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Achievement motivation is a significant contributor to the foreign language learning process. This study explored the achievement perceptions of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners who were studying at different higher education institutions with dissimilar degree programs, such as a vocational college, an undergraduate program in a public university, and Sino-American university undergraduate and graduate programs in China. The study also aimed to reveal EFLs' causal attributions of success and their underlying dimensionality styles through an open-ended questionnaire and the Causal Attribution Dimensions Scale (CDSII) (McAuley et al., 1992). Findings revealed that two thirds of the participants perceived themselves as unsuccessful learners. Both in success and failure conditions the participants had similar attributions naming effort, interest, and ability as the most frequent ones. The attribution1s for close ended question did not show difference across school types. Qualitative data revealed more themes for failure and the data showed some differences across the school types. Environment and relevance to life/career attributions were the most common in both success and failure conditions. Causal dimensionality analysis revealed more internal, personally controllable stable and moderately externally manageable attributional styles for success, and more internal and personally controllable attributional styles for failure. Findings were compared and discussed according to school types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report examines whether a person's subjective view of their rank relative to others in society—subjective socioeconomic status (SES)—is systematically related to views on distal and proximal determinants of ill‐health. This was tested using cross‐sectional data from 28,718 respondents from 27 countries who took part in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in 2011. Adjusting for age and gender as well as income and education, mixed logistic regression models showed that subjective SES was negatively associated with the likelihood of agreeing with distal explanations for poor health (being poor or because of work/life environment) and positively associated with the likelihood of agreeing with health‐related behaviours as a cause for poor health. Subjective SES was not related to agreement that genes influence health. These analyses introduce a social psychological factor into the lay understanding of health determinants and extend models of subjective status and attributional style to health explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of the study is to develop and evaluate a measure of attributions about partner online behavior. Background: The attributions that intimate partners make for one another's actions foreshadow deterioration in relationship satisfaction. Although online communication is now pervasive, tools for assessing the attributions partners make for online behavior (e.g., why a partner hasn't responded to a text message) are not yet available. Method: College students (Sample 1) and individuals recruited via Qualtrics panels (Sample 2) completed an online survey assessing attributions, relationship satisfaction, attachment anxiety, jealousy, and depression. Results: The Relationship Attribution Measure–Online Behavior (RAM‐OB) is internally consistent, unifactorial, and reasonably stable. Maladaptive attributions (i.e., internal, stable, and global explanations for negative behavior) are negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction and positively correlated with attachment anxiety, jealousy, and depression (Study 1). Further, we demonstrate that maladaptive attributions covary with lower levels of relationship satisfaction even after controlling for anxious attachment, jealousy, and depression, and that the relationship between attributions and satisfaction is stronger for women and for people living with lower incomes (Study 2). Conclusion: The RAM‐OB is a reliable and valid measure of the attributions partners make about online behavior. Implications: The availability of the RAM‐OB may create new opportunities for understanding the role of technology and media‐related behaviors in intimate relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The race-crime congruence effect occurs when defendants accused of racially stereotypic crimes receive more punitive outcomes than those accused of non-stereotypic crimes. Additionally, data shows that specific facial cues elicit criminal stereotypes. However, limited data on how appearance-based inferences of criminality impact case judgments exists. Through two studies, we aimed 1) to expand the race-crime congruence effect literature by investigating differences in judgments towards Black, White, and Hispanic defendants, 2) to further explore the predictors of perceived defendant criminality, and 3) to examine the impact of perceived criminality on case judgments. Six hundred eighty-seven participants were randomly assigned to one of nine brief case summaries in a 3 (race) × 3 (stereotypic crime) factorial design and completed various measures. Contrary to predictions, no significant race-crime congruence effects were found along with mixed results regarding the predictors of perceived criminality. However, in study one, perceived criminality mediated the relationship between defendant race x participant prejudice and stability attributions. In study two, stability attributions mediated the relationship between perceived criminality and recommended punishments. These studies provide two substantial contributions to the literature. The results provide evidence of appearance-based inferences of criminality impacting perceptions of defendant behavior and judgments. Additionally, causal beliefs of defendant behavior may in part explain why one's appearance impacts other's judgments of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study explores the attributions and coping strategies of athletes who experienced psychological impact from sport injuries or illness from a qualitative methodology. Purpose: To understand athletes' unique perspectives on injury and recovery, framed in the Global Model of Sport Injuries, and contribute to the development of effective interventions and support programs for athletes. Methods: A qualitative research approach was employed, conducting semi-structured interviews with an ad hoc sample of 16 athletes, representing diverse backgrounds and competitive levels. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using NVivo software, identifying themes and codes related to attributions and coping strategies. Results: Athletes attributed their sport injury mostly to bad luck, routine deviations, and negative mental states, while coping strategies used included cognitive restructuring, emotional calming, seeking social support, mental withdrawal, and behavioral risk. Factors such as training deviations, social support, psychological responses, and injury diagnosis seems to have influenced the coping strategies employed. Conclusions: Sport injuries and illnesses significantly impact athletes' careers and wellbeing. Support and effective communication from coaching staff and healthcare professionals were identified as crucial for athletes' wellbeing. These findings contribute to understanding the psychological processes and experiences involved in sport injury recovery and highlight key elements for prevention and intervention protocols. Future research should explore communication patterns in sports contexts and assess attributions and coping strategies at different stages of injury recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research provides new insights into the link between destination social responsibility (DSR) and resident quality of life (QOL). A conceptual model is tested based on attribution theory and empowerment theory that investigates the impact that different DSR motive attributions can have on resident QOL, and the potential mediating role of empowerment. DSR actions attributable to intrinsic (extrinsic) motives by destination residents were found to demonstrate greater (lesser) empowerment and QOL. Empowerment was found to have a significant positive impact on QOL and to mediate the DSR motive attribution and resident QOL relationship. Examination of these initial findings suggest that intrinsic, relative to extrinsic, DSR motive attributions enhance resident empowerment through tourism and QOL under high involvement conditions. This relationship was not found to hold in low involvement tourism conditions. The paper concludes with a discussion of theoretical and managerial contributions, as well as study limitations and future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study that investigated how students labelled as having learning disabilities experienced attributions from their teachers and the impacts of the attributions for these students' learning and interactions. The article explores the phenomena from an attribution theoretical lens. Ethnographic case study underpinned the research as it allowed us to fully immerse and to gain in-depth understanding of what was happening in one public school in Indonesia. We undertook interviews and participant observations, involving two students labelled as having disabilities (aged 10–11). The two key themes emerged: (1) the negative way being recognised by others and (2) being learning disabled marks a student as being different. The attributions assigned to students labelled with learning disabilities are circulated in the classroom and have significant effects on how these students perceive view themselves and participate in learning. As a result, the attributions create and shape their self-worth in their classroom communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundTheoretical and clinical perspectives argue that couples' maladaptive attributions for marital problems lead to marital distress, and that these attributions will detract from couples' relationships regardless of their external circumstances. However, emerging work in cognitive psychology indicates that stress simplifies individuals' information processing, suggesting that the demands faced by couples may strengthen the link between maladaptive attributions and relationship satisfaction.MethodsWith a sample of 462 ethnically diverse newlywed spouses living with low incomes (231 couples, with >30% Black and >50% Latinx), we assessed attributions and relationship satisfaction, along with three hypothesized moderators: couples' financial strain, perceived financial capital within couples' social networks, and the proportion of married couples within couples' social networks.ResultsAfter replicating the robust association between maladaptive attributions and relationship satisfaction, we demonstrate that the association between maladaptive attributions and satisfaction is stronger to the extent that spouses' social networks are characterized by fewer financial resources and lower proportions of married couples.ConclusionContextual factors may alter the effects that partners' cognitions have on relationship satisfaction, suggesting that influences far removed from the dyad itself can affect basic processes arising between partners.

The accurate and comprehensive mapping of land cover has become a central task in modern environmental research, with increasing emphasis on machine learning approaches. However, a clear technical definition of the land cover class is a prerequisite for learning and applying a machine learning model. One of the challenging classes is naturalness and human influence, yet mapping it is important due to its critical role in biodiversity conservation, habitat assessment, and climate change monitoring. We present an interpretable machine learning approach to map patterns related to territorial protected and anthropogenic areas as proxies of naturalness and human influence using satellite imagery. To achieve this, we train a weakly-supervised convolutional neural network and subsequently apply attribution methods such as Grad-CAM and occlusion sensitivity mapping. We propose a novel network architecture that consists of an image-to-image network and a shallow, task-specific head. Both sub-networks are connected by an intermediate layer that captures high-level features in full resolution, allowing for detailed analysis with a wide range of attribution methods. We further analyze how intermediate layer activations relate to their attributions across the training dataset to establish a consistent relationship. This makes attributions consistent across different scenes and allows for a large-scale analysis of remote sensing data. The results highlight that our approach is a promising way to observe and assess naturalness and territorial protection.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, humanitarian NGOs have instituted safety protocols intended to reduce the risk of spreading infection during services to refugees. But those protocols are not always followed, and how staff attribute refugee non-adherence reveals underlying power dynamics in humanitarian assistance which can shape how they approach improving adherence in order to enhance effective service provision to the refugees. Using the data from 1466 interviews conducted with 468 different NGO staff in Türkiye, Jordan, and Lebanon, this study exhibits how paternalistic rhetoric operated in humanitarianism during the initial stages of the pandemic. While staff attribute the non-adherence of refugees to essential refugee culture and sometimes "immoral" character, they attribute their own non-adherence to morally neutral situational factors. Some NGO staff even perceived the refugees as incapable of complying with the safety protocols without assistance. While the literature on paternalism focuses on North/South power dynamics between service providers and refugees, our data show that these dynamics also exist in South-South humanitarian interventions where both the service providers and the refugees are from the region and have similar cultural backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Beliefs about mental health are shaped by the sociocultural context. Prisons have unique environmental and social features, and the prevalence of mental health problems in incarcerated populations is exceptionally high. These features make prisons especially interesting settings for exploring health beliefs. The aim of this study was to explore the conceptualizations of mental health and coping preferences in a prison environment. Methods: Individual in-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen incarcerated males from three prisons in Northern Norway. The design draws on central elements from Grounded Theory. Results: Mental health was perceived as distinct from mental illness by many of the participants. They coped with the prison environment by focusing on the things that gave them a sense of meaning and autonomy – this also formed their conceptualization of mental health. Furthermore, social interaction and activities were perceived as important to enhance and maintain mental wellbeing, however there were institutional barriers to using these coping strategies. The prison environment was integrated in the participants conceptualizations of mental health problems, and psychosocial stressors were emphasized in causal attributions. Biological and dispositional factors were less frequently mentioned. The participants preferred non-medical management for mental health problems and most displayed a reserved attitude towards psychotropic medications. The exception was attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, for which they held neurobiological causal beliefs, together with a corresponding preference for medication as treatment. Conclusion: The main finding was a firm integration of the prison context in in the participants’ beliefs about mental health. We theorize that fusion of prison conditions and mental health beliefs were brought on by the processes of prisonization, observing mental distress in peers and attempts to protect selfesteem by externalizing the causes for mental health problems. Access to activities, social time, and “someone to talk to” were perceived to be crucial for improving and preserving mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Far-right domestic terrorism is a major threat to US national security. Despite this reality, conservative policymakers have downplayed the threat of right-wing violence while arguing that far-left violence (from groups like Antifa) is a more pressing concern. Drawing on attribution theory and research on politically motivated reasoning, we suggest that politics constrain the American public's understanding of terrorism by shaping casual attributions for it. Using data from an experiment within a national survey (n  = 700), we examine how political views moderate attributions made for the actions of far-right, far-left, and Islamist terrorism. We find that causal attributions for terrorism depend on the type of terrorist considered, with external attributions (motivated by injustice or oppression) endorsed most strongly for Islamist terrorists and internal attributions (motivated by hate or evil) endorsed most strongly for far-right terrorists. Furthermore, political views moderate this effect such that people believe terrorism committed by politically aligned groups is motivated less by the internal characteristics of the terrorists and more by external factors. Taken together, these findings may help to explain partisan differences in moral outrage over politically motivated terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parenting styles associated with maternal depression are a risk factor for adolescent psychopathology, and maternal attributional styles may be a key mechanism in this relationship. Mother‐adolescent dyads (N = 180; 96 male; ages 10–15) completed in‐person interactions and then the mothers participated in a video‐mediated recall procedure to assess maternal attributions. Maternal depression was associated with negative attributions. Negative attributions were associated with low parental acceptance, aggressive parenting, and low positive parenting. Positive maternal attributions were associated with less aggressive parenting, and more positive parenting during one interaction task. Adolescent externalizing behaviors were associated with negative attributions. Future research should evaluate whether maternal attributions mediate the association between maternal depression and both parenting behaviors and adolescent mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long suggested that CEOs can benefit from corporate philanthropy. However, little is known about this relationship in contexts of authoritarian capitalism such as China, where the state not only uses its control of economic entities to pursue social goals but also plays a key role in CEOs' careers. We theorize how corporate philanthropy among state-controlled firms increases the CEO's likelihood of receiving career benefits from the state in the form of outside directorships. Outside directorships represent an important form of social capital in the Chinese context, and corporate philanthropy is an important mechanism through which social capital can be acquired. In addition, we theorize how two factors—the degree of state ownership and the number of independent directors on the CEO's board—moderate this relationship. Analyzing a 12-year panel of state-controlled, publicly-listed firms in China comprising 6,594 firm-year observations, we find general support for our ideas. In so doing, we contribute to scholarship on the business–society relationship and corporate governance in the context of authoritarian capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood maltreatment is a predictor of subsequent parenting behaviors; however, the mechanisms explaining this association have been understudied. The present study examined the indirect effect of childhood maltreatment on maternal sensitivity to distress via (a) emotion regulation difficulties, (b) negative attributions about infant crying, (c) minimizing attributions about infant crying, and (d) situational attributions about infant crying. The sample included 259 primiparous mothers (131 Black and 128 White) and their 6-month-old infants (52% female). Mothers retrospectively reported on their childhood history of maltreatment when their infants were about 2 years old. Emotion regulation difficulties and causal attributions about infant crying were assessed prenatally. Maternal sensitivity to distress was rated during three distress-eliciting tasks when children were 6 months old. Results from the structural equation model demonstrated that maternal childhood maltreatment was significantly positively associated with negative attributions about infant crying but not with emotion regulation difficulties, minimizing attributions, or situational attributions about crying. Furthermore, negative attributions about crying were associated with lower sensitivity to distress, and there was an indirect effect of childhood maltreatment on sensitivity to distress via negative attributions about infant distress. These effects were significant above and beyond the effects of coherence of mind, concurrent depressive symptoms, infant affect, maternal age, race, education, marital status, and income-to-needs ratio. The results suggest that altering negative attributions about infant crying may be an important area to intervene during the prenatal period to reduce continuity in maladaptive parenting across generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intimidation is often defined, received, and perceived pejoratively. The current study sets out to find a “sweet spot” in situations where intimidation cannot be avoided and compliance is the goal, where one can maximize compliance but keep fear as low as possible. This experimental study predicted that by lessening mean-spirited speech, a moderate amount of intimidation, as opposed to greater or lesser degrees of it, would produce more compliance with a request, positive interpersonal attributions, and communicative accommodations. The results supported the idea of such a “sweet spot” and implications for authority figures are considered and discussed.

IntroductionThis study explores the attributions and coping strategies of athletes who experienced psychological impact from sport injuries or illness from a qualitative methodology.PurposeTo understand athletes' unique perspectives on injury and recovery, framed in the Global Model of Sport Injuries, and contribute to the development of effective interventions and support programs for athletes.MethodsA qualitative research approach was employed, conducting semi-structured interviews with an ad hoc sample of 16 athletes, representing diverse backgrounds and competitive levels. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using NVivo software, identifying themes and codes related to attributions and coping strategies.ResultsAthletes attributed their sport injury mostly to bad luck, routine deviations, and negative mental states, while coping strategies used included cognitive restructuring, emotional calming, seeking social support, mental withdrawal, and behavioral risk. Factors such as training deviations, social support, psychological responses, and injury diagnosis seems to have influenced the coping strategies employed.ConclusionsSport injuries and illnesses significantly impact athletes' careers and wellbeing. Support and effective communication from coaching staff and healthcare professionals were identified as crucial for athletes' wellbeing. These findings contribute to understanding the psychological processes and experiences involved in sport injury recovery and highlight key elements for prevention and intervention protocols. Future research should explore communication patterns in sports contexts and assess attributions and coping strategies at different stages of injury recovery.

Integrated gradients is an explainable AI technique that aims to explain the relationship between a model's predictions in terms of its features. Adapting this technique to point clouds and semantic segmentation models allows a class-wise attribution of the predictions with respect to the input features. This allows better insight into how a model reached a prediction. Furthermore, it allows a quantitative analysis of how much each feature contributes to a prediction. To obtain these attributions, a baseline with high entropy is generated and interpolated with the point cloud to be visualized. These interpolated point clouds are then run through the network and their gradients are collected. By observing the change in gradients during each iteration an attribution can be found for each input feature. These can then be projected back onto the original point cloud and compared to the predictions and input point cloud. These attributions are generated using RandLA-Net due to it being an efficient semantic segmentation model that uses comparatively few parameters, therefore keeping the number of gradients that must be stored at a reasonable level. The attribution was run on the public Semantic3D dataset and the SVGEO large-scale urban dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do employees become politically motivated? In this study, we examine how ethnic minority employees interpret political experiences at work and form motivations to act politically (or not) by uncovering attribution-based political scripts. We propose that cognitive scripts entail learning about the political landscape at work and motivational pathways (personal responses to the political landscape). Adopting a mixed methods approach, we interviewed 40 ethnic minority employees and extracted 810 spontaneous causal attributions about beneficial or detrimental career-related political experiences. Using latent class analysis, we identified how combinations of these attributions formed six political scripts. The content of these scripts revealed that most political experiences motivated participants to opt out of the political arena, unless political activity was legitimized or enabled by senior gatekeepers. Our findings advance scholarship on political cognition, political will, and racialized politics at work by highlighting how the wider organizational political environment shapes employees' political motivation. We also demonstrate how politics can be perceived as racialized and offer practical suggestions for ways organizations can make workplace politics more racially inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated assessments of the acceptability of and negative relational implications for the reasons given for someone not providing emotional support. A representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 1598) participated in a survey experiment that included thinking of a person from whom they would expect such support, imagining that they did not receive support from this person, and being shown one of 16 reasons to explain the nonsupport. Participants evaluated that reason for its acceptability and its negative relational ramifications. As predicted, some nonsupport reasons were judged as more acceptable than were others, and they generated fewer negative relational ramifications. Participants who experienced nonsupport by a friend viewed their reasons as more acceptable than those experiencing nonsupport from family members. Despite this, greater negative relational ramifications were reported when friends compared to family members did not communicate support. Women's nonsupport was viewed as less acceptable compared to men's; however, there were no gender differences in the negative relational ramifications of nonsupport. When tested in a mediation model, acceptability mediated the relationship between expectations and negative relational ramifications, but there was also an unexpected direct negative effect between expectations and negative relational ramifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Difficulty reaching orgasm/ejaculation during partnered sex, a primary characteristic of delayed or absent ejaculation, affects about 5% to 10% of men, but the reasons underlying this problem are poorly understood. Aim: The study sought to gain insight into possible etiologies of delayed ejaculation by assessing men's self-perceptions as to why they experience difficulty reaching orgasm. Methods: We drew 351 men reporting moderately severe to severe difficulty reaching orgasm during partnered sex from a sample of over 3000 respondents obtained through an online survey. As part of the 55-item survey, participants responded to 2 questions asking about their self-perceived reasons for having difficulty reaching orgasm and selected from a list of 14 options derived from the research literature, a series of men's focus groups, and expert opinion. The first question allowed respondents to select all the reasons that they felt contributed to the problem, the second to select only the most important reason. In addition, both men with and without comorbid erectile dysfunction were investigated and compared. Outcomes: Hierarchical ordering of men's self-pereceived reasons for having difficulty reaching orgasm, including typal reasons established through principal component analysis. Results: The major reasons for difficulty were related to anxiety/distress and lack of adequate stimulation, with relationship and other factors endorsed with lower frequency. Further exploration using principal components analysis identified 5 typal reasons, in descending order of frequency: anxiety/distress (41%), inadequate stimulation (23%), low arousal (18%), medical issues (9%), and partner issues (8%). Few differences emerged between men with and without comorbid ED other than ones related to erectile problems, such as higher level of endorsement of medical issues. Typal reasons showed correlations, albeit mostly weak, with a number of covariates, including sexual relationship satisfaction, frequency of partnered sex, and frequency of masturbation. Clinical Implications: Until supplemental medical treatments for delayed ejaculation are developed and approved, a number of men's purported reasons for difficult or absent ejaculation/orgasm—anxiety/distress, inadequate stimulation, low arousal, relationship issues—fall into areas that can be addressed in couples counseling by a trained sex therapist. Strengths and Limitations: This study is unique in scope and robust in sample size. Drawbacks include those associated with online surveys, including possible bias in sample selection, limitation to Western-based samples, and the lack of differentiation between men with lifelong and acquired difficulty. Conclusion: Men who have difficulty reaching ejaculation/orgasm identify putative reasons for their problem, ranging from anxiety/stress, inadequate stimulation, and low arousal to partner issues and medical reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon that includes a lack of education, health or housing; it is a relevant factor of social vulnerability that could lead to a situation of social exclusion. According to studies, poverty can be explained by external/social, internal/individual or cultural fatalistic factors. The aim was to confirm the structure of causal attributions of poverty and their relationships with sociodemographic characteristics, as well as religious and political beliefs, in young people. This is a cross-sectional study with a non-probabilistic convenience sample of undergraduate students on different degree courses. A survey was administered to 278 participants (45.4% women) with an average age of 21.59. They were young people studying health science degrees (78.4%) who self-identified as belonging to the lower or middle–lower class (57.2%), without any religious beliefs (56.5%) and as left wing (37.8%; n = 94) or center-left (27.7%; n = 69) in their political orientation. Confirmatory factorial analysis and multiple regression analysis supported the results in previous literature (CFI = 0.90, SRMR = 0.07, RMSEA = 0.06), indicating that there are cultural (C), external (E-S) and internal (I) attribution factors of poverty. The results show moderate relationships between the cultural factor and internal or external factors. The findings show that political affiliation and sex are the most consistent predictors of attributions for poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the important associations between couple conflict and various physical and mental health outcomes, it is essential to explore factors that may catalyze or exacerbate the frequency and impact of conflict in romantic relationships. One such factor may be relationship mindfulness, or the tendency to have a nonjudgmental awareness of one's experiences in romantic relationships. Previous research has demonstrated a link between relationship mindfulness and various relational outcomes, but its association with relationship conflict has not yet been explored. Additionally, the current study sought to explore the mechanisms that link relationship mindfulness and relational outcomes. Based on previous research connecting conflict to negative partner attributions, the study examined how relationship mindfulness may predict conflict through negative partner attributions. Furthermore, the study aimed to incorporate loneliness as a potential mediator between relationship mindfulness and negative partner attributions. A sample of 116 different-sex middle-aged married couples were recruited to complete an online assessment. Using an actor–partner interdependence mediation model, the results indicated several significant associations among relationship mindfulness, negative partner attributions, loneliness, and relationship conflict. For example, a significant indirect effect was found; that is, female relationship mindfulness was associated with decreased relationship conflict via its prior association with both male loneliness and additionally through male loneliness and subsequent male negative partner attributions. The results indicate that by employing interventions that increase relationship mindfulness, it may be possible to both reduce loneliness and encourage more charitable partner attributions which, in turn, may reduce couple conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research suggests that the juvenile legal system does too little to address the sources and underlying reasons for girls' court referrals. Drawing on attribution theories, the current study examined perspectives that characterize the response of the system to girls' behaviors. Data from this study were derived from a multimethod, qualitative study on system-involved girls. We find that court actors hold gendered attributions of girls' delinquency, in turn informing their decision-making about how to treat and sanction girls. Paternalism remains a persistent feature in how the system locates, defines, and responds to girls through varying gendered attributions. The findings lend further support to attribution perspectives that suggest implicit gender-biases influence court actor decision-making, exacerbating the challenges girls face in and out of the juvenile legal system. By extension, this study offers concrete policy and practice implications for systems change and improving its response to girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socioeconomic position is often determined by uncontrollable, structural factors, yet people from the United States tend to attribute wealth and poverty to individual control. However, information about behavioural correlates of such beliefs across development is relatively lacking. Thus, we examined adolescents' reasoning about the causes of inequality in a sample of 599 adolescents from a socioeconomically, ethnically, and racially diverse middle school (grades 6–8). Additionally, early adolescents were presented with two novel groups with an unexplained wealth disparity and given a task in which they could perpetuate or rectify inequality. We found that while adolescents tended to give equitably and rectify the inequality, this outcome was predicted by the type of explanation they gave for societal inequality. Furthermore, participants' socioeconomic status and sexual identity predicted their inequality explanations. These results add to our knowledge of adolescent reasoning about inequality by demonstrating a potential link between attributions for inequality and giving behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionBeliefs about mental health are shaped by the sociocultural context. Prisons have unique environmental and social features, and the prevalence of mental health problems in incarcerated populations is exceptionally high. These features make prisons especially interesting settings for exploring health beliefs. The aim of this study was to explore the conceptualizations of mental health and coping preferences in a prison environment.MethodsIndividual in-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen incarcerated males from three prisons in Northern Norway. The design draws on central elements from Grounded Theory.ResultsMental health was perceived as distinct from mental illness by many of the participants. They coped with the prison environment by focusing on the things that gave them a sense of meaning and autonomy – this also formed their conceptualization of mental health. Furthermore, social interaction and activities were perceived as important to enhance and maintain mental well-being, however there were institutional barriers to using these coping strategies. The prison environment was integrated in the participants conceptualizations of mental health problems, and psychosocial stressors were emphasized in causal attributions. Biological and dispositional factors were less frequently mentioned. The participants preferred non-medical management for mental health problems and most displayed a reserved attitude towards psychotropic medications. The exception was attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, for which they held neurobiological causal beliefs, together with a corresponding preference for medication as treatment.ConclusionThe main finding was a firm integration of the prison context in in the participants’ beliefs about mental health. We theorize that fusion of prison conditions and mental health beliefs were brought on by the processes of prisonization, observing mental distress in peers and attempts to protect self-esteem by externalizing the causes for mental health problems. Access to activities, social time, and “someone to talk to” were perceived to be crucial for improving and preserving mental health.

This study employed an intersectional approach (operationalized as the combination of more than one social identity) to examine the relationship between aspects of social identity (i.e., race, gender, age, SES), self-reported level of mistreatment, and attributions for discrimination. Self-reported discrimination has been researched extensively and there is substantial evidence of its association with adverse physical and psychological health outcomes. Few studies, however, have examined the relationship of multiple demographic variables (including social identities) to overall levels self-reported mistreatment as well the selection of attributions for discrimination. A diverse community sample (N = 292; 42.12% Black; 47.26% male) reported on experiences of discrimination using the Everyday Discrimination Scale. General linear models were used to test the effect of sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., race, gender, age, SES) on total discrimination score and on attributions for discrimination. To test for intersectional relationships, we tested the effect of two-way interactions of sociodemographic characteristics on total discrimination score and attributions for discrimination. We found preliminary support for intersectional effects, as indicated by a significant race by age interaction on the selection of the race attribution for discrimination; gender by SES on the age attribution; age by gender on the education attribution; and race by SES on the economic situation attribution. Our study extends prior work by highlighting the importance of testing more than one factor as contributing to discrimination, particularly when examining to what sources individuals attribute discrimination.

According to statistical data, the number of entities that declared insolvency in the Republic of Moldova has increased significantly. Thus, if, in 2016, 673 economic agents were declared insolvent, then only in the first quarter of 2022 their number stood at 2968 . In all countries of the world, no matter the level and degree of development of their economy, there is such a phenomenon as insolvency. It is obvious that a natural or legal person could become insolvent because of excess debt or lack of liquidity. In other cases, however, it is found that insolvency occurs because entrepreneurs are not able to manage their business, or they intentionally, through illicit actions, cause the company's poor economic condition. Therefore, the economic and financial difficulties of an enterprise may have the "domino" negative effect of attracting the financial collapse of business partners . We consider that the legislation of the Republic of Moldova provides sufficient instruments for the authorized administrator and the State Tax Service to have the possibility, together with the insolvency process, to identify offenses committed by the debtor even after the insolvency proceedings have been initiated. At the same time, we can assume that the detection of the insolvency offense in the Republic of Moldova is a rare phenomenon, because we are confronted with the problem of lack of professional training and specialization in the given field of the criminal investigation bodies, the competence in examining these crimes is assigned to the general organs of Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to art. 266 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Moldova. However, the offense of insolvency (fictitious and intentional), as an economic crime, requires extensive knowledge of the financial and accounting field, civil law, insolvency, etc., for the instrumental provision of complex strategic investigations following the experience of the European Union. It is therefore important that criminal investigation structures investigating economic offenses in general and insolvency offenses in particular should have a high return through full use of institutional and professional capacities.

Objective: Spousal sexual violence (SSV) is a form of intimate partner violence (IPV) that can affect women physically and psychologically and often co-occurs with other forms of IPV. The estimated prevalence of SSV might not reflect the reality since women often do not readily perceive it as a form of violence. Method: This descriptive study aimed to investigate the factors associated with married women's attributions related to SSV. The sample consisted of 510 married women who were recruited during their visits to various outpatient clinics in a hospital in Turkey between July and December 2016. The data was collected as self-reports via sociodemographic forms, Attributions related to the Sexual Violence Scale, the sources of help-seeking, and the Bem Sex-Role Inventory. Results: Among the sample, 12.7 % reported lifetime SSV. The age and education level of the father predicted victim-blaming attributions, and the education level of women and their fathers predicted rape-supportive attributions. Women who had an arranged marriage had higher rape-supportive attributions. These attributions were not associated with gender role orientation and experience of SSV. Consultation with healthcare professionals was the most common suggestion for women who experienced SSV. Discussion: Attributions of married women to SSV are related to individual and marital factors. Education could be a valuable tool with its form and content for shaping women's attributions to SSV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines central themes in therapists' interpretations and reactions to aggressive behaviors by youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 therapists working with youth with ASD and used interpretative phenomenological analysis. The analysis indicated three main themes: (1) Internal vs. external causes, (2) Mental and physical toll vs. the sense of challenge, and (3) Proactive and reactive coping with aggressive behaviors. The findings contribute to understanding therapists' perceptions and reactions toward aggressive behaviors among youth with ASD. Clinical implications include the need for training and support for therapists working with youth with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 44% of U.S. workers are low-wage workers. Recent years have witnessed a raging debate about whether to raise their minimum wages. Why do some decision-makers support raising wages and others do not? Ten studies (four preregistered) examined people's beliefs about the malleability of intelligence as a key antecedent. The more U.S. human resource managers (Study 1) and Indian business owners (Study 2) believed that people's intelligence can grow (i.e., had a growth mindset), the more they supported increasing low-wage workers' compensation. In key U.S. swing states (Study 3a), and a nationally representative sample (Study 3b), residents with a more growth mindset were more willing to support ballot propositions increasing the minimum wage and other compensation. Study 4 provided causal evidence. The next two studies confirmed the specificity of the predictor. People's beliefs about the malleability of intelligence, but not personality (Study 5a) or effort (Study 5b), predicted their support for increasing low-wage workers' compensation. Study 6 examined multiple potential mechanisms, including empathy, attributions for poverty, and environmental affordances. The relationship between growth mindset and support for raising low-wage workers' wages was explained by more situational rather than dispositional attributions for poverty. Finally, Studies 7a and 7b replicated the effect of growth mindset on support for increasing low-wage workers' compensation and provided confirmatory evidence for the mediator--situational, rather than dispositional, attributions of poverty. These findings suggest that growth mindsets about intelligence promote support for increasing low-wage workers' wages; we discuss the theoretical and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of research has documented the ill effects of abusive supervision. However, this begs the question of why these behaviors continue to occur. To address this question, we contend that scholars need to understand how leaders—the perpetrators of these actions—make sense of abusive supervision. Specifically, drawing upon theories of appraisal and attribution, this paper examines leaders' cognitions of who is accountable for incidents of abusive supervision (i.e., the leader or the subordinate) and their future expectations (i.e., are individuals likely to engage in the same behaviors subsequently or are capable of change) and how these appraisals interact to shape emotional reactions. We conducted three complementary studies: a pilot study to identify relevant emotions, an event‐based experience sampling study (Study 1), and a retrospective recall study (Study 2). Accountability appraisals were associated with emotions, such that appraisals that oneself (vs. one's subordinate) was more responsible for the incident were linked to higher levels of guilt and shame. Although growth mindset moderated associations between accountability appraisals and emotions, it did so for different emotions across the two studies (i.e., hostility in Study 1 and shame in Study 2). Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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How do we judge others' behavior when they are both seen and not seen—when we observe their behavior but not the underlying traits or history that moderate the perceived riskiness of their behavior? We investigate this question in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: How people make sense of, and judge, vaccination-contingent behaviors—behaviors, such as going to the gym or a bar, which are considered to be more or less risky and appropriate, depending on the target's vaccination status. While decision theoretic models suggest that these judgments should depend on the probability that the target is vaccinated (e.g., the positivity of judgments should increase linearly with the probability of vaccination), in a large-scale pre-registered experiment (N = 936) we find that both riskiness and appropriateness judgments deviate substantially from such normative benchmarks. Specifically, when participants judge a stranger's behavior, without being asked to think about the stranger's vaccination status, they tend to judge these behaviors similarly positively to behaviors of others who are known to be fully vaccinated. By contrast, when participants are explicitly prompted to think about the vaccination status of others, they do so, leading them to view others more disparagingly, at times even more negatively than what a normative benchmark would imply. More broadly, these results suggest new directions for research on how people respond to risk and ambiguity. We demonstrate that even subtle cues can fundamentally alter what information is "top of mind," that is, what information is included or excluded when making judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: It has been suggested that students with growth mindsets are more likely to achieve better mathematics learning results than their counterparts with fixed mindsets. However, inconsistent and some even contradictory results have been reported in recent studies which examined the associations between growth mindset and mathematics achievements, suggesting the complexity regarding the effects of growth mindset on academic achievements. Methods: This study aims to examine students' growth mindsets, failure attributions, intrinsic motivation, mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievements in one model to capture the sophisticated functioning processes of growth mindset. A total number of 266 middle school students in China participated in this study. Students' mindset and related variables (i.e., motivations to learn mathematics, attributions of failure in mathematics, mathematics anxiety, mathematics self-efficacy) were measured at year 7, the first year of junior middle school in China. These students' mathematics learning outcomes were tracked from year 7 to year 9, the end of junior middle school. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to investigate the relations among students' growth mindsets, failure attributions, intrinsic motivation, mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievements. Results: The results show that: (1) growth mindset doesn't directly predict mathematics achievements; (2) growth mindset indirectly influences mathematics achievements through intrinsic motivation; (3) failure attributions and mathematics self-efficacy sequentially mediate the association between growth mindset mathematics achievements; (4) failure attributions and mathematics anxiety sequentially mediate the relationship between growth mindset mathematics achievements. Discussion: The results of this study contribute a better understanding about how growth mindsets make impacts on middle school students' mathematics achievements. These findings have important implications for mathematics education in that we could not simply cultivate students' growth mindset in schools with expectations of higher mathematics learning outcomes. Instead, along with the growth mindset intervention, it is fundamental to make interventions on students' intrinsic motivation, failure attribution, mathematics self-efficacy, and mathematics anxiety in mathematics teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: People diagnosed with mental illness develop a variety of explanatory models of their conditions in the face of uncertainty. Explanatory models matter because they are associated with internalized stigma and illness behaviors such as treatment preferences. Aims: This paper explores how working professionals in the United States draw on biological and/or environmental factors to explain the cause(s) of their diagnoses of bipolar or depression. Method: Findings are derived from an analysis of transcripts of in-depth interviews with 52 individuals from across the United States who were invited to participate in a study of working professionals diagnosed with mental illness. About 25 self-identified as having bipolar disorder and 27 as having major depression. Transcript data were analyzed following the principles of flexible coding with the goal of establishing a typology of explanatory models of self-identified bipolar versus depression. Results: Six types of explanatory models emerged from the analysis. One was exclusively biological, a second was exclusively environmental, and the remaining four combined biological and environmental factors in different ways. Quotations from the interviews are provided to illustrate each type, and comparisons between types are made based on primary diagnosis (bipolar vs. depression), and self-reports of trauma and stressful experiences. Conclusion: Implications for the future research on explanatory models and how they may impact people who are diagnosed with a mental illness across multiple dimensions of their lives are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central hypothesis in attachment theory is that parents' own attachment will influence their parenting behavior in ways important to children's well-being; little is known, however, about mechanisms through which self-reported adult attachment style influences parenting behavior. This study examines prospective links between mothers' insecure attachment style and their unsupportive behavioral responses to child distress (i.e., punitive, minimizing, and self-focused responses) through mothers' emotional and cognitive reactions to child distress (e.g., attributing crying to negative qualities of the child). Low-income mothers (N = 164; 79% African American) of preschool children attending Head Start reported on their own attachment style (anxiety and avoidance) and typical responses to their children's distress at Time 1. Approximately 4–6 months later (Time 2), mothers again reported on their responses to their children's distress, as well as their emotions and attributions when watching videos of infants crying. Results from structural equation modeling analyses indicated that mothers' attachment anxiety at Time 1 predicted more unsupportive responses to child distress at Time 2, an indirect link that was explained by heightened negative emotions/attributions about child distress. No paths from maternal attachment avoidance or paths involving positive emotions/attributions emerged. Results provide preliminary evidence for a possible mechanism through which parents' attachment anxiety may influence their unsupportive responses to child distress. These findings contribute to a growing literature on the influence of adult attachment style on parenting and highlight the importance of longitudinal research examining mechanisms linking parent characteristics to parenting behaviors that have important implications for child development. Highlights: We examined mothers' attachment style, emotions and attributions about child distress, and responses to their preschoolers' distress in a low-income, predominantly African American sample. Attachment-anxious mothers showed more unsupportive (e.g., punitive) responses to their children's distress. This link was explained by attachment-anxious mothers' heightened negative emotions/attributions about child distress. Results shed light on cognitive and emotional mechanisms by which adult attachment may shape parenting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguing that it would serve scholars and practitioners better to view impression management (IM) from a coworker's perspective than from that of an actor's outcomes, this study demonstrates that IM by a coworker triggers a self-serving attributional process. The authors reason that denial of another's relative advantage leads the observing coworker to attribute this behavior to the actor's incompetence, consequently leading to counterproductive behavior toward them in efforts to reduce their own relative disadvantage. Data were collected at T1 and T2 from 142 service sector employees. Our results were consistent with our hypotheses. However, the moderated-mediation models for conditional effects of hostile attributional style were not supported. This study offers an integrated view of previously isolated domains of IM and attribution, suggesting future literature considers a similar perspective for more meaningful investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]