A selected review of the effects of various grading systems on student motivation at the university level has been summarized and interpreted. Particular emphasis is devoted to contract grading and the identification of student characteristics, both personal and intellectual, that appear to interact favorably with this relatively new grading…

Tests the hypothesis that individuals are more likely to view their own behavior as caused by the situation and the behavior of others as caused by underlying personality dispositions. Subjects were 100 undergraduate students. (MP)

The relation between past history of outcomes and achievement expectancies was examined for 72 elementary school students. (JMB)

Explored whether and to what degree differences between actor and observer were likely to occur in the mutual attributions of 40 married couples regarding the causes of each other's behavior. Results revealed that married couples exhibited mutual idealizing tendencies in both their perceptions and causal attributions. (Author/ABB)

The hypothesis that, when trying to decide whether the person, stimulus, or circumstance is the cause of an event, individuals increasingly select schema-consistent information with increasing age was tested in 106 Turkish 9-, 12-, and 17-year-old subjects. (Author/RH)

Investigated six- to nine-year-old children's understanding of the principle of mutual trust by testing children's ability to make correct blame attributions on the basis of second-order beliefs. Subjects were presented with four story frames. Stories differed in protagonist's second-order belief about another's knowledge. (Author/NH)

Preschoolers were accurate in identifying the situational determinants of others' real emotions. Their strategies for remediating negative affect in others were consistent with the type and attributional basis of the emotion to be altered. Further, they used contextual information in significantly different and meaningful ways across and within…

Employing the multidimensional scaling of similarities data, studied person perception in five adult-aged groups of both male and female respondents. Identified three basic attributes: perceived age, perceived gender, and perceived autonomy. Discerned several generalizable trends for the attributes of perceived age and perceived autonomy.…

Investigated interrelationships between perceived causes of divorce in a sample of 275 males and 336 females. Seven dimensions of divorce, underlying 18 possible contributing causes, were revealed. Significant differences were found between the sexes both in frequencies with which causes were identified and in composition of the seven factors.…

Examined data on students' perceptions of certain academic factors, faculty and advisors, and university factors to interpret reasons for leaving college. Subjects (N=370) completed questionnaires, which showed that students left school most often due to dissatisfaction with academic programs, unclear career objectives, and unclear educational…

Patterns of academic attributions, developed by 225 hearing impaired college students to explain success or failure, closely resembled those of hearing students. The internal factors of ability and effort received the strongest attributional ratings for success, whereas the external and unstable factor or luck received the weakest rating.…

Attributional bias (unrealistic optimism and responsibility) was examined in relationship to conflict among married and divorced individuals. Individuals perceived themselves as better than average and as more responsible than their partners for marital problems. Optimism bias was lower among divorced individuals and those with a higher level of…

Manipulated the content of attributional interpretations and their discrepancy from client attributions (N=38) to examine the respective importance of these two variables to the effectiveness of interpretation. Results indicated that interpretation content was irrelevant to change in clients' negative emotions, attributional styles, and…

Sixteen "helpless" learning disabled students (grades four to five) assigned to an attribution training group demonstrated greater reading persistence and showed significant increases in effort attributions for failure as well as more internal attributions for achievement situations when compared to Ss in the control group. Treatment gains for…

Investigated whether leader's (N=89) locus of control moderated the relationship between perceived leader influence behaviors and certain subordinate (N=245) outcome variables. The results showed that locus of control did significantly moderate the effect of supervisor influence on productivity and subordinate satisfaction with supervision. (JAC)