While the doctorate was once perceived as preparation for an academic position, internationally more than half of all graduates leave the higher education sector by choice or lack of opportunity. We know little of how they perceive and navigate the transition from PhD to other career. This longitudinal study of 23 sciences doctoral students,…

Examined the relationship between locus of control and death anxiety. The Reid-Ware Three Factor Locus of Control Scale and Templer Death Anxiety Scale were administered to college students aged 17 to 49. Death anxiety loaded significantly on the Fatalism dimension for males and on the Social System Control dimension for females. (Author/BWF)

Research has shown that learned-helpless children, who make attributions for failure to lack of ability, tend to show impaired performance of decreased persistence in the face of challenge. In similar situations, mastery-oriented children, identified by their tendency to attribute failure to insufficient effort, show improved performance or…

The connection between self-esteem, sex, and attributional style was examined in two studies. Results indicated that for positive events, high self-esteem subjects make more internal attributions than low self-esteem subjects, and for negative events, high self-esteem subjects make fewer internal attributions than low self-esteem subjects. The…

Two types of self-blame were investigated: characterological self-blame, corresponding to the popular negative view of self-blame; and behavioral self-blame, representing a positive attempt to reestablish a belief in control. Results of a questionnaire completed by rape crisis centers located across the country attest to the pervasiveness of…

Male and female adults revise their perceptions of control three times in their lives, between the ages of 20 and 65. To investigate the relationship between experienced control in terms of loci of control (internal, external), situations (opposite sex, same sex), and direction (from or over the environment), and the developmental stages of men…

Hypothesis that externally oriented Black male subjects would view themselves as more Negro in appearance than they were judged by observers was tested by comparing subjects' and observers' judgments on scale of 15 faces which changed from Negro to Caucasian. Hypothesis was contradicted in 1968 study, supported in 1975. (Author/NRB)

Control over self, lifestyle, and environment is a major factor in how one ages. To investigate how age acts as an environmental force in affecting perceptions of control, 45 adults, aged 60-80, from western Kansas were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the Tiffany Experienced Control Scales (ECS), the Minnesota…

This study examined four causal attributions (ability, effort, task difficulty and luck) for success and failure in achievement and affiliation contexts across five countries (U.S., South Africa, Japan, India, and Yugoslavia) in three subject majors: teacher training, social science, and science. Each 5x2x3x2 analysis of variance assessed the…

Although research suggests that men and women are perceived as differing significantly on a number of traits or characteristics, little research relates these traits to observable behaviors. The trait-characteristic issue, when carried over to employment, serves to justify discrimination against women. Research on attribution theory also supports…

It is time to stop blaming the rise in serious student misbehavior on families, peers, teachers, school systems and society, and to begin to hold students responsible for their own actions. To compare the personal characteristics of disruptive and "normal" students, teachers in a small high school identified 69 inhibitors (disruptive students) and…

Adolescent determination of behavior can be viewed as the result of perceived locus of control. To investigate adolescent perceptions of control in terms of age, loci of control (internal or external), situations (community and home), and direction of control (from or over the environment), 909 adolescents (345 males, 564 females), aged 11-19,…