Motivation: behavioral and attribution theories  (Page 5/6)

Motives related to attributions

Attributions are perceptions about the causes of success and failure. Suppose that you get a low mark on a test and are wondering what caused the low mark. You canconstruct various explanations for—make various attributions about—this failure. Maybe you did not study very hard; maybe the testitself was difficult; maybe you were unlucky; maybe you just are not smart enough. Each explanation attributes the failure to a different factor. Theexplanations that you settle upon may reflect the truth accurately—or then again, they may not. What is important about attributions is that theyreflect personal beliefs about the sources or causes of success and failure. As such, they tend to affect motivation in various ways, depending on the natureof the attribution (Weiner, 2005).

Locus, stability, and controllability

Attributions vary in three underlying ways: locus, stability, and controllability. Locus of an attribution is the location (figuratively speaking) of the source of success or failure. If you attribute a top score on a test to your ability orto having studied hard, then the locus is internal; that is, being smart and studying are factors within you. If you attribute the score to the test’s having easy questions, then the locus is external; in other words, your success is due to something outside of you. The stability of an attribution is its relative permanence. If you attribute the score to your ability, then the source of success is relatively stable— by definition, ability is a relatively lasting quality. If you attribute a top score to the effort you put in to studying, then the source of success is unstable— effort can vary and has to be renewed on each occasion or else it disappears. The controllability of an attribution is the extent to which the individual can influence it. If you attribute a top score to your effort at studying, then the source of success isrelatively controllable— you can influence effort simply by deciding how much to study. But if you attribute the score to simple luck, then the source of the success is uncontrollable— there is nothing that can influence random chance.

Attributions for success and failure

As you might suspect, the way that these attributions combine affects students’ academic motivations in major ways. It usually helps bothmotivation and achievement if a student attributes academic successes and failures to factors that are internal and controllable, such as effort or achoice to use particular learning strategies (Dweck, 2000). Attributing successes to factors that are internal but stable or controllable (likeability), on the other hand, is both a blessing and a curse: sometimes it can create optimism about prospects for future success (“I always dowell”), but it can also lead to indifference about correcting mistakes (Dweck, 2006), or even create pessimism if a student happens not to perform atthe accustomed level (“Maybe I’m not as smart as I thought”). Worst of all for academic motivation are attributions, whether stable or not,related to external factors. Believing that performance depends simply on luck (“The teacher was in a bad mood when marking”) or on excessivedifficulty of material removes incentive for a student to invest in learning. All in all, then, it seems important for teachers to encourage internal, controllableattributions about success.