Dimensions Of Causal Attributions Research Articles

Multilevel causal attributions on transboundary risk: Effects on attributions of responsibility, psychological distance, and policy support.

This study used two randomized experiments in a prospective design (Study 1 N =297, Study 2 N =296) to examine how multilevel causal attribution dimensions (internal vs. external to an individual or a country) shape domestic and foreign policy support to counter transboundary risk. Results from Study 1 and 2 showed that external-country (vs. internal-country) causal attribution reduced perceptions of internal-country attributions of responsibility, which had a cross-lagged effect on support for domestic-industry policies to mitigate the risk. In contrast, perceptions of external-country attributions of responsibility increased support for foreign policies in a 2-week follow up. This study offers theoretical insights into the demarcation of multilevel causal attribution dimensions in studying media framing effects. It also highlights some important causal mechanisms of how media frames shape public support for policies aimed at transboundary risk mitigation.

Beyond workaholism: differences between heavy work investment (HWI) subtypes in well-being and health-related outcomes

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore well-being and health-related outcomes among all the four basic subtypes of heavy work investment (HWI), as well as a fifth distinct category of full-time workers (i.e. those who work from 35 to 43 weekly hours).Design/methodology/approachThe 510 respondents chosen to be included in the Internet survey were mostly heavy work investors. Based on two dimensions of causal attributions (causal locus and controllability), an elimination mode was used to classify heavy work investors into four main subtypes. Those who reported high financial needs were classified as needy. From the remaining heavy work investors, those who reported high organizational demands were classified as organization-directed. Afterward, those who reported high drive to work were classified as workaholics. Finally, those who reported high passion for work were classified as work-devoted.FindingsAmong the five categories of classified respondents, the work-devoted and the needy emerged as the most distinct categories. The work-devoted had the best outcomes (stronger positive feelings, better current health condition, better body mass index (BMI) and adequate hours of sleep a night), whereas the needy had the worst outcomes (a higher level of stress, bodily pain, aches that interfere with regular activities and weariness throughout the day).Originality/valueThis study addressed both long hours and high effort invested in work, and both dispositional and situational heavy work investors. A possible implication of this study is that when job applicants have similar human capital profiles, organizations should consider recruitment of work-devoted individuals for demanding jobs.

How Nonprofits Can Recover from Crisis Events? The Trust Recovery from the Perspective of Causal Attributions

While trust is a valuable relational asset for nonprofits, it is fragile and once broken can cause a great deal of damage to the organization. Therefore, once it is lost after a crisis event, valid strategies are needed to rapidly repair the trust. Although trust repair mechanisms have been widely studied, little is known about the way trust changes over time and the methods needed to repair trust and even less is known about trust in nonprofit organizations. Therefore, two studies were conducted in this paper using the three causal attribution dimensions from attribution theory to reveal how trust in a nonprofit can be damaged and repaired. It was found that the attribution cause significantly influenced the trust repair process; that is, when the cause had a higher locus of causality, stability, and controllability attribution degrees, it was more difficult for donors to forgive the organization. While reducing the controllable attribution of individuals was not found to effectively repair trust, reducing the locus causality or stability had a more significant effect. It was also found that the three specific strategies of denial, diminishing crisis, and rebuilding played a critical role in trust repair for nonprofits influenced by the locus of causality. This study provides a useful framework for nonprofit practitioners seeking to effectively respond to crises and win back the trust of their current and potential donors.

Let Me Tell You About My Success: The Implications of Attribution-Based Capitalization Response Messages for Discloser Affect

Capitalization attempts, or the sharing of personal good news, can have positive outcomes for disclosers when met with a skillful response. This study reports on a test of an attribution-based theoretical framework for capitalization response messages. Participants (N = 314) read capitalization response messages created by crossing the causal attribution dimensions of locus, stability, and globality. They rated messages for their anticipated effect on positive and negative affect. Results indicate that messages that make internal attributions for success are rated significantly higher on positive affect and lower on negative affect than messages making external attributions, as are messages making stable versus unstable attributions. The stability dimension moderates the impact of the globality dimension on message ratings. Implications for attribution and social support theories are discussed.

The Role of Causal Attributions in Sport Consumers' Emotions and Satisfaction Judgment

We examined the role of causal attributions of sport consumers in the formation of emotions and satisfaction judgment. Participants were 165 students at a large university in the southeastern United States. Through a series of hierarchical regression analyses, their attribution processes were found to be an important antecedent of their consumption emotions. Specifically, internal causes that related to the game outcome (e.g., internal control and stability) had a significant positive impact on their feelings of pride and a significant negative effect on their shame, whereas external control had a significant positive impact on their anger and a significant negative effect on their feelings of gratitude. Thus, both internal control and stability appeared to be the most influential causal attribution dimensions in predicting consumer satisfaction with the outcome of a game. From a practical perspective, marketing campaigns emphasizing a sporting team's season-long stability may enhance sport consumers' satisfaction.

The Determinants of Customers' Behavioral Intentions after Service Failure: The Role of Emotions

This study explores the effects of stability and controllability, two dimensions of causal attribution, on airline travelers’ negative behavioral intentions, namely switching and negative word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions, through their negative emotions. Data were collected through a survey of airline travelers who experienced a service failure in the past year. Results indicate that both causal attribution dimensions affect negative behavioral intentions. The results also confirmed the moderating role of negative emotions in the stability/controllability and switching intention relationship as well as stability and negative WOM relationship. Managerial implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

Causal Attributions of the High and Low Resilient Adolescents

Causal attributions play a predominant role in diverse behaviors. The present study attempts to find whether resilient distinguished himself / herself on causal attributions for events in terms of the underlying dimensions identified by Weiner (1979). A convenient sample consisting of 120 students studying in higher secondary class was used in this study. The age of the subjects in the sample ranged from 15 to 16 years. Both males and females were included in the sample. The Revised Causal Dimension Scale (CDS-II) (McAuley, Duncan,&Russell, 1992) and Resilience Scale for Adolescence (READ) (Hjemdal et al., 2006) were used to obtain measure of causal attributions and resilience of the Subjects. Criterion groups were formed representing high group and low group on resilience using the median score of the distribution of scores of the sample on READ. The groups were compared with each other on dimensions of causal attributions namely Locus of Causality (LOC), Stability(S), External Control (EC) and Personal Control (PC) using ANOVA. Findings show that locus of causality and personal control significantly differentiated low and high group on resilience. Highly resilient were higher on locus of causality and on personal control. The perceived the cause of events to be originating from within them and perceived higher degree of volitional influence that can be exerted over a cause by them was found to be characteristic of resilient.

Dimensions of Causal Attributions of Tax Evasion in Portugal

A study carried out in Spain (Salgado, 1998) suggested that attributions of tax evasion had two independent dimensions: (a) tax evasion control, and (b) beliefs about the tax system. In order to check if perceptions of tax evasion causes are crossculturally generalizable, the present study reports on a research conducted in Portugal using the same causal attributions used in the Spanish research. A sample of 497 Portuguese men and women with a variety of jobs were asked about their causal attributions of tax evasion. A factor analysis was carried out and the results showed a factor pattern which reproduced the Spanish factor pattern. Congruence coefficients confirmed the similarity of the structures. These findings confirmed that two dimensions may explain the structure of the perception of tax evasion causes. Implications of the results are discussed and future research is suggested.

STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENTS IN A STATISTICS COURSE IN RELATION TO MOTIVATIONAL ASPECTS AND STUDY BEHAVIOUR


 
 
 The present study focuses on motivational constructs and their effect on students’ academic achievement within an existing statistics course. First-year Health Sciences students completed a questionnaire that measures several motivational constructs: dimensions of causal attributions, outcome expectancy, affect, and study behaviour, all with respect to statistics. The results showed that when the cause of negative events was perceived as uncontrollable, outcome expectancy was negative. When the cause of negative events was perceived as stable, affect toward statistics was negative. Furthermore, negative affect toward statistics and limited study behaviour led to unsatisfactory achievements. Path analysis (Lisrel) largely confirmed the causal relations in a model that was based on attributional and learned helplessness theories. The consequences of these findings for statistics education are discussed.
 First published May 2007 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives
 
 

Experimental Effects of Manipulating Attributional Information about Challenging Behaviour

Background The informal staff culture in intellectual disability services has been proposed as a significant factor determining staff perceptions of, and responses towards, challenging behaviours. However, research to date has been exclusively descriptive.Methods An experimental analogue of one potentially salient aspect of staff informal culture, the causal language used to describe challenging behaviours, was developed. Naïve participants (N = 84 students) rated attributional dimensions and optimism after viewing a video of aggressive behaviour. Participants were exposed to vignettes in which information about the behaviour's controllability and stability was manipulated prior to viewing the video.Results Controllability and stability manipulations affected later perception of dimensions of causal attributions (e.g. behaviour presented as controllable was rated as caused by factors more likely to be internal to the depicted client), and optimism (e.g. behaviour presented as stable was associated with a less positive perception of potential for change).Conclusion Staff talk in intellectual disability services, especially language communicating causal information, is likely to affect perceptions of subsequent incidents of challenging behaviours. This may have important implications for the treatment and assessment of challenging behaviour. Further research is needed to replicate and extend the findings of this study and also to contribute to the development of external validity.

The influence of causal attribution of parents on developing the child enuresis

Causal attributions are affirmed as a cognitive element able to explain emotional and motivational aspects of behaviour of some categories of adult psychiatric patients, primarily depressive ones. Theoretical and practical success of cognitive ideas in explaining the origination of depressive disorders, and in the monitoring of depressive patient treatment has led to further development of theory, but also to the attempt to apply the learning about causal attributions to various problems. Characteristic attempts are those that the problems of child abuse, children?s depression, upbringing problems, school failure, hyperactivity, enuresis, and long-term effects of different child treatment, too, are analysed from the point of view of causal attributions. By assessing parent causal attributions regarding child night urination, we wanted to establish to what extent specific attributions for child behaviour differentiate the parents of children having this problem from those parents whose children have established control. Parents were assessed in terms of four dimensions of causal attributions for child?s problem. Those are the dimensions of globality, counter-lability, internality, and the stability of the cause of child?s problem. The analysis of parent causal attributions show that mothers and fathers in both assessed groups similarly experience the cause of enuretic problems of their children. Enuresis is seen as caused by specific, internal, and instable causes. Such a system of dimensions could correspond to the belief that the main etiological factor of the enuresis is maturing. For more reliable verification of this attitude, longitudinal strategy in research is necessary, especially to comprehend whether parental attributions have been developed as an effect of persistent enuresis, or whether the enuresis is developed as an effect of parental attributions.

Causal Attribution Dimensions and Adjustment To Sport Injury

A study of 31 patients (20 males and 11 females) at a sports medicine clinic who attributed their injuries to overtraining or overuse was conducted to examine the relationship between causal attribution dimensions and psychological adjustment to sport injury. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires that included the Profile of Mood States (POMS) and an attribution measure in which participants were asked to identify the main cause of their injuries and to rate the perceived cause of injury in terms of internality, stability, and globality dimensions. The attribu-tional dimensions accounted for 55% of the variance (p < .0005) in POMS total mood disturbance (TMD) scores. Internality (ft =– .38, p < .01) and stability (ft = –.58, p < .0005) were inversely related to TMD. These findings were essentially the same when statistically controlling for injury duration, injury severity, and injury status. The findings suggest that attributing overuse injuries to internal and stable factors may have adaptive value.

Depressed Mood and Child Conduct Problems

Depressed mood and child conduct problems as predictors of mothers' attributions for their own and their children's negative experiences were examined. Eighty-two mothers of children aged 5 to 12 rated dimensions of causal attributions for hypothetical situations involving either themselves or their children. Mothers who reported higher levels of depressed mood were more likely to attribute their own negative experiences to internal, controllable, global, and stable factors. Maternal depressed mood was also associated with attributing children's negative experiences to causes within the child, and within the child's control. Mothers' perceptions of conduct problems in their children were related to attributions of globality and stability for child negative experiences. Mothers who perceived their children's negative experiences as due to internal and controllable child causes indicated more negative anticipated behavioral responses to the child concerned.

Role of causal attributions in dynamic self-regulation and goal processes.

A dynamic model of self-regulation and goal process was tested with student survey responses and exam scores over successive performance episodes. A model of goal processes related to performance within episodes was developed and supported in both instances. The locus and stability dimensions of causal attributions were examined as moderators of how self-regulation and goal processes develop over time in a between-episode model. Results of the between-episode model showed stability attributions as moderating goal achievement-self-efficacy change relations following both episodes, whereas the locus attributions moderated the goal achievement-satisfaction relationship only after the first exam. Findings were discussed in terms of the evolution of goal processes over time and the use of attributional framing interventions

Attributions for episodes of marital aggression: The effects of aggression severity and alcohol use

This study examined attributions for husband to wife marital agression as a function of aggression severity and husbands' alcohol use. Subjects were a community sample of 117 wives and 109 husbands who reported an episode of serious physical aggression during a structured interview, conducted at one year of marriage. The results showed that husbands' attributions were influenced by both severity and alcohol use. In particular, sober husbands tended to blame their wives for severe aggression, but, unexpectedly, drinking husbands tended to assume responsibility for severe aggression. In contrast, wives' attributions were influenced mainly by severity. Wives also discriminated between the locus and stability dimensions of causal attributions, whereas husbands relied solely on the locus dimension. Specifically, wives held husbands' behavior more responsible for severe aggression than their own behavior and held husbands' character much more responsible than their own character. Additional findings with regard to relationship attributions were discussed.

Test anxiety and causal attributions: Some evidence toward replication

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to examine the nature of causal attributions and their relationship to measures of trait and state test anxiety, and perceptions of success. Eighty-four female undergraduates completed a sentence memory task after which they rated their level of perceived success, generated reasons for their performance, and rated these reasons for their performance along three causal attribution dimensions (internality, stability, globality). Perception of success was related to the three explanatory style dimensions, with internality as the weakest of the three relationships. Although the expected test anxiety-outcome interactions were not found, test anxiety relationships were noted indirectly from both the attribution rating scale analyses and directly from the content analyses. For the former results indicated that the strongest relationships were between test anxiety (trait and state) with perception of success. Content analyses supported the importance of the internality dimension, and supplemented the rating scale analyses. The pattern of findings was interpreted to suggest the importance of task and/or situational variables in the attribution process, a point of recent interest.

Guilt reactions to sexual fantasies during intercourse

This study explored how guilt feelings about having sexual fantasies during intercourse are related to frequency of fantasizing, to sexual satisfaction and sexual dysfunction, and to different beliefs about the cause, transgressive nature, and consequences of such fantasizing behavior. Drawing from a sample of 178 men and women with intercourse experience (means age = 27), 84% reported that they fantasized at least some of the time during sexual intercourse. From this sample, those who reported feeling most guilty about having sexual fantasies during intercourse (1 SD or more above the mean, n = 39) were compared to those who felt least guilty (1 SD or more below the mean, n = 43). Those subjects who felt guilty reported having significantly fewer sexual fantasies during intercourse than those who felt the least guilty. They also reported higher levels of sexual dissatisfaction and dysfunction. The high-guilt subjects believed that sexual fantasies during intercourse were significantly more abnormal, immoral, uncommon, socially unacceptable, and harmful to themselves, their partner, and their relationship regardless of whether their partner knew that such fantasies occurred. They also reported that the cause of their fantasizing during intercourse reflected significantly more negatively on their sexual behavior and their general character than did the low-guilt group. No statistically significant differences were found between groups on the causal attribution dimensions of internality, stability, or globality of such fantasies. In general, these findings suggest that guilt reactions about sexual fantasies during intercourse are related to beliefs that such fantasies are deviant and harmful and that such guilt reactions are negatively related to sexual satisfaction and adjustment.

Validity of an Attributional Model for a Specific Life Event

Weiner's (4, 5) model of causal atuibutions was originally validated regarding achievement on laboratory tasks. Some unsuccessful attempcs to apply it to attributions regarding other events have prompted suggestions that the model's posrdated dimensions of causal attributions are not applicable to natural processes of causal inference (1, 2, 3). To check on the model's validirg for an actual life event, questions concerning causal amibutions were included in a questionnaire routinely given to undergraduate students prematurely withdrawing from Dalhousie University. One question concerned whether the cause(s) of their withdrawal were primarily internal or external in nature and another concerned whether the causes were relatively unstable or stable. Of 242 respondents over the two years, 79% described the causes as internal and G4% described the causes as unstable. Elsewhere on the questionnaire, students checked off which of 21 listed factors contributed to their withdrawal and circled the most imwrtant factor. The three factors most frequently indicated to be the most important factor were uncertainty about career need a break from academic work, and financial difficulty. Uncertainty about career goals was associated with describing the causes as internal (XIZ = 18.7, p < .001), while financial difficulty was associated with describing the causes as external (x12 = 6.1, p < .02), and need a break from academic work was associated with describing the causes as both internal and unstable (xis = 13.8, fi < ,001 and 10.7, p < .01. respectively). Students indicating that the causes were unstable were much more likely to intend to return to university (~2' = 54.5, p < .002), even though the presence or absence of spebific problems (uncertainty about goals, etc.) were not predictive of intentions. These results indicate that, at Least for this specific life went, studencs can make apparently valid attributions using the dimensions of the proposed model and that their thinking along these dimensions has a suong relationship to their intended behavior.

Causal attribution bias in shy males: Implications for self-esteem and self-confidence

The present study examined the locus of control and the stability dimensions of causal attributions for past heterosexual social experiences in relation to social self-esteem and expectancy for success in interactions with persons of the opposite sex. Two hundred and fifty-four single college male subjects completed (a) a Social Self-Esteem Inventory (SSEI) and other scales, (b) a causal attribution questionnaire dealing with past heterosexual social experiences, and (c) an expectancy for heterosexual social success questionnaire. The overall results showed that high SSEI subjects made internal attributions in explaining past social successes and external attributions for past social failures with persons of the opposite sex. Low SSEI men, on the other hand, externalized the cause of their successes and assumed more personal responsibility for failure. Subjects who made stable (ability and task difficulty) attributions for past successes had greater expectancies for future success in heterosexual social relations than subjects who made unstable (effort and luck) attributions. These results were discussed in the context of attribution theory and cognitive approaches to depression, and in relation to cognitive factors that may underlie the etiology and treatment of shyness problems.