Individual differences in attribution and the effect on emotion

Individual differences in attribution and the effect on emotion The relationship between attribution and emotions has generally not been studied using an individual difference perspective. However, the relationship between attributional style and depression has been considered one of the most established in psychology (Peterson & Bossio, 1991) and in a correlational study of many different instruments, Gohm and Clore (2002) found that an internal, stable, and global attributional style for bad events (or pessimism) was associated with the tendency to experience negative emotions intensely. Optimism, in general, has been associated with positive emotions or more often, a lack of negative emotions (Seligman, 1998). These very general findings however do not provide much information concerning specific emotions. In order to study the personality – appraisal – emotion link concerning attribution and anger, one therefore needs to combine the literature from the appraisal and attribution emotion literature and the explanatory style literature. These relationships have been the impetus for the present study. 1.4 Summary and discussion The literature above has sought to integrate research and theory from personality and emotion research, using an appraisal theory framework, in order to examine a question with 36 practical applications: How do individuals deal with goal obstruction and unexpected failure when working with another person in a goal relevant situation? Attribution research has found that individuals will search for causality in failure situations, explanatory style research has found that there are consistent and individual differences in how individuals explain poor events, and appraisal theories of emotion have shown relatively consistent findings concerning the relationship between specific appraisal dimensions and emotions. However, two issues remain. On the one hand, the results from these separate but related fields have not been combined; although several of the authors cited above have suggested interesting links. Most important, however, none of the literature cited has examined these phenomena in real, interpersonal situations. We therefore propose to examine the following questions: 1.5 General research questions 1.) “The major task of appraisal theory is to predict which profiles of appraisal under which circumstances produce…emotion episodes and which type of emotion is likely to occur” (Scherer, 2001, pp. 370). A major postulate of appraisal theory is that individuals in the same situation will have different emotions because they will appraise the situation differently. Other authors have contended that people will report similar appraisal dimensions in the same situation (such as in vignettes and recalled emotion episodes) because they have learned particular scripts and interpretations concerning specific types of situations (e.g., Parkinson & Manstead, 1992, 1993). We predict an intermediate position: although the situation will bring about rather similar patterns of appraisals and emotions (i.e., there is certainly some shared social meaning concerning particular types of situations), it will also be possible to identify distinct patterns of appraisal and emotion for different types or groups of individuals. In other words, it should be possible to tease apart some of the variance explained by the situation from the variance explained by personality or other individual factors. 2.) Appraisal theory predicts that appraisal dimensions serve as mediator variables between a particular personality construct and a specific emotion. We will test this mediator variable approach when we examine the influence of personality (explanatory style or attribution style) on emotion (especially anger), and we expect to find specific appraisal dimensions 37 (especially causal attribution and blaming) that serve as moderating variables to explain the personality – emotion link. In other words, we postulate that explanatory style will have consistent effects on appraisal and therefore on emotions within a goal relevant, social, achievement situation in which there is failure. 3.) Finally, there are some apparent contradictions between the optimism literature (e.g., Seligman, 1998; Chang, 2001) and the appraisal and attribution literature (e.g., Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 2001; Weiner, 1986) as to what should happen in interpersonal achievement-type failure situations. According to attribution and appraisal theorists, persons who generally attribute causality to external factors should be more likely to look for the causality of failure externally and therefore have more anger, irritation, frustration and contempt experiences, especially if this external factor is another person. Those who generally look for causality of negative situations internally should look for causality of a failure internally and therefore experience more embarrassment, shame, and guilt (Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 2001; Weiner, 1986). Researchers using the ASQ suggests that those typically naming internal causes for negative events will do more self-blame and have more negative emotions in general or more depression / sadness. Generally attributing causality of negative events to external factors, however, has been seen as “positive” for the individual in terms of better health, higher self-esteem, and more positive emotions. Interestingly, we found no results in the literature indicating if the external attribution for failure situations takes the form of blaming another person, or rather in finding fault with other external objects such as the task itself, time, etc. One could speculate that such a difference in object will play a role in the types of emotion experienced. Indeed, past research has primarily used vignette studies and past memory recall to study attributions and emotions, and we found no systematic research looking at how these phenomena function in real, interpersonal situations of failure or how explanatory style might affect these. Based upon the literature review above, it seems reasonable to expect that if finding fault with external factors is advantageous for self-esteem in failure situations, then blaming the other person might be one of the ways of externally attributing causality for failure when working with another person. And if these persons engage in blaming, then they should, according to appraisal and attribution theory, have more anger emotions.