Two studies, involving elementary school children, investigated children's representation of adults' use of the moral intentionality principle, with particular emphasis on the distinction between causal attributions of events-to-the-situation vs. events-to-the-person. (JS)

American culture attributes success and failure to four factors (native ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck) existing on three continuums (locus, stability, and controllability). This article applies attribution theory to students' beliefs concerning their present and future academic performance and explores implications for both students…

Motivation of band members was tested by asking them a series of questions related to whether they ever challenged for chair positions and their satisfaction with their present placement and skill. Concludes failure and lack of satisfaction with one's current level of performance resulted in fewer challenges and external attributions of success.…

The realities of indirect service delivery are examined, and indirect services that might ideally be provided are considered. Obstacles to moving into a more indirect service oriented model of service delivery, including system-level factors, personal factors, and training factors are discussed. Suggestions are provided for overcoming obstacles.…

Reviews knowledge about suicide in alcoholism: how commonly suicide among alcoholics occurs; which alcoholics commit suicide and why; suicide among alcoholic women and alcoholic physicians; possible predisposing biological factors; possible linkages with depression, adverse life events, and personality disorder; and future research and directions.…

Interviewed heart attack victims (N=287) seven weeks and eight years after their attack. Explored interrelations among causal attributions for the attack, survivor morbidity, and heart attack recurrence. Found that patients who cited benefits from their misfortune seven weeks after the first attack were less likely to have another attack and had…

Chicana and Anglo female subjects responded to verbal descriptions in which an Anglo, Black, or Chicana female experienced either occupational success or failure. Significant variations were found in attributions for occupational outcome as a function of ethnic background of both the subject and the succeeding or failing actor. (Author/GC)

Assessed use of certain rules for judging intentionality of action-outcomes by children of 3, 7, and 11 years. Intentionality judgments based on matching rather than objective rules were observed more frequently. It was concluded that matching rule emerges first in development and is more essential than various objective rules. (Author/DST)

Presents three studies which examined adults' and preschoolers' sensitivity to implicit causality in interpersonal verbs. Findings suggest that the scenes concerning the causes and consequences of interpersonal events can readily be activated in the process of understanding these verbs. This finding holds true for both preschoolers and adults.…

A model grounded in recent ordinary language philosophy is proposed which postulates that subjects employ counterfactual and contrastive criteria of causal ascription, as unified in the notion of an abnormal condition. Two experiments satisfy the three criteria specified for an adequate test of the abnormal conditions focus model. (Author/LMO)

Investigated expected outcome on a test as a determinant of mood among college students. No correlation between mood and expected result was found. However, anticipated emotions, attributions of the expected result to chance and attribution of mood to the exam did correlated with mood. Female students were more affected than males. (Author/BL)

Reviews studies which examine spontaneous attributional activity. The paradigms include the coding of written material, recording of thoughts during or after task completion, and indirect inferences of attributional activity exhibited in other cognitive processes. Finds unequivocal documentation of attributional activity and the conditions that…

The Mathematics Attribution Scale (MAS) (Algebra) was designed to assess attributions of success and failure in algebra to ability, effort, task, and environment. This study examined the MAS (Algebra) for a separate dimension of attributes for success and a dimension of attributes for failure. The two hypothesized dimensions did not emerge.…

Investigated the application of the empathic set effect to perceptions of domestic violence in college students (N=116). Results indicated that observers can be induced to make attributions about another's behavior that consider environmental factors as contributing to behavior and not attribute such behavior solely to internal or dispositional…

Attempts to assess whether social learning or attributional theory best accounts for expectancies of future success in college students (N=159) with a modification of a task used by Weiner and Kukla (1970). Results indicated partial support for elements of both the social learning and attribution theories. (LLL)