Trust and communicated attributions in close relationships.

The attributional statements intimate partners communicate to one another were examined as a function of trust. In discussions by 35 married couples, 850 attributions and corresponding events were coded on dimensions of valence, globality, and locus. Results of regression and contingency analyses indicate that attributional statements expressed in high-trust relationships emphasized positive aspects of the relationship. Medium-trust couples actively engaged issues but focused mom on negative events and explanations. Low-trust couples expressed more specific, less affectively extreme attributional statements that minimized the potential for increased conflict. Results could not be accounted for by relationship satisfaction. These findings also highlight the importance of focusing on features of the events for which attributions are expressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experimental modification of attribution processes.

Attributional style is hypothesized to be a causative factor in depression vulnerability; however, no studies to date have examined whether manipulation of attributional style influences depressed mood. The purpose of this study was to determine whether computer-based cognitive bias modification (CBM) procedures could modify attributional style and influence stress vulnerability. Participants were provided with multiple training trials that were intended to promote the use of either a positive or a negative attributional style. Compared with individuals in the negative attributional style condition, individuals in the positive attributional style condition showed decreased tendency to make self-deficient causal attributions for poor performance on a difficult anagram test. Furthermore, individuals in the positive attributional style condition reported less depressed mood in response to this academic stressor. These results suggest that attributional style is not invariable and can potentially be modified with CBM approaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the social psychology of the stock market: Aggregate attributional effects and the regressiveness of prediction.

The expectation that changes will either persist or regress to previous levels depends in large part on whether causal attributions are provided to explain recent changes. If these attributions are provided, then the tendency to make regressive predictions is diminished. It is argued that the news media provide such attributions and so cause aggregate-level changes in the predictions of those who receive these communications and thereby in receivers' subsequent behaviors. Causal attributions by members of the media should be expected to be more frequent and more extreme than those that would be generated by individuals who do not expect to communicate information to others. This aggregate attributional process, whereby one group acts on the attributions provided by another, is illustrated in financial markets. First, this research shows that the financial press explains recent changes in stock prices with good news after price rises and with bad news after price falls. In an experimental study, such news is shown to lead to less regressive predictions. The normative and theoretical implications of the results for economic and psychological processes are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression and the explanation of events that happen to self, close others, and strangers.

Depressive and nondepressive college students attributed causality for positive and negative events that happened to either themselves, a close other, or a typical student. Depressives made less optimistic attributions than nondepressives when explaining events that happened to themselves. However, depressives and nondepressives generally made similar attributions about others; both groups were optimistic when explaining events that happened to their best friend or romantic partner and less optimistic when explaining events that happened to the typical student. The results indicate that depressives do not treat close others as extensions of the self, at least in terms of their attributional patterns. Furthermore, depressives were aware of the extent to which their attributions benefitted or harmed the desired identity of the actor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributions and the stigma of illiteracy: Understanding help seeking in low literate adults.

Examined the extent to which members of a stigmatized group would make internal versus external attributions for their difficulties and how these attributions would influence their willingness to seek help. Hypothesis 1 was that help-seeking by stigmatized individuals would be influenced by reflected attributions (their expectations of the attributions others would make regarding their difficulties). Hypothesis 2 was that stigmatized individuals would possess a less optimistic style of attribution than others. Ss included 26 low-literate adult learners (aged 18–62 yrs), 26 literacy tutors (aged 27–80 yrs), and a comparison group. Information was collected concerning attributional style and personal and reflected attributions for the difficulties experienced by low literate adults. Contrary to predictions, low literate Ss were found to have the most optimistic style of attribution. The belief that others would make internal attributions for literacy difficulties was strongly correlated with a fear of negative evaluation as a result of being helped. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental, child-centered attributions and outcome: a meta-analytic review with conceptual and methodological implications

Eight empirical studies which bear on the relation between parents' "child-centered" attributions for children's problems and parental satisfaction or child adjustment were meta-analyzed. The parental attributional dimensions of stability and globality garnered the most support as correlates of parental satisfaction and/or children's adjustment; the dimensions of intent, selfish motivation, and blame received initial support and warrant further study. Important methodological and conceptual issues were identified and improvements are suggested. The need for prospective designs aimed at determining the causal relation, if any, between parental attributions and outcome, thorough assessment of attributions and the events which impinge upon them, detailed measurement of symptom and satisfaction variables, a wider array of child diagnoses, and establishment of parental diagnoses, are emphasized.     

Attributions in the sports pages.

Extended the generality of attribution research by exploring several important issues in a highly involving real-world setting in which attributions naturally occur: athletic competition. 107 newspaper accounts of baseball and football games were coded for attributional content. These data support a motivational or self-enhancement explanation for the tendency to make internal attributions for success and external attributions for failure. No support was found for D. T. Miller and M. Ross's (1975) contention that this tendency is mediated by expectancies. It was also found that more attributions were made after unexpected, as opposed to expected, outcomes. There was a tendency for relatively more stable attributions to be given after expected outcomes. The advantages and disadvantages of studying attributions in archival data and the possibility of attributions justifying rather than explaining behavior are discussed. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intuitions about situational correction in self and others.

People's attributional phenomenology is likely to be characterized by effortful situational correction. Drawing on this phenomenology and on people's desire to view themselves more favorably than others, the authors hypothesized that people expect others to engage in less situational correction than themselves and to make more extreme dispositional attributions for constrained actors' behavior. In 2 studies, people expected their peers to make more extreme dispositional inferences than they did themselves for a situationally constrained actor's behavior. People's expectation that they engage in more situational correction than their peers was diminished among Japanese participants, who have less desire to view themselves as superior to their peers (Study 3), and among participants who were led to view dispositional attributions more favorably than situational attributions (Study 4). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Situations, attributions, and the evaluation of reactions.

The present studies deal with the integration of theoretical models and empirical work on the antecedents of causal attributions with conceptions about attributional consequences. A central, although thus far neglected, postulate of attribution is addressed: the assumption that realistic attributions lead (or, more specifically, are perceived as leading) to functional behaviors and emotions. First, definitions of veridicality and functionality are discussed within an attributional framework. Second, three simulation studies that investigate whether realistic attributions are perceived as leading to functional reactions were conducted. Results indicated that stimulus persons who are described as exhibiting behaviors that are guided by unrealistic attributions are judged to be less likely to attain long-range success in both achievement and social situations and are thought of as being less contented and less likeable than persons who show reactions that are tied to realistic attributions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect as a determinant of egotism: Residual excitation and performance attributions.

Investigated the influence of outcome-related affect on subsequent causal attributions. After working on a social skills test, 66 male college students engaged in physical exercise. Ss were given success or failure feedback on the test 1, 5, or 9 min after the exercise. Excitation transfer theory suggests that the residual arousal from the exercise in the 5-min condition would elevate the positive and negative affective states elicited by success–failure feedback. Thus, increased attributional egotism in the 5-min condition was predicted. Findings show that Ss preferred internal factors to explain success, whereas external factors were blamed for failure. Ego-defensive attributions following failure and ego-enhancing attributions following success were more pronounced in the 5-min condition than in the other conditions. Results support the idea that outcome-related affect mediates egotistical performance attributions. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional interpretations in counseling: Content versus discrepancy.

The content of attributional interpretations and their discrepancy from client attributions were manipulated to examine the respective importance of these 2 variables to the effectiveness of interpretation. 38 undergraduates with mild to moderate depression (as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory) and who exhibited either behavior or characterological styles on the Attributional Styles Questionnaire were given brief counseling that contained either behavioral or characterological interpretations. The matching of attributional styles with interpretation content constituted the discrepancy variable. Three male counselors administered all treatments. Results indicate that interpretation content was irrelevant to change in Ss' negative emotions, attributional styles, and problem-related attributions. Change on the stability dimension of Ss' attributional styles was partly a function of interpretation discrepancy. Ss' negative emotions improved in all conditions. Their attributional styles became less internal and less global in all conditions, but their problem-related attributions became more internal. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The minimizing of blaming attributions and behaviors in delinquent families.

Parents' data were evaluated in three studies of families with a delinquent adolescent. Families were provided with different forms of a positive versus negative interactional (attributional) context. Study 1 demonstrated that the negative context elicited significantly more negative behaviors than did the positive context when parents interacted with each other and with their delinquent adolescent. Study 2 demonstrated that the dispositional attributions of parents were influenced by the manipulation of set, with a dissatisfied set producing negative blaming attributions and a satisfied set producing nonblaming, positive attributions. Study 3 demonstrated that parents' negative sets regarding their adolescent's negative behaviors, once established and discussed by the family for 5 min, were unresponsive to a subsequent positive reattribution regarding those behaviors. Taken together, the data provide some support for reattribution techniques such as relabeling. Yet, the data question the ease with which such techniques can be successful and challenge proponents of such techniques to develop methodologically sound empirical demonstrations of their effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mediation among attributional inferences and comprehension processes: Initial findings and a general method.

Attribution theories have not specified whether attributions are made by perceivers as part of the process of comprehending an event or only later in response to specific attributional questions. Theories also disagree about the types of attributional inferences (judgments of causation, of the actor's traits, or of intentionality) that are most likely to be made initially and to mediate further inferences. Whereas previous research has been unable to address these issues, a design using 2 RT measures provided relevant evidence. Results of 2 studies involving 100 undergraduates show that judgments of intention and of the actor's traits may have been made in the process of comprehension; affective judgments and inferences about the repetition of an event and the event's personal or situational causation were probably made later. Implications for a model of schema-based attributional inference are discussed. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does adopted mean different? An attributional analysis.

46 adopted and 121 nonadopted Ss, aged 13–21 yrs and from upper-middle-class families, completed a series of attributional stories, Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale, and a perceived parenting questionnaire. Results indicate that attributions were different and that, contrary to expectations, adopted Ss were significantly more confident and viewed others more positively than nonadopted Ss. They also had a more internal locus of control than their nonadopted peers, and their adoptive parents were experienced as significantly more nurturant, comforting, predictable, protectively concerned, and helpful than were nonadoptive parents. It is suggested that an important correlate of attributional judgments is the parenting that is experienced. Results are discussed in terms of other studies that have reported an excessive number of adopted persons who have psychological problems. (51 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional style as a risk marker of genetic effects for adolescent depressive symptoms.

Genetic effects on adolescent depression have been consistently reported, but little is known about mediating pathways from the distal genotype to resultant behavioral symptoms. Identifying intermediate risk markers may provide clues on these pathways. In the present study, longitudinal twin and sibling data were used to address 3 issues pertaining to attributional style as a putative marker of genetic risk for adolescent depression: state independence by assessing predictive effects between attributional style and depressive symptoms, heritability of attributional style at different time points, and genetic links between attributional style and depressive symptoms characterizing concurrent and longitudinal associations. The authors further examined whether these predictive and genetic links varied across levels of stress, age, and gender. Negative attributions preceded, co-occurred with, and followed symptoms. The predictive association between earlier negative attributions and later depressive symptoms did not differ by stress, age, or gender. Attributional style was moderately heritable at both time points. Genetic links with concurrent and prospective depressive symptoms were larger in individuals reporting higher levels of stress, who were older and female. Implications for attributional style as a marker reflecting genetic risks are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross sectional study of symptom attribution and recognition of depression and anxiety in primary care

OBJECTIVES: To examine the effect of patients' causal attributions of common somatic symptoms on recognition by general practitioners of cases of depression and anxiety and to test the hypothesis that normalising attributions make recognition less likely. DESIGN: Cross sectional survey. SETTING: One general practice of eight doctors in Bristol. SUBJECTS: 305 general practice attenders. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The rate of detection by general practitioners of cases of depression and anxiety as defined by the general health questionnaire. RESULTS: Consecutive attenders completed the general health questionnaire and the symptom interpretation questionnaire, which scores style of symptom attribution along the dimensions of psychologising, somatising, and normalising. General practitioners detected depression or anxiety in 56 (36%; 95% confidence interval 28% to 44%) of the 157 patients who scored highly on the general health questionnaire. Subjects with a normalising attributional style were less likely to be detected as cases; doctors did not make any psychological diagnosis in 46 (85%; 73% to 93%) of 54 patients who had high questionnaire and high normalising scores. Those with a psychologising style were more likely to be detected; doctors did not detect 21 (38%; 25% to 52%) of 55 patients who had high questionnaire and high psychologising scores. The somatisation scale was not associated with low detection rates. This pattern of results persisted after adjustment for age, sex, general health questionnaire score, and general practitioner. CONCLUSIONS: Normalising attributions minimise symptoms and are non-pathological in character. The normalising attributional style is predominant in general practice attenders and is an important cause of low rates of detection of depression and anxiety.     

Measuring parental attributions: Conceptual and methodological issues.

A selective review is offered of current issues and new developments in the measurement of parental attributions for social behavior. Attributions have alternatively been conceptualized as involving (a) memory-dependent knowledge structures (i.e., interpretive styles that are dependent on the parent's history) or (b) stimulus-dependent appraisal processes (i.e., interpretations that are dependent on information available in the immediate context). Consideration is given to the theoretical underpinnings of different types of attributional measures and the implicit models within attribution research (e.g., attributions as mediators, attributions as moderators). Finally, psychometric issues within different attributional approaches are discussed, including consideration of the factors that optimize or constrain the utility of different measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional styles and life events in the classroom: Vulnerability and invulnerability to depressive mood reactions.

A core prediction of the reformulated model of learned helplessness and depression states that when confronted with the same negative life event, people who display a tendency to attribute negative outcomes to internal, stable, or global factors should be more likely to experience a depressive reaction than people who typically attribute negative outcomes to external, unstable, or specific factors. The present study tested that prediction with 227 undergraduates by determining whether the content of Ss' attributional styles at 1 point in time predicted the severity of their depressive response (Multiple Affect Adjective Check List) to receiving a low grade on an exam at a subsequent time. Consistent with the prediction, Ss with an internal or global attributional style for negative outcomes at Time 1 experienced a depressive response when confronted with a low grade; Ss with an external or specific attributional style were invulnerable to this response. In contrast to results for the internality and globality dimensions, Ss' scores along the stability attribution dimension were not correlated with the severity of their depressive response to the low grade. In the absence of a negative life event, Ss' generalized tendencies to make internal or global attributions for negative outcomes at Time 1 were not significantly correlated with their subsequent changes in depressive mood, although there was a nonsignificant positive correlation between severity of depressive response and the tendency to make global attributions for negative outcomes at Time l. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maladaptive achievement patterns: a test of a diathesis-stress analysis of helplessness

The present study tested the assumptions, derived from a diathesis-stress model, that students' perceptions of autonomy-support in their classroom produce a relatively intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic motivational approach to academic tasks and that this approach, in turn, predicts qualitatively different responses to uncontrollable events. It was further assumed that students' motivational orientation would be more reliable than attributional style or perceptions of competence in predicting achievement patterns, including performance level after failure, use of adaptive attributions, and overall achievement scores. Results supported these predictions and further demonstrated, in longitudinal analyses, that motivational orientation may contribute to the formation of perceptions of competence and attributional style in students.     

Maladaptive achievement patterns: A test of a diathesis–stress analysis of helplessness.

The present study tested the assumptions, derived from a diathesis–stress model, that students' perceptions of autonomy–support in their classroom produce a relatively intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic motivational approach to academic tasks and that this approach, in turn, predicts qualitatively different responses to uncontrollable events. It was further assumed that students' motivational orientation would be more reliable than attributional style or perceptions of competence in predicting achievement patterns, including performance level after failure, use of adaptive attributions, and overall achievement scores. Results supported these predictions and further demonstrated, in longitudinal analyses, that motivational orientation may contribute to the formation of perceptions of competence and attributional style in students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)