Showed that men used more ability attributions on a digit guessing task and women stressed ability for failure. Those more successful on the task reported using more ability, effort, and luck ascriptions. Only in relation to subjective outcome for effort did sex identity add information beyond sex of subject. (Author)

Examined subjects' causal attributions of counselor behavior and ratings of counselor characteristics as affected by counseling analogue methodologies. Quasi-analogue subjects tended to rate counselors more positively than did audiovisual analogue subjects. Audiovisual subjects who saw only the counselor tended to rate counselors more positively…

Children who lacked subtraction skills received didactic training in subtraction with effort attributional feedback concerning past achievement, with feedback concerning future achievement, or with no feedback. Results showed that attributional feedback for past achievement led to more rapid progress in mastering subtraction operations, greater…

Study compared self-esteem and attributions of 35 learning disabled (LD) and 99 non-LD junior high school students and general attributions and task specific attributions of LD students. Concluded that LD students may verbalize desire to do well in school but fail to expend the effort necessary to complete work and, consequently, appear to be…

Results indicated that the mothers of LD children attributed successes less to ability and more to luck, while attributing failures more to a lack of ability and less to bad luck. (Author)

Undergraduates completed Jones's Irrational Beliefs Test and reported impressions of actors portraying couples on videotape. Disagreeing couples were rated as experiencing more negative feelings, sharing less affection, having less stable relationships, and being less compatible than agreeing couples. Observers high in irrational beliefs reported…

A series of five experiments are reported which support the proposition that observers between three years of age and adulthood interpret physical causation primarily in terms of the concept of generative transmission rather than in terms of other well-known rules such as covariation, similarity, and temporal and spatial contiguity. (Author/MP)

The hypothesis that college students' overall level of course achievement would be related positively to the accuracy of their performance evaluations and knowledge of the instructor's grading criteria was tested. Results showed no difference in poor and good students' accuracy at evaluating the course performance of others. (Author/GK)

Alcoholism in females requires a different explanation from alcoholism in males. A set of dimensions for analyzing the problem was specified. A two-track model emerged: depression-dependence, and low femininity. These are seen as developmental, with life events contributing to a value-added propensity to problem drinking, ultimately triggered by a…

Describes process scales designed to rate counselor's references to locus of control and record problem-solving statements. Results indicated counselors are inconsistent in use of style and content in causality. Counselors implied that students had resources to solve problems, but provided solutions rather than allowing students to solve problems.…

Teacher praise typically does not function as a reinforcer. Rather, it is reactive to and under the control of student behavior. Its effects must be understood using concepts from attribution and social learning/reinforcement theories. (Author/GK)

Three- to eight-year-old children were asked to make causal attributions for performance on a motor task, reward allocations for the performance outcome, and state expectations for future success. (Author/DB)

The possibility that teachers' counterdefensive attributions are self-presentations designed to establish favorable social identities is examined. An experiment by Ross et al. (1974) in which teachers were led to believe that they had been successful or unsucessful in teaching a lesson to a pupil is simulated. (Author/GK)

Lack of effort-perceived controllability of need for help-anger-neglect and lack of ability-perceived uncontrollability-pity-help form two constellations. There was also evidence of an attribution-affect-action motivational sequence, in which thoughts determine what we feel and feelings determine what we do. (Author/CP)

As temporal distance from an event increased, individuals both interpreted their own behavior and outcomes as being more due to situational influences and perceived their behavior to have been more similar to the behavior of others. Further, differences in attributions of actors and observers narrowed as temporal distance from the target event…