Attributions

Attributions

'Process of ascribing reasons for, or causes to events and behaviour.'

Weiner's (1972) model

Internal - External
Stable - Unstable

Locus of Causality

	Internal	External
Stable	Ability – We were the better team.	Task Difficulty – Opponent was too good
Unstable	Effort – I gave everything	Luck – Referee was on their side

Can attributions affect our motivation / Success

Low achievers - Failure attributed to lack of ability (internal) - Lowers confidence - Leads to poor performance - More likely to fail again.


Learned Helplessness

Failure is inevitable
Even when success is possible
Leads to performer giving up easily

Attribution Retraining (2 Methods)

This means ascribing suitable attributions for success and failure in order to improve performance in the future.

Method 1 - Making controllable attributions (Internal/unstable) attributions. If reasons for success/failure can be controlled you can do something about it this will also improve performance.

Method 2 - Self serving bias, the use of attributions to protect self confidence.
Success attributed to - Internal factors
Failure attributed to - External factors