Teachers' teaching-related competence beliefs such as perceived teaching ability and self-efficacy have been linked to their occupational well-being and external evaluations of instructional quality. However, researchers have struggled to establish a reliable empirical link between teachers' competence beliefs and students' academic outcomes. To…

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)

College subjects undertook nine cognitive tasks with different perceived sex linkages, stating their expectancy of success before performance and attributing causality for their perceived performance after each task. Results indicated that (1) females hold lower expectancies of success than males and (2) perceived sex linkage of the task also…

Previous research has indicated that locus of control acts to moderate the effects of stressful events. In this study the role of depressive attributions, negative outcome expectancies, and internal locus of control and their interactions with minor negative events in predicting symptoms of psychological distress were examined. Subjects (N=131)…

Undergraduates in an economics course reported prior grade averages and their final exam predictions. Students rated the influence that ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck had on performance and completed an achievement motivation scale. Regression analyses provided support for the attribution model of achievement expectations. Sex…

Results indicated that expectations concerning success were determined by past achievement and by evaluative feedback. Immediate past performance had a stronger relative influence on expectations and performance than evaluative feedback. Feedback had a relatively greater effect on self-evaluation. (Author/DB)

Learning-disabled (N=48) and nonlearning-disabled (N=48) fourth- and fifth-grade boys were given a task and told they had either succeeded or failed. Results indicated that learning-disabled subjects showed greater persistence, attributed outcomes to external factors, and did not exhibit lower performance expectations nor show greater expectancy…

Examined factors that freshman (N=161) used to explain their first-term performance and the relationship between these attributions and affect, expectancy, and future performance. Results showed that successful students rated most items higher than unsuccessful ones, and positive affective responses to achievement were associated with internal…

Two experiments investigated the relationship between the magnitude of motivation for control over the environment and tendency to derogate victims. Manipulated situational controllability and uncontrollability within a learned helplessness procedure and assessed derogation of a victimized stranger. Results indicated that motivation and need for…

Two experiments demonstrated interactive effects between locus of control and expectancy confirmation-disconfirmation in determining attribution of failure. (Editor)

Research has shown that attributing failure to lack of ability leads to lower motivation than does attributing the failure to lack of effort. An attributional model of motivation and performance following failure was tested with college students (N=63), who were preselected on the basis of their attributional styles for interpersonal failures, as…

Continuing motivation has been defined as an individual's willingness to return to a task or task area at a subsequent time, in similar or varying circumstances, without visible external pressure to do so, and when other behavior alternatives are available. In the current study, path models from Weiner's theory of motivation were developed to…

Literature from organizational and social psychology has suggested that three types of factors influence performance, i.e., cognitive, affective and behavioral. A model was developed to test a set of propositions concerning the relationship between the three kinds of factors, and included attributions, expectancies, general emotional responses to…

The role of affect in information processing has recently received attention, and several possible influences of affect have been suggested. The informational and directive effects of affect were investigated with subjects (N=61) who either described events in their recent past that made them feel good, described events that made them feel bad, or…

Male and female undergraduates rated their ability, amount of preparation, task difficulty, and their initial confidence (expectation) before they began an important examination. Subsequently they attributed causality for the examination outcome by rating the importance of factors involving ability, preparation, task difficulty, and luck as…