Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control Scale (I-E) and the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes were administered to 138 undergraduate students in a personalized system of instruction course. Results indicated that the I-E scale is related only to academic attitudes and that study habits are related to two measures of performance. (Author/JAC)

Graduate students completed questionnaires containing either past performance information alone or past performance information and aptitude scores for a hypothetical student. Low aptitude scores led to greater ability attributions, regardless of performance. High aptitude scores led to greater effort attributions given poor performance and to…

Teachers rated responsibility and expected performance of first and second grade students. Actual classroom interaction was observed; high or low expectation was related to teacher praise or criticism. Other relationships between teacher expectation, perceived personal responsibility, teacher rating of responsibility, and teacher feedback behavior…

Three vignettes describing characters who exhibited disordered (antisocial, withdrawn, or self-punitive) behavior were read to second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children. The children were asked what caused the behaviors, whether characters wanted to behave as they did, and whether and how characters could change their behavior. (Author/JMB)

A total of 556 Israeli fifth graders participated in a study of delay of gratification. Two hypothetical delay of gratification situations were presented. The first situation required a choice between an immediate and a more valuable but delayed reward. The second situation required the subjects to predict an intelligent child's choice in the same…

Investigated the role of metatheoretical assumptions regarding clinicians' attributions of patient responsibility for problem cause and therapeutic change in contributing to similarities and dissimilarities in theoretical orientation and investigated the implications of these assumptions for clinical practice. Observed relations with estimated…

Sixty-four 10- to 12-year-olds (N=64), identified as gifted, average, or educable mentally retarded (EMR), were administered tasks in which failure/success were manipulated. Assessment indicated that gifted students credited success to low task difficulty, had initially high expectations which lowered following failure, and persisted more with…

First semester college students (n=92), during their second week of classes, participated in a two (received grade point average information vs. no information) by two (imagined academic achievement scenarios vs. no scenarios) by two (received reattribution information vs. no information) intervention program designed to enhance their academic…

Questionnaires completed by 146 Westinghouse Science Talent Search winners identified curiosity as their primary research impetus. Females reported more concern with social impacts of scientific research, less variability in self-image as scientists, and a greater tendency to credit hard work and dedication (versus intelligence/creativity) for…

Mothers of learning-disabled (N=15) and normally achieving (N=16) elementary-school boys administered an academic task to their children, and mothers' expectations and attributions for their sons' performance were assessed. Mothers of learning disabled pupils held lower performance expectations, provided more negative nonverbal responses, and more…

This article reviews self-fulfilling prophecies in three sequential stages: (1) teachers develop expectations, (2) teachers treat students differently depending on expectations, and (3) students react to treatment in expectancy-confirming ways. The focus is on social and psychological events at each stage, causal processes linking stages, and…

Investigated braising effects of subordinate likeableness on leaders' attributions for subordinate poor performance and corrective actions toward subordinates in laboratory study of 96 undergraduates and field study of 98 organization leaders. Both groups made similar attributions for poor performance of liked and disliked subordinates, but were…

Interrelationships among metamemory, intelligence, attributional beliefs, self-concept, and strategy use were investigated in 102 German and 91 American children. Some were trained to use a cluster-rehearsal strategy on a Sort Recall task. Post-training assessments tested maintenance, near-transfer, and task-related metamemorial knowledge.…

Examines how certain human brow and mouth gestures influence the attributions of social dominance made by children. Hypothesizes that stimulus photographs depicting adults with lowered-brow expressions or without smiles appear to be more dominant relative to photographs showing adults with raised-brow expressions or with smiles, respectively. (HOD)

Investigated influence of Christian values of clinicians and clients on judgments of prognosis, psychopathology, and locus of client problems. Both religious and nonreligious clinicians assigned moderately religious clients more pessimistic prognoses and greater psychopathology. Religious therapists made more internal attributions for the…