Date of Award
Spring 1985
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
First Advisor
Bardwell, Rebecca
Second Advisor
Negin, Gary
Third Advisor
Taft, Thomas B.
Abstract
Sex bias against women has been demonstrated in studies of achievement-related attributions. To clarify the conditions under which attributional biases may exist, four independent variables were manipulated in this study: sex of subject (male, female), sex of performer (male, female), performer traits (masculine, feminine) and sex-association of task (masculine, feminine). Another purpose of the study was to test the prediction made by attribution theory that expected outcomes are attributed to stable causes and unexpected outcomes to unstable causes. Two separate experiments were conducted for success and failure. Subjects were 372 male and 348 female college undergraduates, randomly assigned to rate the performance of one stimulus person on ability/lack of ability, effort/lack of effort, task ease/task difficulty, and luck/bad luck. Data were analyzed by a series of multivariate analyses of variance, followed by univariate F-tests and Duncan's Multiple Range post.hoc tests, where appropriate. Three analyses were conducted per experiment. The first analysis tested the overall effects, the second analysis tested the predicted hypotheses, and the third analysis tested hypotheses generated by the data...