The Future Events Scale (FES; S. M. Andersen, 1990) is an expectancy-based measure of optimism and pessimism, grounded in cognitive theories of depression, with implications for clinical practice. Although ample research has documented the utility of the FES in predicting important cognitive and behavioral outcomes, psychometric data on the scale are lacking. The current article presents multisample analyses to show that the FES has clear factor structure, good reliability, and a theoretically meaningful nomological network. The FES is shown to be distinct from the best known measure of optimism and pessimism, the Life Orientation Test (M. F. Scheier & C. S. Carver, 1985). Applications are discussed.

This research examined the conditions under which people who have more chronic doubt about their ability to make sense of social behavior (i.e., are causally uncertain; Weary and Edwards, 1994, Weary and Edwards, 1996) are more likely to adjust their dispositional inferences for a target’s behaviors. Using a cognitive busyness manipulation within the attitude attribution paradigm, we found in Study 1 that higher causal uncertainty predicted increased correction of dispositional inferences, but only when participants had sufficient attentional resources to devote to the task. In Study 2, we found that higher-causal uncertainty predicted greater inferential correction, but only when the additional information provided a more compelling alternative explanation for the observed behavior. Results of this research are discussed in terms of their relevance to the Causal Uncertainty (Weary & Edwards, 1994) and dispositional inference models.

We examined whether raising uncertainty about the causes of one’s judgments motivates correction. Specifically, we examined whether activating chronically accessible causal uncertainty (CU) beliefs with a conditional warning about possible bias enhances correction of weather judgments for tropical weather primes and of word frequency judgments for the availability bias. In two studies we showed that activating chronic beliefs led to careful correction of target judgments. Moreover, Study 2 revealed that chronically high-CU individuals who received a conditional warning felt more uncertain than did other participants, but that this uncertainty was suppressed somewhat by adjusting for the bias. Results are discussed in light of recent models of judgment correction (e.g., Wegener & Petty, 1997), and the causal uncertainty model (Weary & Edwards, 1996).

The current study examined on-line behavior recategorization as a mechanism underlying corrections for contextual influences in dispositional inferences. After watching an initial comparison video that portrayed either a successful or unsuccessful performance on a spatial ability task, cognitive load and no load participants watched and made real-time ratings of a target performance. The comparison video was expected to exert a contrastive influence on participants' automatic impressions of the performance (behavior categorizations) and the child's intelligence (dispositional inferences). Load participants' on-line and post-video performance and ability ratings showed this expected effect, as did no load participants' initial on-line performance ratings. However, no load participants' later on-line and post-video ratings did not. These findings support the notion that corrections for contextual influence can occur at the level of behavior identification as perceivers encode behavioral cues.

This study investigated the process by which individuals with and without dysphoria judge the likelihood that specific negative events will happen to them. More specifically, it examined whether the positive relationship usually found between dysphoria and pessimism is mediated by how easy it feels to imagine reasons why such events would happen to the self. We manipulated the number of reasons that participants imagined (two vs. five) as an additional predictor of ease. Regression analysis indicated that both the number of reasons imagined and dysphoria predicted feelings of ease. Moreover, dysphoria and feelings of ease predicted likelihood judgments. Finally, feelings of ease partially mediated the relationship between dysphoria and likelihood judgments. We discuss the results in terms of the availability heuristic, the simulation heuristic, and ease of recall (e.g., Schwarz et al., 1991), as well as possible moderators of depressed individuals' judgments of future events.

Two studies examined the notion that perceivers’ chronically accessible, negative future-event expectancies might serve as an important cognitive context for the interpretation of temporarily primed expectancies. Such a cognitive context should activate more extreme event-outcome categories that subsequently should be used as comparison standards in the dispositional inference process. A final study examined the direct effect of chronically accessible, negative expectancies on judgments of the priming stimuli. The results of all three studies support the notion that the contextually produced extremity of momentary event expectancies resulted in an unaware and highly efficient comparison and contrast process. When participants were aware of the activation of extreme event-outcome categories and had the requisite resources, correction of target judgments occurred.

The authors examined the roles of chronic expectancies and other contextual information in the dispositional inference process within the domain of ability judgments. Prior to viewing a videotaped performance under either cognitive load or no load participants in Studies 1 and 2 were given additional information designed to constrain their categorizations of the performance. In Study 2 chronic future-event expectancies also were assessed. Analyses revealed that when under cognitive load, participants' ability inferences were assimilated to the constraint information (Studies 1 and 2) and to chronic expectancies (Study 2). Furthermore, Study 2 analyses revealed that these effects were medi ated by participants' behavior categorizations. Evidence suggestive of a proceduralized form of correction for task difficulty (Studies 1 and 2) and an effortful, awareness-based correction for the constraint information and for chronic expectancies also was found. Results are examined in light of recent models of the dispositional inference process.

In 3 studies, we examined the hypothesis that the effects of stereotype usage on target judgments are moderated by causal uncertainty beliefs and related accuracy goal structures. In Study 1, we focused on the role of chronically accessible causal uncertainty beliefs as predictors of a target's level of guilt for an alleged academic misconduct offense. In Study 2, we examined the role of chronic causal uncertainty reduction goals and a manipulated accuracy goal; in Study 3, we investigated the role of primed causal uncertainty beliefs on guilt judgments. In all 3 studies, we found that activation of causal uncertainty beliefs and accuracy concerns was related to a reduced usage of stereotypes. Moreover, this reduction was not associated with participants' levels of perceived control, depression, state affect, need for cognition, or personal need for structure. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the model of causal uncertainty and, more generally, in terms of the motivational processes underlying stereotype usage.

In 4 studies, the authors examined whether making outcome expectancies distinct resulted in their use as comparison standards and, consequently, in contrastive dispositional inferences for a target's behaviors. The expectancies examined were based on either chronic future-event expectancies (Study 1) or temporary, manipulated expectancy standards (Studies 2-4). Analyses revealed that when contextual expectancies were distinct or separable from target information, participants' dispositional judgments were contrasted from them under cognitive load and overcorrected (assimilated to them) under no load. These effects were mediated by participants' behavior categorizations. Evidence suggestive of a proceduralized form of correction for task difficulty and an effortful awareness-based correction for the effects of expectancies also were found. Results are examined in light of recent models of the dispositional inference process.

Two studies examined the impact of trait and category diagnosticity on the social information processing of depressed and non-depressed participants. As suggested by the Weary, Marsh, Gleicher, and Edwards model of the effects of depression on social information processing, it was predicted that depressed participants would be especially sensitive to the diagnosticity of the available information when forming an impression of another person. In Study 1, depressed participants were more sensitive than nondepressed participants to trait diagnosticity when forming an impression. In Study 2, depressed participants were more sensitive than nondepressed participants to both trait and category diagnosticity when forming an impression.

Although depression has been associated with both uncertainty about the causes of events and certainty that negative events will happen, little is known about the relationship between these two types of certainty-related beliefs. A 6-week prospective study assessed the concurrent and longitudinal relationships among causal uncertainty, depressive predictive certainty, uncontrollability, and depressive symptomatology. Causal uncertainty and depressive predictive certainty were not related either concurrently or longitudinally. Depressive predictive certainty was associated with increases in depressive symptomatology over time and causal uncertainty, was shown to be a concomitant of depression. Perceptions of uncontrollability were found to be an antecedent of causal uncertainty, as well as a consequence of both causal uncertainty and depression. Uncontrollability, however, was not related to depressive predictive certainty. Implications of these results for models of causal uncertainty and hopelessness depression are examined.

Perceptions of lack of control have been thought to be closely related to causal uncertainty, or uncertainty about the causes of events (Weary and Edwards, 1994). A 6‐week prospective study tested the notion that perceived lack of control results in higher levels of later causal uncertainty. This prediction was confirmed. It also was found that time 1 causal uncertainty was associated with higher levels of time 2 perceptions of lack of control. Feelings of lack of control, causal uncertainty, and levels of depressive symptomatology were concurrently related at both time periods. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Two studies provide construct validity evidence for the Causal Uncertainty Scale. In the first study, the factor structure of the CUS was validated. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the CUS is composed of two highly correlated factors, uncertainty about the causes of one's own outcomes and uncertainty about the causes of others' outcomes. Relationships between these two factors and a variety of other variables were assessed. In the second study, the relationship between the CUS, its two factors, and the Big Five personality factors was examined. The CUS was found to be related only to Neuroticism. Participants' causal uncertainty scores were significantly better predictors of their confidence in causal hypotheses than were their Neuroticism scores. It is suggested that causal uncertainty may operate in a domain-specific fashion.

Two studies examined depressed and nondepressed perceivers' characterizations and thoughtful inferences about the behaviors of another person. In Study 1, depressed and nondepressed participants under a cognitive load or no load were asked to make either dispositional (ability) or situational (task ease) inferences about a target's videotaped performance. When cognitive resources were limited, depressed compared with nondepressed individuals made more pessimistic characterizations. No depression-related differences were found when sufficient cognitive resources were available for inferential correction. Study 2 provided evidence that the depressed-nondepressed differences in characterizations could be accounted for by schema-based future-event expectancies (S. M. Andersen, L. A. Spielman, & J. A. Bargh, 1992). Results are examined in light of previous failures to find consistent differences as a function of level of depression in inferences about others.

This study examined the extent to which chronic causal uncertainty beliefs influence diagnostic information seeking. Situational factors intended to increase the excitation level of causal uncertainty beliefs and the intensity of goal-directed behavior also were investigated. Participants expected to interview either a gender in-group or a gender out-group member, and half of them expected to be held accountable for their understanding of the interviewee. For out-group conditions, those accountable participants who possessed chronically accessible causal uncertainty beliefs revealed the greatest preference for diagnostic information. For in-group conditions, no differential pattern of information seeking as a function of chronic causal uncertainty beliefs or goal importance were found Results are discussed in terms of a recent model of motivated social cognition proposed by G. Weary and J. A. Edwards (1996).