Attributional Retraining Alters Novice Golfers’ Free Practice Behavior

Abstract

This experiment examined the effects of a single attributional feedback on causal attributions, expectations, and free-practice with novice participants in a golf putting task during perceived failure. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups: (1) internal, controllable, unstable attributional feedback; (2) external, uncontrollable, stable attributional feedback; (3) nonattributional feedback. Participants completed four test trials consisting of six putts each. Each trial was followed by a free-time period of 2 minutes, a measure of expectations and free-practice. The results showed that it is possible to modify in a functional or dysfunctional way, (a) novice participants’ attributions about perceived failure, (b) expectations, and (c) free-practice behaviors.