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Gloomy but smarter: The academic consequences of attributional style
Author(s) -
Houston Diane M.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8309.1994.tb01039.x
Subject(s) - psychology , style (visual arts) , social psychology , attribution , life style , applied psychology , archaeology , history
The social psychological literature concerning the relationship between attribution and performance has documented the detrimental effects of particular types of attributional pattern on performance, expectancies and mood. The present paper reports three studies in which there was a consistent relationship between attributional style and actual performance. Undergraduate students who tended to attribute achievement‐orientated failure to stable, and to some extent global, causes actually performed well on subsequent academic and ability tasks. These findings are new and constitute a challenge to the prevailing assumptions in the literature.