Attempts to refine the Kelley causal attribution model by developing a classification scheme to describe the various types of causal attributions, and by demonstrating the importance of comparison-object consensus as well as the usual factors of target-object consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. (Author/SS)

Subjects watched animated films depicting the simultaneous movements of two triangles toward a goal. One triangle was pushed by an external object while the other triangle was not. Initially, only college students understood the discounting principle. Kindergarten children, second graders, and fourth graders did not. Revision of the film produced…

This study tests two differing hypotheses: the competing response hypothesis, which states that both reward and non-reward distractions produce decreases in interest which weaken over repeated trials, and the attribution/overjustification hypothesis, which maintains that rewards produce a decrease in interest that does not weaken over trials.…

Tests the hypothesis that individuals are more likely to view their own behavior as caused by the situation and the behavior of others as caused by underlying personality dispositions. Subjects were 100 undergraduate students. (MP)

Rotter's social learning theory is applied to the learned helplessness paradigm, and is used to analyze (1) expectancy change processes occurring during helplessness training and (2) the generalization of those changes to other situations. Literature on individual and situational differences is also reviewed. (Author/SS)

Tested attribution are driven by control motivation and that attributional activity increases following an experience with lack of control. Subjects were given high, low, or no helplessness training and tested for motivational variations. (Author/SS)

Tests the proposition that both foreseen and foreseeable consequences can lead to the arousal of cognitive dissonance, and predicts that self-justificatory attitude change would occur in the foreseen conditions, regardless of whether subsequent information about the occurrence of the consequence was ever given. Subjects were 60 undergraduate…

Focuses upon informational social comparison and examines the proposal that such comparison can be motivated by two quite different concerns: constructive process and validation process. Subjects were 77 freshmen. (MP)

Illustrates a general strategy for detecting motives that people wish to conceal. Subjects were college students. (MP)

As temporal distance from an event increased, individuals both interpreted their own behavior and outcomes as being more due to situational influences and perceived their behavior to have been more similar to the behavior of others. Further, differences in attributions of actors and observers narrowed as temporal distance from the target event…

Six experiments examined the relations of causal attributions and affect to judgments of help-giving. (Author/SS)

Investigates the relationship between causal attributions and responses to social rejection across popularity levels, focusing on individual differences along each dimension. (Author/SS)

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that persons process a stimulus less extensively when they are part of a group that is responsible for the task than when they are individually responsible. Subjects were college students. (Author/MP)

Causal attributions for a manipulated success-failure event were collected from college students on five different measuring instruments. Results indicated that the structured measures showed greater interest correlation validity than did the open-ended measure. (CM)