Equipment malfunctions and attribution of causality

The purpose of this study was to test whether individuals would be more likely to attribute the cause for the malfunction of a new piece of equipment as a manufacturing problem in the equipment or as an inability on their part to properly work with the equipment. The subjects were 600 residents of Florida, selected by a stratified random sample and interviewed in a statewide telephone survey. Subjects were more likely to attribute the cause to themselves rather than the machine. Overall, 71% attributed the cause to themselves, while only 24% said the machine was at fault. There was also an interaction effect in terms of income, with middle-income users more likely to blame the machine and upper-income users more likely to blame themselves. Further, there was also a significant relationship between attribution of cause and age, with older respondents being more likely to attribute cause to themselves. These results imply that attribution may differ when the potential object of attribution is a machine rather than another person.     

Augustine or Philistine? College Students' Sanctification of Learning and Its Implications

Sanctification is a psychological process in which aspects of life are associated with God (theistic sanctification) or sacred qualities (nontheistic sanctification). Sanctification accounts for outcomes in diverse areas, such as family, the environment, and work. One area yet to be examined is the sanctification of learning, which was addressed in the present study in a sample of 349 college students in the United States. Sanctification of education was related to better educational outcomes (i.e., positive emotions toward education, higher grade point averages, and psychological growth), partially through the mediator of good study strategies (critical thinking and self-regulation), as indicated by structural equation modeling. Hierarchical regressions revealed that sanctification of learning predicted higher levels of investment in learning, advanced study strategies, and better educational outcomes, over and above demographic and general religious variables. The present study demonstrates the beneficial implications of sanctifying learning while contributing to the growing body of literature that demonstrates the importance of the sanctification construct.     

Parallel Processing Response Times and Experimental Determination of the Stopping Rule

It was formerly demonstrated that virtually all reasonable exhaustive serial models, and a more constrained set of exhaustive parallel models, cannot predict critical effects associated with self-terminating models. The present investigation greatly generalizes the parallel class of models covered by similar "impossibility" theorems. Specifically, we prove that if an exhaustive parallel model is not super capacity, and if targets are processed at least as fast as non-targets, then it cannot predict such (self-terminating) effects. Such effects are ubiquitous in the experimental literature, offering strong confirmation for self-terminating processing. Copyright 1997 Academic Press. Copyright 1997 Academic Press     

Self-regulation and social pressure reduce prejudiced responding and increase the motivation to be non-prejudiced

Self-regulation constrains the expression of prejudice, but when self-regulation falters, the immediate environment can act as an external source of prejudice regulation. This hypothesis derives from work demonstrating that external controls and internal self-regulation can prompt goal pursuit in the absence of self-imposed controls. Across four studies, we found support for this complementary model of prejudice regulation. In Study 1, self-regulatory fatigue resulted in less motivation to be non-prejudiced, compared to a non-fatigued control. In Study 2, strong (vs. weak) perceived social pressure was related to greater motivation to be non-prejudiced. In Study 3, dispositional self-regulation predicted non-prejudice motivation when perceived social pressure was weak or moderate, but not when it was strong. Finally, in Study 4 self-regulatory fatigue increased prejudice when social pressure was weak but not when it was strong.