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Read the text on attribution theory.

Attribution Theory

Bernhard Weiner

At its core, attribution theory is concerned with exploring which causes people ascribe to events of various kinds or rather “attribute”. Fundamental to such attribution activities is the basic human desire to understand and control one's environment: In order to understand and control my environment, I naturally want to find out why a particular event occurred. When, for example, I have no idea why my glass fell off the table am quickly tempted to think my room is haunted - a scary thought. It is more pleasant for me to know that the glass fell because I put it on the edge of the table and then bumped the table slightly.

The basis for Bernhard Weiner's attribution theory is the distinction between the dimensions of locality and stability. This makes it possible to arrange typical attribution patterns in a systematic way. The locality dimension states that causes are found either outside or inside a person. On the stability dimension, attributions vary with respect to whether causes are considered stable over time ("is always like this") or variable over time ("may be different next time").

Which causal attributions are possible on these two dimensions will be presented in more detail below.

Let us imagine a student who has achieved a poor result in an exam. What are the reasons for this failure?

1. He may tend to hold his lack of talent responsible. Talent can be conceived as an internal cause of his performance, since it is localized in the student himself. Furthermore, it can be considered stable, since it cannot be assumed that the student will be more gifted in the next school task. Thus, we speak of an internal stable attribution.
2. The student could also try to explain the failure with the task difficulty. The task difficulty is a cause of failure that was in the student's environment. Moreover, he could not influence it - the student had to write the school task as it was, he could not change the task difficulty. This would be an example of an externally stable attribution.
3. Furthermore, the student could explain the failure by saying that he did not try hard enough in the school task. Effort is a variable that can be localized in the person, and the student can vary how hard he tries. Thus, this would be an example of an internal variable attribution.
4. Finally, the student could also consider chance or luck to be the cause of the failure. This would mean that the failure was due to external causes which the student could not influence, but which could be completely different in the next school task (external variable attribution).

The same attribution patterns can occur, of course, if the student was very successful in the school task - even then, he may attribute this result to one of the four factors: ability, task difficulty, effort, and chance.

If one enters these four determinants of performance behavior into a four-field scheme, the following matrix is obtained:

Table: Classification scheme of determinants of performance behavior according to Weiner et al. (1971).

The theory assumes that the various possible attribution patterns have far-reaching consequences. Thus, a student's further learning behavior is influenced by the causes to which he attributes his academic performance. The following possibilities can be distinguished:

1. It can be assumed that in situations of success, attribution to one's own ability has a favorable effect on further performance behavior. A student who attributes success to his own ability will continue to be motivated to engage in performance-related activities because he has experienced that he possesses the skills necessary to accomplish a task.
2. On the other hand, it is particularly unfavorable to attribute one's own successes to external variable causes, i.e. to chance. This rather leads to a lack of willingness to take up further performance-related activities, since one cannot control these causes and thus it does not make sense to continue to exert oneself.
3. However, it should be favorable to attribute failures to variable causes, i.e. to chance ("bad luck") or to one's own lack of effort. Variable causes are not valid permanently. A student who attributes failures to a lack of effort knows that better performance is possible with greater personal commitment.
4. Finally, it is a great disadvantage to attribute failure to one's own lack of talent. In this case, it seems hopeless for a student to continue to strive, since he believes that he is untalented in the respective area and that nothing can be done about it.

So far, only so-called self-attributions, i.e., attributions of causes that relate to one's own behavior, have been considered. Attributions by others, can be distinguished from self-attributions. Attributions by others can have the same effects on the behavior of students as self-attributions. In particular, individuals in pedagogical key positions, such as parents or teachers, should attribute children’s or students’ success or failure in a favorable manner. On the one hand, attributions by others can be adopted by affected learners. On the other hand, attributions about the performance of students by the teacher influence the teaching actions. For example, if a physics teacher considers female students to be less gifted in science, he may be less likely to call on female students relative to male students or may set easier requirements. This can lead to girls actually being less successful than their male peers. For example, if parents believe that success in school depends primarily on ability, rather than effort, there is less willingness to stimulate activities related to academic achievement.

Thus, attribution theory assumes that even thinking (or cognitions) about being gifted at something exerts a major influence on motivation for further achievement behavior. For pedagogy, the theory has great significance because the nature of attribution has a significant impact on students' learning and achievement behavior.

Not only self-attributions on the part of the learners, but also attributions by others applied to the learners from outside can have a strong effect. However, attribution patterns can be influenced by means of training. For pedagogy, there are basically two starting points for actions based on attribution theory.

One possibility is to try to influence unfavorable attributions by others from the pedagogical side. This involves enabling people in pedagogical key positions, such as parents and teachers, to find favorable attributions for the behavior of their children or students. An example of this would be reattribution training as developed by Ziegler and colleagues. In this training, teachers learned to give students written feedback on classwork, which led to more favorable self-attributions among students and subsequently to a higher motivation to learn.

These studies also involved changing unfavorable self-attributions on the part of the learners themselves and supporting favorable ones. Students in 8th grade beginning physics classes at high school, for example, learned to consciously attribute failures to variable causes rather than blaming their perceived lack of talent. It was found that students who participated in the reattribution training attributed performance actions more favorably and were also more motivated and interested than students in the comparison group who did not receive this training.

Case Assessment : “English Language Learning”

You have now read a theory text. You will analyze and discuss a case using this theory together with your learning partner. You can consider the following questions in your discussion:

   • What difficulty does the main character face in the situation described?

   • Does the person believe he can overcome this difficulty? What are the reasons and factors for this difficulty?

Your case evaluation should not be about finding a solution, but about explaining the situation.

As an intern at a high school, you are present at an educational psychology counseling session with Michael Peters, a tenth-grade student: “Somehow it's becoming increasingly clear to me that English Language just isn't my subject. Last year I almost failed. Mrs. Weber, that is my English Language teacher, said to me that I would have to work really hard if I wanted to pass the nineth grade. My parents actually reacted pretty well when I told them about it. “Well,” my mother said, “after all, none of us are "geniuses" in English.” My father smiled. Then, he told me how he had just managed to pass his English Language exam with a lot of copying and cheat sheets. Dad said that even back then, the Peters were the terror of teachers. I told this story to Mrs. Weber at a school party, slightly tipsy. She said that she did not think it was a bad excuse. However, it was not good either, just an excuse, and you could come up with other ones to justify your blatant laziness. I still managed to get through the last school year, but I am really excited about the new school year!"

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