The aim of this study was to examine differences between happy and unhappy people, with respect to individuals interpretations, their attributonal style and in what way the priming effect is related to their attributional style and well-being. The participants were 74 senior high school and 21 undergraduate college students. Participants were asked to read a short story, some words were in bold type, and thereafter for their subjective perception of the words in bold type loading and memory of them in a recognition list. Attributional style was operationalized with an own constructed instrument. The results show that happy individuals interpreted more words as positive than negative in comparission with unhappy individuals. No correlation between participants well-being and global or attributional style for negative events were found. Both groups showed a tendency to be more optimistic than pessimstic for positive events. No differences were found for either memory or priming of loaded words. In sum the results suggest that happy individuals tend to conceive the world more positive.

The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship among the employee hostile attributional style, abusive supervision, job engagement and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. The total valid sample consisted of 291 subordinates from Aerospace industrial development, defense technology and system development industry in Taiwan workplace and was analyzed by factor analysis, reliability analysis and hierarchical regression analysis to measure the relationship among the constructs. Research results found that: (1) Subordinates¡¦ hostile attributional style was negatively related to their job engagement and that this effect was stronger when abusive supervision were high. (2) Subordinates¡¦ hostile attribiutional style was positively related to subordinates¡¦ perceptions of abusive supervision and that this effect was attenuated when subordinates were high in perceived self-efficacy in managing anger/irritation.

<p>The aim of this study was to examine differences between happy and unhappy people, with respect to individuals interpretations, their attributonal style and in what way the priming effect is related to their attributional style and well-being. The participants were 74 senior high school and 21 undergraduate college students. Participants were asked to read a short story, some words were in bold type, and thereafter for their subjective perception of the words in bold type loading and memory of them in a recognition list. Attributional style was operationalized with an own constructed instrument. The results show that happy individuals interpreted more words as positive than negative in comparission with unhappy individuals. No correlation between participants well-being and global or attributional style for negative events were found. Both groups showed a tendency to be more optimistic than pessimstic for positive events. No differences were found for either memory or priming of loaded words. In sum the results suggest that happy individuals tend to conceive the world more positive.</p>

The role of child optimism as a mediator and moderator in the relationship between interparental conflict and child adjustment was examined for 36 children between the ages of 9 and 12 years who resided in a two adult home. Child participants completed self-report measures of dispositional and attributional optimism, as well as a self-report measure of interparental conflict. Mothers of child participants completed measures of child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Multiple regression analyses found that dispositional optimism mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and both child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Attributional optimism was found to mediate the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalizing symptoms. No significant moderating effects of optimism were found. The relationships between optimism and child appraisals of threat and self-blame related to interparental conflict were examined using correlations. Both dispositional and attributional optimism were significantly negatively related to child appraisals of threat and self-blame regarding interparental conflict. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Using the framework of the reformulated learned helplessness (RLH) model of depression, this study examined the nonachievement of self-expectations of primigravidas desiring natural childbirth in terms of their attributional style and the possible resulting depression. The RLH model predicts that individuals who have a depressive attributional style experience a sense of helplessness when faced with situations which seem difficult or out of their control and are more apt to fail and become depressed. Natural childbirth is an experience which has the potential of appearing out of control to women involved in the birth process. Using a before and after design, the study was based on a sample of forty-one married primiparas who had an uncomplicated pregnancy, attended Lamaze childbirth classes, and anticipated an uncomplicated, unmedicated vaginal delivery. Sixteen subjects stated they did not meet their self-expectations during childbirth and twenty-five stated they did meet their self-expectations. The hypothesis were tested using two matched groups of sixteen each. Data from all subjects were used for post hoc analysis of the hospital data.

No description available.

The maturation and consolidation of executive functions, including cognitive flexibility, attentional control, goal-setting, and information processing, continues throughout adolescence. Cognitive vulnerabilities to depression, such as rumination on negative affect, negative cognitive style, and hopelessness, also emerge as stable risk-factors for depression during this time. Emerging evidence suggests these vulnerabilities may be associated with alterations in executive functioning, and with cognitive maturation. The current study explores the association between trajectories of executive development and cognitive vulnerabilities to depression using a person-centered characterization of latent classes of growth trajectories. Classes of adolescent cognitive development in working memory, selective attention, sustained attention, switching, and divided attention, were derived, and class associations with cognitive vulnerabilities were probed. The results showed that most executive domains have a normative majority with typical growth and low levels of cognitive vulnerability. Minority classes, representing atypical growth, were differentially related to cognitive vulnerability. Contrary to hypotheses, better cognitive development was generally associated with higher levels of cognitive vulnerability, specifically internal, stable, and self-worth dimensions of negative cognitive style. Several exceptions included classes whose trajectory suggested developmental regression; consistent with hypotheses, these classes also demonstrated higher levels of negative cognitive style. Results support a model in which cognitive development scaffolds the maturation of negative cognitive style. / Psychology

The thesis deals with attributional styles and their research in patients with psychosomatic disorder. The text is divided into a theoretical part and an empirical part. The term psychosomatic disorder is defined in the theoretical part. The essential links between psychosomatic disorder, stress and cognitive processes are mentioned. Selected attribution theory and the concepts of attributional styles, then make up the majority theory. In the empirical part, there are hypotheses defined using three psychodiagnostic methods tested on a set of people with psychosomatic disorder and compared with the healthy population. Key words: attribution attribution theory attributional style psychosomatic disorder/psychosomatic illness somatoform disorders

Suicidal behavior, including suicide attempt, may result from maladaptive explanatory patterns for past negative life events, in which a person attributes the causes of stressors to internal, stable and global factors. Conversely, an optimistic explanatory style involves perceiving negative life events as external, transient and specific, and may be related to reduced suicide risk. We examined the association between attributional style and lifetime suicide attempts in 135 college students, covarying age, race and ethnicity. Participants provided informed consent and completed an online survey. An optimistic explanatory style was associated with reduced risk of suicide attempt; this effect persisted in a model controlling for hopelessness and depressive symptoms. The manner in which an individual interprets negative life events may buffer against suicidal behavior. Therapeutic strategies to promote an optimistic explanatory style may be successful in the prevention of suicide.

Work context has many consequences for the psychological outcomes of employees. These outcomes also have consequences for the employer through possible loss of productivity, impaired health of employees which may be associated with absenteeism and turnover intention, among others. The literature also shows that these outcomes are not always the same even under similar working conditions. Theorising in cognitive psychology indicates that the way in which an individual appraises a situation may be more important to psychological outcomes than the actual presence of a stressor. Recently, personal resources have been hypothesised to influence these individual differences. Few if any studies have explored such personal resources as moderators in the relationship between work context and psychological outcomes, especially in the South African public service context. Thus, the general aim of this study was to determine whether personal resources (emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and explanatory styles) are moderators in the relationship between work context Gob demands and job resources) and psychological outcomes (psychological well-being and work engagement) in a sample of government employees. A cross-sectional survey research design was implemented. Data were collected from 459 participants with the following measuring instruments, the Job-Demands Resources (JD-R) Scale, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), the Affectomemter-2 Short-form (AFM.), the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) , the Emotional Intelligence Scale (ElS), the General Self-efficacy (GSE) scale, and the Explanatory Style (ES) Questionnaire. A demographic questionnaire was developed by the first author to capture diverse information from the participants relating to gender, turnover intention, post level and so forth. Analyses were conducted mainly in 2 steps. Firstly, multiple regression analyses were used to test the main effects of work context variables on psychological outcomes. Secondly, two-step hierarchical regression analyses were used to test whether personal resources (emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, and explanatory styles) moderated the relationship between work context variables and psychological outcomes. Before testing the moderation, all independent variables and moderator variables (dimensions of personal resources) were centred so as to exclude the possibility of any multicollinearity in the regression equation. The results of the study, reported in three articles/manuscripts, showed significant main effects for work context and the personal resources as predictors of psychological outcomes. In the second place, the results also showed that the personal resources used in this study moderate the relationship between work context and psychological outcomes. In the first article, it was concluded that emotional intelligence is of potential value, especially in the public sector that is focussed on optimal service delivery, and where emotional encounters are stock-in-trade. Emotional intelligence is a valuable personal resource to cultivate for establishing, developing, and maintaining positive outcomes in psychological well-being in the workplace. In the second article, it was concluded that as self-efficacy beliefs facilitate actions and behaviour taken by individuals, it is important that feedback and modelling could play an important role especially in service-oriented work contexts that may need self-regulation of emotions. In the third article, it was concluded that as attributional feedback can induce change in how individuals perceive their success or failure in a task, the role of explanatory styles in psychological outcomes could be cultivated through active feedback given to employees on their performance and possibilities of future growth in the organisation. Overall it was concluded that a lack of job resources in the presence of high job demands will undermine psychological outcomes even in the presence of personal resources. Therefore, the consequences for health impairment and negative outcomes cannot be over-emphasised in a situation where job demands outstrip job resources. Employees in the public service require skills such as social and emotional competency, self-efficacy and optimism as these are important tools in dealing with the public. Employees must have initiative, flexibility, motivation to achieve, empathy, self-esteem and confidence, self-control, and group management among fellow employees and the public that is served by them. Although the limitations for this study are related to the fact that it was a cross-sectional research design and data was collected using self-reports, insights were gained about the role of personal resources in the relationship between work context and psychological outcomes. Based on all three articles, it was recommended that cross lagged panel studies may be useful in further clarifying the role of personal resources in longitudinal studies about the relationship between job resources and psychological outcomes and possible upward spirals arising from facilitating these relationships. Aspects of such studies may also include a qualitative assessment of what participants perceive as job resources and personal resources and these help them to achieve their goals. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.