Causal Attributions and Sex Differences Associated With Perceptions of Occupational Barriers

This study extends previous research addressing sex differences in perceived occupational barriers and evaluates the mediating role of causal attributions in the relationship between perceived occupational barriers and career maturity. Participants (85 women and 30 men) listed their perceived barriers to occupational goals, completed a measure of attributions for career decision making, and completed 2 different measures of career maturity. Findings revealed that a larger proportion of women than men perceived past barriers associated with family-related issues. Results also revealed a significant, negative relationship between the number of perceived occupational barriers and career maturity for participants who believe that career decision making is an externally caused, uncontrollable process. The implications of these findings and suggestions for career counselors to integrate perceived barriers into the counseling process are discussed.     

Achievement attributions and depressive symptoms in attention deficit-disordered and normal children

Depressive symptoms and achievement attributions were examined in attention deficit-disordered (ADD) and normal schoolchildren. The findings indicate that the ADD children acknowledged having more depressive symptoms and displayed more external attributions both for positive and for negative achievement. In addition, correlations reveal that the normal children's achievement attributions became more internal with age, whereas the ADD children became more external for negative events. The patterns of the relationships among measures are discussed.     

Why is discrimination stressful? The mediating role of cognitive appraisal

This study attempts to shed light on past findings that experiences of racial and gender discrimination are associated with poor psychological and physical health outcomes by investigating the role of cognitive appraisal as a mediator of the relationship between experiences of discrimination and affective stress reactions. African American female college students (N = 115) imagined themselves in an audiotaped scenario in which they overheard 2 European American male classmates make negative evaluations of them. Participants then completed measures of causal attributions, cognitive appraisal, and affective stress reactions. Multiple regression analyses supported the hypotheses that attributions to racism and to discrimination that combines racism and sexism were associated with increased stress reactions. This relationship was mediated by cognitive appraisals of centrality.     

Trait Attributions About College Students With a Physical Disability: Circumplex Analyses and Methodological Issues1

Trait attributions concerning able-bodied college students and those with a physical disability were investigated in two studies. In Study 1, 194 able-bodied students completed extensive adjective checklists in one of four experimental conditions: stimulus person physically disabled (wheelchair user) male, disabled female, able-bodied male, or able-bodied female college student. To avoid self-presentation biases, subjects completed checklists not in terms of their own views but in terms of commonly held stereotypes. Results showed that not only were fewer socially desirable and more undesirable traits attributed to students with a disability than to able-bodied students, but when tested for “sameness” vs. “oppositeness” using two circumplex models, traits attributed to students who have a disability were clearly the “opposite” of those attributed to able-bodied students. In Study 2, 115 students completed a trait checklist based on the findings of Study 1 with reference to one of the four stimulus persons. Although subjects reported their own views, the results were consistent with those of Study 1. It was also found that stereotyping in the socially desirable direction was related to stereotyping in the undesirable direction; both were related to lack of ease with students with a disability. Common stereotypes of wheelchair user students are listed and the implications of the findings for the design of programs to reduce prejudice and integrate students with a disability into academic life are discussed.     

Expectations and attributions in social anxiety disorder: diagnostic distinctions and relationship to general anxiety and depression

Contemporary cognitive models suggest that social anxiety disorder arises from a number of cognitive factors, including tendencies to form pessimistic (rather than optimistic) attributions and expectations for socially-related events. These models also assume that the strengths of such attributions and expectations are more closely linked with social anxiety than with general anxiety or depression. To test these assumptions, a battery of self-report measures was completed by participants with a primary diagnosis of generalized social anxiety disorder (n = 75), panic disorder with agoraphobia (n = 44), or post-traumatic stress disorder (n = 59). To examine differences on these cognitive variables, group comparisons were performed controlling for general anxiety, depression and medication status. Social anxiety disorder, compared with panic disorder with agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, was characterized by lower expectations for positive social events and higher expectations for negative social events. There was no difference among the groups on expectations for non-social positive or negative events. Stable and global attributions for social negative events were more closely associated with social anxiety disorder than with panic disorder with agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder. Correlational analyses also revealed specific relationships among social-cognitive measures and social anxiety, even after controlling for general anxiety and depression. The results are consistent with cognitive models of social anxiety disorder.     

Priming Prejudice How Stereotypes and Counter-Stereotypes Influence Attribution of Responsibility and Credibility among Ingroups and Outgroups

The research examines the effect of priming negative stereotypic and positive counter-stereotypic portrayals of African Americans (Study 1) and women (Study 2) on interpretations of actual media events. A counter-stereotypic portrayal of an African American male led participants to subsequently make more external or situational attributions of responsibility to other African American males involved in unrelated media events (i.e., Rodney King and Magic Johnson), whereas stereotypic portrayals led to more internal or personal attributions. Similarly, a counter-stereotypic portrayal of a female tended to increase the perceived credibility of females involved in unrelated media events (i.e., the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings and the William Kennedy Smith/Patricia Bowman rape trial) whereas stereotypic portrayals decreased their perceived credibility. Study 2 also revealed an ingroup-outgroup bias in the interpretation of media events, with females tending to be more sympathetic toward other females. Implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions made for future research.     

Explication of interspousal criticality bias

Although bias towards perceiving spousal criticism is related to dysphoria and marital discord (Smith & Peterson, 2008), the bias construct has received insufficient elaboration. We explicated the criticality bias construct by exploring its correlates and incremental validity relative to perceived criticism, marital attributions, and negative affect. 118 couples completed self-report measures and undertook a videotaped discussion task. Signal detection analyses of both spouses' and outside observers' ratings of discussions produced bias indices. Criticality bias evidenced a pattern of convergent and discriminant validity mirroring perceived criticism's (Renshaw, 2008). Bias also provided incremental validity beyond perceived criticism, marital attributions, and negative affect to the prediction of behavior. Bias may be a dysfunctional way to view marital events and a stress generation process.     

Children's Trait and Emotion Attributions in Socially Ambiguous and Unambiguous Situations

Children's attributions about story characters in ambiguous and unambiguous social situations were assessed. One hundred and forty-four 6–7-year-olds and 10–11-year-olds heard about actors who slighted a recipient intentionally or for an undetermined reason and then made causal attributions about the events, an emotion attribution about the recipient, and global personality attributions about the actors and recipient. Relations between perceived self-competence and attribution style were also assessed. Participants were more likely to make negative causal attributions in the unambiguous condition and with increasing age. Older girls and younger boys were more likely than other groups to attribute negative emotions to the recipient. Overall, participants perceived recipients positively and actors negatively. Perceived self-competence was positively correlated with actor attributions, although these differed by age and gender. Implications for children's psychosocial adjustment are discussed.     

The relationship between attributions and depression varies across attributional dimensions and across samples

Two hypotheses implicit in the use of composite measures of attributions in tests of learned helplessness theory (but not implicit in the theory itself) were tested: the hypotheses that relationships between depression and the three types of attributions are equal in magnitude and are linear. To test these hypotheses, data from three published studies of the reformulated learned helplessness theory (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) were reanalyzed. The hypothesis that internal, stable, and global attributions are equally related to depression was tested and rejected. Increases in internal attributions were related to depression in one sample; increases in global attributions for negative events were related to depression in two samples; stability attributions for negative events were unrelated to depression. The relationship between attributions and depression was nonlinear in one of the three populations studied. Finally, a third hypothesis was tested: the hypothesis that the relationship between attributions and depression is equal across samples. The hypothesis was rejected: attributions for negative events were more highly related to depression in a psychiatric sample than in normal populations. Implications of these findings for learned helplessness theory and for the use of composite measures of attributional style are discussed.     

Partners’ Attributions for Service Members’ Symptoms of Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The association of service members’ combat-related PTSD with partners’ distress is weaker when spouses/partners believe that service members experienced more traumatic events during deployment. Also, when simultaneously examining partners’ perceptions of all PTSD symptoms, perceptions of reexperiencing symptoms (the symptoms most obviously connected to traumatic events) are significantly negatively related to distress in partners. These findings are consistent with the notion that partners may be less distressed if they make external, rather than internal, attributions for service members’ symptoms. The present study explicitly tests this possibility. Civilian wives of active duty service members completed measures regarding their own marital satisfaction, their perceptions of service members’ combat exposure during deployments, their perceptions of service members’ symptoms of PTSD, and their attributions for those symptoms. External attributions were significantly positively associated with perceptions of combat exposure (r_p = .31) and reexperiencing symptoms (β = .33) and significantly negatively associated with perceptions of numbing/withdrawal symptoms (r_p = –.22). In contrast, internal attributions were significantly negatively associated with perceptions of reexperiencing symptoms (β = –.18) and significantly positively associated with perceptions of numbing/withdrawal symptoms (β = .46). Internal attributions significantly moderated the negative association of PTSD symptoms with marital satisfaction, such that the association strengthened as internal attributions increased. These findings are the first explicit support for an attributional understanding of distress in partners of combat veterans. Interventions that alter partners’ attributions may improve marital functioning.     

Expectations and Attributions in Social Anxiety Disorder: Diagnostic Distinctions and Relationship to General Anxiety and Depression

Contemporary cognitive models suggest that social anxiety disorder arises from a number of cognitive factors, including tendencies to form pessimistic (rather than optimistic) attributions and expectations for socially-related events. These models also assume that the strengths of such attributions and expectations are more closely linked with social anxiety than with general anxiety or depression. To test these assumptions, a battery of self-report measures was completed by participants with a primary diagnosis of generalized social anxiety disorder (n?=?75), panic disorder with agoraphobia (n?=?44), or post-traumatic stress disorder (n?=?59). To examine differences on these cognitive variables, group comparisons were performed controlling for general anxiety, depression and medication status. Social anxiety disorder, compared with panic disorder with agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, was characterized by lower expectations for positive social events and higher expectations for negative social events. There was no difference among the groups on expectations for non-social positive or negative events. Stable and global attributions for social negative events were more closely associated with social anxiety disorder than with panic disorder with agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder. Correlational analyses also revealed specific relationships among social-cognitive measures and social anxiety, even after controlling for general anxiety and depression. The results are consistent with cognitive models of social anxiety disorder.     

The mediation component of the hopelessness depression in relation to negative life events

A necessary test of the mediational processes component of the hopelessness theory of depression is to test whether the individuals who have negative attributional style and experience negative life events are likely to make negative attributions for the negative events they confront. The present study, using undergraduate students, find that the negative attributional style do not predict negative attributions subjects made for the negative life events they experience within a period of 3 months. However, subjects' negative attributions for the negative life events coupled with the experience of a high number of negative life events predicted their depressive symptomatology. The depressive symptomatology is found not to be mediated through hopelessness. The findings are discussed in relation to the hopelessness theory of depression.     

The Motivational Quality of Global Attributions in Hypothetical and Experienced Situations of Gender Discrimination

Traditionally, global attributions have been thought to reduce instrumental behavior aimed at resolving negative events. However, the present research shows global attributions for gender discrimination are related to taking action against unfair treatment. In Study 1, women ( N = 157) completed a questionnaire assessing attributions for hypothetical scenarios of discrimination and collective responses to discrimination. In Study 2, women ( N = 79) were placed into a laboratory situation of discrimination and asked to indicate their attributions for and responses to their unfair treatment. In both studies, hierarchical regression analyses showed that global attributions were related to both individual and collective responses to their discrimination. Implications for examining attributions in an intergroup context were discussed.     

Youth adjustment to parental illness or disability: the role of illness characteristics, caregiving, and attachment

This study aimed to (1) examine relations between youth adjustment and three sets of predictors: parental illness/disability characteristics, caregiving, and parent-child attachment, and (2) explore differences on these variables between youths of parental physical illness/disability and youths of parental mental illness. Eighty-one youths between 10 and 25 years of a parent with a physical illness/disability (35%) or a mental illness (43%) completed a series of self-report measures assessing perceived characteristics of the parent's illness/disability, caregiving experiences, and adjustment outcomes. Results revealed a set of predictors of poorer youth adjustment: gradual illness/disability onset, being male, isolation, lower perceived maturity, and less choice in caregiving. Youths of parental mental illness differed from youths of parental physical illness/disability on emotional distress (worry and discomfort) dimensions of caregiving. Youth-parent attachment security was associated with youth caregiving and there was a trend for attachment to vary according to parental illness/disability type. Findings highlight young caregiving as an important target for service and policy planning.     

Depressive Attributional Style: The Role of Self-Esteem

Two studies evaluate the role of self-esteem in the depressive attributional style. In the first study, college students completed four measures of depression, four measures of self-esteem, and the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ). Regression analyses revealed that across measures, self-esteem was a better predictor of attributional style for negative events than was depression. In study two, psychiatric inpatients completed a measure of self-esteem, a measure of depression, and the ASQ. In this clinical sample, self-esteem and depression were highly correlated and both predicted ASQ scores. But when variation in depth of depression and social desirability were removed statistically from the association between self-esteem and attributions for negative outcomes, there remained a significant association between self-esteem and internal, stable, and global attributions for negative outcomes. Controlling for the variation in self-esteem eliminated the relation between depression and depressive attributional style. These findings demonstrate the importance of self-esteem in depressive attributional style in both normal and clinical populations, as well as potential differences in the relations among self-esteem, depression, and attributional style in clinical versus normal samples.     

Child Victims' Attributions about Being Physically Abused: An Examination of Factors Associated with Symptom Severity

The goal of the present study was to examine a conceptual attributional model for the development of psychopathology after child physical abuse. Physically abused or maltreated children referred for treatment completed a series of measures to assess parent-to-child violence, abuse-specific attributions and general attributional style, other potential predictors, and children's psychopathology. Results revealed that the severity of current parent-to-child violence was associated with children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Attributions predicted the level of children's psychopathology beyond the variance accounted for by the severity of parent-to-child violence. The severity of parent-to-child violence, attributions about the abuse, general attributional style, and level of family functioning accounted for 28%–63% of the variance in children's abuse-specific, internalizing, and externalizing symptoms. Implications of the findings and research recommendations are discussed.     

Beginning Medical School: Determinants of Male and Female Emotional Reactions1

With the knowledge that medical students experience a variety of academic pressures as well as interpersonal stress during medical school, an assessment was made of emotional reactions among male and female students during the initial months of medical training. Questionnaires were completed at the start of school and 4 months later for the incidence of positive and negative emotions and tension-related symptoms. Students also estimated their midterm grade point average (GPA) and rated the friendliness of their peers and their experience of sex discrimination. By midterm, all students experienced negative emotions and symptoms more frequently and positive emotions less frequently than at the beginning of the school year. Additionally, women students reported more negative affect and physical symptoms at both time points than men. Women also reported a greater decrease in positive emotions and perceived peer friendliness than men. Higher anticipated GPA was associated with more frequent experience of positive emotions and less frequent negative emotions and physical symptoms in both sexes, but this pattern was stronger for women than for men. The implications of these findings are discussed.