Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, Management

Research highlights “moral stress” exercising powerful influence on individual's well-being and his or her turnover intentions beyond the effects of general stress. Recently there have been calls for theoretical and empirical research into “the largely unexplored” moral aspects of stress also in organizations. As a result, scholars have proposed the construct of moral stress and explored its discriminant validity amongst job stressors, validated a moral stress scale, and tested its predictive validity on individual worker's fatigue, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Despite these significant results these studies fail to explain the “what” or “how” behind moral stress, and proclaim “other types of positions and environments need to be tested” in understanding the role of moral stress in organizational settings. In particular, individual level antecedents of moral stress have not been theorized and analyzed among executives. In response to this void this mixed method sequence of studies investigates the role and impact of moral stress in individual executive ethical decision-making processes, and its antecedents. Due to lack of explicit theory and earlier empirical research on the topic the first study qualitatively explores how moral stress manifests in manager's experience and how it influences senior manager's behaviors who are involved in high-pressure, group decision-making processes where the manager experiences conflict between his or her personal values and guiding values of the organizational setting. I draw upon semi-structured interviews with 30 senior executives and find that among morally aware executives moral dissonance and moral stress act as motivating mechanisms to engage in an ethical decision-making process. This is, however, moderated by overall decision-making process quality, the relational climate of the setting, and manager's job embeddedness. The second study investigates the specific impact of role identity saliency (total and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kalle Lyytinen (Committee Chair); Brad Owens (Committee Member); Shannon French (Committee Member); James Gaskin (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethics; Management; Sustainability

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1978, Psychology

Committee: Samuel Osipow (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1978, Psychology

Committee: Nancy Betz (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2007, Counselor Education and Supervision

This study addressed how role salience and work-family conflict relate to leadership practices for women managers. The sample (N = 197) was comprised of single and married women, ages 22-55, with and without dependent children living at home, holding middle or upper management positions within various for-profit organizations. Forty-four women's organizations/associations and 50,000 women managers in the U.S. were solicited by email, in addition to distributing printed surveys to Human Resource managers of businesses for distribution to their women managers. The number of years in the workforce and estimation of employer support of family needs were demographic variables that showed statistically significant relationships with leadership practices. The results indicated there were no significant differences in leadership practices between women managers with or without dependent children living at home. Additionally, women managers were able to be differentiated based on their salience for work, family and bother work and family roles. Measured role salience differed from women managers' expressed role salience. Women managers with a measured role salience for work and both work and family had significantly more Work Interfering with Family (WIF) conflict than managers with a family salient role. There was no significant difference in Family Interfering with Work (FIW) conflict among the women managers with any salient roles. When expressed role salience was considered, there were no significant differences in WIF or FIW conflict. Results of the study indicated that there were no significant differences in the leadership practices of women managers with a role salience for work, family, and both work and family. Women managers identified as having WIF conflict did not significantly engage in more leadership practices than those identified as having FIW conflict. Recommendations for future research and for practice are also provided.

Committee: Cynthia Reynolds (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts, Marietta College, 2024, Psychology

The college age group has shown the highest levels of risk-taking in research, which has serious implications for their social, health, and safety outcomes. Hence, researchers have aimed to create programs that reduce such behaviors. These interventions have been implemented with limited success, indicating further research is needed to shed more light on the underlying factors involved in this behavior. I suggest including Mortality Salience (MS) as a factor of understanding this phenomenon due to prior research showing the influence it has in the unconscious processing leading to this behavior. Past researchers investigating risk-taking behavior have not used a behavioral task of risk-taking while exploring MS effects. Our research addressed this limitation by using the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) as our main measure of risk-taking. Our first goal of this study was to investigate how under the Mortality Salience condition, the best model for predicting participants' risk-taking behavior on the BART would include measures of participant self-esteem, impulsiveness, perception of risk benefits, importance of money, and gender. Our secondary goal was to investigate the hypothesis that the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT) subdomain scales scores would be significantly associated with risk-taking behavior measured by the BART. I tested the best regression model to predict performance on the BART from the factors of MS, self-esteem, gender, importance of money, impulsivity, and perception of risk benefits. A second hypothesis involved testing the convergent validity of the BART task with the DOSPERT behavioral measure. The results did not support the hypotheses of this study. The limitations of this study involving the methods and measures used with the participant population indicated directions future research investigating risk-taking with the BART and DOSPERT could utilize.

Committee: Mark Sibicky (Advisor); Charles Doan (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Psychology; Social Psychology

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2023, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

A large body of research has investigated the role of religious belief within terror management theory and the cognitive science of religion, with interesting results emerging for atheists as compared to religious individuals. While atheists explicitly disavow religion, implicit measurement techniques have revealed an intuitive belief in religious concepts, particularly following reminders of death (Jong et al., 2012). However, to date, no studies have directly observed the cognitive processes that underlie these effects. In response to this gap in the literature, the present study seeks to propose and test a model of the cognitive pathways utilized by religious and atheistic individuals as they manage existential concerns. Specifically, this model proposes that following mortality salience (MS), both religious and atheistic individuals experience intuitive religious belief due to evolutionary cognitive biases. These intuitions are then consciously shaped in accordance with explicitly endorsed ideologies, leading religious individuals to accept intuitive religious belief and atheistic individuals to override their intuitions with a more analytic orientation. As such, the present study hypothesized that MS (compared to pain) would lead to decreased need for cognition (NFC) in Christians but increased NFC in atheists. In a sample of 248 adults, an ANOVA indicated that Christians primed with MS reported lower NFC than those primed with pain, while the opposite effect emerged for atheists, providing compelling evidence for the proposed model. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Committee: Kenneth Vail III (Advisor); Kathleen Reardon (Committee Member); Michael Horvath (Committee Member); Eric Allard (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology; Religion; Social Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Medicine: Neuroscience/Medical Science Scholars Interdisciplinary

Psychological loss is something that most people will experience in their lifetime. Losing something of value (e.g., interpersonal relationships, financial stability, secure housing, health) can erode well-being and negatively impact quality of life, generating a unique set of depression-like symptoms. While loss is common, it is difficult to track clinically and has received little attention in preclinical studies. Previously, our lab developed a protocol to study this experience of losing a positive stimulus in rats, called enrichment removal (ER). Environmental enrichment is a well-known positive, rewarding experience, and ER generates behavioral phenotypes that are reminiscent of loss symptoms in humans. Given this face validity, my dissertation work seeks to better understand the molecular mechanisms of loss using enrichment removal and a range of molecular and behavioral techniques. We first identified the basolateral amygdala (BLA) as an important region in ER. We then utilized a comprehensive multi-omics approach to identify novel candidate mechanisms in this region, identifying microglia and the extracellular matrix (ECM) as potential targets driving removal phenotypes. Further investigation into these candidates revealed that ER leads to a loss of function in microglia and an accumulation of ECM. The latter effects were especially intriguing, prompting further study of the matrix itself and the parvalbumin interneurons which it typically surrounds in the form of perineuronal nets. Overall, the present molecular results demonstrate that ER increases ECM in the BLA, decreasing overall plasticity in the region and altering parvalbumin phenotypes to promote inhibition. Next, we expanded our behavioral profiling of ER, focusing on behaviors regulated by the BLA. These results revealed an interesting phenotype of impaired salience evaluation, in which the strength of various stressors and the behavioral responses that they elicited were mismatc (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Teresa Reyes Ph.D. (Committee Chair); James Herman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Eric Wohleb (Committee Member); Diego Perez-Tilve Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert McCullumsmith M.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Neurosciences

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2022, Curriculum and Instruction (Education)

Professional identity impacts the career choices, professional development, and wellbeing of the clinician educators (CEs) who are foundational to the evolving medical education and health care system. Physicians, who fulfill educator roles in an academic health center, can develop clinician educator identity (CEID) as they participate in longitudinal faculty development programs (LFDPs). It has also been demonstrated that after the program ends, professional identity salience depends on a participants' individual agency and ability to connect to supportive resources in the larger local context including regional and national educational societies. However, how CEID forms and what factors impact its salience remain unexplored. The central research question is, “How is an CEID formed and transformed in physicians?” In order to explore CEID formation, a collective case study was conducted of physicians with formal educational leadership roles. Data collection strategies included collecting documentary evidence, identity maps and curriculum vitae, as well as two interviews. Interview questions explored interpretations of experiences that influenced the formation of the participants' CEID as well as factors that influence CEID salience. The data were analyzed using qualitative methods informed by professional identity formation theory and literature. Participants in this collective 1) described their CEID as a profession, leveraging specialized competencies to serve others, 2) explored a unique career path in multiple communities of practice outside their local clinical departments, with guidance from mentors, role models and sponsors, and 3) associated the importance of their roles as a CE with its contribution to patient care as well as felt affirmed by recognition from import individuals in the medical education community. This study has implications for how professional developers imagine, implement, and evaluate the initiatives designed to encourage the developm (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Danielle Dani (Advisor); Beam Pamela (Committee Member); Harrison Lisa (Committee Member); Machtmes Krisanna (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Leadership; Medicine

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, Psychology

When people experience existential threats, they are motivated to focus on positive information that supports their worldview and self-esteem. However, people also regularly make mistakes and experience the threatening emotion of regret. The current research explores how individuals regulate their regret experiences when facing the terror of death reminders. Study 1 suggests mortality salience (MS) differentially impacts the affective experience of regrets across social and non-social life domains. After MS, people experienced less intense social regrets than non-social regrets. In Study 2, I found additional support that people are motivated to regulate social regrets after MS. Study 2 investigated potential regulatory mechanisms, specifically psychological repair work. Based on the findings from Study 2, there was greater support for a cognitive regulatory mechanism than the initially hypothesized psychological repair work. Future work should more comprehensively measure cognitive regret regulation following MS.

Committee: Amy Summerville PhD (Committee Chair); Heather Claypool PhD (Committee Member); Christina Roylance PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2019, College of Sciences and Health Professions

Terror Management Theory posits that people are motivated to defend against death awareness by maintaining cultural beliefs and behaviors that transcend mortality— sometimes motivating hostile, even militaristic, defenses of one's culture. In contrast, self-determination theory suggests that autonomous regulation (self-determination) serves as a platform for personal growth and well-being. However, the present thesis suggests that, in addition to fueling growth, self-determination may also help buffer against the awareness of mortality, thus mitigating the impact of death awareness on hostile cultural worldview defense. To test this hypothesis, American participants were randomly assigned to be reminded of mortality or a control topic, then randomly assigned to be reminded of feelings of autonomy or being controlled, and then lastly completed a measure of one possible form of worldview defense: support for militaristic defense of American foreign policy interests in Syria. The present analysis found that death reminders increased that form of worldview defense, unless participants were first prompted to recall self-determination experiences.

Committee: Kenneth Vail Ph.D. (Advisor); Eric Allard Ph.D. (Committee Member); Elizabeth Goncy Ph.D. (Committee Member); Shereen Naser Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Experimental Psychology; Psychology; Social Psychology

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2019, College of Sciences and Health Professions

The present research built on prior work suggesting that mortality salience (MS) can undermine psychological well-being and explored the previously-untested hypothesis that autonomy can mitigate that effect. Specifically, the study investigated the effects of primed autonomy on measured death anxiety following a reminder of mortality. Participants (n = 119) were randomly assigned to either an MS or control condition and then, following a delay, were primed with the concept of either autonomy or being controlled. Death anxiety was then measured. Results found that MS increased death anxiety among those in the controlled prime condition, but not among those in the autonomous/self-determined prime condition. These findings suggest that autonomy serves an important terror management function that can mitigate the effect of death-related thoughts on well-being. Importantly, the results also highlight the potential intersection between existential defense and growth.

Committee: Kenneth Vail Ph.D. (Advisor); Eric Allard Ph.D. (Committee Member); Elizabeth Goncy Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert Hurley Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Experimental Psychology; Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Political Science

This dissertation explores the relationship between linked fate, political knowledge and message cues. I argue there is a relationship between Black political knowledge, linked fate, and attitudes that varies based on the salience of the issue in question, the source of the message, tone of the message and the recipient's strength of linked fate and amount of Black political knowledge they possessed. This argument draws on research on political attitudes, political knowledge, and psycho-political behavior within the Black community. I conceptualize Black political knowledge as the range of factual information about Black racial group's role in and relationship with the American political system stored in one's memory. Afterwards I introduce the Black political knowledge battery, a 14-item measurement of said concept with questions about the historical, policy, and partisanship aspects of the racial group's political behavior. Afterwards, I use the battery in a survey experiment to examine the relationship between issue salience, message cues, linked fate and Black political knowledge. The data analysis chapter determined support for as well as rejection of the theoretical framework, albeit aspects of the model. Results determined linked fate and Black political knowledge have profound influence on Black responses to group messages regardless of the salience of the issue in the message. However, that influence can be affected by message cues in less racially salient treatments. Likewise, a two-way significant interaction between Black political knowledge and linked fate was discovered, where highly linked and knowledgeable individuals give vastly different responses than high-linked, low-knowledge individuals. This finding supports the theoretical assertion that there is a difference between linked fate and Black political knowledge, such that those who are highly linked but have low knowledge will be more likely to agree with the message described.

Committee: Kathleen McGraw (Committee Chair); Thomas Nelson (Committee Co-Chair); Nathaniel Swigger (Committee Member); Ismail White (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; Black Studies; Political Science

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2018, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The scenario of the atheist in the proverbial foxhole has been a topic of discussion in religious circles for centuries. Building on prior research utilizing terror management theory (TMT), a dual process model of cognition, and previous work suggesting that humans are intuitively wired for teleological and religious concepts, the researchers set out to examine atheist's religiosity when confronted with the reality of one's impermanence. To explore this idea, the present experiment recruited a sample of atheists, manipulated their awareness of mortality, manipulated their ability to employ analytic thinking, and measured various intuitive cognitions (e.g., teleological reasoning) alongside religious belief. Results suggest that atheists in the speeded conditions reported higher agreement with teleological items; but the same did not happen for religious items. Additionally, atheists primed with mortality salience (vs. control) reported lower agreement with religious items in the un-speeded condition, but not in the speeded condition; a similar interaction was not observed for the teleology items. Limitations and potential directions for future research are discussed.

Committee: Kenneth Vail (Advisor) Subjects: Experimental Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2018, Experimental Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

Busyness is often preferred over idleness (Hsee, Yang, & Wang, 2010). Drawing from Terror Management Theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986), I argue that existential concerns regarding inevitable personal mortality, in part, contribute to preference for busyness. Three studies support this reasoning. In Study 1, mortality salience increased behavioral busyness. In Study 2, mortality salience marginally elevated favorability toward a busy (vs. idle) individual. In Study 3, being busy reduced the need to engage alternative self-esteem striving-related defenses following a reminder of death. Discussion considers the terror management function of busyness.

Committee: Mark Alicke PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Social Psychology

PHD, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

Research on self and identity has a rich history in social psychology. A number of different conceptions exist that theorize the organization of the self. This dissertation focuses on the organization of self from the perspective of Identity theory. Identity theory can be broken down into three research programs; the structural, interactional, and perceptual control. Previous research in identity theory has focused heavily on the structural program's conception of identity salience as the main organization structure of the self-concept. In addition, research in identity theory has focused heavily on normative aspects of everyday life in terms of the identities explored. This dissertation discusses the challenge that counter-normative identities, or identities that individuals claim that are not what are expected in society, present for the structural research program of identity theory. The interactional research program within identity theory is discussed as one solution to the exploration of counter-normative identities. Using the identity set of religious and non-religious as an example, this dissertation examines the relationship between identity prominence and salience that has been empirically supported for normative identities. In addition, this dissertation incorporates context, a major focus of the interactional perspective of identity theory, in two ways. First, a new measure of context specific salience is developed and incorporated into analyses. Second, proximate social structure, or the structure within which individuals enact identities, is explored as a moderator of the effect between prominence and salience. The results begin to show how counter-normative identities differ from normative ones and highlight the importance of context and the interactional perspective of identity theory, especially when incorporating counter-normative identities.

Committee: Richard Serpe Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Will Kalkhoff Ph.D. (Committee Member); Susan Fisk Ph.D. (Committee Member); Philip Brenner Ph.D. (Committee Member); John Updegraff Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Ohio University, 2017, Political Science

This thesis will take a case study approach to apply the theory of Quiet Politics to the 2008 Great Recession and the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Committee: DeLysa Burnier Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Banking; Finance; Organizational Behavior; Political Science; Public Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Communication

When people experience reminders of their mortality, anxiety heightens. This, in turn, can increase worldview defenses such as outgroup derogation. In this experiment, White participants (N = 190) read an online news story that presented a death threat (death threat, non-death threat) and identity threat (White threat, Black threat, race-neutral threat) manipulation. Following exposure to the experimental manipulation, participants completed measures of anxiety, specific self-esteem, and worldview defense. A multicategorical moderation supported the integration of specific self-esteem in social identity processes. The findings from moderated mediation analyses support previous terror management research (Greenberg et al., 1997): When exposure to a death threat has not been sufficiently suppressed, anxiety from the threat can manifest in worldview defenses. Results demonstrate that specific self-esteem buffers anxiety elicited from threats unrelated to racial identity. Implications include identity processes by which the effects of threat can be mitigated.

Committee: Jesse Fox (Advisor); Lanier Holt (Committee Member); Nancy Rhodes (Committee Member); Zheng Wang (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Psychology; Social Psychology; Social Research; Statistics; Web Studies

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2016, Journalism (Communication)

Salient stimuli, defined as information that sticks out from a particular context, can capture people's involuntary attention (Kardes, 2002). The current examined the effects of salient web ads on people's implicit and explicit attitudes. Prior study suggests that peripheral processing, which does not require much cognitive efforts had greater impact on people's implicit attitudes, because it is similar to the associative learning (Wagner & Sundar, 2009). Therefore, the current study hypothesized that salient web ad could lead to less positive implicit attitudes than less salient web ad since it could elicit more central processing of the ads content. The results showed that salient and less salient web ads did not differ significantly in their effects on implicit and explicit attitudes. The theoretical and practical implications of the study were discussed.

Committee: Parul Jain (Committee Chair); Hans Meyer (Committee Member); Jatin Srivastava (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2015, Psychology

There are many processes by which people can become more extreme in their attitudes and judgments—some more reasonable and rational, some more unconscious and motivational in nature. Across two studies, this thesis focuses on one process that has demonstrated the potential to polarize judgments: defensive bolstering. There are many concurrent theories attempting to explain why, when we feel uncertain and/or threatened, we compensate by bolstering, or extremitizing, various judgments. None of these theories, however, have manipulated threat and uncertainty in an orthogonal manner. Thus, it has been unclear whether feelings of uncertainty are driving the bolstering effects as some theories argue, whether feelings of threat are the driving force as others argue, or if there is something special about the confluence of both uncertainty and threat that is pervasive amongst manipulations in the field. Study 1 examined the viability of a procedure which required participants to imagine hypothetical scenarios to vary threat and uncertainty. This study showed that the combination of threat and uncertainty produced more defensive bolstering than their absence. Bolstering was shown across three measures frequently used in the psychological defense literature. Study 2 then applied these vignettes to disentangle threat from uncertainty and demonstrated that imagining the scenario high in both uncertainty and threat produced greater bolstering on the same measures used in Study 1 than just uncertainty or threat, alone. Collapsing across Studies 1 and 2 in an exploratory analysis suggested that the only condition in which participants extremitized on the dependent variables was when uncertainty was combined with threat. This research suggests that defensive, compensatory bolstering effects may not be due solely to either the experience of uncertainty or threat, as many theories claim, but that it may actually rely on the experience of both.

Committee: Richard Petty PhD (Advisor); Duane Wegener PhD (Committee Member); Ellen Peters PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Social Psychology

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2015, Industrial and Systems Engineering (Engineering and Technology)

The workforce is becoming more age diverse. Approximately seven in ten older adults say they will continue to work full or part time instead of retire (Khan, Rutledge, & Wu, 2014). Therefore, people of different age groups working together will be common across many industries. In this experiment, age diverse teams participated in three different lean simulations. The purpose of this research was to determine if lean simulations could improve team performance in age diverse teams. Assessments were used to determine if the experiment improved perceptions of age diversity and which activity reduced age salience and improved team interactions the most. Results indicated that appreciation of age diversity and team interpersonal processes were not statistically significant. Salience of age diversity was statistically significant between age groups and over time for the younger age group. Additionally, type of task was significantly related to how well participants perceived team interaction.

Committee: Diana Schwerha (Advisor); Mary Tucker (Committee Member); Dale Masel (Committee Member); Dusan Sormaz (Committee Member) Subjects: Engineering; Industrial Engineering; Management; Organizational Behavior