Overview of the measures and predictions

The participants filled out questionnaires at four different moments during the experiment:

T0: before the relationship-building procedure; T1: after the relationship-building paradigm and in anticipation of the social intelligence test; T2: after the social intelligence test; and T3: after receiving the poor score on the test. These questionnaires included manipulation check and implication questions, as well as the 17 emotions on a nine-point rating scale already described in Chapter 2. The following section will describe the specific predictions for this study and the items used to measure them. Appendix 17 also contains a list of variables included for exploratory purposes.

3.3.1 Relationship-building questions

In order to determine if the relationship-building procedure had been successful, participants received a series of questions at T0 and T1. These questions included the items from the Rubin Liking Scale (Rubin, 1970) as well as six additional items we especially created for the experiment. The Rubin Liking Scale is one of the few validated relationship quality questionnaires (Sternberg, 1997) and is comprised of 13 questions, which participants rate on scales of 1 (not at all true; disagree completely) to 9 (definitely true; agree completely).

The questionnaire was translated into French by a native French-speaking research assistant with very good knowledge of English and then back translated into English by a native English-speaking research assistant with very good knowledge of French. The following two items from the original scale were not included: 1.) When I am with___, we are almost always in the same mood: and 2.) I think that ____ is unusually well adjusted. The first question did not make sense in the present context because more than one meeting would have been necessary to answer the question. The concept of “being well adjusted” is very particular to American culture and has no equivalent in French. Finally, because the Rubin scale was relatively old, and we did not know if the French translation would adequately capture partner perception and liking in the present cultural context, we created six new questions for exploratory purposes.

3.3.2 Hypotheses

1.) According to many emotion theorists (e.g., Folkman & Lazarus, 1985), appraisal and resulting emotions are processes that will vary with both the situation and the individual.

Indeed, similar situations – such as a frustrating achievement context, or receiving a low score on an important test – probably would be evaluated in similar ways by many types of individuals and thus engender rather similar emotions. We therefore expected Internals and Externals to have rather similar emotion patterns across measurement points. In other words, because the experiment had four measurement points concerning different and distinct situations, we predicted a main effect of measurement point on emotions.

Personality, on the other hand, should partially account for systematic appraisal and emotion differences within a particular measurement point. In particular, Internals and Externals were not expected to report significantly different emotions at T1 because these measures served primarily as baselines. We did expect significant differences at T2, after the social intelligence test, and at T3, after the reception of the low score, because these situations were created to stimulate causal search and negative emotions.

2.) Explanatory style has been defined as a generalized appraisal tendency across situations.

Based upon the literature review, we therefore predicted that Externals would be significantly more likely to make external attributions than Internals at T2 and T3, and that Internals would make significantly more internal attributions than Externals at T2 and T3.

We also wished to explore if external attributions would be made towards the other person or towards other things. The Table 3.1 below summarizes the questions and predictions. In addition to the questions already described in Chapter 2, we added a three-part exploratory question (Responsible: self, Responsible: partner, Responsible: external). This exploratory question asked participants to distribute 100 points between the partner, the self, and other external forces concerning their degree of responsibility: “If you could distribute 100 points between your partner, yourself, and other external factors (which you need to specify), to indicate the responsibility of each party for the results on this test, how would you do this?”

Table 3.1: Personality and causal attribution predictions

Variable Name ¹ Prediction ²

Variables for Internal Attribution

Cause: self (2,3)* Internals ↑

Cause: self intentional (2,3)* Internals ↑ Responsible: self (2,3) **** Internals ↑ Variables for External « Partner » Attributions

Cause: partner (2,3)* Externals ↑ Cause: partner intentional (2,3)* Externals ↑ Responsibility: self vs. partner (2, 3)** Externals ↑ Better performance with another (2,3)*** Externals ↑ Responsible: partner (2,3) **** Externals ↑ Variables for External « Other » Attributions

Cause: chance (2,3)* Externals ↑ Responsible: external (2,3) **** Externals ↑

Note. ¹ The actual questions corresponding to the variable names can be found in Appendix 12. The number in parentheses indicates the measurement points during which the questions were posed (0 = T0, 1= T1, 2=T2, 3= T3).

² This column indicates whether Internals are expected to have a significantly higher score than Externals on a particular question (or vice versa)

* Single item questions with a 9-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “very much”. The higher the score, the more this item is being endorsed.

** Nine-point variable where a score of 1= the self and a score of 9 = the partner. The higher the score on these questions, the more responsibility is being attributed to the partner.

*** The higher the score on this 9-point scale, the more the respondents believe that they could have performed better with another person (i.e., an indirect measure of blaming the partner)

**** These exploratory questions asked participants to distribute 100 points between the partner, the self, and other external forces concerning each party’s degree of responsibility.

3.) Anger, irritation, frustration, and contempt are generally considered to be other-directed emotions (e.g., Averill, 1982; Scherer, 2001) and shame, guilt, and embarrassment self-directed or self-conscious emotions (e.g., Lewis & Haviland, 1993; Haidt, 2003; Roseman, 2001; Scherer, 2001; Tangney & Fischer, 1995). Based on our literature review, we predicted that Externals would report more other-directed emotions than Internals and that Internals would report more self-directed or self-conscious emotions than Externals at T2 and T3.

4.) We predicted that the relationships between attribution style and particular emotions would be mediated by specific causal attributions. In particular, we predicted that Externals making external attributions would report more other-directed emotions and that Internals making internal attributions would report more self-directed emotions at T2 and T3.

3.4 Results