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Pinning down attributions: the linguistic category model applied to wrestling reports
Author(s) -
Schmid Jeannette
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199911)29:7<895::aid-ejsp964>3.0.co;2-2
Subject(s) - attribution , psychology , social psychology , outcome (game theory) , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , mathematical economics
Implicit attributions in media coverage of wrestling events are investigated. A special feature of show wrestling is a separation in morally good fighters who win because of their intrinsic goodness and morally bad fighters who win by bending the rules. Thus, show wrestling can be characterized by the attributions it affords. Linguistic abstractness as an index of attributions of dispositionality is measured with the Linguistic Category Model (LCM; Semin & Fiedler, 1988). Analyses of published fight reports in an official wrestling magazine show that goodness and badness is indeed attributed on a stable and global level and that fights with the expected outcome are described in terms of fighters' dispositions in contrast to fights with an unexpected outcome. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.