Male and female applicants to traditionally masculine or feminine fields of study were rated by 518 college students regarding their attributions of the applicant's skill and of luck as a factor in the applicant's predicted success. A five factor analysis of variance with attitude towards feminism, sex of subject, sex of applicant, sex of field,…

Entrance into college is considered a stressful experience, with many students experiencing depression and maladjustment. A longitudinal study was conducted to investigate three major models of depression among college students, i.e., the life events model, the cognitive-attributional model, and the social support model. Subjects were 134 freshmen…

Students in grades four, five, and six who represented three classifications of ability were compared for their conceptualizations, attributions, and attitudes about school grading practices. Intellectually gifted, learning disabled, and normally achieving students were assessed. Significant differences were found among the three groups,…

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that variables such as social class, sex, race, I.Q. and school achievement influence a child's anxiety through their influence on the child's tendency to attribute his failures to low ability. The research method selected was a survey design in which nearly simultaneous data were gathered on…

Efforts to understand mediating and maintaining factors associated with dysfunction of alcoholics have produced competing explanations and conflicting, overlapping constructs. To clarify the relationship between mental health and attributional patterns among women, the attributional patterns of alcoholic, depressed, and control females in response…

Previous research has suggested that Rotter's concept of locus of control is significantly related to a variety of attitudes and behaviors. To study the effects of sex, race, and social class differences, a projective measure of locus of control was developed to explore the relationship between control orientation and career aspirations for 432…

Research has provided support for the existence of certain actor-observer and self-serving biases in individuals' retrospective analyses about the causes of behavior. A question that has been relatively unexplored deals with whether the findings on actor-observer differences and the self-serving pattern in attributions are generalizable to…

In an impression explanation of counterdefensive attributions, the tendency of subjects is to accept primary responsibility for negative outcomes and to deny credit for positive outcomes. Counterdefensive attributions represent attempts at maximizing the esteem in which observers hold the actor. To test this hypothesis, a 2 x 5 simulation was…

Defensiveness is the most frequently utilized concept to explain inadequate change on the part of consultees. Defensiveness, in this context, indicates a motive to protect a central component of the self-concept, or a motive to present oneself favorably. Another source of consultee resistance to change results from the limitations of the human…

Sixty undergraduate women interacted in dyads with female experimental confederates in a study of the interactive effects of social attributions and environmental controllability on interpersonal assertion. The environment was systematically varied on two dimensions of social power or control: (1) social responsiveness of the confederate, and (2)…

The attitudes of student teachers and supervising teachers were tested according to six attributional categories: (1) pupil ability; (2) pupil effort; (3) student teacher's ability to teach; (4) student teacher's effort; (5) help from the supervising teacher; and (6) difficulty of the task. Several conclusions were reached: (1) When pupils succeed…

Although alcohol is frequently cited by battered wives and the general public as a cause of marital violence, few researchers actually propose a direct causal relationship between alcohol and marital violence. Interviews were conducted to investigate the role of alcohol in the violent marriages of 185 women and the nonviolent marriages of 89…

Research has not identified any consistent relationships between participation in high school sex education programs and the sexual attitudes and behaviors of college students. Results of preliminary research into the relationship of sex education and developing sexuality have shown few significant correlations. A sample of college students…

Although women are entering the work force in record numbers, little is known about their work lives. An understanding of educated women's attributions as to the reasons for changes in their work history and the effect of these attributions on work experience is needed. A secondary analysis was conducted for a longitudinal data set consisting of…

A model of persuasion suggests that individuals comply with a prediction of their behavior because they are persuaded by that prediction; a model of threat suggests that they defy prediction because of its threat of control. College students with either internal (N=20) or external (N=20) loci of control were informed of the accuracy of the…