The Effects of Ability, Strategy, and Effort Attributions for Educational, Business, and Athletic Failure

Bibliographic Data

ID5262847
AuthorsMargaret M Clifford (University of Iowa, corresponding author)
Year1986
Volume56
Issue2
Pages169-179
Publication date1986-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Educational Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0998 • E-ISSN: 2044-8279
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.2044-8279.1986.tb02658.x
OpenAlexW2013881524
LanguageEN
Citations received4

The effects of attributing educational, business, and athletic failure to low effort, low ability or use of inappropriate strategy were examined with the use of high school teachers as subjects. Strategy attributions were generally found to produce the most constructive effects. Perceived affect, support for future endeavour, and a measure of negative generalisability were rated significantly more favourably under the strategy attribution condition than under the effort attribution condition. The field in which failure was experienced interacted with sex; males appear to judge failure in business more negatively than failure in sports as measured by perceived affect and negative generalisability, while females show reverse trends. The data generally offer strong support for the contention that strategy attributions can produce more positive effects than effort attributions and that strategy attribution-training may have greater educational pay-offs than effort-attribution training. These data also raise questions regarding the assumption that behaviour is a linear function of the stability dimension

Affect (linguistics) · Attribution · Constructive · Developmental psychology · Function (biology) · Process (computing) · Applied Psychology · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Motivation and Self-Concept in Sports · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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