Attribution Theory

Attribution theory is used to explain how people, who inherently work to organize and understand their life experiences, will attribute their successes and failures to four factors: ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck. Each of these factors has been analyzed using three characteristics (i.e., Locus of Control, Stability, and Controllability). Attribution Theory also draws from principles of Motivation Theory and Expectancy Theory to help explain how students' perceptions of their successes and failures impacts persistence and resiliency. This article also includes some best practice suggestions based on the tenets of attribution theory.

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Educational Psychology > Attribution Theory

Overview

What makes a winner win? Is it all in one's attitude? Why do some people with apparent talents never seem to achieve as others predict? How can the interaction between a person's perceptions and the actual talents a person has be used to help each student reach full potential? These types of questions are often answered through the application of attribution theory. Attribution theory originated as a subsection of the theories of personality. Personality psychologists were working to describe what makes individuals unique by identifying the relatively unchanging aspects of people that make them unique individuals. However, there were many different approaches to the questions. Some psychologists focused on identifying and describing personality characteristics that define mental illness and poor social adjustment (i.e., abnormal psychology). Others chose to focus on identifying and describing the personality characteristics of people viewed as mentally healthy. They wanted to understand, and eventually be able to predict, why life events affect people in different ways. During this period of time, psychologists divided into two camps that differed on whether they believed one's inborn traits are integral in determining personality or whether the key factor is the environment in which one is reared (this argument has often been referred to as the continuing nature/ nurture debate). Almost everyone has come to a realization that there is most likely a mix of the two influences that work together to create uniqueness in individuals, although there is little agreement on how much of each are contributing to that mix (Ridley, 2003). Attribution theory is one of the theories formulated using an assumption that both inborn traits and one's environment will be reflected in one's personality. It posits that people will inherently work to organize their observations as they try to make meaning of their experiences.

This organizing will necessitate the creation of categories into which the observations can be sorted. The categories will be created and labeled by each person and will be influenced by both personal temperament and life experiences (Weiner, Nierenberg, & Goldstein, 1976). For example, two students might attend the same campus party and, on telling their friends about their weekends, one might describe the party as fun and exciting while the other describes it as out of control and dangerous. The two students attended the same event but, based on their temperaments and past experiences, chose different categories in which to store their memories of the party.

As the theory of attribution was further refined and developed, researchers realized its impact on how people are motivated, moving the theory from ideas about what makes personalities unique to a theory of understanding how a student's self-perceptions intersect with all learning experiences (i.e., social learning theory). More recently, researchers have linked attribution theory to expectancy theory, which has helped them to better explain the role of persistence and resiliency in the learning process.

Explaining Behavior

Attribution theory says that people will interpret their successes and failures in life in a way that relates to their existing thinking and behavior. It assumes that people try to figure out why they do what they do. The types of explanations people provide to explain their own behaviors can predict how persistent they will be when faced with a difficult task in the future (Weiner, 1985).

Research suggests a student's self-perceptions will strongly influence performance and expectations for success. Self-perceptions also influence the degree of effort a person will choose to put into a difficult or complex task. In most cases, a student will interpret his or her environment in such a way as to maintain homeostasis (i.e., a stable version of one's internalized self-image) (Festinger, 1957). For instance, if a person's self-perception is one of being a poor student, any success will be attributed to factors other than personal ability, whereas a person whose self-perception is one of being a good student will tend to attribute successes to ability (Maatt, Nurmi, & Stattin, 2007).

The Three Attributes

Most theorists sort out explanations of success or failure using polarities of three attributes that can help define personality:

* Locus of control (Internal/External) - this indicates whether a person attributes successes and failures to personal characteristics and behaviors or external circumstances (Rotter, 1975);

* Stability (Stable/Changeable) - this indicates whether a person believes the causes of success or failure can be easily changed; and

* Controllability (Controllable/Not Controllable) - this indicates whether a person believes the behavior or circumstance is something he or she has the power to personally alter or whether that person believes it is out of his/her control (Weiner, Nierenberg, & Goldstein, 1976).

Theorists believe future academic success can be predicted by listening to how a person describes her or his current successes and failures--combining the three attributes listed above with what the student expects to gain from the learning situation (Feather, 1988). These three attributes can be used to help define four constructs associated with learning situations:

* Ability

* Effort

* Task difficulty

* Luck

Table 1 illustrates which attributes are most usually associated with each learning construct.

Table 1: Attribute Locations in Learning Constructs

Ability Effort Task Difficulty Luck Int. Locus Control X X Ex. Locus Control X X Stable X X Changeable X X Controllable X Not Controllable X X X

Locus of Control

Locus of control is best determined by finding who or what exercises the most control over the factors that lead to a learning outcome. If a student believes personal characteristics or behaviors are primarily affecting the outcome of a situation, the locus of control is internal. Some examples of internal control characteristics include attitude, intelligence, and ability. Some examples of internal control behaviors include class attendance, time spent studying, and quality of effort put into studying. Hence, internal control factors can be defined as what the student is personally contributing to the learning experience.

If a student believes external factors are primarily affecting the outcome of a learning experience, the locus of control is external. If a student believes luck (good or bad) or classroom politics are primarily affecting the outcome of a learning experience, the locus of control is external. Some examples of statements that attribute the outcome to external control include: "good thing I brought my lucky rabbit's foot"; "the gods are against me"; and "the teacher doesn't like me." Additionally, if a student is completely unable to predict the outcome of a situation, it is considered a situation affected by external control (Rotter, 1966).

Locus of control is a very important variable in the attribution equation. Good students who believe luck is guiding their successes do not appear to gain confidence in their own abilities to initiate success. They may not acquire the sense of self-efficacy that is so very important in creating resiliency and persistence in difficult learning situations (Feather, 1988). Poor students who believe bad luck is guiding them are not motivated to work at getting a better grasp of the materials that need to be learned. On the converse, good students who attribute success solely to ability and do poorly on a test may have their faith in their abilities challenged, causing them to give up in despair. Research suggests students do better in future learning situations when they attribute poor performance to external controls and credit internal controls for their successes (Rotter, 1966).

Stability

The idea that ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck are either stable or changeable can be a bit confusing. Task difficulty and ability are identified as stable, however practice and study can increase skills (thereby decreasing task difficulty) because of an increase in ability. Students who are taught to rely on ability (which is an internal, stable factor) --and are also taught that ability can be changed with effort-- will develop a healthy resilience that will help motivate them to learn and persist in the face of failure (Rotter, 1975). Luck is identified as changeable because general beliefs indicate luck changes at whim. Yet it is common knowledge that one can change one's own luck. It is detrimental for students to believe their success or failure lies purely in luck. These students will have low motivation to develop new learning strategies and will not be able to optimize the learning that can be gleaned from failures (Weiner, Nierenberg, & Goldstein, 1976).

Stability is best described as whether a student believes the causes of the learning outcome can be easily changed. People generally spend a lot of time thinking about past activities and outcomes. For example, if a student fails a major exam he or she may spend considerable time trying to determine what went wrong (this is sometimes referred to as the causative effect) (Darke & Freedman, 1997; Weiner, Nierenberg, & Goldstein, 1976). The student might decide the failure happened because of staying up all night on the Internet and not bothering to study. Or the student might attribute the poor test score to breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend just prior to the test. These types of causes are considered changeable because they are circumstances the student would be able to change if that student could convince the teacher to let him or her re-test. On the converse, this student might attribute the test failure on an inability to grasp the subject contents despite best efforts at studying because the subject matter was too difficult for the student. Or the student may believe the test was highly subjective and the teacher did not like the student. These types of causes would be considered stable because they would be difficult or impossible to change in order to create success if the student could convince the teacher to give a second chance at the test. Regardless of how the student perceives the learning outcome, he/she is developing expectations for future learning experiences.

Controllability

Controllability indicates whether a person believes the behavior or circumstance can be personally altered should the person choose to alter it. Ability and task difficulty are generally perceived out of the student's purview of control. Luck is seen as partially in and partially out of the person's purview of control. Effort is primarily seen as an action controlled by the individual; however, in the face of failure, a teacher has great potential control a student's efforts.

Following the notion that good teaching will help children link ability to guided effort in the academic arena, some researchers have refined the word effort by renaming it strategic effort. They say a teacher can teach strategic effort by helping a student understand that failures are actually problem-solving situations for which the student will need to strategize in order to succeed (Clifford, 1984).

Expectancy Theory

Expectancy theory suggests a student will use past experiences to forecast probabilities for success in a new learning experience. The perceived probability for success will contribute to the future behavior of the student (Mischel, Jeffrey, & Patterson, 1974; Weiner, 1991). If the probability for success is too high or too low, then the student will likely put little time or effort into studying.

Research by Weiner, Nierenberg, and Goldstein (1976) strongly suggests expectancy of success is more closely correlated to stability than to locus of control, meaning that a student's belief that the factors can be changed to alter future outcomes is very important in creating the skill of persistence in students.

Expectancy theory was originated by Lewin (1938) as a theory of motivation. In 1957, Atkinson moved the theory neatly into achievement motivation theory by suggesting that expectancies for success, based on past experiences, drive an individual's future persistence and striving for success. Several psychologists have tested this theory in the real world and have expanded the definition set forth by Atkinson to create a clear, robust theory that provides a model of achievement choices relating to persistence and self-concept in children based on three constructs: expectancies for success, beliefs about ability or competence, and subjective task values (Feather, 1988; Wigfield, Tonks, & Eccles, 2004).

Expectancy is a very important piece of the attribution equation when trying to predict outcomes in learning situations. It describes how the previous experiences will contribute to determining how hard a student will be willing to work to master the material. When a student perceives two situations to be similar, outcome expectancies will tend to be generally the same. Experiences in other similar situations will influence what the student perceives as a potential outcome of the new situation, influencing the amount or quality of effort the student will be willing to contribute to the learning situation. The more similar the situation, the more specific will be the expectancies developed by the student. Also, the more experience the student has in similar learning situations, the stronger and more specific will be the expectancies of the student (Wigfield, Tonks, & Eccles, 2004).

It is important to create learning situations in which students in younger grades can experience success. These students are developing expectancies that will be carried with them throughout their academic experience. Teachers can take care to create expectancies that align with what the children value in the school experience (e.g., belonging, love of learning, etc.) as they create a psychological atmosphere that will likely stay with the child for the duration of the K-12 experience. Positive early learning experiences that result in outcomes that are tied to a child's efforts and abilities will provide children the opportunity to develop perceptions and expectancies that will lead to academic success. If a child has developed an expectancy of failure (i.e., learned helplessness), it is important for teachers to take time and effort to alter the student's causal perceptions so that the child will be motivated to alter behaviors in or to create opportunities for future success (Weiner, 1991). It is equally important to create learning situations in which new college-age students can experience success and develop the skills needed to maintain resilience in difficult situations; this may come in handy during graduate school and during life in general.

Applications

Effort does not mean asking the student to continue to try without providing the guidance and skills necessary to succeed. It involves devoting effective academic learning time to the task rather than just trying harder or spending more time doing what led to failure in the first place. Effective teachers provide guidance to their students, allowing the students to learn from failure while providing avenues in which the students can learn or improve the required skill set that can lead to success (Clifford, 1984). Telling a student who lacks the requisite ability to generally "try harder" or that the student did not "try hard enough" will only frustrate that student; he or she will think the teacher is accusing him or her of laziness when, in reality, that student may have worked very hard while lacking the requisite skills or study strategies to succeed. The situation will not motivate the student to succeed nor will it cultivate academic resilience in the student. It is important to understand that instructing a struggling student to generally try harder implies control for effort is in the student's purview when, in reality, the guided effort provided by the teacher may be the only venue that will allow the student to succeed.

Additionally, allowing a student to fail repeatedly while making adequate efforts will discourage the student from making any serious efforts to succeed; the student will stop believing in his or her personal ability and will stop believing the failure is tied to lack of effort. Skilled teachers provide opportunities for success in between occasions of failure. This helps build resilience in students by helping establish a sense of personal ability in each student coupled with a knowledge that guided effort can lead to task mastery (Wigfield, Tonks, & Eccles, 2004). Students with high ratings of self-esteem and high ratings of academic achievement tend to rate their successes as internal, stable, and uncontrollable while rating their failures as external, changeable, and controllable. Additionally, they tend to report an expectation for success (Weiner, 2000). Students who are high achievers are not reluctant to approach learning tasks. When faced with failure, they often conclude bad luck or a poor exam was the reason. However, it is fallacious to allow children to believe ability is the sole contributor to success or failure because they will often be intimidated by failure and quit prematurely, not realizing that a little practice or a little more effort would have resulted in task mastery. On the converse, low achievers do not even use success positively. They attribute their success to luck or some other external factor, avoiding the personal responsibility of bringing success to their assignments and thus divorcing themselves from the notion that they can succeed. Educators of young children can encourage success and lifelong learning commitments in students by helping them cultivate the belief that effort is personally initiated and will result in success. Children will acquire the skills needed to maintain persistence in challenging academic tasks if they can be taught to attribute their successes to effort and ability and their failures to lack of effort or bad luck (Feather, 1988).

Implementing Attribution Theory in the Classroom

How can teachers/professors construct a robust learning environment in which the students are motivated to succeed using the precepts of attribution theory? Here are a few ideas:

Academic Diversity

K-12 teachers can diversify the learning experience by providing opportunities for students to enjoy successes relative to their own abilities. Successes optimally based on measures of each student's past performance will build confidence and a sense of self-efficacy in each student. Creating academic diversity can be a challenge--but it can be achieved. It might entail encouraging some students to complete a research paper describing democracy while other students are completing a research paper contextualizing Stalin's life, leadership, and eventual demise. It might include providing math problems at different levels of complexity for students of differing abilities. All students will need to work through achievable challenges (i.e., not too easy and not too hard) if they are to develop an internal locus of control for classroom success.

Continued Approval

Another important task that both teachers and professors can engage in to promote long-term resilience and self-efficacy is that of providing high levels of approval to encourage the development of an expectancy of achievement in each student. Provide encouragement and compliments when a student does well and attribute the student's success to internal control factors. When a student does poorly, identify some external factors that may have interfered with the student's ability to succeed, being careful to verbally identify the successes that may be interlaced with the poor performance (Lobel & Bempechat, 1993; Weiner, 1985).

Here is an example of the power of creating positive expectancies in a young student: A third grade student came bouncing out of the classroom to read to a parent volunteer. The volunteer remembered the child (from kindergarten) as one who had struggled with learning to read. She pulled out the lower-level readers as the boy sat down to read with her. The student smiled up at the volunteer and reminded her that she had volunteered in his class during kindergarten. Then he said, "I was the best reader in that class!" The volunteer smiled to herself and asked, "Wow, how did you know that?" The boy said, "My mom told me every day!" The subsequent reading session was a delight as the boy demonstrated his now excellent reading ability. Good educators (and parents) never underestimate the power of their words on students.

Regulate Classroom Competition

Take care with how competition in the classroom is utilized. Classroom competitions tend to reinforce a sense of ability in high-ability students while diminishing a sense of ability in low-ability students. Competitions can lead to a sense of despair and lack of motivation in children who are constantly and publicly bested by their peers or it can be utilized in ways that alert students to what skills or knowledge sets they need to improve. Using general classroom competition sparely while encouraging students to improve their knowledge and skills based on their own performances can work to encourage students to strengthen their belief in internal controls for success while also allowing them to understand their own performances relative to the general class.

Terms & Concepts

Abnormal Psychology: The branch of psychology that studies the symptoms, causes, prevention, treatment, and complications of mental and emotional disorders (i.e., neuroses, psychoses, and developmental disabilities) (Webster, 2001).

Construct: An abstract concept that has been made concrete by using testing or observable behaviors for the purposes of research (e.g., a psychologist may make intelligence concrete by measuring it via test scores, a student's class performance, or an assessment by a teacher).

Expectancy Theory: A commonly accepted theory that explains how people choose between alternative behaviors. Motivational force is believed to be the driving factor in decision making and the strength of that force can be calculated by multiplying expected outcome by performance expectations by value attached to the outcome. If any of the three variables is given a weight of zero, there will be no motivation to perform.

Homeostasis: A stable balance: equilibrium. A tendency to try to maintain balance between interdependent elements. People will work to balance personal beliefs with lived experiences, which may sometimes include ignoring or altering parts of the experiences that might create imbalance in the belief system (Festinger, 1957).

Learned Helplessness: Individuals who are subject to negative experiences in which they believe they have no control over the outcome will eventually stop taking any action to avoid the adverse outcome. Students who expect to fail and believe control of the outcome is not in their hands will typically give up trying and passively suffer the adverse consequences (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978).

Nature/Nurture Debate: Debates among members of the schools of psychology and philosophy over the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities (i.e., nature) versus personal experiences (i.e., nurture) in determining individual differences in how people behave. Studies grounded in genetic research suggest many key human traits should be, at least, partially attributed to innate qualities possessed by the individual.

Polarities: A term that, when defined, encompasses opposite direction or contrasted properties. For example, the opposite polarities included in the term "temperature" would be hot and cold.

Resiliency: The ability to keep going during very hard times without being overwhelmed or acting in dysfunctional or harmful ways.

Self-Efficacy: A person's beliefs regarding whether one has the power to create change with personal actions (Bandura, 1994).

Bibliography

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Weiner, B. Nierenberg, R., & Goldstein, M. (1976), Social learning (locus of control) versus attributional (causal stability) interpretations of expectancy of success. Journal of Personality, 44 , 52-48. Retrieved November 24, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=7379253&site=ehost-live

Wigfield, A., Tonks, S. & Eccles, J. S. (2004). Expectancy - value theory in cross-cultural perspective. In D. McInerney & S. Van Etten (Eds.), Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Learning volume 4: Big Theories Revisited. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Press.

Wintle, W. D. (1965). The man who thinks he can. In H. Felleman (Ed.), Poems That Live Forever. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Yui-Chung Chan, J., Keegan, J. P., Ditchman, N., Gonzalez, R., Xi Zheng, L., & Fong, C. (2011). Stigmatizing attributions and vocational rehabilitation outcomes of people with disabilities. Rehabilitation Research, Policy & Education, 25 (3/4), 135-148. Retrieved December 11, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=74648324&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Borkowski, J. G., Schneider, W., & Pressley, M. (1989). The challenges of teaching good information processing to learning disabled students. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 36 , 169-185.

Hsien, P. H. (2005). How college students explain their grades in a foreign language course: The interrelationship of attributions, self-efficacy, language learning, beliefs, and achievement. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A, 65 (10-A).

Jones, E. E., Kannouse, H. H., Kelley, R. E., Nisbett, S. V., & Weiner, B. (Eds.). (1972). Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

Peterson, S., & Schreiber, J. (2012). Personal and interpersonal motivation for group projects: Replications of an attributional analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 24 , 287-311. Retrieved December 11, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=74638577&site=ehost-live

Woodcock, S., & Vialle, W. (2011). Are we exacerbating students' learning disabilities? An investigation of preservice teachers' attributions of the educational outcomes of students with learning disabilities. Annals of Dyslexia, 61 , 223-241. Retrieved December 11, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67281134&site=ehost-live