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      The Social Explanatory Styles Questionnaire: Assessing Moderators of Basic Social-Cognitive Phenomena Including Spontaneous Trait Inference, the Fundamental Attribution Error, and Moral Blame

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          Abstract

          Why is he poor? Why is she failing academically? Why is he so generous? Why is she so conscientious ? Answers to such everyday questions— social explanations—have powerful effects on relationships at the interpersonal and societal levels. How do people select an explanation in particular cases? We suggest that, often, explanations are selected based on the individual's pre-existing general theories of social causality. More specifically, we suggest that over time individuals develop general beliefs regarding the causes of social events. We refer to these beliefs as social explanatory styles. Our goal in the present article is to offer and validate a measure of individual differences in social explanatory styles. Accordingly, we offer the Social Explanatory Styles Questionnaire (SESQ), which measures three independent dimensions of social explanatory style: Dispositionism, historicism, and controllability. Studies 1–3 examine basic psychometric properties of the SESQ and provide positive evidence regarding internal consistency, factor structure, and both convergent and divergent validity. Studies 4–6 examine predictive validity for each subscale: Does each explanatory dimension moderate an important phenomenon of social cognition? Results suggest that they do. In Study 4, we show that SESQ dispositionism moderates the tendency to make spontaneous trait inferences. In Study 5, we show that SESQ historicism moderates the tendency to commit the Fundamental Attribution Error. Finally, in Study 6 we show that SESQ controllability predicts polarization of moral blame judgments: Heightened blaming toward controllable stigmas (assimilation), and attenuated blaming toward uncontrollable stigmas (contrast). Decades of research suggest that explanatory style regarding the self is a powerful predictor of self-functioning. We think it is likely that social explanatory styles—perhaps comprising interactive combinations of the basic dimensions tapped by the SESQ—will be similarly potent predictors of social functioning. We hope the SESQ will be a useful tool for exploring that possibility.

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          An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion.

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            An attributional analysis of reactions to stigmas.

            In two experiments, we examined the perceived controllability and stability of the causes of 10 stigmas. Guided by attribution theory, we also ascertained the affective reactions of pity and anger, helping judgments, and the efficacy of five intervention techniques. In the first study we found that physically based stigmas were perceived as onset-uncontrollable, and elicited pity, no anger, and judgments to help. On the other hand, mental-behavioral stigmas were perceived as onset-controllable, and elicited little pity, much anger, and judgments to neglect. In addition, physically based stigmas were perceived as stable, or irreversible, whereas mental-behavioral stigmas were generally considered unstable, or reversible. The perceived efficacy of disparate interventions was guided in part by beliefs about stigma stability. In the second study we manipulated perceptions of causal controllability. Attributional shifts resulted in changes in affective responses and behavioral judgments. However, attributional alteration was not equally possible for all the stigmas.
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              Individual differences in need for cognitive closure.

              This article introduces an individual-difference measure of the need for cognitive closure. As a dispositional construct, the need for cognitive closure is presently treated as a latent variable manifested through several different aspects, namely, desire for predictability, preference for order and structure, discomfort with ambiguity, decisiveness, and close-mindedness. This article presents psychometric work on the measure as well as several validation studies including (a) a "known-groups" discrimination between populations assumed to differ in their need for closure, (b) discriminant and convergent validation with respect to related personality measures, and (c) replication of effects obtained with situational inductions of the need for closure. The present findings suggest that the Need for Closure Scale is a reliable and valid instrument of considerable potential utility in future "motivated social cognition" research.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2014
                9 July 2014
                : 9
                : 7
                : e100886
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States of America
                [2 ]Department of Psychology, Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut, United States of America
                University of New South Wales, Australia
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: MJG MRA. Performed the experiments: MRA. Analyzed the data: MJG MRA. Wrote the paper: MJG MRA.

                Article
                PONE-D-13-26504
                10.1371/journal.pone.0100886
                4090131
                25007152
                6063ae6a-cdb1-4b49-beba-db908c415151
                Copyright @ 2014

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 20 June 2013
                : 2 June 2014
                Page count
                Pages: 14
                Funding
                This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid award to Michael Gill from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognition
                Decision Making
                Cognitive Psychology
                Psychology
                Personality
                Social Psychology
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Research Design
                Survey Research
                Survey Methods
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Social Discrimination
                Social Research

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                Uncategorized

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