Attribution: Clinical Implications

Question 1

Academic achievement

Answer 1

Children who view Ability as internal and unstable (changeable because of factors such as effort) tend to maintain positive mood and motivation after failure

Children who view ability as stable (intelligence) attribute failure to internal, stable, and uncontrollable causes and are likely to show less affected performance after failure or to give up entirely

Praise for ability or effort?
• If you praise for ability you imply that achievement is internal, stable and uncontrollable
 When they have a setback then they don’t do as well on subsequent tasks
• If you praise for effort, then achievement is due to unstable, internal controllable. – here they can do something about it

Performance goals vs mastery goals:
• Performance: “I want to get an A” – want to do better than others – comparing to others
• Mastery goals: how do I compare to the past, or master a subject- comparing to past self

Emotional control
• Tracking kids from HS to college and measured beliefs about whether they have control over emotions
• People who do feel like they control emotions, do better in school, better peer relationships, better mental health

Attribution retraining programs
• Academic: Took kids who were at a risk of dropping out of school and showed them videos of students who said they were once struggling but now are doing better→ does this to change attributions?
 Want to change attributions from Internal stable and uncontrollable, to factors that are internal, unstable and controllable
• Found that these at risk kids did better in school, mood
Personality:
• Tried to get people to think that personality characteristics are changeable – especially in HS students

Question 2

Depression

Answer 2

“learned helplessness”
– depression results when an individual experiences a number of negative events and explains them with primarily negative attributions

Negative events

• internal
• stable
• global
• uncontrollable

Positive events

• external
• unstable
• specific

*Depressed people generally make relatively more uncontrollable attributions for both positive and negative events

Question 3

Anxiety

Answer 3

Anxiety production and maintenance:
Attribute Negative events as
– External 
– Uncontrollable
– Global 

*Trait Anxiety related to stable, internal attributions for failure

Question 4

Relationship Satisfaction

Answer 4

Loneliness – internal, stable, and controllable attributions for negative events
*like anxious individuals, lonely people also attribute hostile intent to others’ behavior

Depression –
self-focused
internal
stable
uncontrollable

Relationship Dissatisfaction
other-focused
blaming attributions that highlight the partner’s negative qualities and minimize positive qualities

Question 5

Aggression

Answer 5

In overly aggressive children, there is a relationship between aggression and external attributions for social failure

Among aggressive adults, similar external and controllable attributions have been found

e. g. violent husbands blaming wife’s intentionally negative behavior as external and controllable
- when internal attributions are made, they tend to refer to unstable causes, such as alcohol intoxication

Question 6

Intervention Implications

Answer 6

*Modifying an individual’s attributions should lead to changes in momentary affect, predominant mood, success expectancy

E.g. for depressed individuals who tend to view negative events as being primarily internal, stable and uncontrollable, treatment with focus on helping them see external and unstable causes for particular negative events and to see controllability in the events around them

For aggressive individuals who tend to blame negative events on the intentionally (controllable) negative behavior of others, treatment would help them see the unintentional nature of some the behavior of others and to share some responsibility for negative interactions

Question 7

Health Settings

Answer 7

Physical therapist struggling with physicians

They either attributed their failing to themselves or blamed the doctors.

Program goals were to make attribution internal, unstable and controllable→ Three week intervention to instead integrate struggles with improvement strategies–to see struggles/failures as controllable