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Publicized in October 2001, the Enron Scandal drew the world's attention to the company's rampant fraud. Sherron Watkins, then vice-president of of the Houston-based energy trading and utility company, was [...]

Recent research (Takaku, 2001: Takaku. Weiner, & Ohbuchi, 2001) tested and supported the hypothesis that injured parties' motivation to forgive their wrong-doers could be enhanced through inducing hypocrisy-dissonance by making the injured parties aware of their own past wrongdoing. The present study tested and supported the model's applicability to people's road-rage experiences by showing that individuals who were aware of their own past reckless driving generated more hypocrisy-induced dissonance, more positive attributions, and less negative emotional reactions than individuals who were not aware of their own past reckless driving. Implications for future research and possible applications of the model in reducing road rage are discussed.

ABSTRACT: The author investigated (a) the effects of a victim's perspective taking and a transgressor's apology on interpersonal forgiveness and (b) forgiveness as a mode of dissonance reduction. Before the [...]

Being accused of breaking a social norm often forces the accused person to offer an explanation, or an account, for the alleged misdeed. In the present study, American and Japanese participants rated the appropriateness of 4 account types as a function of status of the transgressor and status of the victim. A vignette described a situation in which a person was accused of breaking a promise at work and asked to give an account. While Japanese participants rated apology as significantly more appropriate than did American participants, the Americans rated justification as significantly more appropriate than did the Japanese. Status did not influence Americans' ratings of account appropriateness, but the status of the victim did influence the Japanese participants' ratings. An attributional analysis of the data revealed the same underlying motivational pattern for the two cultures.

Adaptive help seeking and self-efficacy have been examined extensively over the last 20 years, but few studies have investigated their role in writing center tutoring, which has become an important component of process-oriented writing instruction. Using data collected over an 8-year period, this study analyzes the effect of writing self-efficacy (assessed using established self-efficacy scales) and help-seeking behavior (measured by frequency of writing center visitation) on writing performance as measured by composition grades. Participants were 671 undergraduates, approximately half of whom were international students for whom English was a second or third language. Data analyses showed an inverse correlation between self-efficacy and help-seeking behavior. In addition, high levels of help-seeking behavior resulted in better performance in composition classes, especially for the ESL participants; indeed, this behavior was the strongest predictor of success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]