GENDER AND CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS FOR MASTERY, PERSONAL, AND INTERPERSONAL EVENTS

In two studies, achievement was conceptualized as consisting of affiliative as well as mastery events. Participants wrote about a recent achievement, provided causal attributions, and assessed the degree to which that achievement involved mastery, personal, and interpersonal themes in the first study. A second study randomly assigned participants a theme and asked them to assess the involvement of traditional correlates of achievement. Results indicated that individuals viewed achievement as consisting of mastery, personal, and interpersonal activities. These activities differed, however, in their associated pattern of correlates and attributions. Mastery events were characterized by public standards, high expectations, a process focus, completed time frame, and attributions to ability and effort. Interpersonal events were characterized by internal standards, lower expectations, an outcome focus, ongoing time frame, and attributions to luck. Characteristics reported for personal events varied as a function of methodology.     

Sex and achievement domain: Cognitive patterns of success and failure

Subjects (N=439) were asked to write an account of an achievement of failure, and to describe it in terms of locus of standards (internal-external), conceptual focus (process-impact), and initial expectations for success (or failure). Additionally, accounts were classified on the basis of achievement domain (personal, interpersonal, mastery). Analyses of variance [2 (sex)×3 (domain)] for each cognitive measure revealed few sex differences. However, cognitive responses did vary as a function of achievement domain. Main effects for domain were observed under success instructions for locus of control (p<.0002) and under failure instructions for locus of control (p<.05), conceptual focus (p<.05), and expectations (p<.06). Interaction effects of sex and achievement domain were observed on locus of standards for success (p<.0002) and initial expectations preceding failure (p<.025), indicating that women were more responsive to domain differences than were men. Discriminant analyses indicated that cognitions were more readily patterned in terms of achievement domain than sex. Elaboration and incorporation of the concept of domain in cognitive models of achievement is suggested.     

Sex-role orientation,achievement motivation,and causal attributions of college females

Female undergraduates were asked to state causal attributions for success or failure outcomes. Students worked in pairs so that one half of them cooperated with either a male or a female partner, while the other half competed with a male or female opponent. All female subjects were pretested on achievement motivation and sex-role orientation. Women who espoused the traditional feminine role were more self-derogating in causal attribution than nontraditional women. Achievement-oriented women, like their male counterparts, were more self-enhancing following failure. However, following competitive success against male opponents, women who scored high in achievement motivation were less self-enhancing than those who scored low.This article is part of a larger study originally prepared as the author's doctoral dissertation at Hofstra University, 1975. The author is indebted to Claire Ernhart, the dissertation chairperson, and to the committee members, Alfred Cohn and Dianne Krooth, for their guidance and support.     

Sex differences in attribution: A Norwegian study

A quasi-experimental study was conducted to examine the effect of sex on actor and observer attributions of success and failure. It was predicted that, contrary to American results in similar studies, Norwegian males and females would tend to be largely similar in their attribution of success and failure. Only same-sex attributions were explored. Subjects were asked to attribute causality along a set of six standard causal dimensions. The results showed that sex had a relatively minor effect on attributions, compared to the effects of attributor role and task outcome. Only in their attributions of ability did men and women differ to some degree in that women were more likely to use lack of ability as an explanation for own failure. The study concludes that cross-cultural research is needed in order to better assess the normative impact on attribution.     

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.     

Exploring sex differences in expectancy,attribution, and academic achievement

Two studies were carried out to explore if sex differences in expectancy and attribution of achievement are related to sex differences in academic performance. Study I investigated expectancy and attribution of achievement, operationalized as grade point index, among 176 male and 116 female college freshmen. Men were found to form higher expectations for future grades. Attributions measured through assigning percentage weights to ability, luck, effort, and difficulty as causal explanations of one's grade point index showed that men make more ability and women more effort attributions. Despite these differences in expectancy and attribution patterns, men and women were found not to differ in their performance. In Study II 120 college freshmen, half of them male, half female, filled out questionnaires before and after a midterm examination. A subsample of 49 also completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory. The results basically confirm the previous study's findings, except in Study II, men and women gave equally high weights to effort as a cause. The results also show that a feminine sex-role orientation is associated with a debilitating pattern of expectancy and attribution and lower performance, especially among women. Implications of the results for unraveling inconsistencies in the attribution literature and for a need to clarify connotations of femininity are discussed.The author wishes to express her gratitude to the members of the Psychology and Guidance Division of the College of Basic Studies, Boston University, for their assistance in preparing the questionnaire and collecting the data for Study I. Research for Study II was supported by grant MH 31181-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health. Mark Nachbar provided assistance in analyzing the data to both studies. Jan Mokros, Joseph Pleck, and Dan Jaquette provided valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Gender Differences in Self-Serving Attributions About Sexual Experiences1

Two studies investigated sex differences in attributions about sexual experiences. Subjects were asked to provide causal explanations for satisfying and unsatisfying past experiences. Men were expected to display a greater self-serving bias than women. This hypothesis was supported for unsatisfying but not for satisfying experiences. In both experiments, males were found to blame their partners more for unsatisfying experiences than females. Males used self-serving attributions, assigning more responsibility to the partner than to themselves (Experiment I), whereas women displayed self-derogatory attributions, attributing negative outcomes more to themselves than to their partners (Experiment II). Furthermore, self-derogatory attribution patterns were correlated with unsatisfactory sexual histories in women but not in men. Implications for the treatment of sexual dysfunctions via reattribution training are discussed.     

Attribution difficulty and memory for attribution-relevant information

This research compared the processing and retrieval of attribution-relevant information when the attributional inference is easy or difficult to make. Subjects attributed behavioral events to the person or to the situation, based on several items of context information. Each context sentence implied either the person or the entity as causal agent. When the attributional inference was difficult to make (an equal number of context sentences implied actor and entity as the causal agent), subjects recalled more of the behavioral events, recalled more context sentences, and were less confident in their attributions than when the attributional inference was easy to make (most context sentences implied the same causal agent). Subjects also recalled context information that was implicationally incongruent with the majority of the other context sentences with a higher probability than when that same information was implicationally congruent.     

The process of sex attribution

Sex attribution is defined as any explanation of behavior that specifies sex of the performer as a causal agent. A method is described for assessing appropriate and inappropriate occasions for making sex attributions, and several hypotheses related to their occurrence are advanced. As predicted, sex attributions occurred most frequently when a person stated a preference that was “sex appropriate” on an empirical basis for someone of his/her sex. Consistent with claims of the Women's Movement, the findings indicate that men are more likely than women to make inappropriate sex attributions. Unexpectedly, however, this bias occurred only when men were judging the attitudes of other males.     

How do women account for failure when they expect success?

Recent research suggests that men and women account for failures differently. Competent, self-aware men discount failures; competent, self-aware women accept them. This style of accounting for failure outcomes in achievement has been explored in studies of attribution and, more recently, the expectancies an individual holds regarding the outcome (to fail or succeed). The theories do not predict acceptance of failure by competent, self-aware individuals. The incongruent results have been consequently explained as a sex difference. Closer evaluation of the research, however, indicates that most women expect failure rather than success, and that this is a learned expectation. This study attempted to answer whether an exposure to success experiences would alter this expectancy and, if so, whether women would then discount failures in a self-serving manner as men do. Through a manipulation of success and failure outcomes using anagram tasks, it was demonstrated that, given an expectation to succeed, women did use systematic biased attributions to account for failure. These findings have significant implications for attribution research and for our understanding of women's attitude towards achievement and ability to maintain a sense of well-being when faced with failure.     

Exploring attributions in natural settings: Gender and self-esteem effects

Two studies investigated the attributions of undergraduates for the outcomes of satisfying and dissatisfying achievement events that occurred naturally over the course of a 3-week period. In both studies, women with low performance self-esteem gave less ego-enhancing attributions than high self-esteem women, high self-esteem men, or low self-esteem men. Also, in Study 2 high self-esteem subjects attributed greater stability to causes of satisfying events than to causes of dissatisfying events, whereas low self-esteem subjects gave both types of events equivalent stability ratings. Both studies provide evidence of consistent individual differences in attributional style across occasions and situations. The gender differences were interpreted in the context of sex-role socialization factors and Anderson and Slusher's (1986) two-stage model of the attribution process.     

The Effects of Gender and Measurement Strategy on Causal Attributions for Infertility

Investigators of causal attributions for threatening events have typically studied either male or female samples and have interchangeably used two methods of assessing attributions. To examine the effect of gender and measurement strategy on causal attributions, we interviewed 31 men and 33 women with impaired fertility. Causal attributions were measured using open-ended questions, as well as by asking participants to rate the influence of five specific causes. The results of a multitrait-multimethod matrix revealed only modest convergence between measurement methods. As predicted, both method and gender influenced causal attributions. Women were more likely to attribute the infertility to their behavior. Causal attributions were related to psychological symptoms, but differentially depending on how attributions were measured.     

Sex-role androgyny and patterns of causal attribution for academic achievement

In order to test the role of social psychological factors in the underrepresentation of women in mathmatics and related academic fields, a two-wave panel survey was conducted among freshmen university students (88 females and 44 males). Before and during their first academic year, survey respondents completed questionnaires assessing their psychological androgyny (employing the Bem Sex-Role Inventory) and their causal attributions for success and failure in various areas of academic achievement. Results of cross-lagged panel correlation analyses confirmed the predicted causal relationship between sex-role identification and feelings of control over achievement in mathematics and science among female respondents. No such relationship was evidenced among male respondents or among females for nonmathematical areas of academic achievement.     

Gender differences in autonomous and social achievement orientations

This research examined gender differences in orientations toward autonomous and social achievement. Three independent samples of subjects (total N= 359 males and 574 females) completed measures of achievement orientation (including Strumpfer's [1975] Autonomous Achievement Values and Social Achievement Values scales) and relevant cognitive, affective, and behavioral variables. Correlational and factor analyses clearly identified distinct autonomous and social achievement factors for both men and women in each of the samples. Examination of the correlates of achievement orientation indicated that whereas an autonomous achievement orientation is similarly expressed in males and females, there are considerable sex differences in the expression of an orientation toward social achievement. In particular, a social achievement orientation was associated with concerns over social approval and responsiveness to social influence among males, but was generally unrelated to these factors among females. Findings are discussed in terms of several recent hypotheses concerning the effects of sex role norms on the development and expression of achievement needs in men and women.     

An interpersonal perspective on depression: the role of marital adjustment, conflict communication, attributions, and attachment within a clinical sample

Previous studies have focused on the difficulties in psychosocial functioning in depressed persons, underscoring the distress experienced by both spouses. We selected conflict communication, attribution, and attachment as important domains of depression in the context of marital adjustment, and we analyzed two hypotheses in one single study. First, we analyzed whether a clinical sample of couples with a depressed patient would differ significantly from a control group on these variables. Second, we explored to what degree these variables mediate/moderate the relationship between depressive symptoms and marital adjustment. The perspectives of both spouses were taken into account, as well as gender differences. In total, 69 clinical and 69 control couples were recruited, and a series of multivariate analyses of variance and regression analyses were conducted to test both hypotheses. Results indicated that both patients and their partners reported less marital adjustment associated with more negative perceptions on conflict communication, causal attributions, and insecure attachment. In addition, conflict communication and causal attributions were significant mediators of the association between depressive symptoms and marital adjustment for both depressed men and women, and causal attributions also moderated this link. Ambivalent attachment was a significant mediator only for the female identified patients. Several sex differences and clinical implications are discussed.     

Generalization of achievement orientations for experiences of success and failure in youth sport

Studies of achievement orientations in sport have focused on subjective success. This study explored the extent to which these orientations generalize to subjective failure. 796 youth sport participants ages 9 to 16 years (338 boys, 458 girls) recalled personal experiences of success and failure. These were then categorized as mastery, comparison or social recognition orientations. In 60% of cases, participants used the same orientation to interpret success and failure. In the middle and oldest groups, such generalization was most frequent for mastery orientations in girls but for comparative orientations in boys. In the youngest groups, mastery orientations generalized most frequently for each sex. Hence achievement orientations generalized across type of experience, but with differences by age and sex.     

Gender Differences in Persistence and Attributions in Stereotype Relevant Contexts

The present research was designed to examine the effects of gender math stereotypes on performance attributions and persistence. Two experiments tested whether stereotypes guided men’s and women’s reactions to negative or positive feedback on an alleged test of verbal or math ability. In Study 1, attributions to ability were influenced by gender stereotypes: women were more sensitive to feedback on a test that was described as a test of their math ability than when the same test was described as a test of their verbal ability, whereas men showed the opposite pattern. Study 2 replicated these findings for negative feedback and further showed that gender differences in attributions to ability mediated the gender difference in persistence in the math domain following an alleged failure on a math test. The implications of stereotype-consistent attributions for women’s persistence in quantitative fields are discussed.     

Self-awareness, probability of improvement, and the self-serving bias.

Evidence for the self-serving bias (attributing success internally and failure externally) is inconsistent. Although internal success attributions are consistently found, researchers find both internal and external attributions for failure. The authors explain these disparate effects by considering the intersection of 2 systems, a system comparing self against standards and a causal attribution system. It was predicted that success and failure attributions are moderated by self-awareness and by the ability to improve. When self-focus is high (a) success is attributed internally. (b) failure is attributed internally when people can improve, (c) failure is attributed externally when people cannot improve, and (d) these attributions affect state self-esteem. Implications for the self-serving bias are discussed.