A large proportion of American students are not psychologically connected or engaged to what is occurring in their classes; in addition, they fail to take school seriously, have lost interest in school, and do not value or seek out success (Steinberg, Brown, & Dornbusch, 1996). In addition, the relationship in a mathematics classroom between…

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the socionormative approach of internality in the field of education, and more specifically regarding scholastic judgment. It describes the theoretical development and the main procedures used by researchers to show that internal causal explanations have more value than external ones because they…

This study examined the theoretically related constructs of children's empathy, affective responsiveness, and altruistic helping. Subjects were 80 nine-year-olds. Empathy was assessed using interviews with children regarding their understanding of the emotion portrayed in, and their own emotional-cognitive responses to, a set of seven videotaped…

Academic failure is a common threat to many students in universities. Addressing this issue are intervention techniques that attempt to alleviate the negative consequences of failure and ensure continued striving for success. Attributional training is one specific approach that has been demonstrated to improve performance for at-risk students who…

Research has found that most people tend to rate themselves as above average on desirable skills or qualities and below average on undesirable qualities. Two factors have been found to influence this self-serving bias: (1) controllability or the perceived control one has over developing a trait; and (2) trait ambiguity in which a positive trait…

The relationship between managerial social power and subordinate job performance has produced mixed empirical results. To investigate the relationship between employees' performance and their perception of managers' social power under favorable and unfavorable climate conditions, an average of 135 city government employees completed two series of…

Although academic achievement and self-concept of academic ability (SCAA) have a reciprocal relationship, studies on the directionality of the relationship are inconclusive. To investigate this relationship in an entire grade cohort in a small city high school, 429 students in grades 9 and 12 were administered a modified version of Brookover's…

There appears to be a tendency for people who have not been victimized by negative life events to perceive themselves as less vulnerable to victimization than others. Research has revealed this unrealistic optimism in risk perception. A study on rationales for risky behaviors was conducted to identify reasons other than this illusion of…

In research on media depiction of violence against women, two variables that have been identified as important in predicting affective and attributional responses are the sex of the subject and the victim's affective reaction to the outcome of sexual aggression. In most previous research the act of sexual aggression has involved rape. In this…

Theories of socialization have developed independently of established facts against which to measure their adequacy. Studies showing low levels of skin conductance and slow latency of response among criminals have supported a bio-social theory that criminals inherit neurological systems that impede reduction of fear and interfere with learning.…

Although recent reviews of the effectiveness of male versus female leaders reveal little evidence of male superiority, evaluative and perceptual biases (beliefs about what constitutes good leadership, and stereotyped beliefs about men and women) among group members persist. To examine attributional biases against female leaders, 85 college…

To investigate reactions to violence between intimate partners, 125 undergraduates (68 males, 57 females) completed a three-part questionnaire. The instrument assessed general attitudes about violence between intimates, respondents' personal history as victim or abuser, and their willingness to use the label "battering". In addition, 24…

Self-serving biases in attribution have been widely explored; however, the effects of motivational factors on observers' causal attributions have been neglected in attribution research. To investigate these effects, observers' liking and perceived similarity toward a target person were manipulated. Subjects were 80 college students. The observer…

Although social gerontologists recognize the heterogeneous nature of elderly populations, they have relied on the use of aggregate data and chronological age rather than sociological variables in their research. The notion of stigma, as developed by Goffman (1963), applied to the elderly focuses on social relationships rather than individual…

The "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: II, Affective Domain," which was published in 1964, is examined. The study was undertaken to: (1) determine what alternatives to the idea of the process of internalization and the focus on values used in the taxonomy are suggested by present psychological theories; and (2) assess the implications…