SOC 463/663 (Social Psych of Education) - Attributions & Beliefs

Attributions & Beliefs
Melanie Tannenbaum, M.A.
Sociology 463/663
Spring 2015

This Week
Attributions
Attribution Theory
Attribution Training
Beliefs about Intelligence
Implicit Theories
Consequences

What’s Going On Here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FIEZXMUM2I
!
Is the large triangle mean?
Yes
No
Can’t Tell

Attribution Theory
Theories about how people
explain the causes of the
events that they observe.

Attribution Theory
People tend to make very complex inferences about motives and
personalities based on very small amounts of information.
!
We like to believe inferences, but there are many ways that they can fail us.
The small shapes could have been trying to play with the large shape,
who was just grumpy.
The small shapes could have been trying to steal something from the
large shape, who was rightfully mad.
!
Also, they are shapes.

Attributions
Subjective explanations
(causal judgments)
for why things are happening.

Attributions: What?
B = f (P, E)
Behavior is a function of the person and the environment.
!
Causal attribution is the process of deciding if you think that
someone’s behavior was caused more by P or by E.
!
You can make these attributions for others and you can also
make these attributions for yourself.

Attributions: When?
When things go wrong
When important things happen
When expectancies are violated
But…
Often spontaneous and implicit assumptions of causality!

Attributions
“Causal attributions answer ‘why’ questions, such as ‘Why
did I fail this exam?’ or ‘Why don’t any of my classmates like
me?’ It is intended that these examples describe situations of
failure because we are more likely to want to know ‘why’
given negative, unexpected, or atypical outcomes.”
- Graham, 1991

Attributions: Why?
Fritz Heider
People are “naive scientists”
Goal is to accurately assess reasons
Distinction between internal and external causes
Internal: Ability, personality, effort, preferences
External: Luck, task difﬁculty, circumstances

Weiner: Three Dimensions
ControllabilityStabilityLocus
Internal
or
External
Constant
or
Varying
Controllable
or
Uncontrollable

Ability or Effort?
EffortAbility
Internal
Stable
Uncontrollable
Internal
Unstable
Controllable

Why did I fail that ﬁnal exam?
Locus of Causality
Internal External
Stability
Stable
Ability
I’m stupid and bad at Calculus.
Task Difﬁculty
Calculus is really hard.
Unstable
Effort
I didn’t work as hard as I should have.
Luck
This was a really tricky test.

Sources of Info
Prior performance history
!
Social norms
!
Teachers

Teacher Responses
Teachers respond to student performance…
Unintentionally & Spontaneously (Nonverbal)
Deliberately (Praise, blame, helping)
Students learn from teachers’ reactions…
About themselves
About their peers

Reactions to Others’ Outcomes
Assumptions about teacher feedback
When the teachers sees…
Success and attributes it to high ability he/she responds with praise
Success and attributes it to high effort he/she responds with praise
Failure and attributes it to low ability he/she responds with pity
Failure and attributes it to low effort he/she responds with anger/blame

Ability vs. Effort
Naive theory of ability & effort as compensatory
Ability makes up for lacking effort and vice versa
“Smart students don’t have to study as much”
Help-seeking
“Avoid the kind of effort that implies a concession of lack of ability.”
If two students achieve the same outcome, the one who tried
harder is often seen as lower-ability.

Barker & Graham, 1987
Children watched videos of a pair of students working on easy
math problems.
!
Half of the children saw a video where both students solved all
of the problems. One student received lots of praise and the
other student received only neutral feedback (“Correct.”)
!
The other half saw a video where both students failed all of
the problems. One student was criticized and the other student
received only neutral feedback (“Not correct.”)
!
The students praised for success and the students not blamed for
failure were both judged as likely lower-ability than their counterparts.

Attributional Consequences
Responses to poor performance…
Pity?
Implies that student could not have changed the outcome
Low ability inference
Anger/Blame?
Implies that the student could have changed the outcome
Low effort inference, but often also a high ability inference!

Graham, 1984
Sixth graders tried (and failed) a novel puzzle task.
!
A female experimenter posing as a teacher
responded with pity, with anger, or with no emotion.
!
Children were most likely to attribute their failure to low
ability when the teacher conveyed pity, and most likely to
attribute their failure to insufﬁcient effort when the
teacher conveyed anger.

Responses to good performance
Positive feedback sustains motivation
But…too much for low difﬁculty tasks?
Signals low expectations
Low ability inferences

Unsolicited help?
Low ability inferences
Blame?
High ability inferences
Naive Theories
“Help is given to those who cannot help themselves”
“Those who are blamed can help themselves”

Graham & Barker, 1990
Participants watched a video of two students
working on math problems as their teacher walked
around their desks.
!
The teacher provided one student with unsolicited
help very early on, before the student could even
really be struggling. The teacher simply looked at
the other student’s paper and kept walking.
!
Participants assumed that the helped student was likely
lower in ability than his unhelped counterpart.

Compared to letter grades, written feedback elicits…
Greater task (mastery) orientation
Focus on process of learning (mastery goals)
Less ego-involvement
Focus on grades, etc. (performance goals)

Explanatory Styles
“Trait”-like ways that we explain things
Do you tend to see events as internal/external? Stable/
unstable? Controllable/uncontrollable?
Pessimistic Explanatory Style: Internal, Stable,
Uncontrollable for negative events/failures.

Significant correlations between
having a pessimistic explanatory
style at age 25 and physical health
problems at ages 45-60!

Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to
personality while ignoring situational causes.

A driver who cuts you off is automatically a jerk or a
bad driver (or worse…)
Maybe she was in a hurry, had to swerve to avoid an
object in the street, had kids pulling her hair…

Observers often don’t consider the situational
advantages enjoyed by those who succeed.
Bill Gates had access to
real-time programming
years before most
people did.

A disproportionate
number of pro hockey
players have January,
February, or March
birthdays.

A disproportionate
number of pro soccer
players have
September, October,
or November
birthdays.

Children born on
opposite ends of the
cutoff date differ by
12% in 4th grade
standardized math &
science scores.

Students trying to look good
Desirable: High Ability
Self-serving biases
Taking credit for successes
Deﬂecting blame for failure
Problem: Claiming high ability in light of failure
“What’s so great about self-esteem?”

Self-Serving Attributional Bias
The tendency to attribute failures to external causes and
successes to internal causes.
This usually occurs because people want to maintain a
positive image of themselves.
Think for a moment…
The last time you got an A, was it because you were
smart & prepared, or because the test was easy?
The last time you got a C, was it because you weren’t
smart or prepared, or because the test was hard or unfair?

Self-Serving Attributional Bias
After a professional sports game, 80% of statements made
about the victory by coaches/athletes cited internal causes
(“we trained hard”), while 47% of the statements made
about the loss cited external causes (“bad calls”).
!
In shareholder business letters, CEOs claimed credit for 83%
of positive events but only claimed blame for 19% of
negative events.

Reactions to Own Outcomes
When I experience….
Success and attribute it to high ability I feel pride
Success and attribute it to high effort I feel contentment
Failure and attribute it to low ability I feel shame
Failure and attribute it to low effort I feel guilt

Consequences of Attributions
Motivations & expectations depend on attributions
Ability vs. Effort
How will I do next time?
What do I need to do next time?
Amount of effort/studying needed
Should I seek help or not?

What To Do?
Perry et al., 2010
Two types of dysfunctional attributional thinking
Relinquished Control
Bad luck, low ability, test difﬁculty, and poor teaching
Rely on uncontrollable causes
Devalued Control
Discount effort & strategy
Rely on controllable causes

Bad Starts and Better Finishes
Perry et al., 2010
Attributional Re-Training
Three components administered in a 1-hour session
Causal Search Activation
Attribution Induction
Attribution Consolidation
First-year students in Intro Psych class after 1st exam

Perry et al., 2010
Attribution
Consolidation
Attribution
Induction
Causal Search
Activation
Initiate attributional thinking
about causes of success & failure
after feedback on 1st exam
!
10-item survey assessing
various attributions
!
“If I study in appropriate ways, I
will be able to learn the material
in my courses.”
!
Estimates roles of ability &
effort in exam performance
10-minute videotape
!
Encourages controllable causal
attributions for bad
performance
!
Two students talking about how
poor performance can be
changed & how their
performance can improve with
hard work & effort, with a
professor agreeing at the end
GRE-type aptitude test;
intentionally difﬁcult.
!
Rated own perceptions of
success/performance on test.
!
Discussion of the videotape,
highlighting adaptive &
maladaptive attributions.
!
1-page handout summarizing
good attributions; encouraged
to keep it close as a reference.

Perry et al., 2010
Students who got Attributional Retraining performed
better on second exam, got better final grades, and had
higher overall GPAs at the end of the semester!
These benefits happened only in the low- and average-
performance groups, not the high-performance groups
Attributional retraining has the most potential benefit
for the students who need the most help.

Perry et al., 2010

Discussion Questions!
If children are praised just for effort and how hard
they are trying, does that remove motivation to
actually complete a task/succeed/do well?
How can teachers & parents “train” good attributions?
What are other ways that teachers communicate
ability/effort inferences in the classroom & through
feedback?

Scientiﬁc Study of Intelligence
What is it?
Where does it come from?
How stable/ﬂexible is it?
How measurable is it?

The Origin Story of Intelligence
Alfred Binet
Creator of the Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
Divide “intelligence age” by actual age
Devised tests for identifying weak students
Remedial instruction
Why?
Advances in statistical techniques
Need for classiﬁcation in the US Army during WWI

Issues
How can we really measure “intelligence”?
What does “intelligence” look like?
One global intelligence? (Spearman, g)
Multiple intelligences? (Gardner)
Genetic vs. Environmental bases?
Cultural inﬂuences?

Wisconsin Model Revisited
SES of
Origin
Family
Structure
Ability
Educational
Attainment
Academic
Performance
Influence of
significant others
Educational
Ambition

Wisconsin Model Revisited
SES of
Origin
Family
Structure
Ability
Educational
Attainment
Academic
Performance
Influence of
significant others
Educational
Ambition
Intelligence

Predictive Power of Intelligence
Life
Outcomes
Intelligence
Socioeconomic
Status
Parenting Style

Naïve Theories of Intelligence
Carol Dweck: Implicit Naïve Theories
Entity vs. Incremental Theories
Intelligence is ﬁxed
Intelligence is malleable
Why are they important?
Shape inferences/attributions about own ability
Shape inferences/attributions about others

Implicit Theories
Core assumptions about the malleability of personal qualities
Incremental or
Malleable
Entity or
Fixed
Things like intelligence,
personality traits, or abilities are
ﬁxed, unchangeable, and innate.
Things like intelligence, personality
traits, or abilities can be grown or
developed over time.

Implicit Theories
Entity (Stable)
Your personality/abilities are ﬁxed
No matter what you do, they pretty much stay the same.
!
Incremental (Unstable)
Your personality/abilities are malleable
If you want to change them, you can do so with enough effort.

Implicit Theories
The entity theory world is about measuring your ability, and everything
(challenging tasks, effort, setbacks) measures your ability.
It is a world of threats and defenses.
!
The incremental world is about learning and growth, and everything
(challenges, effort, setbacks) is seen as being helpful to learn and grow.
It is a world of opportunities to improve.

Resilience
Good outcomes in spite of
serious threats to adaptation or
development (Masten, 2001)
Any behavioral, attributional, or emotional
response to an academic or social challenge that is
positive and beneﬁcial for development, such as
seeking new strategies, putting forth greater effort,
or solving conﬂicts peacefully (Yeager & Dweck, 2012)

Your response to failure greatly depends on these mindsets.
!
Entity theorists see failure as a threat.
If “you are who you are,” failing means that you are a failure.
Incremental theorists see failure as a cue to work harder.
If you can change, failing just means you need to put in more effort.

Implicit Theories of Intelligence
Fixed Malleable
Student Goal
Look smart
(even if you sacrifice learning)
Learn new things
(even if it’s hard or risky)
Failure Implications Low Intelligence Low Effort/Poor Strategy
Effort Implications Low Intelligence Activate & Grow Intelligence
Post-Difficulty Strategy Less Effort More Effort
Self-Defeating Behavior High Low
Post-Difficulty Performance Impaired Equal or Improved

Implicit Theories & IQ Performance
Cury, Da Fonseca, Zahn & Elliot (2008) JESP
Entity Theory
High Worry
Lower IQ Test Performance
Low Willingness
to Practice
Incremental Theory
Low Worry
Higher IQ Test Performance
High Willingness
to Practice

Snyder et al., 2014
Giftedness Beliefs & Self-Handicapping
110 participants at a private, elite university
Performed problem-solving sets & received feedback
Manipulated…
(1) Theory of Intelligence (Entity vs. Incremental)
(2) Problem-Solving Experience (Success vs. Failure)
Performed second pattern-completion task
Would they self-handicap?

Snyder et al., 2014
Entity Message
A lot of research suggests that giftedness is strongly ﬁxed
through genetics. It’s either something you have or you don’t
have. So as expected, we’ve found in our own research that high
ability, like what we’ve identiﬁed in you, results in fairly stable
performance. It’s the kind of thing that results in really consistent
performance across our different study tasks.

Snyder et al., 2014
Incremental Message
We’ve found that achieving at such a high level, like you
have, requires not just high ability but also hard
work and persistence. Things like effort, really sticking it out
during a difﬁcult task — those things are really important so that
you can continually improve even from your high skill level. We’re
actually pretty excited about these ﬁndings. It means that effort is
still important, even for gifted students like you.

Snyder et al., 2014
Success
I can see you’ve done really well on these problems and you got [#]
correct. That’s really great and right in line with the other
participants we’ve had in the gifted study.
Failure
It looks like you had some trouble with these problems. You didn’t get
any correct…usually our gifted participants get at least three of
these questions right. I don’t really know if the gifted label actually
applies now but let’s just move on to the next gifted task.

Snyder et al., 2014
Claimed Self-Handicapping on Task #2
14 factors like test anxiety, illness, fatigue, etc.
“How likely is ___ to negatively impact your performance?”
Behavioral Self-Handicapping on Task #2
Allowed to choose the level of light on a dimmer
Told that bright light would help, low light would hurt

Snyder et al., 2014
Claimed Self-Handicapping: Women

Snyder et al., 2014
Claimed Self-Handicapping: Men

Snyder et al., 2014

How Are Beliefs Formed…
And Can They Be Changed?

The Role of Praise
Ability Praise
(“You’re so smart!”)
Effort Praise
(“You worked so hard!”)
Promoted Theory of
Intelligence
Entity/Fixed Incremental/Malleable
Student Goal
Look smart
(even if you sacrifice learning)
Learn new things
(even if it’s hard or risky)
Failure Implications Low Intelligence Low Effort/Poor Strategy
Post-Difficulty
Enjoyment & Persistence
Low High
Defensiveness
(Denial, Lying, etc.)
High Low
Post-Difficulty Performance Impaired Improved

Interventions!
Aronson et al., 2002: Intervention group increased
GPA by ≈ 0.23 grade points
!
Good et al., 2003: Intervention group had
signiﬁcantly higher math & verbal achievement scores

Blackwell et al., 2007
Implicit Theories & Adolescence
40% of respondents in 1 study rated adolescence as
the worst time of life - more than any other stage
Core beliefs can set up different patterns of response
to challenge & setbacks
Longitudinal study of students in junior high school
373 students in 4 consecutive 7th-grade classes

Time 1: Motivational Questionnaire
Intelligence theories, goals, effort beliefs, responses to failure
Mastery vs. Performance Goals
Beliefs that effort leads to positive outcomes (or is ineffective)
Responses to Failure
Helpless: Ability-Based, Uncontrollable
Positive: Effort-Based
Subsequent Measures
Math Grades

Incremental Theory Correlates With…
Positive effort beliefs (r = 0.54)
Learning goals (r = 0.34)
Fewer helpless attributions (r = 0.44)
More positive response strategies (r = 0.45)
Higher math achievement scores

99 low-achieving 7th-graders in NYC
Time 1: Achievement, motivational questionnaire
Intervention
Time 2: Achievement, motivational questionnaire

Both Groups
Sessions 1 & 2
!
The Brain - Structure & Function
Sessions 5 & 6
!
Anti-Stereotyping Lesson
Study Skills & Time Management Lesson
Eight 25-minute periods
1 period each week

Attribution
Consolidation
Control
Sessions 3 & 4
!
Memory Lesson
Activity: “Grocery Store Tricks”
Sessions 7 & 8
!
Discussion on how learning makes
you smarter & smart/dumb labels
should be avoided
Sessions 3 & 4
!
Incremental Theory Intervention
Activity: “Neural Network Maze”
Sessions 7 & 8
!
Discussion on academic difﬁculties &
successes, memory, and the brain

4
4.25
4.5
4.75
5
Control Group Intervention Group
Pre-Intervention
Post-Intervention
Endorse Incremental Theory

0
10
20
30
40
50
Control Group Intervention Group
Teachers Spontaneously Citing Positive Change

Teachers Spontaneously Citing Positive Change
“L., who never puts in any extra effort and doesn’t turn in
homework on time, actually stayed up late working for hours to
ﬁnish an assignment early so I could review it and give him a
chance to revise it. He earned a B+ on the assignment (he had
been getting C’s and lower).”

Is It Just About Intelligence?

Peer Exclusion
Adolescents increasingly seem to believe that social labels,
once acquired, are ﬁxed entities that cannot change.
(Birnbaum et al., 2010; Diesendruck & haLevi, 2006; Killen et al, 2010)

Peer Exclusion
!
People with entity theories of personality are more
likely to see their own & others’ negative behaviors as
stemming from ﬁxed, personal deﬁcienies.
(Chiu et al., 1997; Erdley et al., 1997)

Yeager et al., 2011
Implicit Theories & Peer Conﬂicts
High school students
Entity vs. Incremental Theories of Personality
“Bullies and victims are types of people that really can’t be changed.”
Write about a time a peer upset or hurt you
Rate your desire for vengeance
Teens with higher entity theories reported
signiﬁcantly higher desires for revenge & a
reduced desire to forgive the peer.

Yeager et al., 2011
High school students
Read a story about a student who was bullied
1/2 of students learned that people’s characteristics
can be developed and are not ﬁxed (intervention)
Students in the intervention group were
signiﬁcantly less likely to endorse aggressive,
vengeful responses to the bullies

Yeager et al., 2011
Entity
Shame after
Exclusion
Revenge &
Punishment
Incremental Less Shame
Less Need
for Revenge
Incremental intervention = less
aggressive retaliation, more prosocial
action towards the excluder/aggressor

Yeager et al., 2011
We have found that what students need the most is not self-esteem
boosting or trait labeling; instead, they need mindsets that represent
challenges as things that they can take on and overcome over time with
effort, new strategies, learning, help from others, and patience.
!
When we emphasize people’s potential to change, we prepare
our students to face life’s challenges resiliently.

Motivations
Motivations to hold different theories of intelligence?
!
Theories
Conﬂict Theory
Human Capital Theory
Policies
Tracking/Ability Grouping
Open Access Policy

Discussion
If people aren’t “vengeful” towards aggressors, how does that motivate
change? Is it always best to be forgiving?
Do you have more of an entity or incremental mindset? Why do you think
this is the case?
Do you think that there are any beneﬁts of entity mindsets or
disadvantages of incremental mindsets?
What does it mean to “underachieve” as discussed in the Snyder
article? Is “underachieving” more about objective standards, other-
perceptions, or self-perceptions?
Do you think gender plays a role in mindset/belief development?
Race/ethnicity? SES? If so, how and why?

SOC 463/663 (Social Psych of Education) - Attributions & Beliefs

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (20)

Similar to SOC 463/663 (Social Psych of Education) - Attributions & Beliefs

Similar to SOC 463/663 (Social Psych of Education) - Attributions & Beliefs (20)

More from Melanie Tannenbaum

More from Melanie Tannenbaum (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

SOC 463/663 (Social Psych of Education) - Attributions & Beliefs