On performance tasks, individuals tend to attribute success to their own ability and effort while attributing failure to task difficulty and luck. To investigate the possiblity that the asymmetry in causal attributions for positive and negative outcomes occurs independent of any bias resulting from self-presentation concerns, 80 female college…

While attributions have traditionally been viewed as social cognition variables, some researchers have proposed that individual differences exist in attributional patterns and that these patterns are differentially related to and predictive of various behaviors. A study was conducted to examine the question of attribution style as a trait-like…

Recently, research has begun to identify the social cognitive dysfunctions that aggressive children display. Using noninteractive laboratory tasks, aggressive children were found to perceive more hostile intentions from others in ambiguous situations than did nonaggressive children. Research has not investigated if this bias occurs in truly…

Sexual choices and sexual behavior involve complex cognitive as well as affective processes. Models which denote cognitive processes influencing sexual behavior are needed. Attribution theory is a prominent social-cognition model that may influence these phenomena. This study was conducted to determine whether or not different virginity status…

Although understanding how causal attributions for performance develop is important to attribution theory, little research has been done on this topic. To explore changes in attributions during task performance for both actors and observers, 90 female undergraduates participated in a procedure in which they received either 80 percent or 20 percent…

In an attempt to replicate an earlier study of attribution of responsibility (Experiment 2 of Samuel et. al, 1981), this research utilized a case study describing an 18-year-old named Johnny who tripped and fell while shoplifting a rifle from a sporting goods store; the gun fired, inflicting either minor or critical injuries on a nearby customer.…

Previous research linking life events and psychological well being may have been biased by traditional retrospective designs. To eliminate retrospective bias, a prospective design was used in which events were measured before the criterion had occurred. Subjects were 209 male and 159 female participants in the Augmented Baltimore Longitudinal…

A study was conducted to determine the correspondence between the effects of task purposes and goal-setting strategies on preschoolers' unmonitored compliance, and their internal attributions for compliance. A total of 97 preschool children of 4-5 years of age participated in two 5-minute compliance tests that employed a resistance-to-distraction…

Bulman and Wortman's (1977) study of severe accident victims showed that victims who blamed themselves as the cause of the accident were more likely to receive higher coping ratings from a nurse or social worker, while victims who blamed others for the accident or who saw the accident as avoidable were more likely to be rated as having coped…

A previous study examined determinants of attributions for success or failure in stopping smoking in a self-help treatment program with and without a drug component. This follow-up study examined the attributions that successful quitters made after remaining abstinent through 12 months, or after they relapsed. Subjects (N=137) had been assigned to…

The search for and generation of causal explanations required by the task of explaining an initial impression, appear to be sufficient to raise the subjective likelihood of the event explained and to result in the persistence of the initial impression. Generating supporting and counter arguments with respect to the event does not result in an…

Correlation-based approaches to causal analysis contain too much irrelevant information that masks and modulates the true nature of causal processes in the world. Both causal modeling and path analysis/structural equations give the wrong answers for certain conceptions of causation, given certain assumptions about the "error" variables.…

Splitting, a primitive defense mechanism of young children in confusing or ambivalent situations, in psychoanalytic theory is characteristic of those with borderline or narcissistic diagnoses. It may recur in adults negotiating co-parenting relationships following divorce and remarriage. Two types of splitting may occur: self-other in which the…

Basic Training (BT) is designed to prepare recruits for their new role as members of the military. The psychological effects of this experience can have important implications for recruits' later effectiveness in the military. Locus of control is one psychological construct which can be important for overall psychological and behavioral adaptation…

In an experimental study, subjects (practicing and preservice teachers) had to take the role of either a pupil or a teacher in viewing a new student. They inspected for thirty seconds a list of sixteen adjectives used to describe students, half belonging to a teacher's implicit personality theory of pupils, and half belonging to a (hypothetical)…