This study examined whether pupils' causal attribution tendencies could be influenced by teachers' attributions of their performance. In addition, the relationship between pupils' causal attributions and their school anxiety was studied. Based on Weiner's (1979) taxonomy of attributions that distinguishes between external versus internal and…

The decade of the 1970's saw an alarming decline in the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of entering college freshmen, and it was theorized that this might be attributed to a corresponding decline in study attitudes. To test this hypothesis, math and verbal SAT scores, study habits, and attitudes of college freshmen in the classes of 1973 and…

Social science perspectives on black maternal childrearing practices have traditionally ignored the cultural-historical, socio-political, and economic realities. Interviews were conducted with 62 black mothers to study their perceptions of racism and its effects on their childrearing practices. Results indicated that educational status alone did…

Sex differences in attributions for success and failure in algebra of Samoan community college students were examined and compared with attributions of a large group of mainland U.S. students. study included the Mathematics Attribution Scale: Algebra Version (MAS), which assessed students' attributions of achievement in algebra to their effort,…

The psychology of emotion has been studied primarily from an intrapsychic perspective. A social psychological perspective of emotion can supplement this intrapsychic approach by examining three areas: (1) controlling the emotions of others; (2) controlling the thoughts of others through emotional expression; and (3) emotional congruence, or the…

A study was conducted (1) to investigate factors that influence an instructor's choice of behavior when confronted with incidents of students' poor communication performance, and (2) to demonstrate how attribution theory can be used as a vehicle for describing and understanding the causes of instructor reactions or behaviors. The study sought to…

The purpose of this study is to determine whether locus of control scores for students in "open" programs changed significantly over a one-year period and whether there was any change different from change experienced by students in a "traditional" program. The lack of significant group main effects indicated that students in the open programs did…

This record of the Senate Juvenile Justice Subcommittee hearing concerns the problem of violent juvenile crime. Opening statements by subcommittee members are followed by testimonies from three panels of witnesses. The first panel presents statements by the founder of the Guardian Angels, the director of the House of Umoga, a home for juvenile…

Conceptual level is a personal characteristic that describes persons on a developmental hierarchy of increasing conceptual complexity, self-responsibility, and independence. The relationship between gender and conceptual level was explored in a group of 70 male and 63 female college students. The This I Believe Test (TIB) was administered to…

A cognitive/behavioral model of depression emphasizing the self-control processes of self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement views self-control as a set of processes by which an individual maintains responses in the relative absence of immediate external reinforcement. The relationship between self-evaluation, attributional style,…

It has been suggested that egotistical attributions for success and failure are mediated by the affective reactions resulting from achievement outcomes. To establish the motivational impact of failure-related affect on subsequent ego-defensive attributions, an excitation transfer paradigm was used to manipulate the negative feelings elicited by…

This study replicates a previous study in order to reexamine the development of sex biases in middle childhood and adolescence. Four hundred public school students in grades 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 (200 of each sex) assigned desirable and undesirable traits to girls and boys. Twenty-nine traits (15 desirable and 14 undesirable) were selected from the…

Research has found that differential attributional styles exist between depressed and nondepressed populations. Depressed (N=32) and nondepressed (N=32) undergraduate female students were selected on the basis of scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist. Participants performed a key press task where the…

Attribution theory research has been criticized for minimizing the influences of social structure variables on individuals. The role of social factors in attributions was explored with 90 females and 50 males who, after reading interviews between police and assault victims, made attributions of blame about different types of assault. The…

Sex and ethnic differences in the use of social power were investigated using role theoretical and attributional perspectives. Performance and self-attribution processes of power usage were related to ascribed versus achieved role characteristics. One hundred and sixty subjects, equal numbers of Chicano and Anglo males and females, participated as…