Perceptions of supervisor bias can profoundly affect employee morale, yet the perceiver usually infers bias from limited information. In this study, 95 male and female undergraduate students participated in groups of 2 to 5 for course credit, playing the role of middle-level managers working in the personnel department of a fictitious company…

Case study methodology was used to provide an in-depth examination of influences on distance learners' achievement attributions in order to gather data about educational orientation, study approaches, and beliefs about success and failure. The four subjects were drawn from 15 first-year distance learners pursuing degrees at Anadolu University's…

Current research on teacher decision making reveals that ability is viewed as an important attribute in determining students' achievement and that teachers behave differently toward students of different ability levels. This study focuses on a secondary English teacher's decision making in a class she perceived to be of low ability and in one she…

While the perception of rape has been studied intensely in recent years, most scales focus on rape myths as the content domain. The need exists for a more general instrument which would include items from a variety of sources, e.g., attitudes toward rape awareness, sexual history, age, virginity, community support, etc., in addition to the myth of…

Each of 91 kindergarten and 79 second grade children attending public and parochial schools were assessed to explore possible relationships between students' performance increments and decrements on experimenter-manipulated puzzle games and their causal attribution for performance, locus of control, and self-concept. The first research question…

In addition to academic pressures shared with American students, students from other countries studying in the United States have the stress of living in an unfamiliar culture. Common symptoms of culture shock (irritability, loneliness, depression, rigidity) have been identified. Parallel symptoms have been described in the learned helplessness…

Examined were the ways peer models affect children's self-efficacy in a cognitive learning context and whether the effects of models vary depending on the sex of the subjects. Subjects were 72 fourth and fifth grade students low in subtraction skills. During pretests subjects indicated the extent to which they thought ability, effort, task…

It was hypothesized that a person's estimates of the preventability of health problems would be related to health behaviors such that a person who engages in healthful behavior should make higher estimates of preventability. A study was conducted to investigate the relationship between causal attribution of health problems and health-related…

Interpersonal power has been defined as the ability of an agent to alter the behavior of a target through means-control, attractiveness, and credibility. To identify and delineate situations of influence in personal relationships, undergraduate students either wrote influence descriptions (N=96), made similarity judgments on the original 96…

A study was made of cross-cultural patterns of achievement motivation in relationship to the mathematics achievement of Japanese and American boys and girls approximately 16 years of age. Sample sizes were 9,582 for the United States subjects (specifically, from Illinois) and 1,700 for the participants from Japan. Data came from performance on the…

In a sample of 559 fifth-grade students, measures were collected to assess: (1) dimensions of self-attribution for causes of academic outcomes; (2) multiple dimensions of self-concept; and (3) academic achievements. The empirically-derived dimensions of academic self-attribution replicated and extended results of previous research, but failed to…

The influence of intelligence, self-concept, and causal attributions on metamemory and the metamemory-memory behavior relationship in grade-school children was studied. Following the assessment of intelligence, self-concept, and causal attributions, 105 children each from grades 3, 5, and 7 were given a metamemory interview and a sort-recall task.…

Perceptions of supervisor bias can profoundly affect organizational climate and employees' morale. Based on attribution theory, it was predicted that bias would be used to explain denial of promotion when the employee had been expected to succeed. It was also predicted that social comparison information detailing the similar plight of peer women…

Past research has demonstrated the prevalence of 11 attitudes toward personal suffering among retirees: punitive, testing, personal growth, bad luck, resignation to the will of God, redemptive, divine perspective, minimizing, submission to the laws of nature, acceptance of the human condition, and defensive attitude. This study examined attitudes…

This study examines the long term effects of a compensatory reading project, the Intensive Reading Instructional Team (IRIT), which has been validated both by the Education Department's Joint Dissemination and Review Panel and the Connecticut State Department of Education. A second purpose is to demonstrate to both the hosting district and to…