The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of attributional style, sex roles, and sex-role self-discrepancy in the relationship between gender and depression. Epidemiological studies report a higher incidence of depression among women then men (approximately 2:1). Among the various theories suggested to explain this gender difference, sex roles, attributional style, and self-discrepancy have been conceived as possible explanations. The relationship between gender and depression may be better understood through examining the possible contribution of these three independent variables. To examine these theories, a sample of 130 subjects was drawn from clients at the USU Counseling Center, the USU Community Clinic, the Logan Regional Hospital, and students from an introductory psychology class at USU. Participation was based on voluntary informed consent of the subjects and approval of the above mentioned institutions. Each subject completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Extended Attributional Style Questionnaire (EASQ), and a revised version of the short Bern Sex-Role Inventory (SBSRI) measuring ideal versus actual self. Path analysis was used to examine the sequence of the relationships presumed by the androgyny model, congruence model, and masculinity model. Neither sex role was found to correlate significantly with depression. Overall, the directions of the path coefficients best supported the androgyny model, but these coefficients were too weak to explain the variance. Attributional style was related to depression, but no gender difference was found in the correlation between attributional style and depression. The correlation coefficient between feminine self-discrepancy and depression was positive but statistically insignificant for the females from the clinical sample and very small for females from the student sample. Overall, attributional style, sex-roles, and self-discrepancy in sex-role characteristics were not found to contribute to the higher rate of depression in women.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between differing stated causes of deviant behavior which is commonly labelled mental illness, and the perceived seriousness of these behaviors in determining judgments of the degree of responsibility attributed to described deviant individuals. This was accomplished by having subjects rate four different vignettes as to degree of perceived seriousness and degree of responsibility for behavior. The subjects were 76 undergraduate students enrolled in either introductory psychology and/or introductory anthropology. The subjects were divided into four groups. Each group of 19 subjects received the same four vignettes. Each vignette gave a behavioral description which was characteristic of one of four categories of mental illness: paranoid schizophrenic, simple schizophrenic, depressed neurotic, and phobic compulsive. Each group received a different stated cause for the described behavior. These causes were biological, social learning, unknown, and both biological and social learning. The subjects were asked to rate the individual described in each vignette as to how serious they perceived the individual's behavior to be on a scale of 1-4. Subjects were also asked to rate how responsible the described individual was, in their judgment, for his behavior on a scale of 1-5. The specific questions addressed by this study were: (1) Does the degree of responsibility for deviant behavior attributed by normal individuals to various types of described deviant behavior vary as a function of the stated cause of behavior? (2) Does the degree of responsibility for deviant behavior attributed by normal individuals to various types of described deviant behavior vary as a function of the perceived seriousness of the behavior? and (3) Do stated cause and perceived seriousness of behavior interact in determining the degree of responsibility normal individuals attribute to deviant individuals. The results of this study indicated that there is a significant relationship between the perceived seriousness and degree of responsibility attributed to deviant individuals. More specifically, the paranoid schizophrenic individual, rated as the most serious, was seen as significantly less responsible than the less serious depressed neurotic or phobic compulsive individual. No significant main effect was found for the stated cause of behavior and no significant interaction, cause by perceived seriousness, was found. These results provide support for the notion that perceived seriousness contributes more to the determination of attribution of responsibility than does the stated cause of behavior. The implications of these findings as they relate to psychiatric rehabilitation were discussed as were the limitations of this study which included concerns regarding instrumentation and statistical analysis.

Attribution theory has become increasingly prominent in social psychology in the last few decades. Insights from attribution theory were used to guide the development of a parenting program . The program was delivered to a group of mothers and fathers of middle-school children in a 5-week parenting program. Parents who volunteered for the program were randomly assigned to treatment and control (delayed treatment) conditions. The program emphasized the dangers of biases in perception and encouraged empathic communication. Parents were encouraged to discuss their own parenting dilemmas in the class. Handouts and reminders were used to help parents understand and remember the pOints of the sessions. Both the parents and their middle-school children gave reports on parent behavior before the program began and after its conclusion. While there were no differences between treated and untreated parents on most child-report measures, children consistently rated parents in the experimental group more favorably than those in the control group when asked to indicate changes in the parents' behavior. Apparently the parenting program made some improvements in parents' nurturing behaviors as perceived by themselves and their middle-school children. It was concluded that the insights of attribution theory can help parents improve their nurturing behavior. Difficult methodological issues about measuring changes in behavior remain unresolved. The implications of this project for practice include the recommendation that parenting programs account for cognitive as well as behavioral processes. Applications for parenting programs and the methodology of their evaluation are discussed.

The present study was designed to test the causal locus hypothesis, and to develop and explore the selfevaluational hypothesis. The causal locus hypothesis is based on attribution, which is a person's perception of cause. The hypothesis holds that persons making internal attributions (self-caused) for failure end external attributions (not self-caused) for success experience more negative postoutcome mood than persons making external attributions for failure and internal attributions for success. The hypothesis was derived from major theories or attribution, but was not experimentally tested until recently (Wollert et al., 1981).

The purposes of this study were (a) to replicate previous research reporting actor-observer differences in subjects' attributions about behavioral causality, and (b) to manipulate the availability of causal information so that those actor-observer differences would be eliminated.

Managing diversity in the workplace is a challenging task for supervisors. Supervisors must punish negative behavior consistently, regardless their employees’ demographic characteristics. Some research suggests that negative workplace behaviors committed by lower status group members (e.g., Black people or women) are attributed to more internal factors and penalized more severely compared to higher status group members (e.g., White people or men; Duncan, 1979; Bowles & Gelfand, 2009; Luksyte, et al., 2013). However, recent evidence of pro-Black biases in judgments (Mendes & Koslov, 2013; Zigerell, 2018), challenge the perspective that evaluators are intentionally biased against Black people. If individuals deliberately compensate for pro-White biases by demonstrating pro-Black behaviors as some researchers suggest (Axt, et al., 2016), the negative workplace behaviors of Black employees may be punished less severely than white employees regardless of their gender or the reasons for their transgressions. The present research examined interactions between attribution, employee gender, and employee race when predicting punishment of negative workplace behaviors. In two studies, participants took the role of a supervisor and read descriptions of employees who violated workplace rules. In Study 1 participants read eight descriptions of workplace rule violations, then responded to attribution, punishment type, punishment severity, seriousness of offense, and responsibility measures. In Study 2 participants read eight descriptions of workplace rule violations attributed to internal and external causes and responded to punishment severity, seriousness of offense, and responsibility measures. Race and gender of the employees committing each offense were randomized within each participant so that they each rated all eight combinations of race, gender, and attribution (Study 2). Study 1 found support for the pro-Black bias, participants made more internal attributions for negative behavior committed by women and White employees and punished their negative workplace behaviors more severely. Unlike Study 1, participants in Study 2 did not make punishment decisions based on employee gender or race. Instead, participants punished behaviors based on their causal explanations; behaviors explained with internal causes were punished more severely than behaviors explained with external causes. Focusing on attribution reduced the propensity to discriminate in favor or against employees based on their demographic characteristics. While race and gender can impact punishments for workplace rule violations, learning more information about causal factors may reduce the likelihood of biased decisions.

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No description available.

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine responses to suicidal ideation by an HIV positive male described as heterosexual/homosexual in a promiscuous/monogamous relationship. Men (101) and women (137) enrolled in introductory psychology courses participated in the study. Participants completed a short demographic questionnaire, read one of four scenarios, and completed the Attitudes and Helping Behavior Scale (AHBS) designed to measure the participantsÆ emotional responses, attributions, and willingness to help the target subject. Present research involved a 2 (sex of subject) x 4 (scenarios) independent groups factorial. Independent ANOVAS were performed to interpret the significance of the main and interaction effects. Results revealed a main effect for gender on total attitude scores on the AHBS. There was no main effect for gender on anger towards the scenario subject as originally hypothesized. Future researchers should utilize a more heterogeneous sample than the present one to obtain more applicable results.

The use of Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) in pollution source apportionment (PSA) is examined and illustrated. A study of its settings is conducted in order to optimize them in the context of PSA. The use of a priori information in PMF is examined, in the form of target factor profiles and pulling profile elements to zero. A Bayesian model using lognormal prior distributions for source profiles and source contributions is fit and examined.