Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2016, Agricultural and Extension Education

Agriculture is not a pretty industry. The process of growing and harvesting enough food to feed a growing population of 7.3 billion people is hard and ugly. No matter the frame, practices like applying chemical substances to the soil, modifying the genomic structure of seeds, and housing livestock in confined spaces do not look or sound attractive. Often times, a lack of understanding of these practices causes them to be criticized by consumers, especially the large majority who are disconnected from the farming industry. Our food systems' ability to produce, store, process, and transport massive amounts of food combined with urbanization, industrialization, and consolidation has resulted in very few people knowing how food is produced (Clapp, 2012). While production efficiency is a valuable tenant of modern agriculture, it is also the underpinning of numerous hurdles for agricultural communicators and educators. One of these hurdles is cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, lack of information, as well as misinformation, has contributed to consumers not always realizing the integral role that “ugly” modern agriculture practices play in avoiding a severe and pervasive food crisis. While people need food, shelter, and clothing, much of which modern production agriculture provides, they are also unfamiliar with the practices used to satisfy these basic human needs. This conflict, or cognitive dissonance, can cause consumers to experience uncertainty and discomfort when confronted with information about the practices in their everyday lives. Cognitive dissonance presents both a challenge and an opportunity to communicators and educators because of its ability to influence a consumer's perception of and subsequent attitude toward a subject. This study aimed to both identify which modern agriculture practices cause consumers to experience the highest levels of cognitive dissonance and evaluate attitudes toward and reactions to news media images of modern agriculture pra (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Emily Buck (Advisor); Annie Specht (Committee Member) Subjects: Agriculture; Communication

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2013, Psychology

People tend to report feeling ambivalent in their attitudes toward objects that are associated with both positive and negative reactions. Across three studies, I investigated if people who have both positive and negative reactions to a novel target would feel less ambivalent about their attitudes if they simply expected to process valence-inconsistent information, compared to if they expected consistency or had no explicit expectations. In each study, people received either mixed or consistent behavioral information about a target individual as well as a summary. The summary either was presented before the behavioral information where it could foster an expectation or after where it could not. Study 1 replicated past work on ambivalence when the summary followed the behavioral information but established a new finding when it came first, namely that people who expected valence-inconsistent (versus consistent and negative) information reported less subjective (but not objective) attitudinal ambivalence than people who did not expect valence-inconsistent information. Study 2 replicated and expanded on these findings in comparison to other types of expectations (e.g., no expectations, undermined expectations), and Study 3 generalized these findings in comparison to consistent and positive expectations. Finally, the latter two studies provided mediational evidence that the extent to which people felt that their expectations had been confirmed (versus disconfirmed) accounted for the decreased feelings of ambivalence.

Committee: Richard Petty Ph.D. (Advisor); Russell Fazio Ph.D. (Committee Member); Duane Wegener Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2008, Psychology

Extensive research has demonstrated outcome differences between judgments based on feelings and judgments based on reasons. Dispositional preference for feelings- or reasons-based judgment may guide the use of implicit and explicit attitude information in evaluation and judgment when contextual cues are not available. Two studies examined the effect of implicit theories of judgment on the use of implicit and explicit attitudes to make judgments of a target. In Study 1, implicit attitudes were influenced by explicit evaluative information for feelings-based theorists, but not reasons-based theorists. Implicit attitudes correlated with explicit attitudes and judgment for feelings-based theorists, but not for reasons-based theorists. Study 2 replicated this correlational pattern especially when situational theories of judgment were congruent with dispositional theories of judgment.

Committee: Amanda Diekman PhD (Committee Chair); Heather Claypool PhD (Committee Member); Maria Cronley PhD (Committee Member); Kurt Hugenberg PhD (Committee Member); Allen McConnell PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Social Psychology