of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy SELF-ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY AND ATTITUDE CHANGE AS FUNCTIONS OF THE ATTRIBUTIONS OF OTHERS

The alignment of collective goals and individual behavior has been extensively studied by economists under a principal-agent framework. Two main solutions have been presented: explicit incentive contracts and monitoring. These solutions correspond to changes in the objective situation faced by individuals. However, an extensive literature in social psychology provides evidence that behavior is ...

This research is aimed to study whether we will have the same attitude change when we have the same intensity of cognitive or emotional level for attitude. People who have higher involvement will be persuaded by central route and low involvement will be persuaded by peripheral route: the matching effect in attitude change. The present study controlled the intensity of both cognitive and emotion...

With a goal to investigate the dynamics of online persuasion, this research extends the Elaboration Likelihood Model to determine the relative effects of argument quality as a central route to influence attitude change versus design elements (specifically image appeal, navigation design, and connectedness) as peripheral route cues to attitude change. Results emanating from this research are bas...

In studying the effects of distraction on attitude change, Festinger and Maccoby hypothesized that individuals would change their attitudes more if distracted during the presentation of a persuasive communication, since the active process of counterargument was inhibited. McGuire noted that a learning-theory approach would predict opposite results since distraction should inhibit reception of t...

The literature concerning the controversy between dissonance and selfperception theories is reviewed. It is proposed that the two theories be regarded not as “competing” formulations but as complementary ones and, furthermore, that each theory is applicable only to its own specialized domain. Self-perception theory, it is suggested, accurately characterizes attitude change phenomena in the cont...

BACKGROUND Domestic violence (DV) is a serious problem all over the world which had been extended to boundaries of countries, economical, cultural and racial classes. 10-69 percent of women are exposed to physical, sexual and emotional violence which has numerous physical and emotional consequences. Therefore, males' attitude towards women is one of the strongest predicting factors of violence ...

This paper presents a recurrent neural network model of long term attitude change resulting from the reduction of cognitive dissonance. The model uses Contrastive Hebbian Learning (CHL) to capture changes in weight strength among cognitions resulting from dissonance reduction. Several authors have presented recurrent network models of dissonance reduction that capture the constraint satisfactio...

In response to agriculture's vulnerability and contribution to climate change, many governments are developing initiatives that promote the adoption of mitigation and adaptation practices among farmers. Since most climate policies affecting agriculture rely on voluntary efforts by individual farmers, success requires a sound understanding of the factors that motivate farmers to change practices...

Users’ attitudes depict one of the main determinants, why individuals use information systems. However, in the basic theoretical understanding of social psychology research attitude could be shaped in two different ways; attitude formation and attitude change. Within this paper, both attitude research streams are theoretically reflected as well as observed in IT adoption literature using data o...