Attributions in Sports Psychology What is attribution theory? It is a "cognitive approach to motivation that focuses on how individuals interpret the causes of success and failure," according to an article in the Australian Psychologist (Grove, et al., 1995, 92). In that regard, studies that Grove and colleague reference show that high achieving athletes tend to use internal attributions more readily after success than failure, which is reasonable considering that a successful baseball pitcher knows when he has his best "stuff" and when he wins a game, the attribution is rightly aimed at his skill. When that same pitcher loses, he can chalk it up to the fact that he faced outstanding hitters. And an athlete with less ability tends to use internal attributions "…more after failure than success" (Grove, 92). He might say, "I just didn't come up with the right pitches at the right time." This paper delves into attribution and sports, a subject which has not seen a great deal of scholarship recently.

Why is it important to use attributions in sports?

According to a peer-reviewed article in Psychology of Sport and Exercise, there has been a "decline" in the number of published research articles on attributions, notwithstanding that the attribution theory was a very "hot topic" two decades ago (Rees, et al., 2005, 190). The authors see this decline as an unfortunate situation because attributions are actually explanations the causes of various events, and when people understand what caused an event -- when there is an attribution they can relate to -- they take that understanding with them into "future situations" (Rees, 190). This paper delves into the importance of attributions in sports, and reviews the literature related...

When the athlete's performance turns out to be a failure (for example, a basketball player on a city recreation league becomes exhausted and can't continue the game), pinpointing the cause for that is an attribution. The player may be thinking that no matter how hard he tries, he can't get in good enough shape for a grueling one-hour basketball game. This is a chance for the basketball player to find a cause for his lack of conditioning -- basically he then needs an attribution for his failing. He needs to attribute his failed conditioning to something, and therein is the issue that Rees and colleagues are addressing.
On page 194 Rees uses theories presented by Anderson (1983) and Anderson plus colleagues -- Deuser (1993) and Riger (1991) -- to dig deep into the psychology of attribution. Rees explains that people "…engage in attributional activity to increase their control of the environment"; they attribute a certain event to a "controllable cause" which can lead to expectations of having control over events in the future (Rees, 194). In other words, that person who ran out of breath in the basketball game could use attribution theory to understand first why he ran out of gas and secondly to perhaps have more control over his conditioning in the future.

Self-Serving Attributions

Stephen Zaccaro and colleagues presented an article in 1987 that compares how individuals and groups differ when it comes to attributions. That is, in their research of 549…