Russell Ames

CHILDREN'S CAUSAL ASCRIPTIONS FOR POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE INTERPERSONAL OUTCOMES

This experiment assessed how children of high and low social status in the classroom attributed the causes of positive and negative interpersonal outcomes for themselves and others. 80 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children (n = 40 males and 40 females) were classified as high or low social status using a sociometric technique. Subjects were asked to attribute the causes of 24 written descriptions of positive and negative interpersonal outcomes. Children of high status tended to attribute the causes of positive outcomes internally and negative ones externally, while lows were more external for positive and internal for negative outcomes. Children of high status tended to view the causes of their own and anothers behavior for positive outcomes congruently, whereas lows acted according to the Jones and Nisbett (1971) actor-observer bias. Implications were made for the cognitive correlates of social interaction.

Adolescent Motivation and Achievement

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses adolescent motivation in the context of school achievement. As a quantitative variable, motivation is equated with concepts such as activity, energy, and persistence and is inferred from achievement levels or from changing levels of achievement. The chapter presents the application of the qualitative view of motivation to the special problems of adolescence and school achievement. Within this framework, adolescents are seen as processing information from the school environment in terms of salient goals or values. Their specific goals and values affect their perceptions, attributions, self-evaluations, and beliefs about strategies of action. Adolescence is a period in which students are coming to grips with the problems of becoming an adult. They are formulating and reformulating values and goals as they move from the immaturity of childhood to the maturity of adulthood. It is these goals and values that set the direction for adolescent attention and activity, and they serve as the central organizing theme for the cognitive activities of the adolescent student engaged to a greater or lesser degree in achievement activities in school.