The purpose of the present study was to examine European American and Mainland Chinese mothers' responses to preschoolers' social behaviours (aggression and social withdrawal) within a cultural framework. Participants were 103 European American mothers from Washington DC, and 100 Mainland Chinese mothers from Beijing and Baoding cities, China. The…

Infant temperament is theorized to have a strong genetic basis. Yet, studies of the stability of temperament and molecular genetics research on temperament have revealed inconsistent findings. One reason may be because research has not taken into account the influence of early social experiences. We review research on aspects of infant…

This is a study on 422 female prisoners in peninsular Malaysia. More than half of the female prisoners are foreigners, mainly from Indonesia and Thailand. This study surveys the background of the respondents and identifies factors that may have influenced them to commit the offences. Female prisoners in Malaysia, particularly those who are…

This article reports on the grouping practices used by a cohort of 10 newly qualified primary teachers for teaching mathematics in different English primary schools. It examines the factors that influence why these teachers group as they do. All the teachers grouped their pupils on the basis of achievement or perceived ability for mathematics. It…

"School refuser" is an always-already negative child identity. The term is used to categorize children or adolescents who appear to dislike and fear school (or aspects of school) and persistently refuse to attend or attend very unwillingly. Given that school attendance is generally considered a necessary social good, regular and anxious…

Although the impact of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) on the family is well recognized, the way mothers attempt to make sense of the diagnosis is largely unexplored. However, in other disabilities, attributions have been shown to predict a variety of outcomes including maternal wellbeing and engagement in treatment. Using Weiner's (1985)…

Although optimism is generally regarded as a positive dispositional characteristic, unmitigated optimism can be problematic. The adaptiveness of overly optimistic expectations in novel or unfamiliar settings is questionable because individuals have little relevant experience on which to base such expectations. In this four-phase longitudinal…

Martin Seligman's psychology research on depression, published in 7 books and hundreds of articles, shows a correlation between attributional style and depression. "Explanatory style" is another term nearly synonymous with attributional style, a habitual way to explain, positively or negatively, external events. A "learned"…

This study explores the influence of cognitive development and health self-perception on Brazilian students' beliefs on the causes of health and illness. Ninety-six randomly selected elementary and junior high school students from two schools in the north area of Rio De Janeiro County were interviewed individually by an investigator. Subjects who…

Research on white college males has shown that people have a more complex schema regarding in-groups than out-groups. In an attempt to replicate the studies (Linville and Jones) on cognitive complexity and liking with a noncollege, racially and sexually mixed population, 60 randomly selected adult males and females read three vignettes describing…

The achievement locus of control of 64 Hispanic and 87 Anglo students enrolled in grades 9-12 in 2 high schools in a large school district in the Southwest was examined with the Multidimensional-Multiattributional Causality Scale (MMCS). Ethnic and sex differences in the attributions of academic success or failure to ability, effort, context, or…

Androgyny research has been hampered by a dependency upon traditional masculine and feminine sex roles for definition. Bakan's (1966) concept of agency and communion, which parallels masculinity and femininity, refers to behavioral competencies, involving a style or manner of interacting with the environment devoid of gender designations and…

Research suggests that observers of spouse abuse are likely to arrive at overly dispositional causal explanations for the abusive behavior, and reject both the abusing spouse and his victim. To examine observers' causal attributions and person perceptions under varying conditions, 160 college students read a vignette about an incident of spouse…

The construct of locus of control formulated by Rotter (1966) is being increasingly emphasized in personality functioning, since it appears to be related to several classes of behavior. It is also being considered as an important construct in cross-cultural research. Cross-cultural comparisons are particularly important, not just because they may…

This paper examines the ways in which children's beliefs about their abilities influence their academic achievement. These beliefs interact with the demands of different tasks or learning situations. Research is described which deals with children's causal attributions for their academic success or failure and with children's definitions of…