Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Business Administration

Pricing is one of the most important tools in a marketing manager's toolbox (Kotler and Armstrong 2010), and at least 80% of consumer choices are influenced by price (Forbes 2017, June 14). Unsurprisingly, extant research studied the effectiveness of many pricing strategies, establishing the effectiveness of strategies like just-below prices (Manning & Sprott, 2009; Thomas & Morwitz, 2005), range pricing (Biswas and Burton 1993; Fan, Li, and Jiang 2018; Haws and Bearden 2006) and price promotions (Foubert and Gijsbrechts 2007; Gupta 1988; Kahn and Louie 1990; Van Heerde, Gupta, and Wittink 2003), and examining how such strategies influence consumer's attitude toward prices and brand, price perceptions, and purchase intention. Building on this extant literature, I examine the nuances of these effects, moderators, and the unique consequences that have not been previously studied. Together, three chapters in this essay contribute to our understanding of how different pricing strategies influence consumer psychology of price perceptions and choices. The first chapter examines the effectiveness of just-below pricing in a context where consumers consider a within-brand upgrade decision, where the company's goal is to encourage upgrades. The first chapter demonstrates that when a base product is priced at or just-above a threshold (e.g., $20.00), consumers are more likely to upgrade and spend more money than when a base product is priced just-below a threshold (e.g., $19.99) because they perceive the upgrade option as less expensive, and they place less weight on price. Further this effect is mitigated under sequential choice and when an upgrade price crosses an upper threshold. The second chapter examines the effectiveness of the increasingly popular strategy of range pricing, where retailers present prices as a range (e.g., $19.99 – $29.99) rather than a specific price point (e.g., $19.99 or $29.99). The second chapter demonstrates that consumers have optimistic pric (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joseph Goodman (Committee Co-Chair); Selin Malkoc (Committee Co-Chair); Grant Donnelly (Committee Member); Priya Raghubir (Committee Member); Rebecca Reczek (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Marketing

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1959, Theatre

Committee: Norbert F. O'Donell (Advisor) Subjects: Theater

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1959, Theatre

Committee: Norbert F. O'Donell (Advisor) Subjects: Theater

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Bioethics

This project is a critique of the concept of consensus and its relation to secular moral reasoning. Proponents of public deliberation argue that achieving consensus is crucial to informing moral norms in secular pluralist societies. Without a transcendental basis for morality, ascribing authority to moral norms requires a process of deliberation. Many bioethicists are concerned with formulating ways to ensure discourse is tolerant, non-coercive, mutually respectful, and grounded in intersubjective understanding. The problem is that secular discourse is fraught with varying conceptions of human rights, ethical principles, and what constitutes a morally authoritative consensus. Bioethicists acknowledge the tyranny of the majority problem, but secularism lacks a sufficient rationale to identify when a majority is wrong. Since competing visions of the good comprise bioethics and consensus does not necessarily indicate moral truth, moral uncertainty is the logical result of secular pluralism. Some moral scientists argue that science can inform moral norms, but a careful reading of their work suggests that what is being espoused is moral nihilism. From determinism to deep pragmatism, many scientists are inadvertently supporting a view of reality that obliterates the possibility of values. In secular pluralist societies, consensus is required to establish basic norms, but no account of consensus can indicate when moral truth is known. Consensus is necessary to fulfill the visions of moral scientists, but such scientists implicitly endorse nihilism. What secularists are discovering – by their own reasoning – is that moral truth is elusive, science cannot inform human values, and bioethical dilemmas are incapable of being resolved. The conclusion to this project offers an Engelhardtian solution. Not only is the principle of permission the only viable basis for secular pluralism – the principle coincides with moral scientists' own account of human nature.

Committee: Matthew Vest (Advisor); Ryan Nash (Committee Member); Ashley Fernandes (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethics; Philosophy; Philosophy of Science

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2021, Philosophy (Arts and Sciences)

This paper responds to Jason Brennan's prominent critique of democracy. Brennan argues that the average citizen is ignorant and irrational, and votes incompetently, exercising illegitimate authority over her neighbors, thereby violating their right against subjection to incompetent government. He concludes that society should replace democracy with epistocracy; the rule of the educated. After clarifying the requirements of Brennan's proposal, I present two lines of defense for democratic theorists, both compatible with the competence principle at the heart of Brennan's argument. First, democracy can satisfy the standards of competence proposed by Brennan through institutional changes. And second, epistocracy falls short of its own epistemic standards by excluding voters, despite the place of voters in the division of political labor. I conclude that Brennan's argument does not undermine democracy's legitimacy, and in fact speaks against his epistocratic alternative.

Committee: Christoph Hanisch (Advisor); James Petrik (Committee Member); Yoichi Ishida (Committee Member) Subjects: Epistemology; Ethics; Philosophy

Bachelor of Science of Journalism (BSJ), Ohio University, 2021, Journalism

American socialist publications have all grappled with the conundrum of staying financially stable within a capitalist society. This has historically resulted in two outcomes: a compromise of values to increase funding like increased advertising, exploitive labor practices and/or the courting of wealthy donors, or the publication's demise. How does modern American socialist magazine Jacobin fall into this American tradition of socialist media? How has it stayed financially stable, and how has its content changed, if at all, in its 10 years of operation? The purpose of this thesis is to analyze Jacobin's content and business practices and place it into the greater historical context of American socialist media.

Committee: Hans Meyer Dr. (Advisor); Victoria LaPoe Dr. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Histology; Journalism

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Philosophy, Applied

This dissertation addresses the problem of issue individuation in public reason liberalism. The problem of issue individuation involves how laws relate to one another for purposes of public justification. That is, how many laws may be justified at once? The dissertation first provides an overview of the literature on issue individuation, and articulates three conditions any principle of issue individuation must meet. Then it articulates a solution to the problem of issue individuation in the form of a functional independence principle, which individuates laws based on the goals of idealized members of the public. Finally, the dissertation explores the implications of the functional independence principle on arguments regarding property rights and egalitarian redistribution.

Committee: Kevin Vallier (Advisor); Gary Oates (Other); Brandon Warmke (Committee Member); Michael Weber (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Philosophy, Applied

If liberal democratic theory requires that policy conform with citizens' beliefs, then democracy seems to require bad policy when citizens hold false beliefs. To escape this problem, public reason liberals advocate epistemic idealization: Citizens' false beliefs, bad inferences, and informational deficits are corrected in order to uncover the genuine reasons citizens hold. Politically legitimate policy must conform with citizens' idealized reasons rather than their messy unreflective reasons. But advocates of idealization disagree over how much idealization is permissible. I focus on moderate idealizers like Gaus (2011) and Vallier (2014, 2018). They hold that the upward bound of idealization is set by the beliefs a real-world citizen could arrive at by sound deliberative route from their existing belief-value sets with a “reasonable” amount of effort. Vallier and Gaus created their models before widespread social media use, echo chambers, high social and political polarization, and all the epistemic problems these create. For this reason, I argue, their models are understandably inadequate for addressing the vicious epistemic environments many citizens currently inhabit and the empirical beliefs they acquire from them. Contemporary moderate idealizers should adopt the exclusion principle whereby we permissibly exclude from policy considerations deeply held empirical beliefs when they contradict a consensus of relevant experts in a mature science—even if they survive moderate idealization. Incorporating this principle generates better policy outcomes and better supports pre-theoretical intuitions about political legitimacy. Chapter 1, argues that, under these conditions, Vallier's moderate idealization leads to normatively and epistemically bad policy, and that the exclusion principle solves this problem from within the commitments of political liberalism. Chapter 2 argues that Gausian moderate idealization also leads to normatively and epistemically bad pol (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kevin Vallier PhD (Advisor); Christian Coons PhD (Committee Member); Molly Gardner PhD (Committee Member); Daniel Piccolo PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Epistemology; Ethics; Philosophy; Public Policy

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD), Wright State University, 2020, School of Professional Psychology

Jurors, representatives of the communities from which they are selected, are tasked with the responsibility of reaching a verdict in an impartial, unbiased manner. Previous research has found that bias and negative attitudes impact juror decision-making, despite practices that are in place to dismiss potentially biased jurors, such as voir dire. Studies have found a correlation between racial biases and juror verdicts. Additionally, a correlation has also been found between insanity defense attitudes and a juror's propensity to favor (or not favor) a Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) acquittal. However, there has been limited examination of the impact of racial bias on juror decision-making in cases of NGRI, as evidenced by a lack of available research in this area. The Insanity Defense Attitudes – Revised (IDA-R) scale is a validated measure of venirepersons (potential jurors) attitudes surrounding NGRI. The IDA-R and a demographic survey were issued to jury-eligible participants from a Midwestern state, following a NGRI case vignette featuring either a White or African American male defendant. All participants met minimum criteria to be an Ohio juror. Findings include the overestimation of NGRI pleas in criminal court, the underestimation of NGRI acquittals, and a correlation between higher IDA-R scale scores and Guilty verdicts among participants. Additionally, race of the participant appeared to predict final verdict for some groups.

Committee: LaTrelle Jackson PhD, CCFC, ABPP (Committee Chair); Michelle Schultz PsyD (Committee Member); Christy Tinch PsyD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

BA, Oberlin College, 2017, Psychology

Pretrial attitudes (attitudes held preceding any case-specific information) towards the insanity defense are known to influence jurors' decision-making about a case. However, the impact of pre-trial attitude on decisions across different types of evidence was an open question that the present study addressed. Through Amazon Mechanical Turk, participants indicated their pretrial support for the insanity defense. Participants served as mock jurors and rated the likelihood of giving the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) as well as perceived responsibility for the defendant's actions; they gave these ratings after introducing seven different pieces of evidence (baseline case vignette, mother hospitalized for schizophrenia, defendant abused as child, defendant testimony to delusions, psychological evaluation diagnosing defendant with schizophrenia, comorbid substance abuse, brain scans supporting schizophrenia diagnosis). Pretrial attitudes had a significant effect on mock jurors' ratings, with those in the low-support group being significantly less likely than the those with higher support to give the defendant NGRI. There was also a significant interaction between attitude groups and type of evidence. Both the effect of attitude group and the interaction between evidence type and attitude group were significant for responsibility ratings as well. The results of this study have important implications for insanity defense trials, and highlight the importance of how pretrial attitudes and different types of evidence, as well as how pretrial attitudes interact with types of evidence, influence the likelihood of a mock juror giving a defendant NGRI.

Committee: Patty deWinstanley (Advisor); Cynthia McPherson Frantz (Committee Member); Sarah Rabbitt (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Philosophy, Applied

This dissertation defends the following thesis: the legal status of non-human animals as property is politically illegitimate. Instead, I argue that humans should be legally understood as guardians over those animals under their tenure. This guardianship relation involves limits on what humans may do to animals, limits which do not currently exist in our society. Most notably, guardians are required to act in the interest of their wards, and so guardians cannot kill or transfer the animals under their tenure unless doing so would be best (or at least good) for the animal. My position broadly fits with, but importantly differs from, much of the recent political philosophy literature focused on animals. I agree that ownership is inappropriate, but argue that considerations of political legitimacy lead us to the guardianship relation rather than full legal personhood. This position falls out of taking seriously the public reason challenge to justice for animals, which appeals to public reason liberalism to argue that the pursuit of justice for animals would be illegitimate. Thus, I examine important debates in public reason liberalism to develop an attractive model of that theory of legitimacy and then apply it to the question of the legal status of animals.

Committee: Michael Weber Ph.D. (Advisor); Kevin Vallier Ph.D. (Committee Member); John Basl Ph.D. (Committee Member); Gary Heba Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Animals; Ethics; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1963, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2016, Foundations of Education: Philosophy of Education

The ecological crisis as defined by the scientific community raises questions that challenge contemporary ethical, political, and educational theory. Situating the problem in the tradition of democratic theory, this study lays out a Rawlsian political liberal conception of sustainability that hinges upon a liberal conception of justice that places moral duties on the state, the citizen, and the educational institutions of contemporary societies. As such the idea of ecological integrity rises to the category of a matter of justice which requires a political principle of sustainability that functions as a normative precommitment. This normative precommitment in turn places moral duties on the government of democratic peoples and concomitantly the citizenry that are the source of legitimate democratic authority. The demanding role of citizenship in this conception thus places an imperative on education which by its nature is a normative activity and thus demands a renewed civic purpose for education that entails the sustainability as well as the stability of democratic society.

Committee: Dale Snauwaert PhD (Committee Chair); Lynne Hamer PhD (Committee Member); Revathy Kumar PhD (Committee Member); Vicki Dagostino PhD (Committee Member); Fuad Al-Daraweesh PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Education Philosophy; Environmental Justice; Environmental Philosophy; Ethics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Philosophy

In this dissertation, I offer a way to reconcile the view that we can be legitimately blamed for our beliefs with the view that we do not have the same kind of control over our beliefs that we have over action. In chapter one, I argue that we hold people accountable for their beliefs by blaming them, and that this blame has a characteristic force similar to the force of moral blame for action. After distinguishing between moral and epistemic blame for beliefs, I argue that accounts of moral blame for action can be extended to account for both forms of doxastic blame. In chapter two, I defend a view of doxastic control that helps ground the legitimacy of this doxastic blame. I argue that while we lack the same direct voluntary control over our beliefs that we enjoy over action, such control is not necessary to satisfy the control condition for blame. I argue instead that we enjoy a form of indirect control over our beliefs in the form of the capacity to actively engage in reflection. And finally, in chapter three, I bring the considerations of the previous chapters to bear on faith. I argue that it's plausible to think that faith is partly constituted by belief. But in that case, since we lack direct voluntary control over belief, we also lack voluntary control over faith. However, I argue that since we still have indirect control over whether we have faith, we can still be held accountable for our faith.

Committee: Declan Smithies (Advisor); Abraham Roth (Committee Member); Timothy Schroeder (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2014, College of Languages, Literature, and Social Sciences

In recent years, a growing number of cognitive scientists have advocated for a more central role of emotion in reasoning and other skills. In this thesis, I investigate how emotion may play such roles and why having emotion in such roles is beneficial to cognition in general. I examine both empirical and philosophical accounts of emotion and suggest that if one wants to provide an account of both how emotion-laden cognition works and why it is successful, one must employ a suitable notion of emotion. I adopt the view that emotions are essentially embodied and I show how understanding a bodily appraisal as the generation of a hypothesis and emotion as the confirmation of that hypothesis can meet many of the charges leveled at perceptual theories of emotion and explain how passionate cognition operates and why passionate cognition is successful. Specifically, I argue that there are five main advantages to my theory of emotion. First, I argue that my view most accurately meets the developmental constraints of not positing innate emotions. Second, I argue that my view fits the apparent evolutionary continuity of emotion by salvaging the intuition that emotions are not exclusively human. Third, I argue that my view explains the role emotions play in an individual's cognitive economy, particularly the role in practical decision-making. Fourth, I argue that my view accounts for the duration of emotional episodes whereas more common perceptual views do not. Finally, I argue that my view affords explanations of exceptional psychological cases, such as Capgras Syndrome. In Chapter One, I present a few exceptional psychological cases so as to elucidate the reason many affective scientists are concluding that emotion plays a larger role in cognition than folk psychological wisdom would have it. In Chapter Two, I construct a preliminary taxonomy of affective phenomena so as to situate emotion amongst other affects, emphasize the dynamics of affective life, and expl (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Sarnecki Dr. (Advisor); Madeline Muntersbjorn Dr. (Committee Member); Ammon Allred Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2005, Humanities

Søren Kierkegaard and Franz Kafka are admired by a wide spectrum of literary critics and philosophers for their common emphasis on subjectivity and the importance of the individual as opposed to the group. However, because the lives, attitudes, and writings of the two authors were very different, it is of interest to continue to examine their possible interrelationship. Both Kierkegaard and Kafka wrote about the biblical Abraham, and the resulting texts provide material for such an examination, organized around the idea of absurdity. “The absurd” is Kierkegaard's synonym for the religious level of existence, described in detail in Fear and Trembling, his analysis of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. There, the word refers to the incompatibility of rationality with religious belief. The religious level of existence that Abraham entered by obeying God's command to sacrifice his son while believing the absurdity that Isaac would not be lost to him, is characterized by a necessity for silence that leads to Abraham's isolation from the world. Kafka was attracted by similarities he perceived between his own life and Kierkegaard's, and greatly esteemed Kierkegaard's intellect and the quality of his prose. He never explicitly condemned Kierkegaard's use of “the absurd” to signify the religious. However, as shown in his letters and notebooks, he did not agree with Kierkegaard's views on the various levels of existence that human life could assume and the nature of the transitions between them. Often, his arguments can also be interpreted as criticisms of Kierkegaard himself rather than of Kierkegaard's ideas. Kafka illustrated his disagreement with Kierkegaard in sketches of four alternative Abrahams, whose lives, unlike that of Kierkegaard's Abraham, remain firmly in the world. For various reasons, they are unable or unwilling to abandon rationality and enter into the religious level of existence. One of Kafka's Abrahams, an antihero totally unrecognizable as a patriarch, has a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Charles Taylor (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Business: Business Administration

This dissertation investigates substantive questions developed from Kahneman and Tversky's behavioral choice theory. Behavioral choice theory postulates systematic departures from economically rational behavior when consumers face choices described incompletely or probabilistically. Previous research relies nearly exclusively on monetary options, which are intrinsically unidimensional and exhibit monotone utility. These special properties are likely to influence the frequency of preference reversals and other so-called non-rational behaviors in human decision-making. Four contributions emerge from this research. First, I extend the idea of risky choices from monetary to non-monetary options and build a theoretical framework with a foundation in prospect theory and reason-based choice. Second, I test the effect of multidimensional vs. unidimensional non-monetary options on choice focusing on both within- and between-dimensional risk. Third, I examine loss aversion across segments and relate an aggregation fallacy to contradictory results in the literature. Fourth, I suggest an extension of Kahneman and Tversky's behavioral choice theory by incorporating options with missing information. I use three discrete choice experiments to generate decision schema by segments of individuals sharing similar utility functions. Latent class discrete-choice models isolate the direction and magnitude of value for each attribute (level) of a set of multi-attribute options. They do so in choice domains involving both monetary and non-monetary attributes and operate effectively at both the aggregate and segment levels. As such, they support the rigorous design of experiments that circumvent the need to rely on monetary gambles. Study 1 investigates the influence of monetary (vs. non-monetary) goals on multidimensional risky choice when full information on reference points is available to an individual. Findings support goal-driven behavior, but reveal only limited evidence to supp (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David J. Curry PhD (Committee Chair); Frank R. Kardes PhD (Committee Member); Jordan J. Louviere PhD (Committee Member); James J. Kellaris PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Marketing

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Western scholars and Muslim exegetes alike are of one voice in conceptualizing the Qur'anic verb ‘aqala as "understand." Noting an opportunity to pry at a rarely-questioned spot in the consensus of Qur'anic studies, this thesis attempts – following the methodologies of Richter (1971) and Isutzu (1995, 2002) and within the framework given by Noldeke and Schwally (1909) – to expose new semantic depths of the root ‘-q-l (occurring exclusively as the verb ‘aqala) as it appears in the Qur'an. Using a diachronic literary, syntactic, semantic, and lexical approach, the depth of the field(s) occupied by ‘-q-l will be explored, providing insights potentially valuable to translators and students of the Qur'an.

Committee: Georges Tamer PhD (Advisor); Snjezana Buzov PhD (Committee Member); Bruce Fudge PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Islamic Studies; Middle Eastern Studies; Religion; Sociolinguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, Philosophy

I offer a new interpretation of Kant's argument for transcendental idealism according to which Kant rejects the metaphysical possibility that things in themselves are spatial (the so-called “neglected alternative”) by arguing that all possible spaces are mere parts of the actual, subjective space given in a priori intuition. I claim that Kant establishes this by denying that it is possible to employ spatiotemporal predicates to conceive of any space that is wholly discrete from intuitive space. I argue that Kant develops a version of this argument as early as the Inaugural Dissertation and I go on to show how the doctrines he adduces in defending this argument help to resolve two longstanding criticisms of his critical philosophy. First, I argue that Kant can consistently uphold the intelligibility of noumenal causation because causal predicates are not subject to the representational limitations he upholds for spatiotemporal predicates. I close by arguing that Kant has available to him a considerably stronger argument against the possibility of non-Euclidean geometries than he is often taken to have and that this argument depends upon claims about the representational and referential capacity of spatial predicates that he defends in arguing for transcendental idealism.

Committee: Lisa Shabel PhD (Advisor); Lisa Downing PhD (Committee Member); Sukjae Lee PhD (Committee Member); William Taschek PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Philosophy

A practical reason, in my terminology, is a consideration in favor of doing something, a normative entity that ought to be weighed in when deciding what to do. A neo-Humean subjectivist about practical reasons thinks that there is, in the very least, a standard connection between having a basic, unmotivated desire and having a practical reason to take the means to its satisfaction. Harry Frankfurt, a neo-Humean, believes that this standard connection is sometimes severed. In some instances, an agent has a basic desire, recognizes one or more adequate means, and yet has no practical reason whatsoever to take any of these means because the desire itself “does not deserve a voice” in practical deliberation. Call a desire that is not able to generate practical reasons a “rationally impotent desire.” Is Frankfurt correct? Are there rationally impotent basic desires? And is the neo-Humean able to explain how a basic desire is able to be rendered rationally impotent? I argue that there are rationally impotent basic desires; that the neo-Humean is able to account for them, by appealing to volitional norms contained in personal ideals; and that my subjectivist account of rationally impotent basic desires is stronger and more plausible than the proposals made by Kant and the neo-Kantian Christine Korsgaard.

Committee: Donald Hubin (Advisor) Subjects: Philosophy