Psychological essentialism is the belief that some internal, unseen essence or force determines the common outward appearances and behaviors of category members. We investigated whether reasoning about transplants of bodily elements showed evidence of essentialist thinking. Both Americans and Indians endorsed the possibility of transplants…

This study investigated the effects of perceived controllability on information processing within Weiner's (1985, 1986) attributional model of learning. Attributional style was used to identify trait patterns of controllability for 37 university students. Task-relevant feedback on an information-processing task was then manipulated to test for…

Reviews studies which examine spontaneous attributional activity. The paradigms include the coding of written material, recording of thoughts during or after task completion, and indirect inferences of attributional activity exhibited in other cognitive processes. Finds unequivocal documentation of attributional activity and the conditions that…

Research has shown that attributional styles are affected by the attributor's culture, inferential goals, and level of cognitive processing. This study compares the attributions made in sports articles and editorials of newspapers published in Hong Kong and the United States. Implications for the mixed model of social inference are discussed. (LSR)

The cognitive approach to stereotypes views stereotyping as a natural consequence of normal cognitive processes; therefore, information that is inconsistent with a stereotype is less likely to be remembered. To investigate this hypothesis an earlier experiment was replicated in three studies. Subjects received congruent or neutral information…

Examined whether reading the Darley and Batson study served to change subjects' understanding of the determinants of helping, and if subjects would come to regard degree of hurry as an important predictor in similar helping situations. Found subjects predicting helping behavior in similar situations were influenced moderately by hurry. (RC)

Although optimism is generally regarded as a positive dispositional characteristic, unmitigated optimism can be problematic. The adaptiveness of overly optimistic expectations in novel or unfamiliar settings is questionable because individuals have little relevant experience on which to base such expectations. In this four-phase longitudinal…

Examined the relationship between spouses' (N=58) attributional styles for marital problems and their negative social reinforcement in a laboratory interaction procedure. Results indicated wives who attributed other couples' marital problems to undesirable personality traits or negative attitudes were more likely to verbally criticize their…

To examine whether a person's actions are more important in determining impressions of personality than are self-descriptions, subjects in two separate studies viewed two videotapes, one depicting a stimulus person's self-description and the other depicting that person's behavior in a conversation. Subjects rated the stimulus person on several…

How people organize sensory data is influenced not only by their role as actor observer; the extent of their empathy for other actors; and the vividness, availability, representativeness, and negative impact of the data; but also by the culture from which it springs. To determine how the attributions people make are affected by culture, which can…

In studies examining the influence of recall on judgments, social psychologists have generally concentrated on the content of recalled material rather than on the process of recall. To investigate the impact of recalled behaviors (content) and the ease with which these behaviors came to mind (process) on assessment of one's own assertiveness, 158…

Conceptual level is a personal characteristic that describes persons on a developmental hierarchy of increasing conceptual complexity, self-responsibility, and independence. The relationship between gender and conceptual level was explored in a group of 70 male and 63 female college students. The This I Believe Test (TIB) was administered to…

Examines the implications of temporal separation for children's developmental differences in inferences drawn about an individual's characteristics after observing multiple instances of that individual's behavior. Also tests two competing hypotheses about how young children process information separated in time. (HOD)

Although consensus on the meaning of depression exists, theories vary widely regarding its source. Depression is essentially an affective disorder; however, because the assessment of sadness is difficult, most psychological theories of depression have focused on some nonaffective component of depression, such as activity level, cognitive…

Introduction: Our aim is to investigate differences of causal attribution among participants in bullying, as they judge the facts from their particular place of participation in the abuse at any given moment, as well as their habitual profile in bullying situations. Method: Using a sample of students between 10 and 18 years of age, and the CIMEI…