This paper describes a therapy analogue experiment in which an interviewer's interpretation of a client's presenting problem was systematically varied along dimensions suggested by causal attribution theory. Subjects were 64 undergraduate students with the same presenting problem of unassertiveness. They were given two different interpretations of…

The relationship between a child's assumption of responsibility for intellectual-academic successes and failures and various performance scores was examined in the present investigation. An expanded version of the Crandall, Katkovsky, and Crandall (1967) Intellectual Achievement Responsibility (IAR) Questionnaire was administered to a total of 138…

The purpose of this study was to expand the previous limited locus of control focus of gender differences cross-nationally by shifting to an attributional model for both successes and failures in both achievement and affiliation domains in order to test the hypothesis that women differ from men in their attributional patterns for achievement and…

Much theoretical interest has been focused on the role that causal attributions play in the development of mood disorders. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the impact of outcomes and performance attributions upon mood. In the first experiment subjects performed different tasks which naturally gave rise to internal or external…

Age is often used to explain performances by older people that may be judged substandard in comparison with those of younger people. To explore age as a possible causal attribution, descriptions of task performances by young (aged 30) and old (aged 70) women were judged by young (N=352) and old (N=96) female subjects on four attributions, i.e.,…

The attribution of responsibility literature may suffer from the lack of an appropriate conceptual basis. Although past research has demonstrated the usefulness of Heider's levels of responsibility framework, one facet of Heider's theory that has received little attention is the justification level. Occupational role constraints and severity of…

Research has established a reliable relationship between self-awareness and causal attribution, i.e., heightened attention toward the self increases attributions of responsibility to the self. It was hypothesized that increased availability or accessibility of self-related cognition would increase causal attributions to the self, although this…

In its original formulation, dissonance reduction was postulated as a mode for resolving behavior-attitude discrepancies. One mode of resolution has been demonstrated in the forced compliance paradigm, whereby a subject rectifies a counterattitudinal behavior with an actual belief, resulting in moderating beliefs. A forced compliance situation was…

Research has shown that attributing failure to lack of ability leads to lower motivation than does attributing the failure to lack of effort. An attributional model of motivation and performance following failure was tested with college students (N=63), who were preselected on the basis of their attributional styles for interpersonal failures, as…

The role of attributions in achievement situations is examined, as well as whether attributions can be altered by the implementation of specified instructional conditions. One hundred eighty nine students from four campuses of a city consolidated community college system were divided into two groups and taught over an 18-week semester by: (1)…

Although research suggests that marital communication is causally related to marital satisfaction, the processes by which marital communication style affects marital relationships have not been identified. These communication styles (conventional, speculative, controlling, contactful) are based on the degrees of self-disclosure and openness to the…

Five subject groups (adults and 11-, 9-, 7-, and 5-year-olds) were given affective reactions by a teacher, such as anger and pity, and asked to infer the teacher's causal attributions regarding why a student failed, such as low ability of lack of effort. There were systematic linkages between the following affect-attribution pairings:…

This exploratory study investigated subjects' reactions to the suffering of another person, with subjects categorized on the basis of their own levels of previous physical punishment by their parents. Within the just world victim derogation paradigm, subjects observed a similar/dissimilar other receiving punishing shocks (as compared to a no-shock…

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…