Causal mapping was used to compare poverty activists and non-activists from Canada and the Philippines (N = 80) in terms of their beliefs about the causes of poverty in developing nations. The causal maps varied as a function of both activist status and country of residence. Activists included more external societal causes in their maps than non-activists, whereas non-activists included more individualistic and internal societal causes. In terms of map structure, Filipino activists included significantly more causal links in their maps than members of the other three groups. A cluster analysis on distance ratios, an index of dissimilarity among the maps, produced three clusters dominated by Filipino non-activists, Canadian non-activists, and Filipino activists, respectively, and a fourth cluster that included a heterogeneous mix of respondents from all four groups. Implications for public education, the effective coordination of antipoverty interventions, and methodological issues related to causal mapping are discussed.
Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. (2004). Ranking recipients of Canadian aid. Retrieved from http://www.asiapacific.ca/data/devt/recipient_dataset3_largest.cfm
2.
Axelrod, R. (Ed.). (1976). Structure and design: The cognitive maps of political elites. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
3.
Becker, M. H. (Ed.). (1974). The health belief model and personal health behavior. Thorofare, NJ: Slack.
4.
Cowie, B. (1976). The cardiac patient’s perception of his heart attack. Social Science and Medicine, 10(2), 87-96.
5.
DeJong, W. (1980). The stigma of obesity: The consequences of naive assumptions concerning the causes of physical deviance. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 21, 75-85.
6.
Eden, C., Ackermann, F., & Cropper, S. (1992). The analysis of cause maps. Journal of Management Studies, 29, 309-323.
7.
Eden, C., & Spender, J. C. (1998). Managerial and organizational cognition: Theory, methods and research. London: Sage.
8.
Feagin, J. R. (1972). Poverty: We still believe that God helps those who help themselves. Psychology Today, 6, 101-129.
9.
Fletcher, G. J. O., Danilovics, P., Fernandez, G., Peterson, D., & Reeder, G. (1986). Attributional complexity: An individual difference measure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 875-884.
10.
Furby, L., & Beyth-Marom, R. (1992). Risk taking in adolescence: A decision making perspective. Developmental Review, 12, 1-44.
11.
Furnham, A. F. (1982). Why are the poor always with us? Explanations for poverty in Britain. British Journal of Social Psychology, 21, 311-322.
12.
Griffin, W. E., & Oheneba-Sakyi, Y. (1993). Socio demographic and political correlates of university students’ causal attributions for poverty. Psychological Reports, 3, 795-800.
13.
Harper, D. J., Wagstaff, G. F., Newton, J. T., & Harrison, K. R. (1990). Lay causal perceptions of third world poverty and the just world theory. Social Behavior and Personality, 18, 235-238.
14.
Heaven, P. C. L. (1994). The perceived causal structure of poverty: A network analysis approach. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 259-271.
15.
Hine, D. W., & Montiel, C. J. (1999). Perceived causes of third world poverty: A cross-cultural attributional analysis. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 943-959.
16.
Hine, D. W., Summers, C., Tilleczek, K., & Lewko, J. (1997). Expectancies and mental models as determinants of adolescents’ smoking decisions. Journal of Social Issues, 53(1), 35-52.
17.
Janis, I. L. (1989). Crucial decisions. New York: Free Press.
18.
Jenkins, M. (1998). The theory and practice of comparing causal maps. In C. Eden & J. C. Spender (Eds.), Managerial and organizational cognition (pp. 231-249). London: Sage.
19.
Kelley, H. H. (1983). Perceived causal structures. In J. Jaspars, F. D. Fincham, & M. Hewstone (Eds.), Attribution theory and research: Conceptual, developmental and social dimensions (pp. 343-369). London: Academic Press.
20.
Kluegel, J. R., & Smith, E. R. (1986). Beliefs about inequality. New York: Aldine.
21.
Laukkanen, M. (1990). Describing management cognition: The cause mapping approach. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 6, 197-216.
22.
Laukkanen, M. (1994). Comparative cause mapping of organizational cognitions. Organization Science, 5, 322-341.
23.
Lunt, P. (1991). The perceived causal structure of loneliness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 26-34.
24.
Markóczy, L., & Goldberg, J. (1995). A method for eliciting and comparing causal maps. Journal of Management, 21, 305-333.
25.
Payne, M., & Furnham, A. (1985). Explaining the causes of poverty in the West Indies: A cross-cultural comparison. Journal of Economic Psychology, 6, 215-229.
26.
Pellegrini, R. H., Queirolo, S. S., Monarrez, V. E., & Valenzuela, D. M. (1997). Political identification and perception of homelessness: Attributed causality and attitudes on public policy. Psychological Reports, 80, 1139-1148.
27.
Rogers, R. W. (1983). Cognitive and physiological processes in fear appeals and attitude change: A revised theory of protection motivation. In J. T. Cacioppo & R. E. Petty (Eds.), Social psychophysiology (pp. 153-176). New York: Guilford.
28.
Singh, S., & Vasudeva, P. N. (1977). A factorial study of perceived reasons for poverty. Asian Journal of Psychology and Education, 2, 51-56.
29.
Wagstaff, G. F. (1983). Attitudes to poverty, the Protestant ethic, and political affiliation: A preliminary investigation. Social Behaviour and Personality, 11, 45-47.
30.
Weiner, B. (1980). A cognitive (attribution)-emotion-action model of motivated behavior: An analysis of judgements of help-giving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 186-200.
31.
Zsambok, C. E., & Klein, G. (1997). Naturalistic decision making. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
32.
Zucker, G. S., & Weiner, B. (1993). Conservatism and perceptions of poverty: An attributional analysis. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23, 925-943.
