This thesis examines the effect of ethnicity on assessments of achievement outcomes, and presents a theoretical explanation using Foschi's reformulation. The reformulation integrates aspects of attribution theory and status generalization theory. It proposes that when a higher status performer and a lower status performer are equally successful at a task, the success of the former will tend to be attributed to ability more than the success of the latter. Also, when the two performers are equally unsuccessful at a task, the performance of the lower status person will tend to be attributed to lack of ability more than the performance of the higher status person. The propositions are tested for ethnicity by collecting evidence from attribution studies dealing with ethnicity and assessment of performance outcomes. The findings indicate that there is substantial support for the propositions. Since these have not been directly tested, an experiment is proposed. In the final section of the thesis a standardized experimental format such as the one used in expectation states research is presented. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

Dating violence among college students has become a pressing concern. However, to date, the bulk of the research in this area has attempted to discern correlates of marital violence. Little research has been paid to the isolation of predictors of violence that occurs early in the relationship. This paper demonstrates the utility of several risk factors identified among male college students in predicting dating violence. Factors included are history of abuse in the family of origin; insecure attachment style as measured by parental attachment and girlfriend attachment; attributional style; anger; and depression. Though it is likely that many other factors predict male dating violence, this study aims to isolate those factors that operate within the framework of history of abuse and insecure attachment. Results indicated the following: 1. History of abuse accounted for a substantial portion of the variance in predicting dating violence. 2. The interaction of attachment to family and partner was related to verbal aggression and abuse toward and from the partner. 3. Attributional style did not significantly predict dating violence beyond history of abuse. 4. Depression was not significantly related to dating violence; however, anger was significantly and directly related to verbal aggression and overall abuse from self toward partner. 5. Results were also discussed in terms of the four abuse criteria, including some notable findings regarding partner attachment style and direction of abuse. In addition, implications for treatment and prevention and suggestions for future research were offered. / Master of Science

The present study examined whether an individual’s own implicit theory of relationships predicts how s/he perceives his/her friend’s romantic relationship. Implicit theories of relationships are based on destiny beliefs (DB), the belief that a relationship is meant to be, and growth beliefs (GB), the belief that relationships require work. Each participant was randomly exposed to one of three relationship scenarios where the participant’s hypothetical friend discusses a partner displaying negative, mixed, or positive relationship behaviors. We found the participants high in DB were less approving of the relationship, and those high in GB were more approving. Those high in DB also made more relationship-damaging attributions when asked to select reasons why the partner engaged in said behaviors but surprisingly perceived the couple as more satisfied overall. Anticipated interactions between DB and GB were not found.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The authorship of the five additions to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy remains a conundrum. Ben Jonson was first thought responsible, but a majority of scholars argue against his involvement. Other candidates have been proposed, namely Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, William Shakespeare, and John Webster. Past attribution studies have mainly focused on Shakespeare due to the fourth addition, the Painter’s Scene, which has been perceived to exhibit Shakespearean quality. John Nance’s lexical study of the fourth addition makes a most compelling case: Shakespeare’s hand is almost certainly present. Warren Stevenson, Hugh Craig, Brian Vickers, and Douglas Bruster have also supported an attribution to Shakespeare; however, their research errs in assuming a single author wrote all five of the additions. This assumption is disproven by Gary Taylor’s work on the first addition, which is the first to identify Heywood, not Shakespeare, as its likely author. Taylor’s conclusion emphasizes that the additions could embody revisions by more than one playwright, such as in the case of Sir Thomas More. Therefore, the authorship of the other additions must remain conjectural until further study. My thesis is the first to independently explore the third addition’s authorship, and based on lexical evidence, the following analysis disproves claims of Shakespeare’s presence within the third addition.

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Research involving attribution theories typically surrounds attributions of responsibility for actions in general. However, people also regularly attribute responsibility to themselves, others, or environmental circumstances for emotions. This research aims to develop a measure of a person's proclivity to attribute responsibility to others for their emotions—the Attributions of Responsibility for Emotions Scale (ARES). The research involves two studies, the first designed to develop items for inclusion in the ARES, and the second designed to validate and determine the reliability of the ARES. Participants in Study 1 included 71 (30 male and 41 female) undergraduate students from Brigham Young University. These participants took part either in focus groups or in responding to a preliminary 24-item version of the ARES online. Participants in Study 2 included 306 undergraduate students from Brigham Young University. These participants responded to several scales, including a 21-item version of the ARES, which all measured constructs similar to responsibility for emotions. Results suggested that a 10-item version of the ARES was the most valid and reliable measure of persons' proclivity for attributing responsibility to others for their emotions.

Common authorship attribution is well described by various authors summed up in Jacques Savoy’s work. Namely, authorship attribution is the process “whereby the author of a given text must be determined based on text samples written by known authors [48].” The field of authorship attribution has been explored in various contexts. Most of these works have been done on the authors written text. This work seeks to approach a similar field to authorship attribution. We seek to attribute not a given author to a work based on style, but a style itself that is used by a group of people. Our work classifies an author into a category based off the spoken dialogue they have said, not text they have written down. Using this system, we differentiate California State Legislators from other entities in a hearing. This is done using audio transcripts of the hearing in question. As this is not Authorship Attribution, the work can better be described as ”Conversational Style Attribution”. Used as a tool in speaker identification classifiers, we were able to increase the accuracy of audio recognition by 50.9%, and facial recognition by 51.6%. These results show that our research into Conversational Style Attribution provides a significant benefit to the speaker identification process.

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