This article presents a scale that measures chronic individual differences in people's uncertainty about their ability to understand and detect cause-and-effect relationships in the social world: the Causal Uncertainty Scale (CUS). The results of Study 1 indicated that the scale has good internal and adequate test-retest reliability. Additionally, the results of a factor analysis suggested that the scale appears to be tapping a single construct. Study 2 examined the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale, and Studies 3 and 4 examined the predictive and incremental validity of the scale. The importance of the CUS to work on depressives' social information processing and for basic research and theory on human social judgment processes is discussed.

This study examined the extent to which chronic causal uncertainty beliefs influence diagnostic information seeking. Situational factors intended to increase the excitation level of causal uncertainty beliefs and the intensity of goal-directed behavior also were investigated. Participants expected to interview either a gender in-group or a gender out-group member, and half of them expected to be held accountable for their understanding of the interviewee. For out-group conditions, those accountable participants who possessed chronically accessible causal uncertainty beliefs revealed the greatest preference for diagnostic information. For in-group conditions, no differential pattern of information seeking as a function of chronic causal uncertainty beliefs or goal importance were found. Results are discussed in terms of a recent model of motivated social cognition proposed by G. Weary and J. A. Edwards (1996).

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Two studies explored depressives' sensitivity to social information as an impediment to their gaining a sense of confidence and control. In Study 1, Ss viewed a videotape of an actor performing an achievement task and were asked to list their impressions of the actor. As compared with nondepressed Ss, depressed Ss generated more inferences overall, generated more abstract inferences, and exhibited less overall confidence in their impression of the actor. In Study 2, Ss reported their beliefs of the utility of information about a person's past behaviors and personality for understanding, predicting future behavior, and describing that person. Depressed Ss expressed more interest than did nondepressed Ss in both types of information but were less confident of the utility of the information for prediction.

In 3 studies, we examined the hypothesis that the effects of stereotype usage on target judgments are moderated by causal uncertainty beliefs and related accuracy goal structures. In Study 1, we focused on the role of chronically accessible causal uncertainty beliefs as predictors of a target's level of guilt for an alleged academic misconduct offense. In Study 2, we examined the role of chronic causal uncertainty reduction goals and a manipulated accuracy goal; in Study 3, we investigated the role of primed causal uncertainty beliefs on guilt judgments. In all 3 studies, we found that activation of causal uncertainty beliefs and accuracy concerns was related to a reduced usage of stereotypes. Moreover, this reduction was not associated with participants' levels of perceived control, depression, state affect, need for cognition, or personal need for structure. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the model of causal uncertainty and, more generally, in terms of the motivational processes underlying stereotype usage.Within the past decade, there has been an explosion of renewed interest in goals and their effects on cognition, affect, and behavior (Gollwitzer & Bargh, 1996;Higgins & Sorrentino, 1990;Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986. Although much of this work focused on specific goal contents and their affective and behavioral sequelae, a major interest of contemporary theorists and researchers has been the various cognitive processes involved in goal-directed action. Individuals (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1990;Weary & Edwards, 1996) working within this more recent tradition generally have viewed goals as cognitive representations of desired end states, and they have focused their attention on the cognitive processes and strategies used in the pursuit of goal attainment and/or disengagement.In addition to this focus on the cognitive bases of motivation and goal pursuit, several investigators (e.g., Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994; Gifford Weary, Jill A. Jacobson, and Stephanie J. Tobin, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University; John A. Edwards, Department of Psychology, Oregon State University.Jill A. Jacobson is now at the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine.This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Research Grant SBR-970954I and by National Institute of Mental Health Training Grant T32-MH19728. Study 2 was conducted in connection with Jill A. Jacobson's dissertation research. Partial reports of the data for Study 2 were presented at the 1999 American Psychological Society meeting in Denver, CO. We thank Galen Bodenhausen for sharing his experimental materials with us.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gifford Weary, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, 1885 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210. Electronic mail may be sent to weary.l@osu.edu. Spencer, Fein, Wolfe, Fong, & Dunn, 1998) have begun to focus on the possible implicit, or automatic, activation of goal-relevant cognitive structures. Thes...

This research tested the hypothesis that because of mildly and moderately depressed and dysphoric individuals' need to reestablish feelings of control, such individuals will be more likely to effort fully process available social information. Using a cognitive load manipulation up within the correspondence bias paradigm, it was found that depressed subjects were less likely than nondepressed subjects to make correspondent inferences (and more likely to process the available social information), but only under the condition of no cognitive load. The results of the study provide evidence for the motivated effortful processing of social information by moderately depressed individuals.

H. Tennen, J. A. Hall, and G. Affleck (1995) argued in their critique of depression research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) that investigators have failed to comply with several methodological recommendations often cited in the depression literature. They recommended resetting minimum criteria for publication of depression research in JPSP. In this article, it is asserted that Tennen and his colleagues did not consider a number of critical issues surrounding this set of methodological criteria. It is also contended that insufficient data are available to require strict adherence to several of the criteria. In light of the complexities surrounding Tennen et al.'s methodological criteria, it is concluded that JPSFs editors, reviewers, and readers would do better to evaluate studies on a case-by-case basis.