Attribution of education outcome by professional and nonprofessional instructors

Attributional Modesty in Women

Three experiments were conducted to test a two-factor model of the determinants of attributional modesty in women. Women tended to make modest attributions for success when they were concerned about how others would evaluate them and when they were concerned about their own self-image. Specifically, the knowledge that one's attributions would be public and the anticipation of future performance on similar tasks led to modesty. Self-derogatory attributions for failure occurred when the subjects thought their attributions would be public.

A Systematic Review of Teachers' Causal Attributions: Prevalence, Correlates, and Consequences

The current review provides an overview of published research on teachers' causal attributions since 1970s in the context of theoretical assumptions outlined in Weiner's (2010) attribution theory. Results across 79 studies are first examined with respect to the prevalence of teachers' interpersonal causal attributions for student performance and misbehavior, as well as intrapersonal attributions for occupational stress. Second, findings showing significant relations between teachers' attributions and their emotions and cognitions, as well as student outcomes, are discussed. Third, an overview of results showing the prevalence and implications of teachers' causal attributions to be moderated by critical background variables is also provided. Finally, observed themes across study findings are highlighted with respect to the fundamental attribution error and the utility of Weiner's attribution theory for understanding how teachers' explanations for classroom stressors impact their instruction, well-being, and student development.

Prediction and Control as Mediators of Causal Attribution

In this paper is reviewed the literature on the naive perception of causality. Studies support Heider's suggestion that actors give external reasons for their behavior, whereas observers attribute the same behavior to the actor's personal dispositions. However, studies also show that actors are sometimes internal and observers are sometimes external in their causal attributions, e.g., actors give external reasons for their failure but they give internal reasons for success, and observers give internal reasons for the other's failure but they give external reasons for success. It was concluded that such results can be explained in terms of both cognitive and motivational factors. It was proposed that the perceiver's concern with prediction and control is one factor responsible for the typical attributions of actors as well as observers, and, furthermore, that there are individual, cultural, and contextual factors which may reverse the typical perspectives of actors and observers.

Attributional Determinants of Teaching and Learning in Cross-Age Tutoring

This study assessed the relationship between causal attributions of 84 children in a cross-age tutoring program and tutors' teaching behavior and learners' performance on a laboratory task using multiple regression analyses. Tutors' beliefs that learners were not responsible for success but were responsible for failure were associated with teaching behaviors high in both verbal and nonverbal communication. These teaching behaviors were also directed most toward learners who believed that tutors are not responsible for lack of students' achievement. Neither tutors' nor learners' attributions predicted task performance. Results are discussed in terms of their relationship to research on both teachers' attributions of responsibility and cross-age tutoring.

Causal Attributions for Student Performance

The purpose of this study, was to determine whether differences in conceptual complexity are related to the tendency of preservice teachers to make ego-defensive attributions for student performance under success or failure conditions. It was hypothesized that concrete individuals would make more ego-defensive attributions than abstract individuals and abstract individuals would make more nondefensive attributions than concrete individuals. The data support the hypotheses only for attributions regarding student ability and motivation.

Nixon and Watergate

A field demonstration of belief perseverance was conducted using survey data from the Cleveland area. Voters' beliefs about Richard Nixon were assessed three times during the U.S. Senate's Watergate hearings: shortly before the hearings began, during the Memorial Day recess, and just after John Dean's testimony. As the hearings progressed, respondents who said they voted for Nixon in 1972 persevered in their positive beliefs about him, while respondents who said the) voted for McGovern in 1972 became more negative in their beliefs about Nixon. Belief perseverance among Nixon's supporters may' have reflected their biased search, appraisal, and recall strategies for processing information about Nixon and the Watergate affair.

Teacher Attributions of Student Performance

Teacher attributions for elementary school students' successful and unsuccessful performances in real classrooms were assessed during three different times of the school year. Results suggest that practicing teachers' explanations of their own students' performances follow patterns consistent with earlier research on attribution processes.

Developmental Differences in the Accuracy of Reporting the Causal Determinants of Behaviour

Previous research has indicated that adults often show little accuracy in reporting the causal determinants of their behaviour, and instead rely on a priori causal theories or schemes for explaining their actions. Although this has been interpreted as indicating a deficit in introspective awareness, alternative interpretations have also been suggested. The present research was designed to assess the adequacy of this and alternative interpretations by exploring whether there are developmental changes in the accuracy of reporting. To explore this question, children aged 3, 5, and 7 years were tested on two liking-judgement tasks, one of which assessed accuracy of reporting the variables influencing liking judgements. Results indicated that younger children do not make the same types of errors as older children and adults, and that younger children can more accurately report the actual variables determining their judgements. These results are discussed with reference to the meaning of the observed developmental change, and to the validity of the various possible explanations for causal attribution errors.

Everyday magical powers: the role of apparent mental causation in the overestimation of personal influence

These studies examined whether having thoughts related to an event before it occurs leads people to infer that they caused the event--even when such causation might otherwise seem magical. In Study 1, people perceived that they had harmed another person via a voodoo hex. These perceptions were more likely among those who had first been induced to harbor evil thoughts about their victim. In Study 2, spectators of a peer's basketball-shooting performance were more likely to perceive that they had influenced his success if they had first generated positive visualizations consistent with that success. Observers privy to those spectators' visualizations made similar attributions about the spectators' influence. Finally, additional studies suggested that these results occur even when the thought-about outcome is viewed as unwanted by the thinker and even in field settings where the relevant outcome is occurring as part of a live athletic competition.

Learning from successful and failed experience: the moderating role of kind of after-event review

The claim that appropriate "after-event review (AER)" may increase the relative value of drawing lessons from successes, as compared with failures, was examined in the present study. The study was a laboratory experiment in which the effect of type of AER (failure-focused, success-focused, failure- and success-focused, and no AER review) on performance improvement and causal attributions was tested under conditions of earlier success and earlier failure. In general, 2 results were demonstrated: (a) Drawing lessons from successful experience is feasible, and its effectiveness is contingent upon the type of AER. More specifically, after successful events, the most effective review is that of wrong actions, whereas after failed events, any kind of event review (correct or wrong actions) is effective. (b) AERs elicit more internal (as opposed to external) and specific (as opposed to general) attributions. These 2 classifications moderate the effect of AERs on task performance.

Self-Threat Magnifies the Self-Serving Bias: A Meta-Analytic Integration

Experiments testing the self-serving bias (SSB; taking credit for personal success but blaming external factors for personal failure) have used a multitude of moderators (i.e., role, task importance, outcome expectancies, self-esteem, achievement motivation, self-focused attention, task choice, perceived task difficulty, interpersonal orientation, status, affect, locus of control, gender, and task type). The present meta-analytic review established the viability and pervasiveness of the SSB and, more important, organized the 14 moderators just listed under the common theoretical umbrella of self-threat. According to the self-threat model, the high self-threat level of each moderator is associated with a larger display of the SSB than the low self-threat level. The model was supported: Self-threat magnifies the SSB.

Causal attribution of success and failure as a function or authoritarianism and sex

We predicted that authoritarian actors would engage in defensive attribution, and authoritarian observers would derogate the other, to a greater extent than egalitarian perceivers. 48 male and 48 female college students were run in pairs of same sex and authoritarianism. A set of easy anagrams was given to subjects in success conditions and difficult anagrams to those in failure conditions. Each subject rated own outcome and other outcome in terms of internal factors of ability and effort, and external factors of task and luck. We found that authoritarian actors were more internal than egalitarian actors only in the condition own success-other's failure. Authoritarian observers, as compared to egalitarians, were more external for other's success and more internal for other's failure only when own outcome was successful. It seems that authoritarian perceivers exaggerate their abilities and derogate the other only when they are clearly in a superior position vis-a-vis the other. There were no sex differences as a function of outcome and authoritarianism.