ABSTRACT Trigged with the democratic movements, Taiwan¡¦s society had evolved in the past 15 years that citizen had more opportunities to participate in public policy decisions. As different objects, values and ideologies existing between stakeholders, conflict of the cognitive nature besides interests (i.e. difference in goals) becomes popular in many local development issues. How to analyze and aid such decision-makings then becomes an important public affairs management topic of study. The study uses the cable car issue in Kaohsiung as the task and local stakeholders like citizens, government officers, councils and environment protect group are interviewed and surveyed using the Social Judgment Theory (SJT) as the guiding methodology. Social judgment theory mainly plumbs the issue of ¡§understanding¡¨ which generated from the discrepancy between decision maker¡¦s subjective cognition and objective environment, and the issue of ¡§conflict¡¨ which resulted from the discrepancy of every decision maker¡¦s subjective cognition, as well as seeks for what causes the cognitive conflict in public policy decisions and explores the method to reduce the cognitive conflict. To survey the conflicts¡¦ degree in every decision maker and provide suggestions to government for consultation to draw up relative policies while facing similar controversial issue is what the study for. Key words¡Gcognitive conflict, public policy disputes, social judgment theory¡]SJT¡^

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-278).

These - Faculté des lettres de Paris. / "Bibliographie": p. [609]-616.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Bob Jones University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 277-289).

Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed March 2, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 55).

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-82).

Nucci and Turiel (1993) have demonstrated that conservative Christians and Jews judge moral issues in terms of justice, rights, and human welfare considerations, and do not solely rely on religious precepts in their moral reasoning. The purpose of this study was to examine whether Turkish Muslims' moral reasoning is also relatively independent of religious prescriptions. Using Turiel's (1983) Domain Theory, the study investigated similarities and differences in the reasoning of more religious and less religious Turks on a variety of moral issues addressed by the Qur'an (a father forcing his daughter to marry someone without her express approval, abortion, homosexuality, adultery, testifying falsely in court, polygamy). The study also investigated whether Turkish Muslims associate harmful and unjust behaviors [e.g., violating others' rights, hurting others (physically or psychologically)], which are considered grave sins in Islam (5:8) (Hashmi, 2002), with God's most severe punishment. The study included 49 less religious Turkish students (20 males 29 females) and 49 more religious Turkish students (23 males 26 females), 18 years of age or older. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire containing six stories. Results were analyzed using a combination of Chi-Square and ANOVA techniques. Findings largely supported the proposition of Domain Theory (Turiel, 1983) that all individuals use moral reasoning that is in part based on justice and rights concerns, even highly religious individuals. The reasoning of more religious participants was mixed between moral and religious concerns. Moral concerns dominated their reasoning when considering forcing a daughter to marry or polygamy, while religious considerations dominated their reasoning for the issue of homosexuality only. The majority of less religious participants judged the issues in terms of justice, rights, and human welfare considerations, rather than on religious precepts. Also, the majority of all participants indicated that God punishes most those who violate others' rights and who harm others. This suggests that Turkish Muslims consistently value principles of justice, rights and welfare when considering moral issues, regardless of religious orientation. / text

In this dissertation I develop a theory of moral judgment as a natural kind. Instead of analyzing the concept of moral judgment, I develop an empirically grounded theory of its underlying nature. In chapter one I argue that moral judgment is a hybrid state of moral belief and moral emotion. The view is supported by a dual systems model of moral cognition and accounts for the internal but defeasible relationship between moral judgment and motivation. In chapter two I argue that in moral judgment moral norms are conceptualized as social, serious, general, authority-independent and objective. The view is supported by empirical research on the moral/conventional distinction and yields an empirical explanation of the possibility of genuine moral agreement and disagreement. In chapter three I explore whether psychopaths have the capacity for moral judgment, and thus whether they are real life "amoralists," individuals who make moral judgments but lack moral motivation. I argue that psychopaths have an impaired capacity for moral judgment and that prominent internalist accounts of moral judgment have difficulty accounting for psychopaths' peculiar combination of deficits.

One of the primary goals of personality assessment is to provide meaningful information regarding an individual’s characteristic way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Given the interaction between the individual and the context, however, there is much debate as to how well personality tests do what they intend. In this paper, the limitations of text-based personality assessments are examined, and the use of virtual simulations as an alternative to conventional tests is explored. A research study is proposed comparing a virtual test with a written test on a variety of criteria. Modern technology and the growing popularity of gaming suggest that researchers may find virtual simulations as a more immersive, flexible, and accurate forms of assessment. / text

The purposes of this study were to investigate how learning disabled adolescents formulate moral judgments as compared to average achieving adolescents, and to determine what relationship, if any, exists between moral judgments and moral conduct. Recent literature had suggested that social per