THE EFFECTS OF THE CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION AND OF ACHIEVEMENT NEEDS ON TASK PERFORMANCE
AN EXAMINATION OF WEINER'S MODEL
1982 Volume 22 Issue 1 Pages 27-36
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1982 Volume 22 Issue 1 Pages 27-36
The purpose of this study is to examine experimentally Weiner's attributional model (1972, 1974) on achievement motivation. We intend to investigate how the degree of expectancy, negative affection and performance depend on the change of the causal attribution of faiure.
The level of achievement needs (high or low achievement needs) was combined factorially with both noise condition (suppression or no influence) and trial condition (6 trials) in a 2×2×6 design with repeated measures. The suppression condition was intmduced by saying, “The task performance will be negatively influenced by white noise” prior to its tria1, and the no influence condition was introduced by saying, “The task performance will not be influenced by white noise. ”
While exposed to white noise, fifty-one female under-graduates received six failure trials at digit-symbol substitution tasks in one of the above four conditions. After each trial, they made causal ascriptions for their failure and then evaluated the degree of negative affection and the degree of expectancy for success at the next trial.
The principal findings were as follows;
(a) Subjects low in achievement needs ascribed failure to low ability more than those high in achievement needs.
(b) Subjects high in achievement needs tended to ascribe failure to low effort more than those low in achievement needs.
(c) Subjects in the suppression condition ascribed failure to influence to white noise and bad luck.
(d) The expectancy for success in the high achievement need condition was higher than that in the low achievement need condition.
(e) In the low achievement need-no influence condition, the negative affection was stronger than that in the other conditions.
(f) In the low achievement need-no influence condition, the task performance tended to be poorer than that in the other conditions.
On the whole, the above results supported Weiner's model. But the result on the relation between the ascription of failure to luck of effort and the degree of negative affection was inconsistent with Weiner's model. Several issues on the negative affection were discussed.
