Attribution Theory

Attribution theory seeks to explain how individuals and teams evaluate their levels of success and failure.

It also seeks to show how the reasons given by an individual or team for their success or failure may affect future motivation in similar situations.Attributions are seen as being what an individual or team interprets or perceives as being causes of theirs or others particular behaviour, outcomes or events.

The reasons given for their success or failure can affect

Ø Immediate emotional reactions

Ø Actual behaviour

The different attributions a performer gives to explain success or failure are important.

If a performer taking part in a new activity eg. basketball is not getting on very well the reasons they perceive for their failure can affect their future behaviour on court.

Weiner’s model is not sport specific in explaining attribution but is a good starting point.  He placed the 4 categories below of causal attributions into 2 dimensions.

Ø Ability

Ø Effort

Ø Task difficulty

Ø Luck

Locus of Causality Dimension

Weiner’s Model           Internal                External

                                      Attributions        Attributions

Stable attributions       ability                  task difficulty     Stability

                                                                                                Dimension

Unstable attributions   effort                             luck

**Copy example on page 592 and place the attributions in activity 11 into the various categories.**

The stability dimension is referring to whether the reasons/causes were relatively permanent (stable) or changeable (unstable) in relation to time.

Ability and task difficulty are seen as being stable factors in relation to time.  Effort and luck are changeable.  If you attribute success to ability then you would expect success at similar activities in the future and vice versa.

The locus of causality dimension is mainly linked to whether the attributions are internal (within performers) or external factors eg. environmental.

Ability and effort are seen as internal with task difficulty and luck seen as external to the performer.

Weiner then added another dimension called the locus of control, this helped to explain the effective consequences of attributions that appear to be in a persons control or not.

The locus of control dimension has been shown to relate to the intensity of a performer’s personal feeling of pride and satisfaction, shame and guilt.

Motivation, pride etc. will increase if a performer relates their success to internal causes such as ability and effort than external uncontrollable factors. 

The opposite effect will generally occur if failure is also attributed to internal and controllable factors.  Shame, dissatisfaction and loss of motivation are likely.

Below is Weiner’s adapted model of attribution

The application of attribution theory in sport

Self-serving bias    ‘A bad workman always blames his tools.’  The traditional Weinerian view was that winners attribute success to internal factors and losers to external factors.

It has been shown that successful performers do tend to attribute their success to internal factors (ability/effort) (a self-serving bias) to make them or the team feel better about themselves.

However unsuccessful performers, do not always protect their self esteem by always attributing failure to external factors in order to reduce shame. 

The performers perception of the causes in relation to perceived success/failure are seen as being more important.

High achievers would attribute success to internal factors and attribute failure to unstable factors, therefore more motivated in achievement situations.

Low achievers tend to attribute success to external factors eg. task, luck etc. with failure attributed to stable factors eg. ‘I am too small or not good enough.’  Therefore find achievement situations less satisfying/ less motivated.

A performers attribution will also be affected by whether they view success in terms of outcome goals or task/mastery goals.

If a tennis player judges their performance on previously set targets (mastery goals) eg. more first serves in etc. then their feelings of pride will be greater even though they lost the match compared to the performer who based themselves on outcome goals.

	High Achiever	Low Achiever
Motivational Orientation	-High motivation to achieve success -Low motivation to achieve failure -Focuses on pride of success	-Low motivation to achieve success -High motivation to achieve failure -Focuses on shame/worry that may result from failure
Attributions	-Ascribes success to stable/internal factors -Ascribes failure to unstable/external factors	-Ascribes success to unstable/external factors -Ascribes failure to stable/internal factors
Goals adopted	-Usually adopts task goals	-Usually adopts outcome goals
Task choice	-Seeks out challenges and able competitors/tasks	-Avoids challenges; seeks out very difficult or very easy tasks/competitors
performance	-Performs well in evaluative conditions	-Performs poorly in evaluative conditions

Learned helplessness

It was Dweck who first categorized performers as ‘helpless’ or mastery orientated.’  Helpless performers attribute failure to themselves seeing the task as insurmountable.

It is an acquired state related to the performers perceptions that they have no control over the situation, with failure inevitable

Characteristics of self helplessness

Ø It can be specific to one activity or general to all

Ø Performer is usually outcome orientated

Ø It usually results from previous bad experiences

Ø Attributions to uncontrollable stable factors

Ø Perceptions of low ability (feels incompetent)

Ø Rarely tries new skills

Ø Experience initial failure in new skills confirms perceptions

Ø Feelings of embarrassment

Ø Future effort is limited (why bother? I’m no good)

Teachers/coaches and performers often attribute success or failure to different reasons. 

When attributing reasons for our own behaviour we tend to relate it to external factors and when attributing reasons for others’ behaviour we tend to relate it to internal factors.

This difference in the application of attributions between an observer and performer are known as fundamental attribution errors.  Important for teachers and coaches to be aware that attribution conflict can happen.

The teacher when giving feedback must not negatively influence the performer by implying that they will never achieve the task, as this could lead to even greater levels of ‘learned helplessness.’

To help with motivation lack of success should be attributed to things that are within their control such as inconsistent technique, lack of experience, bad tactical decisions etc.

Getting performers to realize that failure is not inevitable and teaching them how to make appropriate attributions with regard to their performance, especially when they are possibly already experiencing ‘learned helplessness’ is called ‘attribution retraining’ and is a very important  responsibility of the teacher/coach.

Strategies for attribution re-training

Ø Individual attention

Ø Emphasise task goals

Ø Monitor performer’s attributions

Ø Ensure teacher/coach’s attributions are not negative

Diagram of attribution re-training process

Important for teachers/coaches not to subconsciously infer gender inequalities when dealing with attributions.

Also important for coaches/teachers to be relatively honest in their approach to performers, setting realistic goals or indeed re-defining them if need be.

Self efficacy

Bandura (1977) put forward the concept of self-efficacy claiming it to be very important in explaining success or failure.

He stated that self confidence can be viewed as a global disposition but is often specific to certain situations.

Eg. Team captain very confident during match but not so when asked to speak in front of TV cameras, or the child confident swimming in shallow end but not so in the deep end of the pool.

Bandura suggests that a performer makes judgements with regard to their capabilities to perform a specific task.  A performer’s perceptions of the situation relate to their expected level of self efficacy will affect their:

Ø Choice of activity (direct)

Ø Degree of effort (energise)

Ø Level of persistence (sustain).

Later research has shown that high self efficacy alone is not enough.  A performer must also want to succeed and have the capability (skills and ability) to succeed.

Diagram showing information that affects self efficacy

Past performance

Accomplishments

Vicarious experience

  (modeling)

                                        Efficacy                  Sporting

Verbal persuasion           Expectations           Performance

Emotional and

Physiological arousal

Past performance accomplishments

Previous successful experience is a very reliable predictor of self confidence. Eg. Beckham’s free kicks/corners

Practising a specific skill successfully has more effect than being told you will be able to do it by the teacher.

Important in teaching to built self confidence early on maybe by making the skill easier, i.e. lowering the baskets.

Obviously previous failure could result in low levels of self confidence.

Vicarious experience

Less effective as previous success has been found to be a reliable source of self efficacy.  When a performer observes a successful demo, particularly by someone of the same ability then they are likely to feel more confident.

Verbal persuasion

Teachers/coaches try to persuade performers that they are capable of carrying out certain tasks.  In the majority of situations it can work however it depends on who is doing the persuading.

Occasionally teachers/coaches my distort results or levels of truth in order to persuade performers that they are better than they are, however care must be taken when doing this.

Emotional arousal

Very often performers perceive their ‘natural’ physiological arousal effects as being something negative.  Why am I sweating/heart beating fast/breathing quickly? When they are naturally occurring effects of exercise.

They think they are not prepared and this has a negative effect on their self efficacy.  Research has shown that psychological preparation via goal setting, relaxation/stress management techniques can help to change a performers perceptions of arousal effect promoting positive self efficacy.