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Four studies explored whether perceived implicit theories (Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995) of others have the potential to engender self-doubt and influence one's self-attributions. Study 1 showed that people are aware of the attributional implications of evaluators' implicit theories. Study 2 showed that people can use social cues to detect evaluators' implicit theories. In Study 3, participants who believed that significant others endorsed an entity theory of intelligence exhibited greater self-doubt and made attributions for their own outcomes that were more stable (for negative events) and global (for negative and positive events). Finally, in Study 4, a manipulation of evaluators' implicit theories interacted with performance expectations to predict self-doubt about an upcoming evaluative situation. Compared to their counterparts with incremental evaluators, participants with entity evaluators reported greater self-doubt when they expected to do poorly and less self-doubt when they expected to do well. Di...

College students high and low in test anxiety attributed their performance on each of four examinations in a course to ability, test difficulty, preparation, and luck. Individuals high and low in test anxiety typically evidence systematic predispositions to account for their achievement-related behavior in different terms. The present research substantially replicated these earlier (laboratory and Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale) findings in an actual achievement setting. In addition, however, the present findings differed from the earlier evidence in some important respects. Specifically, (a) high test-anxiety students' attributions for failure were far less self-deprecating than in the laboratory evidence, and (b) high test-anxiety students' attributions (for both success and failure) became more personally flattering, or comforting, as the semester progressed. Results were discussed in terms of the laboratory — field distinction and of the influence of a temporal, or time of measurement, factor, hitherto ignored in the causal attribution literature.

Research has shown that observers tend to attribute causality for an actor's behavior to dispositional characteristics of the actor rather than to external factors. Several authors have suggested that this phenomenon occurs because observers tend to focus attention on the actor. The present experiment was designed to determine whether dynamic qualities of the actor can, in part, account for observers' attentional and attributional behavior. Subjects were assigned the role of observers and were exposed to either a mildly dynamic or a stable actor. Subjects' attributions for the actor's behavior revealed that greater causality was attributed to the dynamic actor.

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that actors' causal attributions for success and failure would be affected by the degree of perceived choice they had in taking an action. Actors either were assigned, or selected one of four therapeutic outlines which were expected to have either a positive or a negative effect, and which actually had either a positive or negative outcome on a purportedly phobic person. For negative outcomes, it was predicted that perceived choice would induce a sense of personal responsibility when a positive outcome was expected, and lead actors to attribute more responsibility to themselves as a result. Results supported this prediction. For positive outcomes, however, actors attributed responsibility to themselves regardless of expectancy or choice. Actors were also found to attribute generally more responsibility to themselves for positive than negative outcomes. Results were discussed in terms of self-esteem motivation and the information available to the actor.

Based upon his review of the self-serving attribution bias literature, Zuckerman (1979) concluded that research employing an interpersonal influence setting was less likely than other research paradigms to produce significant differences in self-attribution for success and failure. A survey of the research reviewed by Zuckerman as well as a more current survey of the relevant literature were undertaken. Statistical combinations of these two sets of evidence revealed Zuckerman's assessment may have been too conservative, at least with respect to two of three experimental paradigms. Additionally, a general tendency of individuals to assume more personal responsibility for success than failure on interpersonal influence tasks was found in the more comprehensive survey. Finally, the evidence concerning interactions of performance outcome with either contextual variables or individual differences indicated that the self-serving bias may be stronger under certain conditions than others and for certain types of individuals. Discussion centered on the conceptual distinctions between interpersonal influence and other achievement settings.

An experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of both informational and motivational factors on observers' attributions. Observers evaluated the behavior of a "student therapist" who attempted to follow a prescribed procedure for reducing minor phobia in a presumed client. Observers were informed of the Probable Outcome of the therapy (positive or negative), and later learned of the Actual Outcome (successful or unsuccessful). Personal Involvement in evaluating the actor's performance was induced in half the observers by informing them they would take the actor's role themselves; the remaining half were told the study would conclude with their judgments. Consistent with previous theorizing and research about information processing, subjects attributed greater causality to the therapist's delivery when the actual outcome differed from the expected outcome than when there was agreement between the two. Subjects also attributed greater causality to the actor for a successful than for an unsuccessful outcome. Personal involvement led observers to attribute less causality to the actor than subjects who expected only to observe; an unexpected interaction of Personal Involvement and Probable Outcome also emerged. However, the strongest motivationally based prediction, an interaction of Personal Involvement and Actual Outcome, was not confirmed.

The present study examined self-presentational claims of handicaps to future performance. Specifically, it was hypothesized that subjects would claim a handicap when others were unaware of a prior failing performance. Subjects initially completed a "social accuracy" test and received false feedback that they had failed. When led to believe that the experimenter was unaware of the previous failure, subjects were more likely to-claim mood as a handicap to an upcoming task than when they believed that the experimenter was aware of the failure. Results of the study are discussed in terms of a distinction between protective and acquisitive self-presentation and the role of public identity in self-handicapping behaviors.

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that actors' and observers' causal attributions are a function of their focus of attention. In the presence of observer-subjects, actor-subjects made a choice among several art works in a supposed decision-making study. The experiment was a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design with the factors (1) source of attribution (actors, observers); (2) camera (actor videotaped, actor not videotaped); and (3) situational stability (stable, dynamic environment). As predicted by the focus of attention-causal attribution notion, it was found that actors attributed more causality to the situation than observers under normal circumstances, when the camera was not operative, but that videotaping the actor reversed the usual actor-observer pattern such that actors attributed less causality to the situation than did observers. Further, when the environment was stable, actors attributed more causality to the situation in the no camera condition than in the camera condition, while observers attributed less to the situation in the no camera conditions than in the camera conditions. Additionally, both actors and observers attributed more causality to the situation when the environment was dynamic than when the environment was stable.

The influence of affect on causal attributions for success and failure was examined in this experiment. A positive, neurtral, or negative mood was induced in subjects who then learned they had either succeeded or failed an aptitude test taken previously. Relative to neutral mood control conditions, subjects in both positive and negative mood conditions showed a pronounced self-serving bias, particularly following success. The finding is interpreted as self-regulation of affective state. Specifically, causal attribution of success to internal factors can sustain or enhance positive affect; attribution of failure to external factors can diminish negative affect. Ancillary analyses corroborated this interpretation.

Research has shown that individuals' causal attributions are affected by the degree of public scrutiny of their behavior (Bradley, 1978). An experiment was conducted to test a self-presentational explanation of this finding. High and low self-monitors were or were not closely scrutinized (videotaped) during their performance of a task at which they either succeeded or failed. Low self-monitors were expected to provide an attributional baseline (little or no self-presentation) against which the self-presentational tendencies of high self-monitors could be assessed. It was found that high self-monitors assumed significantly greater responsibility for success than for failure when videotaped, but assumed only somewhat more responsibility for success than for failure when not taped. Surprisingly, low self-monitors' attributions were affected by the manipulation of evaluation intensity. Low self-monitors assumed more responsibility for success than for failure when they were not taped, but assumed no more responsibility for success than for failure when they were taped.

The impact of performance outcome, task difficulty, and level of test anxiety on attributional accounts for performance and achievement-related affect was explored. Subjects high and low in test anxiety (Sarason, 1972) worked on tasks of varying difficulty, evaluated their own performance, and then responded to two types of attribution items, inventories of major affective reactions (Izard, 1972), and a measure of cognitive interference (Sarason and Stoops, 1978). Meaningful attributional accounts were uncovered; in particular, performance outcome and task difficulty had independent effects on subjects' attributional judgments. Cognitive interference was implicated as a factor contributing to the attributional predispositions of persons differing in test anxiety, and it was a major determinant of affective reactions. In addition, subjects' affective responses were predictably associated with their perceived performance outcome, their level of test anxiety, the difficulty of the task, and subjects' attributional accounts of the factors influencing their performance. Results are discussed in terms of the cognitive components and phenomenological experience of test anxiety and the consequent impact anxiety may have on achievement-related behavior.

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that observers' causal attributions about an actor's performance at a task would be affected by their social perspective in observing the situation. Observer subjects were either assigned to serve in a role comparable to that of observer-subjects in most actor-observer experiments or were assigned a distinctive role more divergent from the social perspective of the actor. As expected, observers with a similar social perspective to that of the actor made more flattering attributions about the actor's performance than observers with a dissimilar social perspective. We concluded that actor-observer differences in attribution for an actor's performance in any one experiment cannot be taken as definitive evidence either for or against the defensive attribution idea.

In the present study, an attributional analysis of cognitions associated with the test-anxiety response is reported Late in the semester, 433 undergraduates in introductory level courses (who had scored high, moderate, or low on a test-anxiety inventory) completed a questionnaire that required (l) a self-assessment of success or failure in the course, (2) open-ended attributions about the causes of that success or failure, and (3) that subjects then rate their open-ended responses on several relevant dimensions. A content analysis of students' written accounts suggested that unsuccessful, highly test-anxious students blamed their character (as opposed to their behavior or the environment) for their failure. Consistent with earlier work, there also emerged a general tendency for successful students to emphasize internal over external attributions, while failing students showed an opposite pattern.

In an effort to uncover some of the determinants of self-handicapping, male and female introductory psychology students chose to listen to either facilitating or interfering music prior to taking a test described either as a valid or an invalid predictor of academic success. In addition, half of the subjects were led to believe that a preexisting distracter, or handicap, was already present in the environment whereas the remainder were not. Results revealed that self-handicapping occurred in anticipation of an important task, but only when there was no preexisting handicap. Attributions for success and failure revealed a clear self-serving bias, replicating earlier work. The results are discussed in terms of the attributional and practical utility of convenient excuses versus self-generated self-handicaps.

High- and low-social-anxiety individuals' reactions to evaluative feedback were investigated. Subjects made accuracy ratings, attributions, and affective responses to feedback on test performance and an evaluation by a psychologist. The results provide support for both self-consistency and self-esteem notions, albeit in separate response domains. Significant interactions between social anxiety and evaluation valence were uncovered on two measures of cognitive responses. Subjects high in social anxiety rated favorable feedback as less accurate, and favorable evaluators as less perceptive, than subjects low in social anxiety Results on the affective measures, however, revealed that high-social-anxiety subjects were less happy with unfavorable feedback than their low-social-anxiety counterparts. The results are discussed in terms of the self-concept of the socially anxious individual, the differential impact of subjective and objective feedback, and implications for clinical intervention.

Samuel Clemens’s observation about the human condition is both insightful and amusing. Embarrassment is an all too familiar human emotion, and one that reveals a great deal about the nature of social relations. This chapter is not about embarrassment. Yet the fact that it exists, and can run so deep, does set the stage for the present analysis of the role of disapproval in social exchange.