Attributions for Success and or Failure in Sport Performance

Performance in Sports

Attribution theory posits that ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck are the major attributional factors that cause success and failure in sport. Effort is considered an internal factor while task difficulty is considered an external factor. Ability is considered a permanent factor while luck is a changeable factor. The reformulated learned helplessness model sought to come up with the most relevant causal dimensions. The model suggests that the specificity of attributions combines with causal internality and stability to influence emotions and behavior. The model avers that global factors influence events like laziness while specific factors influence particular events like temporary fatigue. Adaptive reactions, according to helplessness theory, are occasioned by negative outcomes that are attributed to external, unstable, and specific factors. Adaptive reactions can also be facilitated when positive outcomes are attributed to internal, stable, and global factors. Outcomes that suggest that an athlete has high ability have been attributed to internal factors more than the outcomes that do not imply high ability. Athletes perceived to be having high ability make more internal, stable, and controllable attributions than athletes with low perceived ability. Grove & Prapavessis (1995) posit that negative emotional and motivational reactions are minimized when unsuccessful outcomes are attributed to internal, stable, and global causes. The duo, in their study of squash players, found out that the players' attributions were consistent with helplessness theory regarding the stability and globality dimensions. However, there were inconsistencies with helplessness theory with regard to internality dimensions. The causes attributed to competitive failure were significantly less stable and global than those cited for competitive success. The causes were nevertheless strongly internal regardless of the outcome. The findings of this study were consistent with those of other studies where unexpected results have been found regarding self-serving bias. Sports scientists have thus far failed in their bid to document self-serving bias. These inconsistent findings have largely been attributed to situational norms in sport because they discourage externalization of failure hence undermine the classic self-serving bias. High ability players have a thing for internalizing success more than failure something that low ability players tend not to engage in. high ability players also make more stable attributions more than low ability players regardless of the outcomes. Grove & Prapavessis (1995) are convinced that ability levels cannot influence causal attributions for sport outcomes. However, they are unanimous that strong manipulation of the ability factor can be used to detect this effect. Helplessness theory provided an adequate frame of reference for the duo's finding especially with regard to causal stability and globality that varied as a function of competitive outcomes. It henceforth reflected adaptive orientation consistent with reformulated helplessness model. The use if internal attributions, even after failure, were inconsistent with helplessness theory.

Allen, Jones & Sheffield (2009) while investigating the effect of team-referent attributions on emotions and collective efficacy established that collective efficacy and emotions are important determinants of performance accomplishments in group achievement. Teams that have established that victory is residing within them strongly believe that they have conjoint capabilities. Perception of team control combined with perception of stability show variation in collective efficacy in winning and losing teams. When cause of team defeat is thought of as being under control of others, the stability of the cause is unimportant for collective efficacy beliefs. When the cause is perceived to be under control of others a stable attribution can be detrimental to collective efficacy. This finding provides a logical representation of how interactive effects of attribution dimensions operate in competitive groups. When match officials are thought to be behind team defeat, the recurrence of the failure should not logically affect beliefs about the team's capability. However, the action of match official can influence the likelihood of attaining future team success. A stable attribution for team defeat cannot impair collective efficacy. Higher levels of collective efficacy for wining teams are associated with attributions perceived as stable over time and under the control of the team. This is a departure from the previous findings of research on self-efficacy where interaction effects of stability and control are not associated with self-efficacy beliefs of successful athletes. Allen & Jones (2009) suggest that interventions that target collective efficacy should integrate interactive effects of stability and control attributions. According to this study, there are no strong associations between team attribution and emotional responses. It is only happiness that had significant relationship team controllable attributions that were associated with higher levels of happiness. This finding was consistent with previous attribution researches and achievement model. The team members under study experienced more happiness when team victory was a direct result of the factors the team had control over. Association between attributions and discrete emotions can be attributed to direct applicability of conceptual models of person attributions to team settings. Attribution of team defeat to the group cannot necessarily result into negative emotions as responsibility is shared equally among group members. Negative emotions therefore occur when responsibility is put on an individual member of a team. Allen & Jones (2009) have demonstrated that achievement model is not an appropriate framework for investigating attributions and their impact on collective efficacy and emotions in group achievement settings because the attributions were not strongly associated with emotions despite the fact that happiness showed a positive linear relationship with perceptions of team control. Interventions that target perceptions of team control and stability can be a useful way to increase levels of happiness and beliefs about team capability.

According to Russell & McCauley (1986) attributions can minimize the experience of certain effective reactions to success and failure. Causal attributions can elicit and suppress the experience of certain effective states. This is shown in the research where feelings of gratitude following success were maximized when outcome was attributed to luck or others' actions (Lau & Russell, 1980). The duo's findings were not consistent the previous findings in that none of the attributions for success were significant predictors of effective reactions. The relations between task difficulty attributions for failure and feelings of anger and guilt were also not consistent with the findings from the previous study. Differences in findings might have arisen because causal attributions are not important determinants of effective reactions in actual achievement settings. In circumstances when subjects are compelled to focus on causal explanations for an outcome causal attributions determine effective reactions. In study 1 Russell & McCauley (1986) established that causal dimensions were significant predictors of all success and failure effects. Locus of causality was the most important dimension in individual causal dimensions. Other dimensions like stability and controllability predicted some of the effects. Study 2 revealed that the relations between causal dimensions and effective reactions are not that meaningful especially when tested in the context of an actual achievement event. One causal sequence cannot therefore be favored over the other.

Causal ascriptions are the major component of the theory of motivation and emotion Weiner (1985). The theory posits that the perceived causes of success and failure share common properties namely: locus, stability, and controllability. Intentionality and globality are also some of the common properties that the share. Locus, stability, and controllability affect a variety of emotional experiences like anger, gratitude, guilt, hopelessness, pity, pride, and shame. Expectancy and affect motivates behavior. Theory of motivation and emotion relates the structure of thinking to the feeling and action dynamics. Investigations of expectancy change have revealed that aspiration level is dependent on the prior outcome. It has been established that aspiration tends to increase after goal attainment and decreases if prior aspiration has not been fulfilled. Investigations have also revealed that differences in expectancy shifts given skills vs. chance. The stability of a cause therefore determines expectancy shifts. Outcomes experienced in the past are likely to recur if conditions are expected to remain the same. When causal conditions are expected to change the present outcome is not expected to repeat itself. This causes uncertainty on subsequent outcomes because something different is expected to result. Phenotypic dissimilarities connotative or genotypic similarity is the reasons why individuals classify their thoughts into broad categories. Failure in politics because of charisma or failures in math because of low aptitude are phenotypically different events yet they can be categorized as enduring or stable. Failure in athletics due to insufficient practice or failures in math because of temporary illness are diverse events that are attributed to unstable causes. Goal incentives or properties of the goal effect are another class of variables with motivational impact.

Cognitive psychologists are unanimous that emotions are generated through cognitive appraisal where personal and situational variables are evaluated. Appraisal is therefore integral cognitive-emotional theories. Attribution theory advances that an individual's emotion is dependent on the perceived causes for success and failure (Graham, Kowalski & Crocker, 2002). In a bid to determine if goal characteristics can predict emotion in youth sport participants beyond causal dimensions the researchers finally established that there were no theoretical links between specific causal dimensions and individual emotions. Main predictors for each emotion were different from those proposed in previous studies. There were no robust findings that suggested strong relationship between attribution and emotion. Causal dimensions and goal characteristics predicted emotional experience. That data supported direct effects model and not moderator model. Main predictor of emotion was not consistent throughout the first and second study. There are instances when causal dimensions can assume a secondary role in prediction of emotion. Goal importance despite of being a moderate predictor of joviality and self-assurance could not be used to predict negative emotions. The study established some relationship between goal importance and goal discrepancy with regard to prediction of sadness (Graham, Kowalski & Crocker, 2002). The study's finding that objective and subjective measures of outcome lead to different interpretations is consistent with the findings of the previous studies that indicated that subjective performance accounts for majority of variance in general and individual emotions. Difficulty in measuring discrete emotions in sport is the reason behind the lack of support in the link between causal dimensions and discrete dimensions (Graham, Kowalski & Crocker, 2002).

There are reasons that are advanced to explain dimensional structures in attribution research. Reasons are always categorized into dimensions one can better understand. Explanation can be assigned to the principal attribution dimensions locus of causality, stability, and controllability. Rees (2006) examined the main and interactive effects of attribution dimensions on efficacy expectations in sports and established that the principal predictor of efficacy expectations were stability and personal control. However, stability and personal control differed after more or less successful performances when attributions to stability and personal control are associated with main effects upon efficacy expectations. The research established that there was no significant main effect for locus of causality or external control upon efficacy expectations. However, there was some significant interaction between of locus of causality and stability upon efficacy expectations. When attributions to less successful performances were external there was no difference in efficacy expectations when attributions were stable or unstable. With internal attributions and stable attributions, you can always be assured of higher efficacy expectations. Attributes that athletes classify as internal in locus can also be thought of being under personal control. This underscores why personal control and locus of causality cannot provide unique information about causal attributions. Locus of causality dimensions may therefore have less psychological significance for sport psychology than controllability. Because this studies internal consistency for the stability dimension was low caution should be taken when drawing conclusions about stability dimension in this condition.

The study by Peterson (1980) revealed that players and coaches of teams attributed their defeats late in the season to internal factors a finding that covariation hypothesis can only justify in unsuccessful teams. This calls for additional explanation for mediocre and successful teams. To accept responsibility for past events one must have control over future events. Complexities involved in empirical demonstrations of the use of covariation information should be taken as a cautionary measure because it can only mediate causal attributions in conjunction with other motivational factors like self aggrandizement. The results in this study were influenced by a number of factors including lack of control over which players and coaches to be questioned, accuracy of quotes, and editors' role in creating the data.

Aldridge & Islam (2012) while studying self-serving biases in attribution among the Japanese and Australian athletes hypothesized that Australians as opposed to Japanese athletes showed self-serving biases that made them attribute wins to causes more internal and controllable than the causes to which they attributed losses. These predictions never sufficed because self-serving biases were exhibited by athletes of both nationalities. Australian and Japanese athletes attributed wins and losses to cause that did not differ significantly in terms of locus. The Japanese and Australian athletes attributed wins to causes that were more controllable than to the causes to which losses were attributed. The findings of this duo are inconsistent with previous researches that had suggested that Japanese athletes do not show self-serving biases in attribution. These differences must have been occasioned by differences in methodology, context, and participants. The study focused on attributions spontaneously offered for sporting performance in the natural context of the elite Olympics. The study also used open ended paradigm. It also considered controllability as opposed to traditional models that focus on locus.