Future-Event Schemas and Attributional Inferences

未来事件图式和归因推理

• 批准号: 9631858
• 负责人: Gifford Weary
• 金额: $ 20.34万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University Research Foundation -DO NOT USE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-09-15 至 2000-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9631858&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Future; Event; Schemas; Attributional; Inferences

The purpose of the proposed research is to examine the possible automatic influence of stored knowledge structures on the initial stages of the social inference process. Of particular interest is the effect of future-event schemata which have been shown to typify moderately and severely depressed perceivers and to result in pessimistic predictions of event occurrences. The theoretical framework developed in this proposal argues that previous researchers have failed to find the depression-related differences in dispositional and situational inferences for others' outcomes because they have failed to employ more recent and sophisticated models of and more appropriate investigative methods for examining the inference process. More specifically, it is argued that previous failures to find depressed-nondepressed differences actually have resulted from the (unexamined) interactive effects of behavior characterization and inferential correction stages of the inference process. %%% The proposed research will examine the idea that moderately and severely depressed people try to compensate for their negative views when making judgments about other people. At first, depressed people are thought to develop unfavorable explanations for other people's positive and negative accomplishments. However, by engaging in additional thought, depressed people are sometimes able to correct for this bias. As a result, such people often give the appearance of making unbiased inferences about others' actions. If confirmed, this bias-correcting process could have important implications for the promotion of human potential. In everyday situations, people are often distracted or otherwise engaged in thought, and therefore unable to engage in inferential correction. As a result, their social interactions and evaluations may be colored by their negatively-biased characterizations of others' behaviors. This, in turn, can have very large negative consequences. For example, in educational and other work-related settings, numerous stressors and other mental health problems (notably depression) have been identified. In such settings, teachers and supervisors may well be unable to correct their negatively-biased, automatic attributions for and evaluations of others' performances. The social and economic consequences may be very significant for students and employees.

这项研究的目的是检验储存的知识结构在社会推理过程的初始阶段可能自动产生的影响。特别令人感兴趣的是未来事件图式的影响，这种图式已被证明是中度和严重抑郁的接受者的典型，并导致对事件发生的悲观预测。本研究的理论框架认为，以往的研究者未能发现与抑郁有关的倾向性和情境性推理对他人结果的差异，因为他们没有采用更新、更复杂的模型和更合适的研究方法来检验推理过程。更具体地说，以前未能发现抑郁和非抑郁的差异实际上是推理过程中行为表征和推理纠正阶段的(未经检验的)交互作用的结果。这项拟议的研究将检验这样一种观点，即中度和严重抑郁的人在对他人做出判断时，会试图弥补他们的负面观点。起初，抑郁的人被认为会对他人的积极和消极成就做出不利的解释。然而，通过进行额外的思考，抑郁的人有时能够纠正这种偏见。因此，这样的人往往给人一种对他人行为做出不偏不倚的推断的印象。如果得到证实，这一纠正偏见的过程可能会对促进人类潜力产生重要影响。在日常情况下，人们经常分心或以其他方式陷入思考，因此无法进行推理纠正。因此，他们的社交互动和评价可能会受到他们对他人行为的负面偏见描述的影响。反过来，这可能会产生非常大的负面后果。例如，在教育和其他与工作有关的环境中，已经确定了许多压力源和其他心理健康问题(特别是抑郁症)。在这种情况下，教师和主管很可能无法纠正他们对他人表现的负面偏见、自动归因和评估。对学生和员工来说，这可能会带来非常重大的社会和经济后果。