Attribution

Attribution = the perceived cause of a particular outcome

Weiner's Model: - 4 ways to attribute

• stability - stable or unstable - how permanent the attributions are

• locus of causality - internal or external - inside the performer or an outside source

Internal and Stable - Ability - I am talented

External and Stable - Task Difficulty - Opposition is weak

Internal and Unstable - Effort - I concentrated well/ I tried hard

External and Unstable - Luck - I was lucky with the referees decision

• not sport specific - can't apply it to sporting situations

• he then added controllability

Controllability

• how much control we have over the outcome

• cognitive learners will attribute failure to uncontrollable factors

• autonomous learners will attribute failure to controllable factors

Ability = internal, stable, uncontrollable

Effort = internal, unstable, controllable

Luck = external, unstable, uncontrollable

Difficulty = external, stable, controllable/ uncontrollable*

*a team does not have control over the difficulty of their opponent, but the manager/ coach can control which league they are put in

Self-Serving Bias:

• attribute failure to external reasons and success to internal reasons

Learned Helplessness:

• belief that failure is inevitable when faced with a situation

• global = groups of situations

• specific = one situation

Mastery Orientation:

• an individual will be motivated by the idea of being an expert in a sport/ skill

• often attribute failure to internal, controllable, and unstable factors - effort

Attribution Retraining:

• optimising performance by changing learned helplessness into mastery orientation

• a person who fails in a task should be encouraged to attribute it to controllable, unstable factors - effort and difficulty