Much of psychology focuses on universal principles of thought and action. Although an extremely productive pursuit, this approach, by describing only the "average person," risks describing no one in particular. This article discusses an alternate approach that complements interests in universal principles with analyses of the unique psychological…

This paper reviews the development of attribution theory as it relates to sport from Fritz Heider's original model of attribution theory in 1958 to the present. The original model explains that individuals use four attribution factors to interpret and predict the outcome of an event--ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck. Bernard Weiner built…

The causal attributions of 142 parents (80 mothers and 62 fathers) of Turkish children with mental retardation and autism for their child's disabilities were investigated in this study, which also examined the relationship of these attributions with stress. Parents were given a questionnaire designed to tap potential parental causal attributions…

Quality circles, a management practice that involves groups of workers from the same work area voluntarily meeting on a regular basis to identify, analyze, and solve various work-related problems, have been used in Japan for over 40 years. In the United States, quality circles have been tried in many organizations during the past 2 decades and…

Approaches used by linguists to examine the way in which speakers or writers modify their commitment to the propositional content of their utterances are discussed, and it is noted that a frequent criticism is the failure of inexperienced speakers or writers to modulate their utterances properly. This paper considers economic reports and in…

A study examined the means by which inferences and emotions combine to motivate conflict escalation in response to nonverbal displays of status. Subjects, 64 male and 105 female volunteers enrolled in communication courses at a university located in the northeastern part of the United States, completed a verbal aggressiveness scale and a personal…

Although attractive people are often assumed to have many socially desirable characteristics, observers also attribute certain negative traits to them (i.e., more snobbish, more materialistic, more likely to be unfaithful). To examine whether unattractive people would be seen as more machiavellian (having more negative traits) and whether…

Both external locus of control (i.e., a generalized expectancy that reinforcement is controlled by luck or fate instead of oneself) and internal locus of attribution (i.e., beliefs that success or failure result from an individual's actions rather than external causes) have been related to depression. To examine the relationship of attributions…

A study was made to determine whether there exists a group of overpersisting children who are considered mastery-oriented because of their persistence but who actually demonstrate characteristics of learned helplessness. Subjects were 71 females and 84 males from fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classrooms. Children's scores on the Intellectual…

To examine the role of friendship among children involved in potential conflicts, 37 aggressive, 37 non-aggressive, and 76 "intermediate" third- and fifth-grade boys were presented with a variety of potentially conflictual situations, nine in story form and one involving a contest. Each situation involved a negative or ambiguous outcome…

Previous research provides support for two distinct models of expectation behavior in experimental games. The similarity pattern describes expectations that are similar to the actor's behavior regardless of whether the actor is cooperative or competitive. The triangularity pattern describes expectations that are both similar and dissimilar to…

John Bowlby's theory of affectional bonding and the reformulated learned helplessness theory of depression were integrated into a multivariate model in order to expand the breadth of current attributional theories of depression. This retrospective study focused upon the quality of parent-child relations, the types of discipline parents employed,…

Clients' causal explanations for their psychological difficulties have received significant notice in the research literature. In contrast, few studies have focused on the attributions formulated by counselors regarding their clients' difficulties. Attributional approaches to counseling suggest that both client and counselor attributions can…

This study investigated the reformulated theory of learned helplessness, centering around attributional style in the cause of cognitive and emotional deficits. Subjects (N=58) were undergraduate and graduate psychology students at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Subjects were divided into an experimental group (N=30) who received…

Attribution theorists have argued that if an intrinsically motivated activity is extrinsically reinforced, the activity will be devalued and extinguished when the reward is removed. Hypothesizing that activities performed for their instrumental outcome are valued less than activities not so externally oriented, and that activities performed for…