Causal Attributions and Anticipated Future Performance

Abstract

Causal attributions for performance in an introductory psychology course were examined with respect to students' es- timates of the number of psychology courses to be taken in future. Attributions to ability were more negatively correlated with the likelihood of future performance for unsuccessful stu- dents (receiving a final grade of C or less) than for successful (A or B) students. In addition, unsuccessful students tended to say that they had worked less, the more they anticipated future performance, while successful students said they had worked more, the more they anticipated future performance. Results were interpreted in terms of the "controllability" of the two causal factors, effort and ability.