Why Did I Fail? What's Next? Attribution Theory

By Russell Hendel

The Stepping Stone, May 2024

You fail a fellowship exam for which you have studied many hours. Your manager frequently criticizes your performance on assigned tasks. You didn’t get the promotion for which you were eligible.

Outcomes of failure elicit the question “why?” as well as deliberations of what to do next. Should I continue trying? Should I quit? Should I be persistent and devote more time to it?

The past half-century has witnessed the understanding, growth and application of attribution theory—describing how people explain or attribute successes or failures.[1] The theory has successfully predicted—across multiple domains—that certain types of attributions typically result in withdrawals, lack of effort, and poorer performance, while others typically result in greater persistence, effort, and higher performance. Excitingly, attribution retraining (AR) has emerged as a technique to change people’s attribution from dysfunctional to functional, resulting in more retention, better performance, and more positive emotions.[2] 

This article presents the dominant types of attribution, the three dimensions of attributions, the identification of dysfunctional vs. functional attributions, and reviews AR techniques. Although the theory is still in its infancy, significant positive results may be obtained by following simply learned, easily applied, inexpensive practices.

The article also discusses the effect of attributions on expectations, emotional reactions, and persistence. Although attribution theory has been applied to education, sports, and IT technologies,[3] this article will focus primarily on education.[4] This is not necessarily as restrictive as it seems since education includes training staff in a business setting to do various tasks.

Dominant Types of Attribution

Typical examples of attribution—answering the question of why success or failure has happened—include innate ability, aptitude, intelligence, effort, task difficulty, luck, and favoritism. To clarify what this means we can use the example of the candidate who failed a fellowship exam. Was it due to the candidate’s lack of possession of innate ability, the amount of time spent studying, the difficulty of the exam, or luck? How the candidate perceives the success or failure will influence their decision to stay in the program, take further exams, invest more time studying for future exams, as well as the outcome of future attempts.[5]

The Three Dimensions of Attribution Analysis

The term dimensions refers to the issues, questions, or parameters to assess when reviewing a candidate’s attributions. Theory has identified three such issues typically called locus, stability, and controllability.

Locus refers to the location—internal or external—of the attribution. Aptitude, ability, intelligence, and effort are internal attributions, while task difficulty, luck, or favoritism are external attributions.

Stability refers to whether the attribution remains and persists over time. Aptitude, ability, intelligence, task difficulty, and favoritism are typically perceived as stable while effort and luck are unstable. For example, you could expend effort this exam and not next exam; you could be lucky this time but not next time.

Controllability refers to whether the candidate has any control over an attribution. The candidate has no control over aptitude, ability, intelligence, task difficulty, luck, or favoritism. Contrastively, effort is an attribution controllable by the candidate.

Notice that stability and controllability are mutually independent: a given attribution may be both stable but not controllable (e.g., instructor favoritism), or not stable but controllable (e.g., effort). However, locus and controllability are not independent (external forces are typically those I never have control over while I do have control over some internal forces and not others). For this reason, some research articles simply speak about the dimensions of stability and controllability, the locus being important according to whether it is controllable or not.

Dysfunctional and Functional Attribution

The literature uses the term dysfunctional attribution to refer to attributions that typically lead to negative emotions, less effort and persistence, and lower performance. The sister term functional attribution refers to healthier attributions that typically lead to positive emotions, more effort and persistence, and higher performance.[6]

Quite simply, the typical dysfunctional attributions possess the dimensions of stability and uncontrollability. Some standard examples are “I don’t have the ability to do this,” or “The task is too hard.” The presence of just uncontrollability, e.g., “Elements of chance interfered with my outcome,” is also dysfunctional. The typical functional attributions possess the dimensions of unstable and controllable with the standard example being effort, “I should have put more time in,” or “I should have memorized certain basic facts.” However other examples do exist such as “I was using the wrong strategy and techniques.”

The reader to whom all this terminology is new, would benefit from checking that the standard examples do possess the indicated dimensions.

Attribution Retraining (AR)

The preceding sections presented the terminology and theory. The initial purpose of any theory is understanding. But the ultimate hope and goal of a theory is change. Can we use our understanding to eliminate bad outcomes and increase good outcomes?

The literature on AR reports dozens of well-done AR experiments resulting in better grades (typically, a half letter grade increase), lower dropout rates, more positive emotions and confidence, and transfer of skills learned in a particular course to a general setting resulting in an increased GPA. Moreover, AR has all the desirable characteristics of a treatment: it is effective, easy to learn and administer, and inexpensive.

The literature reports a wide variety of AR forms. The simplest level AR consists of an instructor orally explaining to students the basic theme of the importance of attributing success and failures to controllable attributions (i.e., effort, strategy) versus uncontrollable attributions (i.e., ability, test difficulty, poor teaching, bad luck).

It is possible to elaborate on the basic theme. One can develop a one-pager stating the basic theme and then elaborate with some typical situations accompanied by good and bad student reactions as well as the effect on test scores.

A more elaborate form of AR typically involves a two-component process: AR induction and AR consolidation. During AR induction the basic AR theme is presented to students through a video: Two students discuss their first-year university experiences and mention several ways in which academic performance can be affected by causal attributions. The video concludes with a narrator summarizing the main points of the students’ discussion and outlining the basic AR theme.

The consolidation phase uses the technique of elaborative learning. This is a growing teaching technique known to increase student grades and performance, which consists of learning material by paraphrasing, forming examples, and summarizing material in one's own words. Good elaborative learning does this summarization through three dimensions: depth through interconnection and summaries, breadth through considering diverse related information, and personal structure through recall of personally related examples.

The consolidation phase may use elaborative learning or it may use discussion groups.

More elaborate AR programs have also been reported. One such program targeted at children with epilepsy, used an 11-session AR program, each session consisting of two 45-minute sessions twice a week. The 11 sessions covered typical children reactions, the dimensions of attribution theory, modification, avoiding blame and avoiding considering events as catastrophes, and reviewing ABCDEF— adversity, beliefs, consequences, disputes, energizing, and feelings. Both the psychosocial and physical health of the group receiving the AR intervention increased significantly after the sessions compared to the control group, leading to the conclusion that AR is an effective intervention to enhance the psychosocial and physical health of epileptic children.[7]

Other Aspects of the Theory

So far we have primarily focused on performance achievements. But the full theory focuses on several related issues—expectancy, emotional affect, and persistence—all of which are positively affected by AR.[8] Expectancy refers to a person’s expectations of success. Emotional affect studies the emotional reactions to success and failure; typically seven emotions are studied: pride, shame, guilt, regret, hope, hopelessness, and helplessness. Persistence refers to staying with the program (persisting) and expending effort.

Consequences and Results

As indicated previously, several dozen studies all point to significant positive effects. The studies span a wide variety of domains, college education, health training, sports (basketball and tennis), and IT. Performance, expectancy, positive emotions, and persistence all increase as a consequence of AR.

Interestingly one study showed that learners who score high on elaboration tasks benefit most from AR training in the cognitive domain (perception of causes), while learners who score low on elaboration tasks benefit most from AR training on emotions.[9]

The field is still in its infancy and rapidly growing. As it develops, we may expect to see improvements and refinements on how to best achieve maximal increases.

AR is easy to learn, easy to administer, inexpensive, and boasts of significant results.[10] While the majority of articles cited in this paper dealt with college education, illustrative applications to health and sports were also provided. AR has been applied successfully to IT training[11], which although performed in an academic setting, should easily transfer to similar IT trainings common in the business world. We therefore hope these simple but concrete ideas can and will be adopted and implemented by leaders in their relationships with their teams leading to improved satisfaction and accomplishment.

Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.

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Russell Jay Hendel, Ph.D., ASA, is a member of the Leadership and Development Council as well as the Investment Council. He is adjunct faculty III at Towson University, where he assists with the Actuarial Science and Research Methods program. He can be reached at RHendel@Towson.edu.

Endnotes

[1] The following article gives a good review of the history of attribution theory and also clarifies the dimensions and typical examples. Bernard Weiner, "The Development of an Attribution-Based Theory of Motivation: A History of Ideas," Educational Psychologist 45, no. 1 (2010): 28–36, DOI: 10.1080/00461520903433596

[2] There are several articles on attribution training. The following article gives a good overview and introduction. Other articles are cited as needed below. N. C. Hall, S. Hladkyj, R. P. Perry , J. C. Ruthig, “The role of attributional retraining and elaborative learning in college students' academic development,” Journal of Social Psychology 144 (2004): 591–612. https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.144.6.591-612

[3] The various articles on applications of attribution retraining to sports, IT, and health are cited below.

[4] Several articles on education are cited throughout the paper. We chose the following for an introduction and quick overview. J. C. Ruthig, R. P. Perry, N. C. Hall, S. Hladkyj, “Optimism and attributional retraining: Longitudinal effects on academic achievement, test anxiety, and voluntary course withdrawal in college students,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 34 (2004): 709–730. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2004.tb02566.x

[5] Bernard Weiner is one of the founders of attribution theory and his works popularized its study. The following article traces the initial development of attribution theory including discussions of typical examples and the three dimensions discussed in this and the next section. Bernard Weiner, "An Attributional Theory of Achievement Motivation and Emotion," Psychological Review 92, no. 4 (1985): 548–573. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.92.4.548 

[6] Besides illustrating the contrast of dysfunctional and functional attribution, this article reviews several papers on applications of AR to sports. Iris Orbaach, Robert Singer, Sarah Price, "An Attribution Training Program and Achievement in Sport," The Sport Psychologist 13, (1999): 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1123/tsp.13.1.69 

[7] Besides showing an elaborate AR training program, this article also studies the applicability of AR to health. Najafi Fard, M. Pourmohamadreza-Tajrishi, F. Sajedi, P. Rezasoltani, H. Delavar Kasmaei, “The Effectiveness of Attribution Retraining on Health Enhancement of Epileptic Children,” Iran J Child Neurol. 10, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 53–59. https://doi.org/10.22037/ijcn.v10i2.8050

[8] Several articles already cited discuss emotional effects of AR. The following is also good to look at. Perry, R. H. Stupnisky, N.C. Hall, J. G. Chipperfield, B. Weiner, “Bad starts and better finishes: Attributional retraining and initial performance in competitive achievement settings,” Journal of Social and Clinical and Clinical Psychology 29, no. 6 (2010): 668–700. DOI: 10.1521/jscp.2010.29.6.668

[9] Nathan C. Hall, Raymond P. Perry, Thomas Goetz, Joelle C. Ruthig, Robert H. Stupnisky, Nancy E. Newall, “Attributional retraining and elaborative learning: Improving academic development through writing-based interventions,” Learning and Individual Differences 17, no. 3 (2007): 280–290. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2007.04.002

[10] Tara L. Haynes Stewart, Rodney A. Clifton, Lia M. Daniels, Raymond P. Perry, Judith G. Chipperfield, Joelle C. Ruthig, “Attributional Retraining: reducing the likelihood of failure,” Soc Psychol Educ 14 (2011): 75–92. DOI:10.1007/s11218-010-9130-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-010-9130-2

[11] Maymon R, Hall NC, Goetz T, Chiarella A, Rahimi S, “Technology, attributions, and emotions in post-secondary education: An application of Weiner's attribution theory to academic computing problems," PLoS ONE 13, no. 3. e0193443. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193443