Attribution of Success and Failure in College Performance

Summary

Previous findings attributing academic achievement to traditional causes were replicated and extended to nontraditional causes in two experiments. In the first, 74 female and 40 male students in introductory level courses evaluated their course performance and made causal attributions for their achievement. In addition to the four traditional causes of achievement—ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck—attributions were made to the teacher's performance, interest in the course, and past training. Successful students made higher attributions than unsuccessful students to teacher's performance, effort, ability, and interest. The second experiment, in which 37 advanced math students made attributions for their course achievement, replicated the effects of success on attributions to effort and ability.