Attribution Theory

Reported by:
Caymo, Eenah Antoinette P.
Miramo, Hannah Lois T.
II-1 BECED
 Classroom
Proponent
Application

Theory
 Fritz Heider
(February 18, 1896 –
January 2, 1988)
• an Austrian psychologist whose
work was related to the Gestalt
school.
• Born in Vienna, Austria
• At the age of 24 he received a Ph.D. from the
University of Graz, for his innovative study of the
causal structure of perception, and traveled to
Berlin, where he worked at the Psychology
Institute.
• In 1930, Heider was offered an opportunity to
conduct research at the Clarke School for the
Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, which was
associated with Smith College, also in
Northampton.
• Heider published two important articles in 1944
that pioneered the concepts of social perception
and causal attribution (Heider, 1944; Heider &
Simmel, 1944).
• In 1957, Heider was hired by the University of
Kansas, after being recruited by social psychologist
Roger Barker (Heider, 1983).
• Heider's The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations
(1958) was written in collaboration with the
uncredited Beatrice Wright, a founder of
rehabilitiation psychology.
• Heider died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, on 2
January 1988 at the age of 91.
 Bernard Weiner
1935-present
• is a cognitive psychologist who
is known for developing a form
of attribution theory that
explains the emotional and
motivational entailments of
academic success and failure.
• born in 1935 in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of three
sons of Russian immigrants.
• A product of Chicago's public schools, he received his
undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts from the
University of Chicago in 1955 and an MBA, majoring in
Industrial Relations, from the same university in 1957.
• Following two years of service in the U.S. Army, Weiner
enrolled in a PhD program in personality at the University of
Michigan, where he was mentored by John Atkinson, one of
the leading personality and motivational psychologists of
that era.
• Weiner completed his PhD from Michigan in 1963, spent two
years as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota
before joining the psychology faculty at the University of
California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1965, where he remained
active into the early 2000s.
• As of 2008, Weiner had authored 13 books and published
more than 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
• He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the
Donald Campbell Research Award in Social Psychology from
the American Psychological Association and the Palmer O.
Johnson Publication Award from the American Educational
Research Association.
• He holds honorary degrees from the Bielefeld University in
Germany and Turku University in Finland.
 “A person's own perceptions or
attributions for success or failure
determine the amount of effort the
person will expend on that activity in
the future.”
 What is the Attribution
Theory?
• It is concerned with how individuals interpret
events and how this relates to their thinking and
behavior.
• Heider (1958) was the first to propose a
psychological theory of attribution, but Weiner and
colleagues (e.g., Jones et al, 1972; Weiner, 1974,
1986) developed a theoretical framework that has
become a major research paradigm of social

? ? psychology.
? • Attribution theory assumes that people try to
determine why people do what they do, i.e.,
attribute causes to behavior.
 Principles
1. Attribution is a three stage process:
a) behavior is observed

b) behavior is determined to be deliberate,

and

c) behavior is attributed to internal or

external causes.
2. Achievement can be attributed to:
a) effort is an internal and unstable factor
over which the learner can exercise a great
deal of control.

b) ability is a relatively internal and stable

factor over which the learner does not exercise
much direct control.

c) level of task difficulty is an external and

stable factor that is largely beyond the
learner's control.

d) luck is an external and unstable factor over

which the learner exercises very little control.
3. Causal dimensions of behavior are:
a) locus of control

b) Stability

c) Controllability
 According to attribution theory, the explanations
that people tend to make to explain success or
failure can be analyzed in terms of three sets of
characteristics:
• First, the cause of the success or failure may be
internal or external. That is, we may succeed or fail
because of factors that we believe have their origin
within us or because of factors that originate in our
environment.
• Second, the cause of the success or failure may be
either stable or unstable. If the we believe cause is
stable, then the outcome is likely to be the same if
we perform the same behavior on another
occasion. If it is unstable, the outcome is likely to
be different on another occasion.
• Third, the cause of the success or failure may be
either controllable or uncontrollable. A
controllable factor is one which we believe we
ourselves can alter if we wish to do so. An
uncontrollable factor is one that we do not believe
we can easily alter.
Students will be most persistent at academic tasks
under the following circumstances:
 
1. if they attribute their academic successes to either:
– internal, unstable, factors over which they have
control (e.g., effort) or
– internal, stable, factors over which they have
little control but which may sometimes be
disrupted by other factors (e.g., ability
disrupted by occasional bad luck); and
2. if they attribute their failures to internal, unstable
factors over which they have control (e.g., effort).
Below are eight reasons representing the eight
combinations of locus, stability, and responsibility
in Weiner's model of attributions.
• Internal-stable-uncontrollable (ex) Low aptitude
• Internal-stable-controllable (ex) Never studies
• Internal-unstable-uncontrollable (ex) Sick the day
of the exam
• Internal-unstable-controllable (ex) Did not study
for the particular test
• External-stable-uncontrollable (ex) School has hard
requirements
• External-stable-controllable (ex) Instructor is
biased
• External-unstable-uncontrollable (ex) Bad luck
• External-unstable-controllable (ex) Friends failed
to help (Woolfolk, 1995, pp. 346-347)
 Classroom Application
1) Attributional training hypothesis
- students who are trained to attribute academic
success or failure to effort are more likely to work
hard than students who attribute their
performance to ability.
2) Attributional feedback hypothesis
- when teachers who show sympathy or pity when
students fail convey the idea that students lack
ability (Mayer, 254).
 Classroom Strategies
1. Simply telling students to “try harder” is not very
effective. Students who are not doing well need
to see evidence that effort on their part p[ay off,
that they can improve, and that their academic
performance can change.
2. Remember that students’ individual perceptions
of success lie at the center of attribution and its
variations.
3. Deemphasize luck as a factor in students’
achievement and emphasize ability as what really
counts.
4. Help failure-avoiding students to set realistic
goals.
5. There is research to show that attributions can
change-that students can alter their beliefs about
what they can control in the world.
6. Help students feel worthwhile, adequate and
successful during the many interactions that
occur daily.
7. Prepare and assign tasks that have various levels
of difficulty built into them.
8. Look for behaviors to praise, but make it honest
praise.
9. When dealing with high-achievement-motivation
students, providing them with tasks and problems
that offer opportunities for a mix of failure and
success is most likely to sustain their high
motivation.
10. When dealing with low-achievement-motivation
students, providing them with tasks and problems
that provide mainly success, particularly during
the early phases of new learning, is more likely to
keep them interested.