Deprivation of control and the attribution process.

It has often been assumed that attributions are made to serve a generalized con-trol motivation. If such hypotheses have any basis in fact, then variations in experience with lack of control ought to cause variations in the tendency to engage in attribution processes. The present experiment tested this proposition by first giving subjects one of three levels of experience with lack of control (high, low, or no helplessness training) and then in a subsequent study measuring subjects ' utilization of information that had previously been shown to be sensi-tive to motivational variations. The results indicated the expected effects on mood and performance: Low helplessness subjects were hostile and showed per-formance gains, and high helplessness subjects were depressed and showed per-formance deficits. However, the attributions of both low and high helplessness subjects were significantly more affected by variations in the description of a communicator than were the attributions of subjects who had not been given experience with lack of control. These findings were consistent with the general control motivation hypothesis. The nature of the processes involved, implications