Attribution Processes (attribution + process)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Using Attributions to Understand the Effects of Explanations on Applicant Reactions: Are Reactions Consistent With the Covariation Principle?,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2005
Robert E. Ployhart
Research has shown that explanations for selection decisions may influence a variety of applicant perceptions and behavior, but an understanding of how and why this occurs remains largely unknown. This study attempts to understand the effects of explanations by adopting Kelley's (1967, 1972) covariation model of the attribution process. Specifically, explanations that vary on consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency covariation information should produce predictable effects on applicant perceptions and attributions. Results from 2 studies, the first a laboratory study and the second a field study with actual applicants, support the utility of the covariation model for understanding the influence of explanations for selection decisions on locus attributions, fairness, self-perceptions, and organizational attractiveness. These results suggest that the covariation model may be a useful means to construe the explanation-attribution-perception relationship, and thus provide a number of theoretical and practical implications. [source]


PUNISHING THE "MODEL MINORITY": ASIAN-AMERICAN CRIMINAL SENTENCING OUTCOMES IN FEDERAL DISTRICT COURTS,

CRIMINOLOGY, Issue 4 2009
BRIAN D. JOHNSON
Research on racial and ethnic disparities in criminal punishment is expansive but remains focused almost exclusively on the treatment of black and Hispanic offenders. The current study extends contemporary research on the racial patterning of punishments by incorporating Asian-American offenders. Using data from the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) for FY1997,FY2000, we examine sentencing disparities in federal district courts for several outcomes. The results of this study indicate that Asian Americans are punished more similarly to white offenders compared with black and Hispanic offenders. These findings raise questions for traditional racial conflict perspectives and lend support to more recent theoretical perspectives grounded in attribution processes of the courtroom workgroup. The article concludes with a discussion of future directions for research on understudied racial and ethnic minority groups. [source]


Selecting explanations from causal chains: Do statistical principles explain preferences for voluntary causes?

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2010
Denis J. Hilton
We investigate whether people prefer voluntary causes to physical causes in unfolding causal chains and whether statistical (covariation, sufficiency) principles can predict how people select explanations. Experiment 1 shows that while people tend to prefer a proximal (more recent) cause in chains of unfolding physical events, causality is traced through the proximal cause to an underlying distal (less recent) cause when that cause is a human action. Experiment 2 shows that causal preference is more strongly correlated with judgements of sufficiency and conditionalised sufficiency than with covariation or conditionalised covariation. In addition, sufficiency judgements are partial mediators of the effect of type of distal cause (voluntary or physical) on causal preference. The preference for voluntary causes to physical causes corroborates findings from social psychology, cognitive neuroscience and jurisprudence that emphasise the primacy of intentions in causal attribution processes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


De-escalation after repeated negative feedback: emergent expectations of failure

JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DECISION MAKING, Issue 5 2004
Brian J. Zikmund-FisherArticle first published online: 26 NOV 200
Abstract Research on willingness to make marginal investments (e.g., the escalation and sunk cost literatures) has often focused on project completion decisions, such as the "radar-blank plane." This paper discusses a fundamentally different type of marginal investment decision, that of couples deciding whether to continue infertility treatment in the face of repeated failures. Two experiments based on this context show that when people face multiple independent chances to achieve a valued goal but are unsure about chances of success, premature quitting or "de-escalation" is the norm. Repeated negative feedback appears to induce individuals to see each successive failure as more and more diagnostic. As a result, even a short series of failed attempts evokes beliefs that future attempts will also fail. These emergent expectations of failure, generated by causal attribution processes, associative learning, and/or discounting of ambiguous information, appear very compelling and induce people to forgo profitable marginal investments. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Attributing causality and remembering events in individual- and group-acting situations: A Beijing, Hong Kong, and Wellington comparison

ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2001
Sik Hung Ng
Previous research has shown that collectivists prefer external whereas individualists prefer internal attributions. To test the findings' generality across social situations, we compared the two attributions in situations where either an individual was acting on a group (Individual-acting) or the reverse (Group-acting). As predicted, collectivists' (Beijing and Hong Kong Chinese) greater preference for externality, and individualists' (Wellington Europeans) greater preference for internality, occurred in individual- but not group-acting situations. Collectivists' (mainly Hong Kong) memory of events was better in group- than in individual-acting situations according to prediction, but the predicted reversal was not found among individualists. The collectivist/individualist categorizations of the samples were supported by measures of self-construal. Indigenous Chinese concepts of ,unity, (tong tian ren) and ,combination, (he nei wai) were discussed to throw light on attribution processes that are not readily accessible through the concepts of collectivism and individualism. [source]


Illness perceptions in depersonalization disorder: Testing an illness attribution model

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY (AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY & PRACTICE), Issue 2 2007
Dawn Baker
Depersonalization disorder (DPD) remains poorly understood and controversial in terms of diagnosis and treatment. Little is known about the cognitive representation of this disorder. In this study, 80 participants with DPD were assessed using the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire to determine the nature of their perceptions, causal attributions and whether these correlate with levels of depersonalization and affect. Illness perceptions were generally negative; the nature of symptoms was described as mainly psychological but causal attributions were equally divided between psychological and physical. Over half of the sample believed that symptoms were due to ,physical changes in the brain'. A strong illness identity, psychological illness attributions and high levels of depression were associated with greater depersonalization disorder severity. High levels of anxiety were also prevalent but the relationship between anxiety and depersonalization was unclear. The findings offer some support for a cognitive model of understanding depersonalization disorder, namely that attribution processes are linked to perceived symptom severity and a wide range of experiences come to be seen as part of the disorder.,Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]