Heider's suggestion that Performance = Motivation X Ability has been empirically confirmed by Anderson and Butzin and by Kun, Parsons, and Ruble, using American students as subjects. This multiplying process failed to appear in the present series of three experiments performed on Indian college students. Contrary to the predicted linear fan pattern, the plot of Motivation X Ability effect displayed clear parallelism. An equal-weight averaging rule was able to account for the results obtained in both group and single-subject analyses. Perhaps the integration rules underlying achievement judgments are culture-specific, and Indian college students average motivation and ability information in attribution of future scholastic performance. These results illustrate the potential power that information integration theory provides for the cross-cultural study of social perception and cognition.How do people integrate information a'bout motivation and ability when they predict performance? Heider (1958) made the following suggestion:The personal constituents, namely, power (ability) and trying (effort) are related as a multiplicative combination, since the effective personal force (performance) is zero if either of them is zero. For instance, if a person has the ability but does not try at all he will make no progress toward the goal. (p. 83) If Heider's proposal is correct, then attribu-

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This paper examines the relationship between cultural beliefs about illness and psychological adjustment to a chronic disease. The findings of five studies were metaanalysed. In all these studies hospital patients suffering from various types of health problems were interviewed at different points in time and measures were used to assess their psychological adjustment. The findings revealed that patients' in Indian hospitals consistently attributed their illness to karma and God's will. These cosmic beliefs were found to influence patients' treatment re lated decisions. However, no consistent linkages were unravelled between pa tients' illness beliefs and their psychological adjustment. It was conjectured that these cosmic beliefs acquire different symbolic meaning when illness and social context change. The paper argues for an integrated health care system combin ing the strengths of traditional healing and biomedical practices.

The main objective of this study was to examine the role of causal beliefs in the psychological recovery of temporarily and permanently disabled accident victims. Patients ( N = 41) from a government hospital and private nursing homes in Allahabad city, India, were interviewed one week and three weeks after the accident. The doctor's report of their recovery was also obtained each time. The permanently disabled patients were found less motivated to search for the causes of the tragic went. When asked to make attribution, permanently disabled attributed the accident more to external factors than those who were temporarily disabled. Chance and God's will were the cause more frequently mentioned. Attributions to K m and God's will were significantly correlated with psychological recovery. The sense of personal control was not found to be a good index of psychological recovery. Number of compliints made by the patients and their depressive symptoms, as observed by the doctors, negatively correlated with the psychological recovery.A great deal of research has accumulated in the last two decades to predict psychological recovery of the victims of tragic events. Much of this work has focussed on affective reactions (Shontz 1975; Weller and A.K. Dabl, N. Pan& / Pvchological recovery reactions to tragic events (see Silver and Wortman 1980). Expressing similar views, Taylor has stated, 'though many systematic attempts are made, our knowledge of those factors that influence our reactions to tragic outcomes is very vague' (1983: 1161). It may further be mentioned that the role of beliefs about self, causality and personal control in the recovery process have not been sufficiently understood. Many of these beliefs have their anchoring in specific socio-cultural context. For example, the principle of Karma,* as expounded in Hinduism, is widely accepted as an explanation for many tragic happenings in one's life. The goal of the present study thus was to examine how these beliefs influence psychological recovery of temporarily and permanently disabled accident victims.How do people react to tragic accidents? The initial reaction may be that of shock and confusion. At the early stage, the impinging reality may seem too overwhelming to allow any luxury of cognitive appraisal of the whole situation. However, subsequent reactions of the victims would depend on the way the causality for that event is attributed. The understanding of these causes gives a sense of personal control over their environment, without which the world would seem random and chaotic. Studies have shown that those who have rather convincing answers to the question, 'why it has happened to me?' are psychologically better off than those who have no such explanations available (Bulman and Wortman 1977; Weisman and Worden 1975).The attribution of causality to the event would determine whether the victim would feel angry, or feel helpless. The victim would experience anger when the cause of the accident is attributed to factors controllable by others (e.g., carelessn...

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AllahabadThe main objective of this study is to examine the explanatory models which Indian women use to understand their life threatening diseases. Tbepaper also examines the linkages between these causal explanations and their psychological recovery. Earlier work has shown that in the Indian cultural setting, hospitalised patients attributed their illness more often to metaphysical beliefs. A sample of 132 adult cervical cancer patients from rural background was divided into three groups according to the stage of treatment (first week of radiation therapy, last week of radiation therapy, and subsequent check-up) and interviewed. The findings reveal thatpatients more often attributed their illness to metaphysical beliefs: fate, God's will, karma than to other factors. These factors, however, showed no clear linkages with psychological recovery, which was negatively correlated with attributions to family conditions, physical weakness and mental stress. Implications of these findings for providing better care to cancer patients are discussed.hen a life-threatening illness strikes the individual, the primary concern of the patient is searching and understanding the causes of such illness. Such causal understanding is essential to sustain hope of recovery and to decide the future course of action. Many studies (Radley, 1994) have shown that people not only seek medical explanations of their disease but also try to understand the disease within their social and cultural context. A commonsense undei standing of at UNIV NEBRASKA LIBRARIES on April 4, 2015 pds.sagepub.com Downloaded from

Disability attitudes are major barriers in improving life conditions of physically challenged people in developing countries. Studies have shown that people, in general, harbour negative and paternalistic attitudes towards persons with disabilities. Myths, legends, scriptures and folklores are all part of the cultural belief system that shape such attitudes. The physically challenged frequently suffer more due to societal prejudices than due to their disabling physical conditions. The social and physical environment in which these physically challenged live is often designed without much consideration of their special needs. In this article, some social interventions aimed at changing disability attitudes of rural people in India are discussed. As part of a community-based rehabilitation programme, the main thrust of these interventions was to shift attention of local communities from disabilities to abilities of the physically challenged. The efficacy of these social interventions is discussed.

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