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…

A temporal theory of motivation is proposed in which causes, causal dimensions, psychological consequences (expectancy and affect), and behavioral outcomes play a role in the dynamics of action. The discussion of methodological errors in attribution research that follows examines shortcomings at each of these conceptual stages in the motivational…

Individual differences in self-attributions in a forced-compliance task and following manipulations of facial expressions were found to relate, suggesting that the self-attribution processes are similar and that variations among individuals in these processes are general across contents and inputs. (Author)

Low self-esteem and depressed individuals tend to have an attributional style of externalizing success and internalizing failure. To evaluate a program developed to help reverse this pattern of responses to be more similar to high self-esteem and nondepressed individuals, subjects were first tested for self-esteem, depression, and attributional…

The psychology of emotion has been studied primarily from an intrapsychic perspective. A social psychological perspective of emotion can supplement this intrapsychic approach by examining three areas: (1) controlling the emotions of others; (2) controlling the thoughts of others through emotional expression; and (3) emotional congruence, or the…

It has been suggested that egotistical attributions for success and failure are mediated by the affective reactions resulting from achievement outcomes. To establish the motivational impact of failure-related affect on subsequent ego-defensive attributions, an excitation transfer paradigm was used to manipulate the negative feelings elicited by…

The attributions of success and failure in a course in nursing research design and statistics were measured using a modified version of the Mathematics Attribution Scale. Eight subscales were formed by combining hypothetical success or failure events paired with each attribution category. The scales were success-task, success-environment,…

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.…

An attributional approach to social behavior traces problems in personal adjustment back to the assumptions individuals formulate about the causes of behaviors and events. Attributional information presented during counseling may have therapeutically beneficial consequences. The effectiveness of attribution therapy was investigated in a factorial…

Causal attributions of 96 college students' performance in cooperative group assignments, and students' perceptions of the underlying dimensions of causal attributions (including relationships among performance outcomes, attributional dimensions, and attributional consequences) were examined. Locus of causality was related to affective reactions.…

A set of prevalent emotions, including pity, anger, guilt, pride (self-esteem), gratitude, and resignation, shares a common characteristic, i.e., causal attributions appear to be sufficient antecedents for their elicitation. Research in the field of emotions has shown that the underlying properties or dimensions of attributions are the significant…

This study investigated whether affective reactions in achievement settings were related to self-esteem. Subjects were 308 undergraduate university students displaying affective reactions to various academic situations portrayed in short stories. Resulting biserial correlations indicate that affective reactions to success and failure were related…