Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-106).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

In this study, I examine the influence of construals (interpretations) and mindsets on professional skepticism in auditors. Auditors have been criticized lately for not displaying enough professional skepticism, particularly in their audits of complex estimates (PCAOB 2008). Regulators speculate about and academic research shows a correlation between low professional skepticism and both audit failures and audit malpractice claims (Beasley et al. 2001; Anderson and Wolfe 2002). I hypothesize that prolonging the deliberative mindset in the audit judgment and decision-making process can increase professional skepticism in auditors. Experienced auditors take part in a 1 x 3 between-participants experiment in which they play the role of a senior auditor charged with evaluating a client's fair value estimate. I manipulate the type of mindset (deliberative or implemental) invoked by the evidence documentation instructions and have a third condition in which participants do not have to document audit evidence. Using multiple measures of professional skepticism, I find that auditors in the deliberative mindset condition display higher professional skepticism than both auditors in the implemental mindset condition and auditors in the no documentation condition. I further analyze the types of textual responses entered by the auditors and offer direction for future research in this area.

Politicians and media elites have been calling for a return to civility in United States politics, and the vast majority of citizens agree that civility is necessary for a strong democracy. Yet incivility is an ever-present and misunderstood part of politics. In my dissertation, I focus on news, politics, and incivility by asking three questions. First, to what extent does news coverage portray political conflict as uncivil? Second, what political behaviors do citizens perceive as uncivil? Finally, how does news that portrays politics as uncivil affect citizens? I used a mixed method approach to answer these questions. I, first, conducted a content analysis of news surrounding four high-conflict political events to determine whether two conflict frames (interpersonal-level and public-level conflict) emerged. Second, I conducted two experiments and drew from social judgment theory to determine whether citizens perceived multiple types of incivility and whether their partisanship influenced how acceptable they found political behaviors to be. In a final experiment, I tested whether exposure to mediated conflict frames prompted perceptions of incivility from citizens and affected their reactions to politics. This project makes clear that news coverage of conflict emphasizes incivility and negatively affects citizens. Media elites shape political conflict using interpersonal-level and public-level conflict frames. Citizens perceive both types of conflict, as well, and tend to think that likeminded partisans are behaving appropriately while counter-attitudinal partisans are behaving badly. Finally, and importantly, the coverage of political conflict affects citizens in troublesome ways. Particularly when both types of conflict frames are present in the news, citizens feel more anxiety and aversion, have decreased levels of favorability toward political institutions, and think of political arguments in partisan ways. Overall, I conclude that incivility is not stable. Instead, incivility is a two-dimensional concept that is shaped by the media, perceived by citizens, and advanced by partisans. By recognizing these dimensions of incivility, researchers may find new and important effects of incivility, and people interested in ridding politics of incivility may be more successful by beginning with the recognition that what is uncivil to one person is not always uncivil to another. / text

The purpose of the book of Acts is still not well understood. Various interpretations have been offered in order to make sense of the narrative and its author's intention. What is the point of Luke's second book in portraying the evangelization of the Roman Empire as a rabid confrontation between Jewish followers of Jesus and other Jewish people? This matter calls for an examination of the relationship between the mother religion and the Jesus movement as it expands into a universal religion. Luke portrays the Jesus movement as the focus of divine favor, in contradistinction to the Jewish nation which is presented as opposing the plan of God. Christians respond to persecution by declaring the opponents guilty of opposition to the very work of the Holy Spirit. This portrait of a troubled relationship has led to many confusing or misguided interpretations of the text. What are the implications of the apparent break of continuity between the Jesus movement and the Jewish people? Does the book of Acts give to Israel a place in the divine plan, or is this work an anti-Semitic polemic? This question is so complex that three schools of thought have arisen to attempt to reconcile the conflicting themes. These scholars recognize the friction between Christians and Jews, but debate the significance of the missing explicit repudiation of Israel. Two of these schools view God as continuing to work through the people of Israel, while the third proposes that God has repudiated Israel as the elect nation, replacing her with the Christian Church. This thesis proposes that there has been inadequate attention to the possibility that the narrative is imbedded with neglected Jewish themes, like Pentecost and the gift of Languages (Tongues). Several texts in the Hebrew Scriptures provide indications that Languages have specific implications to the Covenant with Israel, and her place in the plan of God. A deeper study of a first century understanding of these themes will produce substantial, new light on all of these questions.

Social work practice requires that graduates be prepared to deal with complex, multifaceted problems which cannot be defined completely, do not have absolute, correct answers and can be approached from multiple perspectives. This study evaluated the influence of case-based instruction on MSW students' reflective judgment, an aspect of critical thinking associated with the ability to reason through ill-structured problems. (King, Wood, & Mines, 1990). The Reflective Judgment Model, which describes a developmental continuum based upon epistemic assumptions regarding the source and justification of knowledge claims, served as the theoretical framework for the assessment of reflective thinking in this mixed methods study. A quasi-experimental pre-post nonequivalent control group design was utilized to explore whether students who participated in a case method course demonstrated greater increases in reflective judgment than those who did not. MSW students enrolled in a case-based capstone course at a major metropolitan university in the southeast served as the intervention group, while foundation year students enrolled in a research methodology course served as the comparison group. Both groups completed the Reasoning about Current Issues Test (RCI), which is an online, standardized measure that has been widely used to assess reflective judgment (Wood, Kitchener, & Jensen, 2002) at pre and posttest. Content analysis procedures were used to facilitate assessment of students' initial and final case analysis papers for evidence of changes in the reflective thinking skills and problem-solving approaches utilized on initial and final case analysis papers. The case method participants' mean RCI scores remained unchanged between pre and posttest, while RCI posttest scores of participants in the control group decreased significantly. Pre and posttest comparison of students' case analysis papers using a customized rubric based on Wolcott's Steps for Better Thinking (2006) similarly indicated no mean changes in problem-solving approaches between pre and posttest. However, students who began the course using strategies associated with pre-reflective judgment increased their scores on the rubric significantly while those who exhibited higher levels of quasi-reflective judgment at pretest decreased at posttest. Strategies for designing a developmental curriculum to target the reflective judgment levels of MSW students are proposed.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the single largest killer of American males and females in the United States. According to the American Heart Association, (2005) approximately 41% of Americans that experience a coronary attack in a given year will die from it (AHA, 2005). To combat this growing problem, strategies need to be evaluated to assess how the identification of actual and potential CHD risks are made. This study utilized the Social Judgment Theory to gain insight into nurse practitioner's decision-making strategies. Sixty family or adult specialty nurse practitioners affiliated with the University of South Florida (USF) College of Nursing volunteered to take part in a pretest-posttest experimental design. They were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. Condition 1 and 2 received educational interventions and Condition 3 served as the control group, which received no education. This design was used to assess the effects of educational feedback on improving judgment accuracy, achievement, and insight. The findings indicated nurse practitioners agreement with the Framingham prediction model of CHD risk did improve significantly for the two intervention groups from Time 1 to Time 2 (p <.05). the participants also showed a relatively high degree of cognitive control when judging and performing the policy-capturing task (average Rs = .88) as compared to Framingham (Re = .96). Significant amount of unconditional bias (F(2, 57) = 9.85, p < .01) and conditional bias (F(2, 57). 5.42), p < .05) was present in this sample. Nurse practitioners overall performed well when compared with the Framingham Heart Study risk equation, however, nurse practitioners showed little insight into their judgment process. The results of this study may provide the opportunity for nurse practitioners to offer patients more appropriate medicinal and diagnostic treatments. Future cardiac events may be avoided through evidenced-based CHD education for nurse practitioners.

This study examines the effect of in-group bias and decision aid use on auditor judgments, confidence, and decisions in an analytical procedures task. In-group bias, a product of Social Identity Theory, may impair auditor independence by influencing auditor judgments. Auditors rely on client representations to support their opinion of the financial statements; however, clients are sometimes former auditors of the external audit firm. This prior relationship could lead the auditor to exhibit unwarranted trust of client representations. In an online mixed design experiment using staff and senior auditors, I test whether auditor judgments, confidence in those judgments, and decisions to extend testing differ based on a client's prior affiliation. I find that there is insufficient evidence of in-group bias in auditor judgments, confidence, or decisions. Lack of support could be due to the small sample size. In the same experiment, I give auditors access to a decision aid. Practice and prior literature suggest using decision aids should improve audit judgment. I find that a structured decision aid improves audit judgments and decisions for all auditors, and improves confidence for auditors who initially made good judgments. Audit managers can benefit from noting the usefulness of decision aids in improving judgment.

Encoding time is one of the most important features of the mammalian brain. The visual system, comprising almost half of the brain is of no exception. Time processing enables us to make goal-directed behavior in the optimum “time window” and launch a ballistic eye movement, reach/grasp an object or direct our processing resources (attention) from one point of interest to another. In addition, encoding time is critical for higher cognitive functions, enabling us to make causal inferences. The limitations of temporal individuation in the visual stream seem to vary across the visual field: the resolution gradually drops as objects become farther away from the center of gaze, where little differences were found in terms of resolution for objects in the upper versus lower visual field. This resolution of temporal individuation is vastly different from the resolution ascribed to spatial individuation. If individuation is mediated through attention, as some researchers have proposed, the general term ”attention” seems to possess different properties, at least regarding temporal and spatial processing. Next we looked at another aspect of encoding time: Temporal Order Judgments (TOJ), where animals had to judge the relative timing onset of two visual events. After training two monkeys on the task, we recorded from neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), while the animals reported the perceived order of two visual stimuli. We found that LIP neurons show differential activity based on the animal’s perceptual choice: when the animal reports the stimulus inside the receptive field of the neuron as first, the cells show an increased level of activity compared to when the animal reports he same stimulus as second. This differential activity was most reliable in the tonic period of the response \((\sim100 ms\) after stimulus onset). However, no difference in visual response latencies was observed between the different perceptual choices. The parietal cortex has previously been implicated in temporal processing based on patient studies as well as neuroimaging investigations. Physiological studies have also suggested the involvement of parietal area in encoding elapsed time. However, our study is the first to demonstrate parietal neurons encoding relative timing. / Psychology

How can empirical science, and psychology in particular, be harnessed to avoid or eliminate unwanted biases? The body of work herein explores this question across twelve experiments. The first approach we consider is placing the onus on the individual to root out any already existing bias within him or herself. Chapter 3, for example, presents experiments that assess whether people (viz., jurors during voir dire) can accurately "self-diagnose" when they are irreparably biased by negative pretrial publicity. (The answer is a resounding no). A second approach is to try and avoid letting bias enter the courtroom in the first place. Chapter 4, for example, provides an experimental test of an institutional solution known as blind expertise, wherein certain biases of an expert witness are avoided by having an intermediary pick the expert, and then having the expert render an opinion before knowing which litigant made the request. In Chapter 7, we consider a third approach to handling bias, one that concedes it will exist in the courtroom. Namely, instruct jurors on the existence of bias, so that they can try to weigh it properly. To this end we test a recently enacted New Jersey instruction on eyewitness testimony. We find that jurors do not become more sensitive to low versus high evidence quality, but instead they discount the eyewitness testimony across the board. Across this inquiry, we deploy several novel tactics; in Chapter 5, for instance, we explore how continuous response measurement (CRM) can provide unique insights into the study of reasoning, and in particular how jurors parse trial evidence. We end in chapter 8 with a more general discussion of how behavioral science can be applied across law and policy.