Attributions of learning disabled children.

Two studies compared learning disabled (LD) and normally achieving (NA) children's attribution patterns of success and failure in achievement and in social situations. In Study 1, 37 LD and 67 NA 7th and 8th graders were interviewed about attributions for hypothetical success–failure situations. 75 LD and 30 NA Ss (aged 9–17 yrs) from private schools were interviewed about attributions for real-life ratings of success in Study 2. NA Ss in both studies followed the expected pattern of attributing success more internally and failure (or less success) more externally. LD Ss attributed success to internal factors as well, but in both studies they also externalized success more than did the NA Ss. In their attributions for failure (or less success), the LD Ss in both studies did not follow the expected pattern. It is concluded that attributional differences between the LD Ss may reflect differences in self-esteem, expectations, and uncertainty. Careful reconsideration of the potentially negative consequences of attributional retraining of children with learning problems is recommended. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceiving the causes of unemployment: An evaluation of the Causal Dimensions Scale in a real-life situation.

The perceived causes for employment (success) and unemployment (failure) were considered in a longitudinal study with 378 higher professional graduates, who completed a questionnaire shortly before (imaginary situation) and 6 months after their final exam (real-life situation). The design permitted a comparison for the same subjects of causal attributions for an initially imaginary occurrence that eventually became real. Although the results indicate some inadequacies in the internal structure of the Causal Dimensions Scale (CDS), the subscale structure was found to be invariant across conditions (success/failure) and situations (imaginary/real-life). Furthermore, the CDS showed a considerable divergent validity. The perceived causes for (un)employment were consistent with the literature suggesting a self-serving attributional bias. Contrary to expectation the subjects did not change their causal perceptions when becoming actually (un)employed. Indications were found for a self-serving motivational bias, resulting in labor-market success for those who are initially optimistic and motivated to find a job. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression and causal attributions for success and failure.

Investigated the effects of depression on causal attributions for success and failure. From a pool of 340 female university students, 60 were separated into depressed and nondepressed groups on the basis of Costello-Comrey Depression Scale scores, and then received either 20, 55, or 80% reinforcement on a word association task. Following the task, attributions were made for outcome using the 4 factors of effort, ability, task difficulty, and luck. In accord with predictions generated from a self-serving biases hypothesis, nondepressives made internal (ability, effort) attributions for a successful outcome (80% reinforcement) and external attributions (luck, task difficulty) for a failure outcome (20% reinforcement). As predicted from consideration of the self-blame component of depression, the attributions made by depressives for a failure outcome were personal or internal. Contrary to expectations, depressives also made internal attributions for a successful outcome. The findings for depressives are discussed in relation to the recently revised learned helplessness model of depression, which incorporates causal attributions. For nondepressives, the findings are considered in terms of the self-serving biases hypothesis. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of performance attributions on others' perceptions of the attributor.

Two studies investigated the effects that performers' attributions actually have on others' impressions. 441 undergraduates served as Ss. "Self-serving" internal attributions for success and external attributions for failure produced slightly higher ability evaluations than did the opposite pattern in 1 of the 2 experiments. However, in both experiments, these self-serving attributions produced lower ratings on a modesty dimension. External attributions were also perceived as relatively dishonest for all Ss in Exp I and for unsuccessful Ss in Exp II. Publicity (Exp I) and task variables (Exp II) did not affect ability, modesty, or honesty judgments made from performance attributions but did strongly affect the influence these dimensions had on overall likability evaluations. In general, Ss who made internal attributions tended to be better liked than those who made external attributions. The implications and limitations of these results are discussed relative to self-presentational considerations. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction?

A review of the evidence for and against the proposition that self-serving biases affect attributions of causality indicates that there is little empirical support for the proposition in its most general form. Some support was found for the contention that individuals engage in self-enhancing attributions under conditions of success, but only minimal evidence suggested that individuals engage in self-protective attributions under conditions of failure. Moreover, it was proposed that the self-enhancing effect may not be due to motivational distortion, but rather to the tendency of people to (a) expect their behavior to produce success, (b) discern a closer covariation between behavior and outcomes in the case of increasing success than in the case of constant failure, and (c) misconstrue the meaning of contingency. (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-serving biases in the attribution process: A reexamination of the fact or fiction question.

Examines the empirical evidence related to the notion of self-serving biases in causal attributions. D. T. Miller and M. Ross's (see record 1975-21041-001) reinterpretations of data that presumably reflect bias are discussed. The studies reviewed show relatively strong support for the causal asymmetry generally cited as evidence for self-serving, or defensive, attributions. Futhermore, a broadened self-serving bias formulation is presented, which suggests that under certain conditions, esteem needs may be best served by making counterdefensive attributions. Conditions that may be expected to elicit defensive or counterdefensive attributions are delineated. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attribution, affect, and college exam performance.

Results of a questionnaire study with 207 college students show that Ss attributed their own performance and the performance of the average student to ability, test difficulty, preparation, and luck. Consistent with the self-serving bias hypothesis, successful Ss perceived internal factors as more important causes and unsuccessful Ss perceived external factors as more important causes of their own performance than the performance of the average student. Furthermore, successful Ss saw internal and stable factors as more important causes of others' outcomes (as well as their own) than did unsuccessful Ss. Ss' anxiety about their performance and their ratings of the course and instructor were systematically, albeit weakly, linked with specific causal attributions. The implications of these causal inferences and affective responses in the educational context are discussed. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is There a Universal Positivity Bias in Attributions? A Meta-Analytic Review of Individual, Developmental, and Cultural Differences in the Self-Serving Attributional Bias.

Researchers have suggested the presence of a self-serving attributional bias, with people making more internal, stable, and global attributions for positive events than for negative events. This study examined the magnitude, ubiquity, and adaptiveness of this bias. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 266 studies, yielding 503 independent effect sizes. The average d was 0.96, indicating a large bias. The bias was present in nearly all samples. There were significant age differences, with children and older adults displaying the largest biases. Asian samples displayed significantly smaller biases (d = 0.30) than U.S. (d = 1.05) or Western (d = 0.70) samples. Psychopathology was associated with a significantly attenuated bias (d = 0.48) compared with samples without psychopathology (d = 1.28) and community samples (d = 1.08). The bias was smallest for samples with depression (0.21), anxiety (0.46), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (0.55). Findings confirm that the self-serving attributional bias is pervasive in the general population but demonstrates significant variability across age, culture, and psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of match importance and gender on the team-serving attributional bias among interdependent sports team players.

This study examined the team-serving attributional bias (TSAB), and moderators of this bias, in sports team players. The authors predicted that, in line with a motivational explanation for TSABs, members of successful teams would make more internal, stable, and controllable attributions than would members of unsuccessful teams, but only after an important match. The authors also examined the impact of gender. After a competitive match, 528 athletes completed a Causal Dimension Scale for Teams and measures of perceived success and match importance. A series of hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that perceptions of success were positively associated with stable, internal, and externally controllable attributions. The authors also found that stability attributions were moderated by gender and match importance, with perceptions of success being positively associated with stable attributions for males regardless of match importance but positively associated with stable attributions only for those females who perceived the match to be important. The results, therefore, provide support for the use of TSABs within sports teams but also indicate that their use may be moderated by gender and match importance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Postperformance attributions and task persistence among Type A and B individuals: A clarification.

Tested the hypothesis that Type A (coronary-prone) Ss would be more self-serving than Type B (noncoronary-prone) Ss in their attributions for success and failure. It was also hypothesized that task persistence would differ among Type A's and B's and would be dependent on task difficulty and perceived task diagnosticity. 78 undergraduates classified on the basis of scores on the Jenkins Activity Survey as Type A's and B's attempted multiple sets of anagrams that were either easy or difficult. Persistence was measured by the number of anagram sets attempted, and, after task performance, attributions for success and failure were assessed. Results support both hypotheses. Type A's took more credit for success than for failure, whereas Type B's did not provide reliably different attributions for success and failure. Furthermore, Type A's persisted longer at the task when it was difficult and when it was viewed as relatively low in information value. Type B's persisted longer at the task when it was difficult but viewed as relatively high in information value. Results are discussed in the context of current debates regarding the responses of Type A's and B's to performance settings. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal attributions, expectations, and task performance.

College students' performance on each of 2 chemistry tests (n?=?253 on the 1st test and 233 on the 2nd test) was classified as a success (or failure) if it met (or failed to meet) a minimum criterion of success that each S set prior to taking each test. Using a paired-comparison technique, Ss attributed their performance on each test to ability, effort, luck, and task difficulty. Among Ss who succeeded on the tests, expected and actual future performance were positively related to attributions to high ability and negatively related to attributions to good luck. Among Ss who experienced failure, expected performance was positively related to attributions to low effort and negatively related to attributions to low ability. Results of these analyses are related to D. T. Hall's (1976) model of psychological success. In addition, although expectations were strongly related to subsequent performance, the relationship was substantially weakened when prior performance and ability attributions were held constant. The implications of this finding for understanding expectancy perceptions are discussed. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributions, affect, and expectations: A test of Weiner's three-dimensional model.

In a test of predictions derived from B. Weiner's (see PA, Vols 50:325 and 62:8688) reformulated 3-dimensional model of attributions, 233 college students who had performed well or poorly on an examination reported the locus, stability, and controllability of the causes of their performance, their affective reactions, and their expectations. As is consistent with Weiner's model, more positive affective reactions were reported by Ss who (a) felt they controlled the causes of their performance, (b) attributed success to internal factors or failure to external factors, and (c) attributed their outcomes to factors that were stable, controllable, and internal. Expectations, however, were related more to perceived locus of cause and controllability than to stability. The implications of attributions and perceived control in educational settings are discussed in relation to learned helplessness, expectations, and reactions to failure. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-serving bias in the classroom: Who shows it? Who knows it?

Two studies were conducted to explore student and teacher attributions for success and failure. In the first study, college students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 roles (student, teacher, or observer). The teacher constructed a written lesson for the student to study. Both teachers and students made self-serving attributions taking credit for success, but not for failure. Although their attributions differed, participants in each role were aware of how participants in the other roles would make their attributions. A second study surveyed college teachers, students, and staff concerning actual previous high and low grades. The results replicated those of the first study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's attributions for success and failure: Effects of age and attentional focus.

This study was an assessment of how children's achievement attributions were influenced by their age, attentional focus, gender, and success or failure experience. Older and younger elementary school children performed a memory task under either self-focusing or task-focusing instructions. After performance, half of the children in each condition were given success feedback and the other half failure feedback. Attributions for performance were then obtained. In the success condition, children judged effort to be the most important cause of their performance, whereas children in the failure condition attributed their performance mostly to the difficulty of the task and their inability to remember the story. Older children in the self-focus condition attributed success more to internal causes than did older children in the task-focus condition. Younger children attributed both success and failure more to luck than did older children. Few sex differences in attributions were obtained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's causal attributions for success and failure in achievement settings: A meta-analysis.

Conducted a meta-analysis of 25 studies (1972–1981 [appended]) on children's attributions for success and failure to test the adequacy of the egotistic bias hypothesis (that attributions are more internal for success and more external for failure) for children in Grades 1–7. Variations in the wording of attributional questions and the research context were also included as factors in the meta-analysis. Results provide support for the egotism hypothesis and indicate that both question wording and research context are important determinants of children's attributions. In general, the egotism effect was supported more for informational than for the more traditional causal wording of the attribution questions. No effects were found for grade level. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social anxiety, self-presentation, and the self-serving bias in causal attribution.

Two experiments with 160 undergraduates studied the contribution of self-presentation concerns to the self-serving bias in causal attribution (individuals' tendency to assume more personal responsibility for a success than for a failure) and its occasional, but systematic, reversal. In Exp I, high- but not low-social-anxiety Ss (selected by scores on the Social Anxiety subscale of the Self-Consciousness Scale) presented themselves in a far more modest light when a committee of high prestige others was to join the experimenter in evaluating their behavior than when the committee evaluation was canceled. In Exp II, this reversal of the self-serving bias among high-social-anxiety Ss was replicated, and it was also found that both high- and low-social-anxiety Ss portrayed the causes of their behavior in a more modest fashion when they responded via the "bogus pipeline," a measurement technique designed to reduce distortion and dissimulation in verbal responses, than when they responded in the traditional paper-and-pencil format. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of causal attribution in personal problem solving.

In 2 studies with 180 undergraduates, self-appraised effective problem solving was associated with a unique pattern of causal attributions. In the 1st study, self-appraised effective relative to ineffective problem solvers tended to view the etiology of personal problems as largely within their own control and as due to their own failure to exert effort in the situations. In the 2nd study, self-appraised effective relative to ineffective problem solvers exhibited a more pronounced self-serving bias regarding successful and unsuccessful problem-solving attempts; effort attributions emerged as a distinguishing characteristic between the 2 groups. Self-appraised effective problem solvers viewed lack of effort as a primary component when their attempts to solve personal problems were unsuccessful. Results are discussed in relation to previous findings regarding causal attributions among different populations and to appropriate clinical interventions. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectations, aspirations, and evaluations as influenced by another's attributions for success and failure.

A study with 80 male and female students aged 16–18 yrs examined the effects of another's attributions for performance on one's own expectations, aspirations, and evaluations of performance. Ss witnessed an other (O) who had attributed his (or her) performance (successful or unsuccessful) on an anagram task to luck, task ease or difficulty, effort, or ability. When O had succeeded, Ss expected to perform best if O had attributed his success to the task (rather than to luck, effort, or ability); when O had failed, Ss expected to perform worst when O had attributed his failure to the task. In addition, Ss witnessing a successful O were more hopeful if O had made a task attribution, but Ss witnessing an unsuccessful O were more hopeful if O had made an effort attribution. Finally, Ss showed a tendency to attribute their own performance to the same cause to which O had attributed his own performance. Results are discussed in relation to the stability–instability and internal–external dimensions of causal attributions and to the need to perceive oneself as exercising effective control over the environment. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)