Citation

Mulilis JP, Duval TS. J. Appl. Soc. Psychol. 2003; 33(7): 1437-1456.

Affiliation

Penn State University; University of Southern California, USA

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1559-1816.2003.tb01957.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Person-relative-to-event (PrE) theory is a general theory of coping with threat that emphasizes the relationship between level of appraised threat relative to level of appraised person resources, and personal responsibility (Duval and Mulilis, 1999; Mulilis and Duval, 1995, 1997, in press; Mulilis, Duval, and Bovalino, 2000; Mulilis, Duval, and Rombach, 2001). While the theory has assumed that level of personal responsibility moderates the effects of appraised levels of resources relative to threat, nevertheless it also has been suggested (Mulilis and Duval, 1997) that these processes might, in fact, occur in an independent and parallel manner. Alternatively, Brickman (1987) suggested that a person attributes responsibility for the solution of a problem to self only to the extent that the person perceives that he or she is in control of future events surrounding the problem. Using an academic assessment as the threatening event, the present study was conducted to test these competing assumptions in the context of an educational setting. Results of this investigation support the previous suggestion of the authors that personal responsibility and resources relative to threat appear to operate as independent and parallel cognitive processes in PrE theory. Implications of these results for improved academic performance are discussed.