Scant sociological attention has been given to the role of luck within social mobility/reproduction. This paper helps address this conceptual gap, drawing on insights from over 200 longitudinal interviews conducted with 20 working-class young people and 22 of their parents over an 11-year period, from age 10-21. We explore the potential…

This study explored student teachers views of factors influencing them to choose teaching as a career. A total of 600 student teachers completed a questionnaire. They were asked to rate the importance of 25 factors in influencing their choice of teaching as a career. Using Factor Analysis, we categorized the 25 factors into three main factors…

Thirty-seven counselor education graduate students were asked to assign validity ratings to seven possible explanations of what determines behavior. The students assigned high validity ratings to an "interaction" explanation for behavior. Further, they attributed their own behavior to external causes and the behavior of others to internal causes.…

Much theoretical interest has been focused on the role that causal attributions play in the development of mood disorders. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the impact of outcomes and performance attributions upon mood. In the first experiment subjects performed different tasks which naturally gave rise to internal or external…

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…

Used classification scheme developed by Marlatt and Gordon (1980) to categorize the highly tempting situations of 596 participants in smoking cessation programs. Relapsers had significantly more situations characterized by withdrawal symptoms and negative affect and fewer situations involving cigarette cues than did temporary lapsers and…

Hypothesizes that the growing body of empirical data concerning attribution theory offers insight into the administrative process. To stimulate research to test this hypothesis, presents previous relevant research and a theory entitled Administrative Attribution Theory. Research questions applying the theory to educational administration are…

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…

In order to give the psychological conception of alienation greater cogency relative to the influence of sociological alienation, research is needed that ties alienation attitudes to individual personal behavior. It was hypothesized that the stronger the alienation attitudes of people, the weaker will be their exploratory behavior. Thus,…

The interactive effects of implicit normative and explicit situational consensus information were examined regarding the processes of causal attribution and evaluation. Stimulus items were single sentence descriptions of antisocial and prosocial behaviors representing the extremes of high and low normative consensus in each behavior category, as…

During the last decade, the attributional aproach to achievement motivation has evolved into a powerful theory of motivated classroom behavior. Causal attributions, and their dimensional nature, are seen as influencing achievement behaviors through their effects on the expectations that individuals hold for outcomes in future achievement…

A model of persuasion suggests that individuals comply with a prediction of their behavior because they are persuaded by that prediction; a model of threat suggests that they defy prediction because of its threat of control. College students with either internal (N=20) or external (N=20) loci of control were informed of the accuracy of the…

Beckman's rating scale for antecedents of alcohol use was administered to 212 high school freshmen and juniors, including equal numbers of American Indians and Euroamericans. Compared to other adolescents, American Indian males felt that heredity and fate played a greater role and their environment played a lesser role in their use of alcohol. (KS)

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…

This article advances an attributional theory of motivation and emotion, with achievement strivings as the theoretical focus. Causes of success and failure share three common properties: locus, stability, and controllability. Stability of causes influences changes in expectancy of success. Expectancy and affect guide motivated behavior.…