Actors' and observers' attributions for success and failure: A comparative test of predictions from Kelley's cube,self-serving bias,and positivity bias formulations

An experiment was conducted to test implications of Kelley's cube, self-serving bias, and positivity bias formulations for attributions associated with success and failure on a test of “abstract reasoning.” Subjects either experienced or observed outcomes on three tasks. They then made attributions for only the third outcome, which was either a success or a failure. The first task was of the same type and had the same outcome as the third task, thus providing the information that the outcome being attributed was high in consistency. The second task was of a different type than the first and third tasks, and its outcome either did or did not differ from their outcomes, thus varying information about the distinctiveness of the outcome being attributed. Consensus was manipulated by presenting false norms, ostensibly from a previous experiment. In contrast to previous research, the present study included thorough checks on all of these informational manipulations. Regardless of attributor role (actor or observer), subjects attributed success more to internal than to external factors and attributed failure more to external than to internal factors. These findings indicate a general bias toward positive evaluations. Discussion centers on possible alternative interpretations of these findings, restrictions on their generality, and the limitations that they seem to impose on the applicability of the other two formulations.     

Some effects of task relevance and friendship on helping: You don't always help the one you like

It was hypothesized that being outperformed on a task that is relevant to one's self-definition is threatening to self-esteem, and that this threat is greater when one is outperformed by a friend rather than by a stranger. When another's performance threatens self-esteem, persons will be less likely to help the other by making the task easy. To test these hypotheses, 52 friendship pairs participated with strangers in a word identification task described either as a measure of important skills (high relevance) or as a game (low relevance). Participants chose clues for both a friend and a stranger to use in identifying target words. As predicted, they gave harder clues under high-relevance than under low-relevance conditions. Moreover, they gave harder clues to strangers than to friends under low-relevance conditions, but gave harder clues to friends than to strangers under high-relevance conditions.     

Sorting out what's in a word from what's not: Evaluating Clark's Semantic Features Acquisition theory

The Semantic Features Acquisition theory of semantic development which is due to E. Clark (e.g., 1973b) is reviewed and evaluated against the recent experimental literature, with special reference to the acquisition of English antonyms. The review critically examines the three major ontogenetic principles of Clark's theory in light of numerous recent findings, many of which are at variance in some major way with predictions from the theory. In many instances, new data are available which call into question previous findings. A recurrent problem has been that children's comprehension task performance is confounded with their response biases which are specific to the linguistic and nonlinguistic contexts in which the lexical terms are presented. Methodological implications are discussed, with recommendations for employing the logic of converging operations.     

Correlates of children's television viewing: Expectancies,age, and sex

The relationship of interpersonal trust and locus of control expectancies to amounts of television viewing and viewing preferences were examined among children in grades five through eight. Age and sex differences in viewing times, preferences, and viewing habits, as well as children's scores on the Children's Interpersonal Trust Scale and the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale were assessed. Several findings suggested that heavy viewing is associated with less trusting perceptions of others and less belief in controlling one's academic successes and failures, although the pattern found does not suggest so specific an effect of viewing television violence as Gerbner's cultivation hypothesis might suggest. Age and sex differences found were largely consistent with those reported in the previous literature.     

Power,competitiveness, and advice taking: Why the powerful don’t listen

Four experiments test the prediction that feelings of power lead individuals to discount advice received from both experts and novices. Experiment 1 documents a negative relationship between subjective feelings of power and use of advice. Experiments 2 and 3 further show that individuals experiencing neutral and low levels of power weigh advice from experts and experienced advisors more heavily than advice from novices, but individuals experiencing high levels of power discount both novice and expert advice. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrate that this tendency of individuals experiencing high levels of power to discount advice from experts and novices equally is mediated by feelings of competitiveness (Experiment 3) and confidence (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, Experiment 4 shows that inducing high power individuals to feel cooperative with their advisors can mitigate this tendency, leading them to weigh expert advice more heavily than advice from novices. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.     

Teachers' choice of punishment as a function of a student's gender,age, race,and IQ level

Evidence suggests that teachers treat students differently according to various characteristics, including demographic factors and academic labels. An attempt was made to discover whether teachers' recommendations of punishment would differ according to the students' age, race, gender, IQ level, and type of offense. Punishment was recommended for a hypothetical student in a fighting, a stealing, and a cheating situation. The results revealed that southern white female teachers generally reported that they would recommend more severe punishment for males than for females and for white males than for black males. It was noted that these results occured despite the fact that teachers differed in age, number of years of teaching experience, grade levels taught, and education level.