups of potential targets. Causal delay and number of alternatives were varied. The participants were tasked with discriminating which one of the potential targets was producing a secondary event in the form of distal explosions on objects that the participant was instructed to preserve. Choice accuracies and latencies were recorded for each participant. For the analysis, choice accuracies were converted into discriminability metrics using signal detection theory. The experiment revealed a main effect of delay on discriminability but no effect of the number of alternatives. There were main effects of the number of alternatives, sex, as well as a Delay × Number of alternatives interaction on latency. The results suggest that discriminability is maintained across different numbers of targets by compensating with longer observation times.

xvi, 191 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / A growing body of research has focused on how perspective taking leads people to perceive themselves as "merging" with the target of perspective taking, in terms of how they cognitively represent themselves and the target. In turn, this merging has been shown to facilitate social coordination between perceivers and targets and results in reduced stereotyping of the target's group. Using this past research as a starting point, this dissertation asks a related but new question: Does perspective taking lead perceivers to take on the attitudes of the target of perspective taking, even when these attitudes are socially reprehensible? Specifically, this dissertation tested whether taking the perspective of a racist target leads perspective takers to show greater racism and stereotyping. In Study I, 102 participants took the perspective of racist male target (or wrote about a day in his life without taking his perspective or about a day in their own lives), learning about his attitudes from visual information alone. No main effect for perspective taking was found. However, for perspective takers only, greater self-target merging predicted higher explicit racism scores. Also among perspective takers, greater internal motivation to respond without prejudice also ironically led to greater implicit stereotyping. In Study 2, 101 participants took the perspective of a female target who was generally likable but had subtly racist attitudes. Once again, no main effect of perspective taking was found, but for perspective takers, greater external motivation to respond without prejudice led to higher explicit racism scores. In Study 3, 101 participants took the perspective of the same target used in Study 1, but were given information about the genesis of the target's attitudes. The combination of perspective taking and information led to higher explicit racism scores, and this effect was mediated by self-target merging (and not by greater positive regard for the target). Under many circumstances, perspective takers appear to reject taking on a racist target's socially undesirable attitudes, adopting them only when they have been given some reason for why the target holds those attitudes. In addition, motivation to respond without prejudice may lead ironically to greater prejudiced responses. / Committee in charge: Sara Hodges, Chairperson, Psychology; Bertram Malle, Member, Psychology; Ulrich Mayr, Member, Psychology; Mia Tuan, Outside Member, Education Studies

How do organizations assess and explain their performance? Prior studies have attempted to demonstrate that, like individuals, organizations take credit for good performance and blame poor performance on influences in their environment. However, these studies have found only a weak relationship between performance and attribution at the level of the firm. This dissertation seeks to elucidate this relationship by conceptualizing firms as social agents and by combining aspiration and attribution theory for the first time at the level of the firm. Analysis of performance explanations by large, public manufacturing firms in 2004 and 2005 revealed that firms' performance explanations correlated with their cognitive experiences of success and failure. These findings further understanding of organizational cognition, attribution, and image management.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:31:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:42:12Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 beck_mlg_dr_mar.pdf: 611939 bytes, checksum: 06629403726641078da9cf603f8333d8 (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Este trabalho teve como objetivo principal a verificação das percepções sobre fracasso escolarde professores e discentes de um curso de pedagogia. Essa verificação teve por objetivo identificar possível viés ou atribuições egotímicas por parte dos professores em exercício, quando confrontados com as pressões do exercício profissional . A atribuição egotímica é aquela que tem por objetivo o deslocamento de uma atribuição interna para externa, preservando assim a auto-estima e o autoconceito do sujeito. Foram aplicados questionários em discentes de uma universidade pública estadual do Mato Grosso, bem como em professores egressos dessa mesma instituição que atuam na rede pública de ensino. Foram elaboradas categorias conforme as respostas dos entrevistados e as diferenças nas alusões às categorias por parte de docentes em exercício e discentes apontam para a ocorrência do fenômeno da atribuição egotímica por parte dos professores. / This work had as main objective the verification of the perceptions of teachers and students about school failure in a course of pedagogics. This verification had the objective of identifying possible bias or egothymics attributions by the operating teachers, when collated with the pressures of the professional exercise. The egothymics attribution can be expressed on the displacement of an attribution from the internal to a external side, thus preserving the self-esteem and the self-concept of the subject. Questionnaires had been applied to students of a state public university of the Mato Grosso, as well as in teachers originated from the same institution and who act in the public net of education. Categories have been elaborated according to the interviewed onesþ answers and the differences in the mention to the categories between the operating teachers and the students point to the occurrence of the egothymics attribution phenomenon in the teachers side.