In testing Weiner's (1972) attribution theory of achievement behavior, success was found to produce (1) no differential attribution to effort for those high and low in achievement motivation, and (2) an early performance asymptote for those high in achievement motivation, while (3) it also facilitated performance independently of attributions. The…

Causal attributions were obtained from male and female subjects of two racial groups, black and white, following achievement performance in a "natural" setting. Although women expected lower grades than men, no significant differences in attributional ratings as function of gender were observed, nor were any race by gender interactions seen in the…

Alcoholism is becoming an increasingly significant problem for women. At one time, women rarely drank and the female alcoholic was an anomaly. Estimates of the total number of women alcoholics in the United States today are over 900,000. Women now constitute from 20 to 35% of all alcoholics in this country. This paper attempts to gain…

Educators are becoming increasingly concerned with social psychological variables affecting classroom behavior. This study attempts to determine if the achievement attribution model is supported in an actual classroom setting with college students actually taking an important exam. Participants were 35 volunteers from an introductory social…

Attributions of causes of successful task performances as a function of task and sex of the performer were investigated. Introductory psychology students (N=157) were presented with closed-circuit, videotaped episodes in which a male or female stimulus person performed a card-guessing task for 10 trials. Subjects heard the task described to the…

Subjects rated an individual described as either male or female, white or native Indian who chose an upwardly or downwardly mobile occupation (teacher or store clerk). Female characters were rated less likely to succeed. Male subjects were more surprised at male, but not female, character's choice of downwardly mobile career. (Author)

Performance expectancy and satisfaction were investigated in terms of the rate of change in performance outcomes. In a two-by-two factorial design, the direction (improving or deteriorating) and rate (accelerating or decelerating) of change in performance were manipulated using false feedback in a computerized math game. In accord with performance…

Using Seligman's "learned helplessness" paradigm, androgynous and feminine women (as defined by the Bem Sex Role Inventory) either succeeded (contingent feedback) or failed (non-contingent feedback) at a concept formation task and were provided with internal (ability, effort), external (task difficulty, luck), or no causal attributions for their…

Subjects were four groups of 12 college women, high or low in motive to avoid success (MAS) and locus of control (LC), were reinforced for response A on a fixed partial reinforcement schedule on three concept learning tasks, one task consisting of combined reward and punishment, another of reward only, and one of punishment only. Response B was…

In an impression explanation of counterdefensive attributions, the tendency of subjects is to accept primary responsibility for negative outcomes and to deny credit for positive outcomes. Counterdefensive attributions represent attempts at maximizing the esteem in which observers hold the actor. To test this hypothesis, a 2 x 5 simulation was…

The effects of actor identity on achievement attributions for success and failure were investigated. Subjects filled out a locus of control scale either for themselves, a neutral other, a liked other, or a disliked other. Within each actor identity variation, the scale items were either (1) unchanged from the original version or specified as (2)…