No abstract

Measures of several personality variables, from both within and beyond the domain of the Big Five personality factors, were used to predict a variety of complex behaviour outcomes of some social and cultural significance (e.g. alcohol consumption and grade point average). Analyses focused on replicated predictions across participants in four countries (Canada, England, Germany, and Finland) and on the relative predictive accuracies of narrow trait predictors versus broad factor predictors. The results indicated substantial consistency in those predictions across cultures for several of the criteria. Furthermore, the narrow traits were able to account for more criterion variance than were the broad factors underlying those traits. Our data contraindicate the increasingly common practice of using only a few personality factor measures to predict complex human behaviours. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The authors comprehensively review research and theory on the verb causality effect. The effect involves the finding that different types of verbs used to describe interpersonal events give rise to different assumptions about the causes of the respective event. The authors analyze and conceptualize the linguistic categories that serve as independent variables in the pertinent studies, describe the research methods used, conduct reanalyses on the published data, and summarize the results. They conclude that the verb causality effect constitutes a robust and strong rinding that has been documented by several independent researchers across different verb samples, cultures, languages, and age groups.

This article points out that the original formulation of the Kelley (1967Kelley ( , 1973 model of causal attribution and its empirical tests have not truly conceptualized the attribution process as analogous to the analysis of variance (ANOVA). It is shown, however, that the attribution process can readily be conceived of as an analogy to the ANOVA and that revisions, extensions, and refinements of the Kelley model (e.g., Hewstone and Jaspars's [1987] logical model, Hilton and Slugoski's [1986] notion of abnormal condition, and Pruitt and Insko's [1980] comparison object consensus) can be unified within the ANOVA framework. It is shown that data that thus far appeared inconsistent with the Kelley model (e.g., the informational dimensions that lead to circumstance attributions) can be explained and clarified within the framework of the model as analogous to the ANOVA. Finally, an experimental test of the true ANOVA model is presented.

Personality structure was assessed in 4 countries (Canada, Finland, Poland, and Germany) using both an established verbal personality inventory and a new nonverbal personality questionnaire. A 5-factor structure was found to be highly robust in that it was replicated across the 4 cultures and across the 2 personality assessment methods. The data are discussed in terms of (a) the failure to support a semantic similarity interpretation of personality item responses, (b) the factorial validity of the new nonverbal personality questionnaire, and (c) the viability of the popular 5-factor model of personality.

This article integrates theoretical models and research concerning the antecedents of causal attributions with clinically relevant conceptions about attributional consequences and cognitive as well as rationalemotive therapy. "Therapeutic" attributional change programs were stimulated by the attributional analysis of achievement motivation and were suggested by the reformulated model of learned helplessness. Such change programs are mostly guided by theorizing and research about attributional consequences and neglect conceptions concerning attributional antecedents. It Beck and Ellis. is argued in this article that an inclusion of research about attributional antecedents into (clinical) models of attributional change (a) increases the range of applicability of attributional approaches in clinical psychology, (b) allows the making of predictions about when attributional changes can be attempted, (c) can be used to derive techniques for alterations of causal cognitions, and (d) could provide constructs for systematizing therapeutic techniques of cognitive behavior modification as advocated by

Female and male participants (in their early 20s) attributed the success of same-aged (Study 1A-1C) male and female stimulus persons of varying attractiveness to ability, effort, luck, and looks. Consistent with the evolutionary prediction that mating motivation and intrasexual competition determine achievement ascriptions, female participants explained the success of attractive women with luck more and with ability less (i.e., in a derogative way) than they explained the success of less attractive female stimulus persons. However, when the stimulus person was male, women attributed his success to ability more and to luck less (i.e., glorifying) when he was attractive than when he was unattractive. Male participants made derogative attributions for attractive male stimulus persons and unattractive female stimulus persons and glorifying ascriptions for unattractive male stimulus persons and attractive female stimulus persons. We label this pattern of findings sexual attribution bias. The bias disappeared when prepuberty stimulus persons were used as targets (Study 2) and reversed for gay men (Study 3).

An integration of conceptions about attributional antecedents with those of attributional consequences is applied to achievement behavior. The model assumes realistic attributions to be functional. It was tested with a paradigm in which task performance is conceptualized as the sum of the performances on various subtasks requiring different abilities. In Study 1, participants who were induced to make realistic attributions spent more time on tasks for which they had demonstrated high ability than on tasks for which they had demonstrated low ability. This preference for tasks out of areas for which one possesses high ability was correlated with overall performance. Study 2 replicated these results and revealed better posttest performance for individuals with realistic feedback than for individuals with unrealistic feedback.