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Expectancy, Outcome, and Event Type

Effects on Retrospective Reports of Attributional Activity

Lewis and Clark College

Collin van Uchelen

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Sandra Stonebrink

Rosemont School, Portland

Paul R. Cheek

Lewis and Clark College

We examined the effects of event type (academic or interpersonal), expectancy (expected or unexpected), and outcome (success or failure) on attributional activity in reports of past incidents. After writing about one of the eight incident types, undergraduates disclosed the questions they asked themselves after the incident, gave an attribution, and rated the attribution on the Causal Dimension Scale. Outcome was the only significant predictor of attributional search: Subjects asked more attribution questions for failures than for successes. Compared to failures, successes generated attributions that were more internal, stable, and controllable; attributions for expected events were more stable and controllable than for unexpected events, but the stability effect held only for academic events. The most frequent attribution type was internal-unstable-controllable, especially for failures. For successes, internal-controllable attributions predominated and were about evenly split between stable and unstable causes. These findings suggest the existence of an attributional tendency of personal changeability of causes.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 12, No. 3, 353-362 (1986)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167286123010


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