The Relationship Between The Attribution Style Of Junior Middle School Students And Their Cooperative Behavior In The Dilemma Of Public Goods

Attributional style is a stable cognitive tendency of how people explain the events and the behavior in their life. The positive attributional style helps improving self-recognition and self-efficacy. Cooperation, which was considered as a significant social interaction, is an important part of social development. The middle school students could develop their ability by communicating with others. This study is consist of two parts.Research1 examined the characteristic of middle school students’ attributional style by the attributional style scale(Wenbing, Shuqiao, 2003). The total 905 sample students(451girls and454boys)came from five middle schools in Shanghai. Results showed that(1)Middle school students’ s attributional style for positive events was different from the style for negative events, They attributed positive events to internal, persistent, global; and also they attributed negative events to internal, temporary, local.(2)Boys’ global-local score was significantly higher than girls’ in positive events; but boys’ persistent-temporary score was significantly lower than girls’ in negative events.Research2 investigated the relationship of middle school students’ attributional style and cooperative behavior. Participants were 100 middle school students, selected from8 grade. They engaged in a simulation of public goods dilemma. Results supported that(1) Moral punishment can effectively elicit expectation and cooperative behavior of middle school students. However, this effect isn’t permanent. When researcher undoes moral punishment, expectation and cooperative behavior will decrease.(2)When students were in moral punishment situation, positive persistenttemporary score was significantly and positively correlated with expectation, as well as cooperative behavior. It means that as the persistent-temporary score increases, cooperative expectation and behavior will improve. Negative internal-external score was significantly and positively correlated with expectation, as well as cooperative behavior. Negative global-local score was correlated significantly and negatively with expectation, the same as cooperative behavior. It means that the higher persistenttemporary score is, the higher expectation and cooperative behavior is. Three dimensions weren’t significantly correlated with cooperative expectation and behavior in the moral punishment situation.(3)Cooperative expectation is a mediation variable between middle school students’ attributional style and cooperative behavior.