Subjects read two descriptions of an actor responding positively toward a target person with different patterns of information accompanying them. In one description, the subject was the target person. Comparison between two-dimension information patterns implied that when distinctiveness or consensus information was absent results were dependent…

Results indicated that: (1) high information was ranked most important for drawing a stimulus inference; (2) low distinctiveness information was most important for drawing a person inference; and (3) low consistency information was most important for drawing a circumstance inference. (Author)

Observers tend to attribute causality for an actor's behavior to dispositional characteristics of the actor rather than to external factors. Determined whether dynamic qualities of the actor can account for observers' attentional and attributional behavior. Revealed that greater causality was attributed to the dynamic actor. (Author)

Pairs of subjects engaged in brief conversations, then made trait ratings of causal attributions about their own or other person's behavior. Although observers made more extreme trait ratings than did actors, observers also made stronger external causal attributions than did actors. Concluded that actor-observer differences in descriptions of…

Investigated British attitudes toward the poor as measured by MacDonald's Povery Scale and the Protestant Ethic Scale. Supporters of the British Conservative Party had more negative attitudes toward the poor, and were more likely to blame the poor for their fate than supporters of the British Labour Party. (JAC)

Offers rapprochement of Rotter's (1954) social learning theory with self-esteem and related constructs. Self constructs are defined and combined into a conceptual framework indicating the impact of their interrelations within a self-esteem system. An attribution model is used to clarify the impact of causal internalization on self-esteem.…

Investigated college students' (N=280) evaluations of attributions of causality, moral responsibility, and blame using two scenarios with either mild or severe consequences. Found attributions of moral responsibility were generally judged by perceivers to be more complex than attributions of causality and blame, suggesting process of attributing…

Subjects (N=82) were given either veridical or false feedback concerning their level of intimacy one week after a short structured interaction with another. Results indicated that feedback had a greater effect on the reported degree of liking for the other and the disclosure level. (Author/RC)

Assessed effects of an individual's temporal pattern of success on attributions of responsibility for winning or losing simulated free throw contests. The player on a winning team who scored at the end was judged responsible for the outcome. (Author/BEF)

Two studies were conducted that explored observers' perceptions of responsibility of a victim for her involvement in a premeditated crime. Male and female college students listened to tapes of a purported victim describing a crime (either a rape or a mugging). There was general tendency toward a sympathetic reaction pattern. (Author)

Investigated expected outcome on a test as a determinant of mood among college students. No correlation between mood and expected result was found. However, anticipated emotions, attributions of the expected result to chance and attribution of mood to the exam did correlated with mood. Female students were more affected than males. (Author/BL)

Investigated the application of the empathic set effect to perceptions of domestic violence in college students (N=116). Results indicated that observers can be induced to make attributions about another's behavior that consider environmental factors as contributing to behavior and not attribute such behavior solely to internal or dispositional…

Attempts to assess whether social learning or attributional theory best accounts for expectancies of future success in college students (N=159) with a modification of a task used by Weiner and Kukla (1970). Results indicated partial support for elements of both the social learning and attribution theories. (LLL)

Investigated the effects of the consensus and sentence structure of single sentence descriptions of different behaviors on causal attributions. High consensus produced less person attribution than did low consensus, and passive items produced more stimulus attribution than did active items. (Author)

A study of the extent to which people are likely to attribute traits to other people rather more than to themselves produced support for the Jones and Nisbett hypothesis. The level of trait attribution in the present study was higher than that obtained in previous studies. (Author)