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Sport Psychology (PSY407)

Lesson 05

CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION IN SPORT

Attribution Theory

The key element in attribution theory is perception. When athletes are asked," to what do you attribute

your great success?" they are being asked for their perceptions. The fact that their perceptions of why

they are successful may be completely erroneous is beside the point. The manner in which athletes

answer questions like these reveals their perceptual beliefs.

Attribution theory is a cognitive approach to motivation. It assumes that people, understand, and

predict 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) described his theory as one of common sense, or "naive psychology".

This is a complex theory in which perceived attributions are viewed as greatly influencing a person's

actions, feelings, confidence, and motivation. How and athlete feels about herself is directly related to

the athlete's perception of cause and effect. The attributions that athletes select reveal their motivational

structures. Furthermore, helping athletes to change their perceptions can have a significant effect on

their motivation to achieve. For this reason, motivation and attribution theory are very closely related.

For example, some young people feel they fail because they lack natural ability. Since natural ability is

relatively permanent, it is hard for those children to see that things will ever change for the better.

However, if the young athletes can be encouraged to consider bad luck or lack of effort as a cause for

their failure, they need not feel that things cannot change always try harder.

The Attributional Model

The basic attribution model was proposed by Heider (1944, 1958). However, several significant

contributions by Weiner (1972, 1979, and 1985) have made it much more useful. Most recently,

contributions by Russell (1982) and by McAuley, Duncan, and Russell (1992) have improved our ability

to measure attribution.

Fritz Heider's Contribution

The basis of 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). Effective personal

force is composed of the attributional factors ability and effort, while effective environmental force is

composed of the attributional factors 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 a separate dimension referred to as can (or cannot). If a task is

difficult and yet is accomplished, it must be due to great ability. However, depending on the difficulty

of the task and the ability of the subject, several other attributions can give rise to the can or cannot

dimension.

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 unsystematic way. All these factors

(trying, ability, task difficulty, and luck) combine to result in a behavioral outcome, to which an

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Sport Psychology (PSY407)

individual attributes a cause. Heider reasoned that the personal and the environmental components of causation

are additive. Thus the following formula represents his reasoning:

Behavioral outcome = personal force + environmental force

Bernard Weiner's Contributions

Using Heider's basic formulation, Weiner (1972) made several significant contributions to the attribution model

that made it easier to understand and apply in achievement situations. Weiner took Heider's four main factors

and restructured them into two main causal dimensions. Theses two dimensions he labeled stability and locus

of control.

Weiner then incorporated Heider's four main factors into his two-dimensional classification scheme for causal

attribution. Ability was classified as being internal and stable, effort as internal and unstable, task difficulty as

external and stable, luck as external and unstable. In his later writing's Weiner (1979, 1985) clarified that a third

dimension named controllability must be included in the attribution model.

The inclusion of this third dimension created a few conceptual problems that had 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 and clarifying 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 controllable or uncontrollable.

Dan Russell's And Ed Mcauleys's Contributions

To deal with attribution distortion and misclassification, Russell (1982) developed the Casual Dimension Scale

(CDS). In using the CDS, athletes are asked to indicate their perceived cause for an outcome, and then to rate

the cause relative to nine questions. The scale is composed of three questions for each of the dimensions of

locus, stability, and controllability. Since its development in 1982, the Casual Dimension Scale has been used

extensively by researchers.

An article by McAuley, Duncan, and Russell (19920) documents the development of the Casual Dimension

Scale2 (CDS2), a revision of the original version of the scale. The revised version differs from the original in

that it comprises four rather than three casual dimension scales. The four dimensions of the CDS2 are locus of

control, stability, personal control, and external control. The original CDS scale failed to distinguish between

causes that were controlled by the individual and those controlled by other people. Attributions were simply

controllable of uncontrollable, with no clear indication of who was controlling the cause.CDS2 measures four

specific dimensions of causality.

Other Considerations

A number of conceptual problems persist. For instance, researchers and practitioners may fail to recognize that

the kinds of attributions people make are based on a socialization process that may vary across cultures.

Socialization plays an important part in the emphasis that we place on attributions. Attributions depend on what

we learn to value. Differences in Socializations will undoubtedly affect the kinds of attributions made.

In addition to social-cultural differences, we also have evidence that young track and field athletes' attributions

do not differ as a function of gender, but do differ as a function of race/ethnicity.

A second problem that has often plagued attribution research is that the experimenter can bias a subject's

perception of outcome. In many sports related attribution studies, subjects do not perceive themselves to be

succeeding or failing until the researcher biases their perceptions b asking, "to what do you attribute your

success(or failure). Sometimes success and failure are perceived differently by researchers and athlete. For

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Sport Psychology (PSY407)

example, let's say I play tennis with one of the world's best players. I don't expect to win but if I can

win one or two games, I will consider myself a success.

References

Cox, H. Richard. (2002). Sport Psychology: Concepts and Applications. (Fifth Edition). New York:

McGraw-Hill Companies

Lavallec. D., Kremer, J., Moran, A., & Williams. M. (2004) Sports Psychology: Contemporary Themes.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers