Heider's suggestion that Performance = Motivation X Ability has been empirically confirmed by Anderson and Butzin and by Kun, Parsons, and Ruble, using American students as subjects. This multiplying process failed to appear in the present series of three experiments performed on Indian college students. Contrary to the predicted linear fan pattern, the plot of Motivation X Ability effect displayed clear parallelism. An equal-weight averaging rule was able to account for the results obtained in both group and single-subject analyses. Perhaps the integration rules underlying achievement judgments are culture-specific, and Indian college students average motivation and ability information in attribution of future scholastic performance. These results illustrate the potential power that information integration theory provides for the cross-cultural study of social perception and cognition.How do people integrate information a'bout motivation and ability when they predict performance? Heider (1958) made the following suggestion:The personal constituents, namely, power (ability) and trying (effort) are related as a multiplicative combination, since the effective personal force (performance) is zero if either of them is zero. For instance, if a person has the ability but does not try at all he will make no progress toward the goal. (p. 83) If Heider's proposal is correct, then attribu-

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This paper examines the relationship between cultural beliefs about illness and psychological adjustment to a chronic disease. The findings of five studies were metaanalysed. In all these studies hospital patients suffering from various types of health problems were interviewed at different points in time and measures were used to assess their psychological adjustment. The findings revealed that patients' in Indian hospitals consistently attributed their illness to karma and God's will. These cosmic beliefs were found to influence patients' treatment re lated decisions. However, no consistent linkages were unravelled between pa tients' illness beliefs and their psychological adjustment. It was conjectured that these cosmic beliefs acquire different symbolic meaning when illness and social context change. The paper argues for an integrated health care system combin ing the strengths of traditional healing and biomedical practices.

The main objective of this study was to examine the role of causal beliefs in the psychological recovery of temporarily and permanently disabled accident victims. Patients ( N = 41) from a government hospital and private nursing homes in Allahabad city, India, were interviewed one week and three weeks after the accident. The doctor's report of their recovery was also obtained each time. The permanently disabled patients were found less motivated to search for the causes of the tragic went. When asked to make attribution, permanently disabled attributed the accident more to external factors than those who were temporarily disabled. Chance and God's will were the cause more frequently mentioned. Attributions to K m and God's will were significantly correlated with psychological recovery. The sense of personal control was not found to be a good index of psychological recovery. Number of compliints made by the patients and their depressive symptoms, as observed by the doctors, negatively correlated with the psychological recovery.A great deal of research has accumulated in the last two decades to predict psychological recovery of the victims of tragic events. Much of this work has focussed on affective reactions (Shontz 1975; Weller and A.K. Dabl, N. Pan& / Pvchological recovery reactions to tragic events (see Silver and Wortman 1980). Expressing similar views, Taylor has stated, 'though many systematic attempts are made, our knowledge of those factors that influence our reactions to tragic outcomes is very vague' (1983: 1161). It may further be mentioned that the role of beliefs about self, causality and personal control in the recovery process have not been sufficiently understood. Many of these beliefs have their anchoring in specific socio-cultural context. For example, the principle of Karma,* as expounded in Hinduism, is widely accepted as an explanation for many tragic happenings in one's life. The goal of the present study thus was to examine how these beliefs influence psychological recovery of temporarily and permanently disabled accident victims.How do people react to tragic accidents? The initial reaction may be that of shock and confusion. At the early stage, the impinging reality may seem too overwhelming to allow any luxury of cognitive appraisal of the whole situation. However, subsequent reactions of the victims would depend on the way the causality for that event is attributed. The understanding of these causes gives a sense of personal control over their environment, without which the world would seem random and chaotic. Studies have shown that those who have rather convincing answers to the question, 'why it has happened to me?' are psychologically better off than those who have no such explanations available (Bulman and Wortman 1977; Weisman and Worden 1975).The attribution of causality to the event would determine whether the victim would feel angry, or feel helpless. The victim would experience anger when the cause of the accident is attributed to factors controllable by others (e.g., carelessn...

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