The Growth and Extinction of Expectancies in Chance Controlled and Skilled Tasks

Rotter, Julian B.; Liverant, Shephard; Crowne, Douglas P.

doi:10.1080/00223980.1961.9916516

Cited by 141 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Rotter and his associates (James, 1957;James & Rotter, 1958;Phares, 1957;Rotter, Liverant, & Crowne, 1961) used tasks in which success appeared to be determined by either chance or skill. They demonstrated that verbalized expectancies for future success are affected by outcomes of previous trials.…”

Section: Methods For Assessing Humans' Representations Of Contingencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser?

Alloy¹,

Abramson²

1979

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

1,417

102

1,328

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SUMMARYHow are humans' subjective judgments of contingencies related to objective contingencies? Work in social psychology and human contingency learning predicts that the greater the frequency of desired outcomes, the greater people's judgments of contingency will be. Second, the learned helplessness theory of depression provides both a strong and a weak prediction concerning the linkage between subjective and objective contingencies. According to the strong prediction, depressed individuals should underestimate the degree of contingency between their responses and outcomes relative to the objective degree of contingency. According to the weak prediction, depressed individuals merely should judge that there is a smaller degree of contingency between their responses and outcomes than nondepressed individuals should. In addition, the present investigation deduced a new strong prediction from the helplessness theory: Nondepressed individuals should overestimate the degree of contingency between their responses and outcomes relative to the objective degree of contingency.In the experiments, depressed and nondepressed students were presented with one of a series of problems varying in the actual degree of contingency. In each problem, subjects estimated the degree of contingency between their responses (pressing or not pressing a button) and an environmental outcome (onset of a green light). Performance on a behavioral task and estimates of the conditional probability of green light onset associated with the two response alternatives provided additional measures for assessing beliefs about contingencies.Depressed students' judgments of contingency were surprisingly accurate in all four experiments. Nondepressed students, on the other hand, overestimated the degree of contingency between their responses and outcomes when noncontingent outcomes were frequent and/or desired and underestimated the degree of contingency when contingent outcomes were undesired. Thus, predictions derived from social psychology concerning the linkage between subjective and objective contingencies were confirmed for nondepressed students but not for depressed students. Further, the predictions of helplessness theory received, at best, minimal support.The learned helplessness and self-serving motivational bias hypotheses are evaluated as explanations of the results. In addition, parallels are drawn between the present results and phenomena in cognitive psychology, social psychology, and animal learning. Finally, implications for cognitive illusions in normal people, appetitive helplessness, judgment of contingency between stimuli, and learning theory are discussed.

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Section: Methods For Assessing Humans' Representations Of Contingencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser?

Alloy¹,

Abramson²

1979

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

1,417

102

1,328

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The first type, which essentially involves situational studies, has primarily used tasks which were structured as skill or change, i.e., tasks on which reinforcement is seen as being within or not within an individual's control. Such structure has been achieved experimentally (Phares, 1957;Phares, 1962) or by assumed prior cultural experience (Rotter, Liverant, & Crowne, 1961). Individuals have been found to behave in characteristically different ways in skill versus change situations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%

Attitude change as a function of internal-external control and communicator status1

Ritchie¹,

Phares²

1969

J Personality

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“…In the skill condition, number of trials to extinction was longer for the 100% reinforcement group than the partial reinforcement group. These general skill-chance differences have been replicated and extended with several different reinforcement schedules (Rotter, Liverant, S Crowne, 1951), a behavioral criterion of expectancy (Holden 6 Rotter, 1952), generalization of expectancies (James, 1957), and perceptual threshold for threatening stimuli (Phares, 1952).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Internal-external control as a determinant of information-seeking in a social influence situation1

1967

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The Growth and Extinction of Expectancies in Chance Controlled and Skilled Tasks

Cited by 141 publications

References 8 publications

Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser?

Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser?

Attitude change as a function of internal-external control and communicator status1

Internal-external control as a determinant of information-seeking in a social influence situation1

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