The Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) approach to leadership emphasizes the interactive nature of the superior-subordinate relationship, asserting that an individual's role in an organization is defined through a series of episodes with the supervisor. Because work-related values are potentially important subordinate characteristics in LMX development,…

Previous research has consistently demonstrated that variations in physical attractiveness elicit different evaluative and behavioral responses. To assess differences in affective responses to variations in physical attractiveness and the affect of sex on those responses, 76 college students (31 male and 45 female) viewed colored slides of an…

Although women continue to obtain full-time jobs at ever increasing rates, they remain dramatically underrepresented at the managerial level. To examine the impact of physical attractiveness and job type (traditional or nontraditional), and the interaction of these two factors on attributions about women's competence, 174 working adults (76 males…

During the last decade, the attributional aproach to achievement motivation has evolved into a powerful theory of motivated classroom behavior. Causal attributions, and their dimensional nature, are seen as influencing achievement behaviors through their effects on the expectations that individuals hold for outcomes in future achievement…

Goals of this study were to: (1) assess mothers' perceptions of their role in fostering their preschooler's cognitive learning; (2) examine attributions used by mothers to explain why they experience ease or difficulty helping their preschooler learn; and (3) relate maternal perceived level of ease/difficulty to attributions for the reasons…

Results of a pilot study on the role of the family in the development of locus of control convictions and causal attribution tendencies are presented. Six mother-child dyads were observed in their natural surroundings. Mothers' verbal responses to their daughters' behavior were recorded and analyzed for content. Results showed (1) that causal…

Previous research has found that outside events seem to have little effect on happiness. Three studies in New Zealand were conducted to identify mental processes that give circumstances their favorable and unfavorable meanings. The first study examined the gap between aspiration and achievement in terms of income, education, physical fitness,…

A review of the literature reveals that several common characteristics are used to describe battered women, e.g., low self-esteem, passive, guilty, depressed, dependent. To test the accuracy of these descriptions, the 16 PF Personality Inventory was administered to 30 battered women. Analyses confirmed that abused women exhibited significantly…

Research on moral development and behavior has traditionally emphasized person related variables such as level or stage of moral reasoning, individual differences in moral traits and dispositions, or past reinforcement history. The effects of context on moral action and decision, in contrast, have received relatively little attention. It is…

Low self-esteem and depressed individuals tend to have an attributional style of externalizing success and internalizing failure. To evaluate a program developed to help reverse this pattern of responses to be more similar to high self-esteem and nondepressed individuals, subjects were first tested for self-esteem, depression, and attributional…

Past research indicates that people employ different strategies to manage others' impressions; however, conditions which make these strategies effective remain unclear. Using a sample of college students (N=345), the effectiveness of self-presentational strategies on influencing others' attributions of causes for expected and unexpected helping…

While little research has been done in the area of shyness and most of that has been descriptive, both theory and research suggest that investigation of expectancy of success and attributional style differences between shy and not-shy individuals is warranted. Very shy (N=49) or not-shy (N=48) female subjects, selected from an initial group of 698…

Attribution theory and gerontology would be enriched by the application of a life-span approach to attribution, involving increased attention to the age of the stimulus person and developmental factors associated with self-attribution. In studies on achievement attributions about older people, chronological age appears to be a more salient cue for…

Incest is an issue that generates strong emotional reactions in psychotherapists as well as laypeople. Clinicians may not be immune to the tendancy to overreact by predicting poor outcomes for incest victims or by denying its importance altogether. To assess the effect of incest on the evaluations of female clients by therapists, 124 clinicians…

Research has suggested that race and sex are strongly associated with the "imposter phenomenon" (I-P), a secret, intense, subjective self-perception of phoniness experienced by many high achievers. Sex, race, and perceived atypicality were examined in relation to the imposter phenomenon for 30 persons with adequate achievement in career…