Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

This research inquired into the correlation and characteristics between cognition, judgments of responsibility, affection, and helping behavior on the perceived controllability of learning behavior, in order to verify the applicability of the attribution theory concerning responsibility in Chinese college students. It also investigated into the influences of antecedents other than control and affects that lead most of the students to help their classmates.

The basic experiment of our research accorded with Bernard Weiner. Since the results of our former research were not thoroughly consistent with the results of American students, one group of open-ended questions was added in experiment 1, and three groups of variables (learning as a duty, borrowing class notes continually, and special causes as antecedents) were added in experiment 2. In total, 382 university students participated separately in these two experiments.

Results and discussion: The mean judgments of the basic variables in the two different control conditions of the two experiments revealed significant differences, the students could treat the two conditions distinctively. The judgments of the variables in the uncontrollable condition were entirely consistent with the model of the attribution theory, while the judgments of the variables in the controllable condition were not fully consistent with it. The students judged the grade of anger lower than the grade of lending, most of the students were inclined to lend their class notes. However, the significant correlations between controllability and responsibility in the controllable condition indicated that the level of the controllability was the main cause of the judgments of responsibility, though they influenced the behavior indirectly through the medium of affects at times.

All of the judgments of lending class notes in the controllable conditions of the two experiments were higher than the medium. Especially, the results of the judgments of special causes showed that the ideological tendency moderated the ratings of anger, the responsibility of skipping class, and raised the level of lending behavior. As compared with the model 5 of helping behavior of Bernard Weiner, there is a direct path from the stimulus to helping, which might be accompanied with ideological effects (antecedents). Therefore, we perceived in as an additional remark of helping behavior Model 5. Concerning the theory and models, they are applicable to Chinese university students if only considering the antecedents.

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