Attribution theory -

• Attribution


  The percieved causes of a particular outcome

  The reasons justifications and excuses we give to winning, losing or drawing.
• Weiner's Model


  4 reasons for results: ability, effort, task difficulty and Luck

  2D Model of locus of causality and stability
• Ability


  Internal/Stable

  E.g., we lost because our shooter wasn't very good

  Uncontrollable
• Task Difficulty


  External/Stable

  E.g. We lost because the other team were better than us

  Uncontrollable/Controllable
• Effort


  Internal/Unstable

  E.g. We won because we tried harder than the other team

  Controllable
• Luck


  External/unstable

  E.g. We lost because the referee got the decision wrong

  Uncontrollable
• Locus of Causality


  Whether the attributions come from within the person (internal) or from the environment (external)

  Affects feelings of pride, confidence and shame
• Stability


  Whether the attribution is changeable or unchangeable

  Affects expectations of future outcomes
• Winning Attributions = Stable


  Increased motivation
• Failure Attributions = unstable


  Increased likelihood of further participation as outcomes can change
• Self Serving Bias


  A persons tendency to attribute their failure to external reasons
• Controllability


  Whether Attributions are under the control of the performer or under the control of others or whether they are uncontrollable
• Learned Helplessness


  Belief that failure is inevitable
• Specific Learned Helplessness


  Feeling of hopelessness when faced with a particular situation

  E.g. I am a hopeless football player
• Global learned helplessness


  A feeling of hopelessness when faced with a group of situations

  E.g. I am hopeless at all sports
• Low achievers


  Attribute failure to uncontrollable factors which leads to learned helplessness
• High achievers


  See failure as a learning experience and attribute failure to controllable unstable factors
• Mastery Orientation


  View that an individual will be motivated by becoming and expert in skill development or sports performance
• Attribution Retraining


  Aims to change learned Helplessness to mastery orientation

  Changes thinking behind the cause of failure
• Attribution Retraining Method


  Attributing failure to internal, unstable and controllable factors
• Weiner’s model:

  Attribution theory tells how individuals explain their behaviour. Performers use attributions to offer reasons for winning/playing well or losing/playing badly.
• Weiner suggested that 4 key attributions lie on 2 dimensions:

   Locus of causality = where the performer places the reason for the win/loss:

  1. Internal = winning or losing was within performers control – natural ability or effort.

  2) External = winning or losing was out of the performers control and under the control of the environment – task difficulty or luck.
• Locus of stability = how fixed the attributions are:

  1)    Stable = the reason is relatively permanent e.g. ability (internal + stable) remains the same over a long period of time and so does task difficulty (external + stable) i.e. ability of opposition

  2)    Unstable = change from week to week or even within minutes in a fixture e.g. effort (internal + unstable) changes at different points in the match whether winning or losing and luck (external + unstable)
• Attribution, task persistence and motivation

  Attributions can be used to ensure even when individuals/teams lose, they keep trying to improve + don’t give up. LoC tells us we have control of effort + if we put more effort into training session, we will be successful in future. If we attribute success to high ability or to amount of effort we put into match, then we might see success in similar task in future. The s-dimension tells us things can change due to luck as luck is unstable.
• Attributing this way can help performers to understand the need to practise, preserver and stay motivated – to stay task persistent.
• Performers + coaches should attribute the reasons for winning internally to ability and effort and failure should be attributed externally rather than internally to ability. This is called self-serving bias.

  Self-serving bias will raise self-efficacy and esteem and increase the likelihood of an individual continuing to participate.
• Learned helplessness

  = the belief that failure is inevitable.

  Learned helplessness develops when performers attribute failure internally to stable reasons. They believe that no matter what they do or how hard they try, they are destined to fail and are therefore not persistent.
• Learned helplessness can either be general (every sport) or specific (one sport).

  This usually occurs when performers have low self-confidence due to past failings and so they completely withdraw their effort and stop participating. 

  May be due to having unrealistic goals set by the coach.

  Learned helplessness performers share characteristics with NAF performers; if their attribution remains unchanged, it is likely that they will not participate in sporting activity, as they have such low self-esteem relating to sport.
•  

  Strategies to avoid learned helplessness

  Performer should change negative attributions to positive ones = attribution retraining

  The performers perception of why they have failed is altered – they attribute failure to external factors such as luck or internal/controllable factors such as effort, which they can improve on.

  Success is attributed internally to ability; the performer knows they have what is necessary to repeat the victory in the future.
• To avoid learned helplessness the coach can:

  -        Set realistic/achievable process and/or performance goals

  -        Raise self-efficacy using Bandura’s model

  -        Highlight previous successful performances

  -        Give positive reinforcement and encouragement