Investigated reactions of others to the surviving spouse of an individual who commits suicide. Results indicated (compared to those spouses of accident and leukemia victims) that the spouse of a suicide was viewed as being more to blame for the death, as having had a greater chance of preventing the death, and as being more ashamed of the death.…

The attributional perspective on leadership, which suggests the social construction of organizational realities attributes to leadership the activities and outcomes of organizations, was supported by the results of three archival studies and a series of experimental studies. Tables, figures, and 64 references are provided. (DCS)

Compared persons who attended career workshops and those who registered but did not attend. Interviews with nonattenders showed 45 percent had forgotten or felt discouraged, 38 percent gave environmental reasons, and 17 percent indicated they had already met their goals. (JAC)

Twenty-six severely learning disabled students aged 10 through 20 enrolled in a special residential school were interviewed. Most were found to have very little insight into the nature of LD and tended to attribute their learning problems to their own lack of effort. (Author/CL)

Compared reasons given by divorced men and women (N=335) for the failure of their marriages. Structural and demographic variables, including sex, socioeconomic status, religion, age at marriage, parental approval, duration, number of children, and premarital acquaintance were mentioned. Results suggested that different types of marriage breakdown…

The study was to determine when the patterns of causal evidence proposed by Orvis, Cunningham and Kelly (1975) begin to function as schemata in the attributional process. One hundred forty-four subjects took part in the study. (RH)

Seventy-six children ages four to eight were tested first in a reward-allocation task in which they had to divide a reward between two stimulus characters painting a fence. The characters differed in painting abilities, effort put into the job, and amount of fence painted. Then the same children's understanding of causal relationships among…

Thirty learning disabled (LD) and 30 normal achieving (NA) elementary-aged pupils' attributions, expectations, affect, and persistence were assessed. Ability attributions for failure differed for LD and NA pupils. In addition, effort was judged as more important in determining success than failure for both LD and NA pupils. (Author/SB)

Replicates Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, and Maracek (1973) using preschoolers instead of adults to see whether preschoolers tend to attribute cause more to external factors when judging their own behavior than when they are acting as observers of other people's behavior. (RH)

A data analysis model is proposed for studies concerning attribution theory. The model is based on the author's previous work in the area of trait view theory. (JKS)

Results indicated that: (1) high information was ranked most important for drawing a stimulus inference; (2) low distinctiveness information was most important for drawing a person inference; and (3) low consistency information was most important for drawing a circumstance inference. (Author)

A theory of the lay epistemic process is outlined. An integrative framework is provided that allows consideration of diverse attributional models in common theoretical terms and derivation of the necessary applicability conditions of different such models. (Author/RL)

Observers tend to attribute causality for an actor's behavior to dispositional characteristics of the actor rather than to external factors. Determined whether dynamic qualities of the actor can account for observers' attentional and attributional behavior. Revealed that greater causality was attributed to the dynamic actor. (Author)

To determine whether heart rate increase can be attributed to increased sucking amplitude for sweeter fluids, sucking and heart rate of 20 full-term infants were studied. (MP)

Two studies conducted with children in kindergarten and grades 1-3 tested the hypothesis that the attribution of manipulative intentions to the donor underlies the tendency to discount intrinsic interest in the presence of rewards. The children made attributions for the behavior of story characters who had been offered a reward for task…