Browsing by Subject "Belief and doubt"
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Item An analysis of the relationship between open-closed belief-disbelief systems and security-insecurity(Texas Tech University, 1972-05) Montgomery, Peter Samuel,Not availableItem Children's understanding of the normativity of belief(2002-05) Koenig, Melissa Ann; Echols, Catharine H.; Woolley, Jacqueline D.The variety of accounts of theory of mind development, arising from distinct theoretical perspectives, have focused on children’s causal-explanatory views on the mind and have not developed accounts of children’s normative judgments of the mental domain. This account proposes a new way of thinking about the findings of various domains in this field and gives particular attention to prior work on false belief, origins or sources of belief and the distinctions between fantastical and epistemic states. Children's understanding of epistemic justification and their appreciation of the normative significance of others' reasons for belief was investigated in 2 experiments. Three-, 4- and 5-year-olds were presented with the opportunity to direct praise, criticism and advice to others who have different kinds of evidence for what they believe. Experiment 1 determined that children of all age groups appropriately judged looking, reliable testimony and inductive inference as better reasons for belief than pretense, guessing and desiring, however, 3-year-olds did not perform as well as 4- and 5-year-olds. In Experiment 2, children of all age groups consistently praised justified true believers and had difficulty evaluating justified false, unjustified true and unjustified false believers.Item Relationships between beliefs, attitudes, intentions and participation in an hypnotic induction: an examination of two models of estimating future behavior(Texas Tech University, 1988-08) Copley, James WFishbein and Ajzen (1980) proposed a "value expectancy model" of attitude formation postulating that the sum strength of our beliefs and their concurrent, affective evaluation of the beliefs, combine to determine attitudes toward performance of an action. The attitude then influences our intentions to perform the act and that intention has a direct influence upon our behavior. They stated that a limited number of beliefs were needed to estimate attitude. Bagozzi (1981) suggested that their model failed to allow for the complexity of the relationship between beliefs and behavior. Two models were submitted which proposed that attitudes had a more direct influence on behavior than simply influencing intention and that past behavior had a major influence on future behavior. That contention was also supported by research by Bem (1972), who forwarded the theory that attitudes were determined primarily by previous behaviors and beliefs and attitudes were influential only to the extent that some behavioral history was limited or nonexistent. This author proffered a factorial model based on previous models and research which had contradicted Fishbein and Ajzen's model. Given the intricate relationship between behavior, attitudes and beliefs, an action with low probability of prior performance was sought. Copley (1981) found less than one percent of sampled students had any experience with hypnosis. He reported strong positive correlations between attitudes and sequelae experienced following hypnosis and other procedures. Therefore, hypnosis was chosen as the target behavior. Results of this study indicated that beliefs were multi-dimensional with seven factors related to hypnosis. Two meta-factors emerged. The primary meta-f actor was based on fears and negative events while the secondary one involved neutral and positive events. Findings only partially supported the Fishbein and Ajzen model. Primary beliefs comprised the second factor and correlated highest with measures of attitude and intention. The additive model did not result in relationships as predicted in all cases but provided estimates of attitude equal to the factorial model. Relationships between beliefs, attitudes, intentions and behavior decreased as distance between variables increased, which was also supported the additive model. Anomalies in the results provided support for the factorial model. The presence of multiple dimensions, some of which had stronger relationships with intentions, also supported the factorial nKxiel. Conclusions suggested that anomalies provided greater error variance and conversely made the tests more conservative. Outcomes were suggested to be indicative of important statistical and methodological implications for future research. These included differing results in relationships dependent on whether parametric or nonparametric analyses were used.Item Skepticism, faith, and knowledge: an analysis of the epistemological implications of skepticism(Texas Tech University, 2001-08) Nelson, Douglas RayNOT AVAILABLE