*Attributions and Emotions: The Impact of *Situation and Person Factors
In a sample of 187 undergraduate students, I examined how situation and person factors influenced attributions and emotions. As predicted, both situation (i.e., life domain and control) and person factors (i.e., sex and gender) influenced attributions. Participants reported higher internal and lower external attributions in response to high control situations than in response to low control situations. Further, there were more shared attributions in response to interpersonal compared to achievement situations. Females reported less external, more shared, and a trend for more internal attributions than did males. Gender roles also interacted with situation factors to influence attributions. Of note is that persons with high femininity made more internal attributions than did persons with low femininity, especially in response to interpersonal situations. As expected, emotional reactions were differentially associated with different control and domain conditions. Participants reported higher sadness, guilt, shame and lower hostility in response to high, as opposed to low, control situations. Regarding life domain, interpersonal situations elicited greater sadness and guilt than did achievement situations. In contrast, achievement situations elicited greater anxiety and shame than did interpersonal situations. There was evidence that both sex and gender roles interacted with situation factors to influence shame, but not other emotional reactions. One of the most important findings was that compared to persons with high masculinity, persons with low masculinity reported substantially higher amounts of shame in response to high, as opposed to low, control situations. I discuss how the results of the present study may explain why there are sex differences in depression.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign