The study described in this paper involved 333 American students in Wisconsin and 375 Chinese students in Hong Kong in grades 8, 10, and 12. The study focused on 3 areas: (1) gender differences in perception of causal attributions of success or failure in school; (2) the relationship of gender to achievement goal orientation; and (3)…

This study compared responses to three vignettes describing incidents between a male patient and a female nurse that involved the nurse being mildly assaulted, severely assaulted, or verbally abused (the control condition) by the patient. After reading each vignette, 32 of 42 female senior-year nursing students and 28 of 48 practicing nurses…

Researchers investigated the causal attributions for health and illness among 96 Brazilian elementary school students. Subjects were interviewed individually and their causal attributions were assessed through 14 true-false items (e.g. people stay well because they are lucky). The findings suggest that there may be more cross-cultural similarities…

This study examined the applicability of a multicomponent model to understanding the bases of attitudes toward people with disabilities. The 108 students (65 females, 43 males) reported their attitudes toward three groups -- amputees, people with AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), and the chronically depressed. They also completed…

A study examined college students' resistance decisions in the classroom. Initial validation tests of the resistance typology developed by N. Burroghs, P. Kearney and T. Plax (1989) confirmed the existence of all 19 resistance categories. Further analyses indicated that the categories could be meaningfully reduced to two dimensions: Teacher-Owned…

This study examined distinctions between self-esteem as a general attitude of self and the underlying self-beliefs which link the self with a positively or negatively valued attribute. It was hypothesized that black adolescents would have higher scores on the general self-esteem measure, while they would not have have higher scores on all specific…

This paper discusses the Building Strong Families parenting program, which combines findings from recent attribution research with traditional ideas. Attribution is defined as the process by which people assign cause to behavior. The role of expectancy in attribution and the role of attribution in the relationship between parent and child are…

Since student ratings of teacher effectiveness are instrumental in faculty promotion and tenure decisions, the assets and limitations of such ratings must be understood. To investigate the impact of three personality factors (ability, locus of control, and self-esteem) and academic performance on expectation and attributions of performance, 212…

Career development theories provide useful ideas for understanding career indecision, but neglect of a measurement of career indecisiveness has caused confusion. To examine the relationship between trait indecisiveness, vocational uncertainty, and interpersonal characteristics, 325 freshmen students were tested with a Trait Indecisiveness Scale…

Previous research suggests that observers of spouse abuse are likely to arrive at overly dispositional causal explanations for the abusive behavior, and reject both the abusing spouse and his victim. As part of a study examining observers' perceptions of a spouse abuse incident under varying conditions, 160 college students read a vignette about…

Causal attribution has been found to have a great effect on future performance. Causal attributions were studied across two academic subjects and two outcomes using an open-ended measure. All 180 ninth-graders in a girls' high school in the Bay Area of San Francisco (California) stated their best and worst subjects and provided their perceived…

This document consists of Part 2 of a book of readings on at-risk youth designed to provide information and strategies for counselors, teachers, parents, administrators, social workers, and others who work with youth at risk. Part 2 contains five readings on causal factors related to at-risk behaviors. "The Harmful Effects of Dysfunctional Family…

This study investigated the cognitive styles, attributions, and self-evaluations of 40 gifted girls and 40 gifted boys, grades 6 through 8. Informational attributional ratings for task difficulty, luck, ability, and effort were studied in the context of: (1) an individual non-competitive goal structure; (2) a competitive goal structure; (3)…

To discover what part parent impartiality might play in creating a climate in which each individual child can prosper, 198 college students from a large Midwestern urban university were questioned about their perceptions of their parents' behavior during the time that they were growing up. The first section of the survey consisted of 50 questions…

An attributional model that conceptualizes the pressures that reduce professors' personal and career vitality is presented. The model is based primarily on the locus of control literature and especially the reformulated model of learned helplessness by Lynn Abramson, Martin Seligman, and John Teasdale. The analysis deals only with the cognitive…