This study evaluated the intent attributions and feelings of emotional distress of relationally and physically aggressive children in response to instrumental and relational provocation contexts. Findings indicated that physically aggressive children exhibited hostile attributional biases and reported relatively greater distress for instrumental…

Examined causal attributions about aggression made by early, middle, and late adolescents. Analyses of the attribution questionnaire supported the hypothesized model of causal beliefs. The strength of endorsements of internally oriented causal factors increased with age. Findings are discussed with regard to socio-cognitive development and…

When sibling pairs interacted with unrelated mothers, facial and vocal affect directed to the difficult child in the pair was more dysphoric than that directed to the other. This was particularly the case among women who attributed relatively high control to children and low control to adults. A similar relation between affect and attributions was…

Examined whether cognitive attributes differentiate depressed children from those with other psychiatric disorders. Findings from 108 child and adolescent psychiatric patients revealed that depressed children endorsed significantly lower self-esteem, more hopelessness, more externalized locus of control, and more depressive attributional style…

A structural model of the consequences of success attributions--derived from B. Weiner's attribution model--was tested using 208 first-term college students. Although the hypothesized model was rejected based on a chi-square, goodness-of-fit test, a specification search yielded a model that fit the data and was consistent with Weiner's theory.…

Implicit motives generally sustain behavior over time because of the pleasure derived from the activities; self-attributed motives predict immediate responses because of social incentives in a structured situation. Implications of these distinctions are discussed. (SLD)

Conducted two studies to investigate marital satisfaction and egocentric bias in spouses' perceived contributions to activities in marriage. Results from 40 spouses indicated that spouses claimed to make greater contributions to negative relationships events than their partners attributed to them. Results from 50 spouses replicated findings.…

Analyzes mishaps affecting Delta Air Lines from perspective of motivational psychology. Hypothesizes that pilot error in one near disaster caused other employees to try harder not to make mistakes. Sees additional motivation as pushing many employees beyond point of optimal performance, generating decline in overall performance. Describes problem…

Four-year-olds' and adults' inferences based on shared conceptual properties, category labels, and perceptual information were assessed in four experiments. Stimuli included novel and familiar animals. Found that children made attribute-based inductions as well as category-based inductions, and that perceptual similarity consistently influenced…

Research documents that attributions of failure resulting from lack of ability result in less punishment from others than do ascriptions to lack of effort. This paper provides a conceptual analysis of these empirical findings, guided by a taxonomy of causal thinking. Process and functional understandings of achievement strivings are distinguished.…

In a visual habituation experiment, infants watched a circle (the "agent") move toward another circle by jumping over a barrier or jumping without a barrier present, and then watched a circle move straight to another circle. Found that infants were able to identify the agent's spatial goal and to interpret the agent's actions causally in…

Children who were rated for aggression and assessed for depression made attributions of story characters' intent and described their responses to story situations. Aggressive and depressed children made attributions of hostile intent. Children who were both aggressive and depressed showed response patterns similar to both aggressive and depressed…

Proposes that construct differentiation moderates the effects of perspective on causal judgments. Finds that construct differentiation was positively associated with intrapersonal variability in ratings of causal judgments across three perspectives and positively associated with actor/observer differences when taking the perspective of message…

Using data from two ongoing longitudinal studies and prior research, examines the effect of parental attitudes on the perpetuation of gender stereotypes in choice of school subjects and careers. Because society does not yet reward female- and male-typed occupations equally, such stereotyping is often disadvantageous to girls. (DM)

In the two studies reported, three year olds tended to choose mentalistic descriptions more often than behavioral ones to describe people. (PCB)