Motivation – Attribution Theory

Dr. Anshul Singh Thapa

An Introduction

• Attribution theory focuses on how people explain their success and failure. This view is originated by Heider (1958) and extended and popularized by Weiner (1985, 1986), holds that literally thousands of possible explanations for success and failure can be classified into a few categories.
• These most basic attribution categories are stability (a factor to which one attributes success or failure is either fairly permanent or unstable), locus of causality (a factor is either external or internal to the individual), and locus of control (a factor is or is not under control)

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• A person can perceive his success or failure as attributable to a variety of possible reasons. These perceived causes of success or failure are called attributions.

One may attribute his success to

• Stable factors (e.g., Talent or ability) or an unstable factor (e.g., luck)
• An internal cause (e.g., our effort) or external cause (e.g., easy completion)
• A factor one can control (e.g., plan) or factor out of control (e.g., )

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One may attribute his failure:

• Stable factors (e.g., our lack of Talent) or an unstable factor (e.g., the terrible instructor)
• An internal cause (e.g., our bad luck) or external cause (e.g., the training ground is to far from my house)
• A factor one can control (e.g., our lack of effort) or factor out of control (e.g., The cost of the program)

Attribution affects expectations of future success or failure and emotional reactions.

• Attributing performance to certain type of stable factors has been linked to expectations of future success. A failure also can be ascribe to a stable cause, such as low ability, which would lessen confidence and motivation, or to an unstable cause (luck) which would not.
• Attributes to internal factors and to factors in our control (eg. ability, effort) rather than to external factors or factors outside our control often results in emotional reactions like pride and shame.

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• The key element in attribution theory is perception. Attribution theory is a cognitive approach to motivation. It assumes that people strive to explain, understand and predicts events based upon their cognitive perception. According to attribution theory, the intent of every human being is to explain his own actions in terms of their perceived causes.
• Fritz Heider (1944, 1958) the originator of attribution theory, describes his theory as one of common sense. However, as viewed by Weiner (1985) and Roberts (1982), attribution theory is far more than a lay person’s understanding of perceived motivation. It is a complex theory in which perceived attributions are viewed as greatly influencing a person’s action, feeling, confidence and motivation.

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Attribution Model

• The basic attribution model was proposed by Heider (1944, 1958). Several significant contributions by Weiner (1972, 1979, and 1985) have made it much more appreciable in sports realms.
• Recently contribution by Russels (1982) and by Mc Auley, Duncun and Russels (1992) has improved our ability to measure attribution.
• Fritz Heider’s Contribution
• The basis for Heider’s model was the notion that people strive for prediction and understanding of daily events in order to give their lives stability and predictability.
• Outcomes are attributed internally to the person (personal force) or externally to the environment (environmental force).

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• Effective personal force is composed of the attribution factors such as ability and effort, while effective environmental force is composed of the attribution factors such as task difficulty and luck.
• According to Heider, an interaction occurs between the personal force of ability and the environmental force of task difficulty that yields the separate dimension referred to as can (or cannot).
• The highly unstable factor of luck also enters into many attribution situations. Luck is an environmental factor that can favorably or unfavorably change an outcome in an unpredictable way.

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• All these factors (effort, ability, task difficulty and luck) combine to result in a behavioral outcome, to which an individual attributes a cause.
• Heider reasoned that the personal and the environmental components of causation are summative. Thus, the following formula represents his reasoning:
• Behavioral outcome = Personal force + Environmental force

• Bernad’s Weiner Contribution
• Weiner took Heider’s four main factors and restructured them into two main casual dimensions. The two dimensions he labeled stability and locus of control.
• Stability is composed of stable and unstable attributes, while locus of control includes internal and external loci of control.
• Locus of control is a psychological construct that refers to people’s belief about whether they are personally responsible for what happened to them. Athlete’s who exhibits internal control tends to believe their behavior influence outcomes. Those who exhibits external control tends to attribute their outcome to outside force such as fate, chance and other people. Weiner than incorporated Heider’s four main factors (effort, ability, task difficulty, luck) into two dimensional classification schemes for casual attribution.

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• Ability was classified as being internal and stable, effort as internal and unstable, task difficulty as external and stable and luck as external and unstable.
• Within the four choice frame work, Weiner envisioned that people would generally attribute their success and failure to one of the four factors.
• Further if the athlete attributes their failure to the cause which is external and unstable, this can be changed next time, but if they attribute their failure to cause which is internal and stable, then the outcome is not going to change next time.
• (When losers attribute their failure to external and unstable factors it will not made them better rather it served to protect their self esteem).
• In his later writings Weiner (1979. 1985) clarified that a third dimension named controllability must be included in the attribution model. He argued successfully in favor of a three – dimensional model.

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• The inclusion of this third dimension created a few conceptual problems that have to be addressed.
• The first problem was how to differentiate between the dimension of locus of control and the new dimension of controllability. He solved this problem by renaming the locus of control dimension locus of causality and clarifies the distinction between the two dimensions. He explained that locus of causality has to do with whether an outcome was perceived by the individual to be internally or externally caused, whereas controllability has to do with whether an outcome was perceived by the individual to be controllable or uncontrollable for example an athlete might lose a 100 meter race to a faster opponent, attribute the loss internally to low ability (speed), yet feels that she does not have control over how fast she can run.

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• Another issue that Weiner become uncomfortable with relate to two dimensional model, was the implication that the four attributions always fit the two dimensional model.
• For example, ability, classified in the model as being stable, could be considered by individual to be unstable, with practice and training. Efforts, categorized as unstable, could be viewed as stable by individual who always try hard. Task, considered to be difficult in one instance could become less difficult with practice. Finally luck, normally considered to be external and unstable, could actually be considered by an individual who believes himself o be a ‘luck person’ to be stable.

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Need achievement Theory

• Personality factors
• Situational factors
• Resultant tendency
• Emotional reaction
• Achievement behavior

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Personality factors

• According to need achievement view, each of us has two underlying achievement motives; to achieve success and to avoid failure. The motive to achieve success is defined as ‘the capacity to experience pride in accomplishment’, whereas the motive to avoid failure is ‘the capacity to experience shame in failure’.
• High achievers demonstrate high motivation to achieve success and low motivation to avoid failure. They enjoy evaluating their abilities and are not preoccupied with thoughts of failure.

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• In contrast, low achievers demonstrate low motivation to achieve success and high motivation to avoid failure. They worry and preoccupied with the thoughts of failure.
• Atkinson delineated achievement motivation as a combination of two personality construct: the motive to approach success (or the capacity to experience pride in accomplishment) and the motive to avoid failure (or the capacity to experience shame in failure).
• Everyone has both: we all feel good when we accomplished something and bad when we fail. But we do not all have the two motives to the same degree and personality is the key to the difference between the two motives.
• We commonly refer to people as high or low achievers. People with a high motive to approach success and low motive to avoid failure are high achievers who seek out challenging achievement situations without worrying about possible failure a great deal and avoid achievement situations.

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Situational factors

• Trait alone is not enough to actually predict behavior. Situation must also be considered. There are two primary considerations one should recognize in need achievement theory: the probability of success in the situation on task and the incentive value of success.
• The probability of success depends on whom we compete against and the difficulty of task i.e., our chance of winning a match would be lower against professional layers than against a novice.

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• The value we place on success however would be greater because it is more satisfying to beat a skilled opponent than it is to beat a beginner.
• Settings that offer 50 – 50 chance of succeeding provides high achievers the most incentives for engaging in achievement behavior. However, low achievers do not see it this way, because for them, losing to an evenly matched opponent might maximize their experience of shame.
• Atkinson’s theory does not predict solely on the basis of the motive but incorporates situational factors as well. The main situational factors is task difficulty or the probability of success and the another situational factor is the incentive value of success – the lower the probability of success, the greater the incentive value.

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Resultant tendency

• The third component is the resultant or behavioral tendency derived by considering an individual’s achievement motive level in relation to situational factors (eg. probability of success or incentive values of success).
• The theory is best at predicting situations in which there is a 50 – 50 chance of success. That is, high achievers seek out challenges in this situation because they enjoy competing against others of equal ability or performing task that are not too easy or too difficult.

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• Low achievers on the other hand avoid such challenges, instead opting either for easy tasks where success is guaranteed or for unrealistically hard task where failure is almost certain.
• Low achievers do not fear failure – they fear the negative evaluation associated with failure.
• A 50 – 50 chance of success maximum uncertainty and worry, and thus it increases the possibility of demonstrating low ability or competence. If low achievers cannot avoid such a situation, they become pre occupied and distraught because of their high need to avoid failure.

Emotional reaction

• The fourth component of the need achievement theory is the individual’s emotional reactions, specifically how much pride and shame she experiences. Both high and low achievers want to experience pride and minimize shame, but their personality characteristics interact directly with the situation to cause them to focus more on either pride or shame. High achievers focus more on pride whereas low achievers focus on shame and worry.

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Achievement behavior

• The fifth component of the need achievement theory indicates how the four other components interact to influence behavior.
• High achievers select more challenging tasks, prefer intermediate risks and perform better in evaluative situations. Low achievers avoid intermediate risk, perform worse in evaluating situations and avoid challenging tasks – by selecting tasks so difficult that they are certain to fail or task so easy that they are guaranteed success.

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• According to Atkinson the tendency to approach success is a function of the person’s motive to approach success as well as the situational factors.
• High achievers are more likely to strive to achieve when their motive for success is high and there is 50 percentage chance of success, which would make the victory more rewarding.
• People with strong motive to avoid failure tend to avoid these situations when forced into achievement situations, low achievers will choose easy (high probability of success) or very difficult (low probability of success) task.

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