Six experiments examined the relations of causal attributions and affect to judgments of help-giving. (Author/SS)

This study uses a multifactorial model of locus of control to examine the attribution of causality in Black and White students in Zambia and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. (Author/MC)

In a competitive situation success and failure were attributed to degrees of ability, effort, and luck, and results show they affect intrinsic motivation of males and females differently. (JD)

Competition interaction indicated that males exhibited more intrinsic motivation during competition than when not in competition, whereas females displayed no differences between these conditions. (JD)

Assesses the ability of four-year-old children to judge certain social situations from the facial expressions of peers. The children were presented with soundless videotapes of the face and upper torso of classmates and unknown peers interacting with peers and adults who were strange or familiar. (JMB)

Second- and third-grade children receiving no consequences or only social consequences for donating to needy peers attributed their behavior to a concern for the other child. Children receiving material consequences together with social consequences tended to attribute their help giving to external sources. (JMB)

The research literature on defensive attribution of responsibility is reviewed within the framework of a nonmotivational information-processing model which proposes that attributed responsibility is a function of the difference between the perceived contingent probability (congruence) of an outcome, given a perpetrators' behavior, and the…

Two experiments attempted to directly assess the impact of self-other perspective on success and failure attributions for a variety of achievement-related situations. (Author/RK)

Two studies are reported which utilize a variety of achievement situations. It was hypothesized that subjects would spontaneously make attributions to ability, effort, luck and/or task difficulty in all these situations and that they would seek information of the types used in previous studies. (Author/RK)

The role of cognitive development in the formation of social judgments was investigated in 2 experiments examining children's use of task outcome information in attributional judgments of ability and task difficulty. (SB)

Argues that nonverbal cues act much like other behaviors in triggering attribution-making in couples' interactions. Finds that negative behaviors were more likely than positive nonverbal cues to be noticed; satisfaction was related to attributions for positive behaviors; mutual attributions for the same behaviors differed significantly; and…

Examined 3- to 5-year-olds' attributions of the mental states of television characters depicting make-believe or realistic actions. Found that children who identified when television characters were engaging in pretend play did not necessarily infer the pretenders' thoughts and beliefs. Inferring pretenders' thoughts was related to performance on…

Considers students' casual attributions as fundamental motivational variables as well as critical motivators of their persistence in learning. Measures optimism, pessimism, and achievement in mathematics in a sample of primary and lower secondary students. Discusses the relationships between grade levels, gender, optimism, and pessimism in student…

The study measured the anxiety of 262 medical students at the University of Barcelona (Spain) during examinations on two subjects. Findings showed a positive correlation between importance attributed to the examination and anxiety and a negative correlation between importance attributed to the examination and the importance attributed to chance in…

This study investigated the relationship between responsibility attribution and tendency to report child sexual abuse among practicing psychologists (N=295). Results indicated a significant effect for responsibility to the mother though responsibility attribution did not predict reporting, while confidence in the occurrence of abuse did. (DB)