Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Philosophy, Applied

It is commonly accepted that suspension of judgment, together with belief and disbelief, are the three doxastic attitudes a person may hold toward a proposition. While there have been decades-long discussions on norms for belief and disbelief, philosophers have only started to work out the norms for judgment suspension in recent years. In this dissertation, I aim to contribute to this discussion by looking into the standard of correctness for judgment suspension, some of the possible norms for judgment suspension, as well as the possible obligations when one suspends judgment. I argue that rationality norms play an important role in determining the norms for judgment suspension and the norms for responding to disagreements. Chapter 1 focuses on the meta-normative aspects of judgment suspension and discusses how the Reasoning View of normative reasons together with the Knowledge Standard correctness for beliefs can accommodate normative reasons for judgment suspension. Chapter 2 focuses on one epistemic norm of judgment suspension called conciliationism. According to conciliationism, one ought to suspend judgment on whether p when one faces disagreements from an epistemic peer about p. I argue that conciliationism depends on a problematic principle called Independence, and offer an alternative principle that does not rely on Independence yet still captures our conciliatory intuitions. Chapter 3 focuses on the cases where one suspends judgment on the permissibility of some action. I argue that when one ought to suspend judgment on whether an action φ is permissible, then φ-ing and ~φ-ing are both permissible. Chapter 4 goes beyond the discussion of judgment suspension and discusses cases where one faces disagreement from a moral expert on a moral issue. I argue that contrary to what pessimists about moral deference claim, one is rationally required to defer to the moral expert in those cases. Though some moral considerations may count against moral deference, they (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christian Coons Ph.D. (Advisor); Michael Weber Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sara Worley Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christopher Kluse Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Philosophy, Applied

In this dissertation, I construct scientifically and practically adequate moral analogues of cognitive heuristics and biases. Cognitive heuristics are reasoning “shortcuts” that are efficient but flawed. Such flaws yield systematic judgment errors, cognitive biases. For example, the availability heuristic infers an event's probability by seeing how easy it is to recall similar events. Since dramatic events like airplane crashes are disproportionately easy to recall, this heuristic explains systematic overestimations of their probability (availability bias). The research program on cognitive heuristics and biases (e.g., Daniel Kahneman's work) has been scientifically successful and has yielded useful error-prevention techniques, cognitive debiasing. I try to apply this framework to moral reasoning to yield moral heuristics and biases. For instance, a moral bias of unjustified differences in animal-species treatment might be explained by a moral heuristic that dubiously infers animals' moral status from their aesthetic features. While the basis for identifying judgments as cognitive errors is often unassailable (e.g., per violating laws of logic), identifying moral errors seemingly requires appealing to moral truth, which, I argue, is problematic within science. Such appeals can be avoided by repackaging moral theories as mere “standards-of-interest” (a la non-normative metrics of purported right-making features/properties). However, standards-of-interest do not provide authority, which is needed for effective debiasing. Nevertheless, since each person deems their own subjective morality authoritative, subjective morality (qua standard-of-interest and not moral subjectivism) satisfies both scientific and practical concerns. As such, (idealized) subjective morality grounds a moral analogue of cognitive biases, subjective moral biases (e.g., committed non-racists unconsciously discriminating). I also argue that cognitive heuristic is defined by its relation to rationa (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sara Worley Ph.D. (Advisor); Richard Anderson Ph.D. (Other); Theodore Bach Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michael Bradie Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michael Weber Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Ethics; Philosophy; Philosophy of Science; Psychology

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2018, Experimental Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

In this paper, we propose three hypotheses to explain the Knobe effect, or the side-effect effect, in which the chair of a corporation is seen as intentionally harming the environment when the side-effect of his action harms the environment but not seen as intentionally helping the environment when the side-effect of his action helps the environment. We propose the following three hypotheses to explain this asymmetry. First, judgments of intentionally harmed and intentionally helped are not judgments of intent. Second, if the action is judged to be morally bad, foresight is a sufficient condition for a harmful side-effect to be considered intentional. However, foresight is not a sufficient condition for a helpful side-effect to be considered intentional. Third, while most participants do think the chair actually harmed the environment intentionally and helped it unintentionally, the asymmetry in other judgments, such as intention, belief, and desire, is caused by motivational bias.

Committee: Mark Alicke (Committee Chair); Keith Markman (Committee Member); Robert Briscoe (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1986, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Psychology/Developmental

The present study examined the relations between Theory of Mind and moral development as they impact specific aggressive behaviors and prosociality in preschoolers. Social-Cognitive and Social-Cognitive Domain Theory suggest that behavior should be considered a function of personal factors and environment, whereby each of these three facets impact and interact with one another, especially during the development of moral understanding. The current conceptualized hypothesized that moral judgment would predict socio-moral cognition, and – separately – that inhibitory control would predict Theory of Mind; additionally, a moderation of socio-moral cognition was posed on the expected relation from Theory of Mind to social outcomes. One hundred seventy-six preschoolers (Ma=53.3 months) completed measures of inhibitory control, moral understanding, morally imbedded Theory of Mind, verbal skills, and a traditional Theory of Mind battery consisting of five tasks. In addition, teacher- and child self-report data were collected for four specific aspects of aggressive behavior, and prosociality. The proposed model was a good fit to the data using teacher-report data. Results indicate that for children high in mental state understanding, applied moral cognitive development influences teacher-rated prosociality, such that those who were better able to understand another's motive tended to be less prosocial—for those without motive understanding, there was no relation from ToM on prosocial behavior. Implications are discussed in regards to theoretical development and previous empirical findings.

Committee: Marie Tisak (Advisor); John Tisak (Committee Member); Carolyn Tompsett (Committee Member); Susannah Cleveland (Other) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Developmental Psychology; Early Childhood Education; Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2015, Management

Fraud thrives in the financial marketplace despite the best efforts of the accounting community. Literature suggests both models and solutions to address the problem, yet a paucity of knowledge remains regarding how sympathy influences fraud. Although many of the largest frauds come from the professional investing community, little research exists on the pathways to fraud within it. I respond to calls for action from auditing and accounting literature, COSO, and practitioners in examining a powerful path to fraud inside the professional trading community, aggravated unintentionally by those who regulate them. I discover an environment where fraud is so pervasive, fraud can become the norm. While interviewing 31 professional investors and regulators, a passionate group of “ethical” fraudsters emerges. These fraudsters rationalize fraud as an ethical act, useful for protecting members of the public, given sympathetic circumstances. Following this line of reasoning, and aligned with literature from accounting, economics, and psychology, I operationalize an experiment. This experiment studies how the threat of detection, monetary rewards, and organizational culture interact to drive fraud when a sympathetic client exists. The data suggest the generalized existence of such “Robin Hood” fraudsters, given the opportunity to commit fraud to help their clients. Additionally, the data confirms the combinatory impact of the Fraud Triangle. Multiple factors need be present for fraud to emerge. Finally, while those in small firms act fraudulently due to the combination of money and a low chance of detection, those in large firms act due to money and a performance driven culture. In the qualitative study, traders expressed the belief that even when caught, the amount they will have to repay is relatively low. Additionally, regulators expressed the opinion that the amount requiring repayment will be high. Combining the results of the experiment with these assertions, I desig (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Timothy Fogarty (Committee Chair); Michael Akers (Committee Member); Don Giacomino (Committee Member); Tony Lingham (Committee Member) Subjects: Accounting

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Psychology

Social scientists have argued that disgust has a unique relationship with moral judgment and, in particular, with judgments involving physical and moral purity. That is, disgust has been said to highlight moral considerations surrounding purity and, thereby, to make moral judgments more extreme. Here, a more general role for disgust is introduced, based on appraisal theories involving the nature and effects of specific emotions. It is hypothesized that because disgust is associated with feelings of certainty, disgust (relative to low-certainty emotions such as sadness) should polarize judgments regardless of the topic and the direction of one's thoughts. This hypothesis is examined across four studies. The results demonstrate that disgust can polarize judgments about other people's moral status, about one's own fitness as a job candidate, and about a fictitious animal species. Further, mediational evidence shows that disgust's validating effects reflect the influence of disgust on certainty. Boundary conditions for the validating effects of disgust (via certainty) are established. Implications for the effects of disgust on social judgment are explored.

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

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, Psychology

Beyond its relationship to general cognitive development, the transition from pragmatic to mutualistic moral judgment during adolescence may relate to social experiential processes. Social experiences of particular theoretical interest in this study pertain to social perspective-taking in friendships, and in particular, the sharing of perspectives afforded by intimate friendships. The present study investigated these possible relationships using a sample of 405 adolescent students recruited from grades seven through twelve in a Midwestern middle-class suburban school district. Mutualistic moral judgment was assessed using a recent Kohlbergian stage measure. Verbal ability and social experiential processes accounted for comparable portions of the variance in adolescent moral judgment. General friendship perspective-taking correlated with friendship intimacy, and each separately predicted moral judgment maturity. Females reported higher levels of friendship perspective-taking, and (as a trend) evidenced more mature moral judgment during early adolescence. Overall, friendship perspective-taking experiences, both generally and within the context of intimate dyads, may facilitate the development of mutualistic moral judgment during adolescence.

Committee: John Gibbs (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology, Developmental

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2011, Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

Self-protection refers to the people's tendency to minimize their shortcomings in order to avoid feeling bad about themselves. The present research examines how self-protection motivations affect people's construals regarding their potentially immoral behaviors. Previous research on this topic has focused on the excuses, rationalizations, and self-serving attributions that people employ to argue that their behaviors are not as bad as they appear. Less is known about how people construe their behaviors that they know are bad. To inform this gap in the literature, the present studies sought a more nuanced view of people's beliefs about their own bad behaviors by examining how these beliefs become integrated into their self-concepts. The purpose of these three studies was to provide experimental evidence that the magnitude of self-protection varies as a function of levels of construal or abstraction. To this end, each study involved an actor-observer paradigm in which participants provided concrete construals of identical behaviors committed by themselves and others and abstract construals regarding the degree to which these behaviors were linked to higher-level self-concepts. In Study 1, regardless of level of abstraction, participants judged themselves more leniently than target persons. When participants were granted access to target person's justifications for their negative behaviors (Study 2 and Study 3), however, they viewed their own behaviors as less negative than those of others (low-level construals). Across all three studies, participants predicted that they would be less likely than target persons to perform the negative behaviors again (mid-level construals). When judging themselves relative to target persons in Study 3, participants did not rate themselves less negatively on trait judgments and global attributions (high-level construals). All three studies provide converging evidence that the self-other discrepancies are at least partially accounted for (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mark Alicke PhD (Advisor); Keith Markman PhD (Committee Member); Matthew Vess PhD (Committee Member); Justin Weeks PhD (Committee Member); Laura Black PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Leadership Studies

“At this moment, America's highest economic need is higher ethical standards….” (Former U.S. President George W. Bush, 2002). That statement was made in the aftermath of the Enron and WorldCom fiascos in the early 2000s. Seven years later, newly elected U.S. President Obama (2009) said in his inauguration speech “Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.” There is a repeated calling to increase the understanding of how to make “hard choices.” It is the leadership of an organization that is one of the most important components of an organization's ethical culture (Brown and Trevino, 2006; Trevino, 1990) and researchers have called for additional studies “to identify the factors that influence the levels of moral judgment used in the workplace” (Loviscky, Trevino, and Jacobs, 2007, p.276).The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between values, organization culture perceptions, and managerial moral reasoning. Data for this study were collected from 100 managers from a variety of industries and organizations through an online survey. Using a Likert-scale, the Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) (Schwartz, 1992) measured four meta-values and ten value types. A 12 item version of the Likert-scale Competing Values Framework (CVF) (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983) was used to measure four different organization culture perceptions. Cognitive moral development was assessed by the Managerial Moral Judgment Test (MMJT) (Loviscky, Trevino, and Jacobs, 2007) which determined levels of moral reasoning using six workplace scenarios asking respondents to make a decision and then both rate and rank the decision criteria. Respondents also provided demographic data (industry, organization size, managerial level, gender, and year of birth). This study provides a contribution to the understanding of the variables that impact the level of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Rachel Vannatta Reinhart (Advisor); Thomas Chibucos (Committee Member); Mitchell Neubert (Committee Member); Patrick Pauken (Committee Member) Subjects: Management; Organization Theory; Organizational Behavior