Dissertation
A moral perspective for understanding evaluators' responsibility assessment for an act
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2012
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/111697
Abstract
This study has three objectives: (1) to examine the effect of evaluators' perceptions of the intensity of the victims' emotional distress, the perpetrator's moral affect, and consideration of the perpetrator's intent on evaluators' responsibility assessment, (2) to examine the responses of different groups of evaluators (i.e., jurors and hackers) to a computer incident (positive or negative intent act), and (3) to examine whether the perpetrator's intent (i.e., negative versus positive) of an act leads evaluators to respond differently. The first objective was accomplished via a test of research model. The second objective was examined via a research question that compared the responses of jurors and hackers. The third objective was investigated via a research question that compared the jurors' and hackers' responses to two scenarios; one containing a positive intent act and the other describing a negative intent act.
The current study used the survey method to examine these issues. The findings suggested that perceived intensity of emotional distress influenced the evaluators' (jurors and hackers) perception of the perpetrator's moral affect, which in turn, affected their assessment of responsibility for emotional distress and subsequent assessment of responsibility for the act. Further, jurors considered the perpetrator's intent in their responsibility evaluations. However, this effect was not observed with hackers. Although jurors and hackers had similar perceived intensity of emotional distress and perception of the perpetrator's moral affect, their responsibility assessments were different. Compared to hackers, jurors assessed more responsibility for emotional distress to the perpetrator for the negative intent act, and assessed more responsibility for the act to the perpetrator for the positive intent act. Thus, the nature of intent affected the evaluators' responses to a certain extent. The findings also showed that intensity of emotional distress had an effect on moral affect in the positive intent situation for both jurors and hackers. This effect did not lead to differences in the jurors' responsibility assessment. However, hackers assessed more responsibility for emotional distress and less responsibility for the act to the perpetrator in the positive intent situation.
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Details
- Title
- A moral perspective for understanding evaluators' responsibility assessment for an act
- Creators
- Suparak Janjarasjit
- Contributors
- Siew H. Chan (Advisor)Susan Gill (Committee Member)Craig D. Parks (Committee Member)Sally I. Wright (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Carson College of Business
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 112
- Identifiers
- 99900581544201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation