Affect as a determinant of egotism
Residual excitation and performance attributions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6206301 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter M Gollwitzer (0000-0003-4872-2929, Ruhr University Bochum, corresponding author), Walter B Earle, Walter G Stephan |
| Year | 1982 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 702-709 |
| Publication date | 1982-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037//0022-3514.43.4.702 |
| OpenAlex | W4231586756 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 23 |
| References cited | 23 |
An experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of outcome-related affect on subsequent causal attributions. After working on a social skills test, college students engaged in a physical exercise task. The students were given success or failure feedback on the social skills test either 1, 5, or 9 minutes after the exercise. Excitation transfer theory suggests that the residual arousal from the exercise in the 5-minute condition may elevate the positive and negative affective states elicited by the success and failure feedback. Thus, increased attributional egotism in the 5-minute condition was predicted. The principal findings are as follows: (a) Subjects preferred internal factors to explain success, whereas external factors were blamed for failure, and (b) ego-defensive attributions following failure and ego-enhancing attributions following success were more pronounced in the 5-minute condition than in the 1-minute and 9-minute conditions. The results support the idea that outcome-related affect mediates egotistical performance attributions. A firmly established finding in the recent social psychology literature is the phenom-enon of asymmetrical attributions after suc-cess and failure. People tend to attribute suc-cess to their efforts, abilities, or other dis-positions, whereas they attribute failure to bad luck, task difficulty, or other external variables. The earliest results hinting at this pattern stem from studies that analyzed at-tributions for performance outcomes involv-ing teaching tasks (Beckman, 1970; Johnson, Feigenbaum, & Weiby, 1964). Since then, numerous other studies have replicated this finding using a variety of different paradigms
Affect (linguistics · Attribution · Developmental psychology · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Communication · Emotional Intelligence and Performance · Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies · Personality Traits and Psychology · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
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| Unique citing works | 22 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,56 |
| Citation span | 1985 - 2024 (40) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 20 |