Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Some research findings on attribution theory

In sport and exercise psychology, one of the earliest attributional questions addressed was
whether or not winners differ from losers in the type of explanation which they provide
for their sporting behaviour. As expected, research findings have generally supported this
hypothesis (see Biddle and Hanrahan, 1998). Specifically, in contrast to their less
successful counterparts, winners in sport tend to favour attributions to internal and
personally controllable factors such as degree of preparation or amount of practice
conducted. Such attributions for success are important because they may be predictive of
future athletic achievement. For example, if a young sprinter attributes a sequence of
poor performances to a lack of ability (a relatively stable internal factor) rather than to the
high quality of his or her opponents (a variable external factor), then s/he may become
demoralised and lose motivation. In this way, attribution theory, or the study of how
people construct explanations for their successes and failures, has a number of practical
implications for everyday life. To illustrate, consider the common finding that people
tend to accept personal responsibility for successful outcomes but blame others for
significant failures (the so-called “credit for success, blame for failure” tendency). For
example, a student who passes an exam is likely to attribute this result to internal factors
like hard work or high intelligence but a student who fails an exam may explain it with
reference to bad luck or being asked the “wrong” questions. In a similar vein, managers
of losing teams tend to make excuses for poor results (see Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 Managers of losing teams

tend to make excuses

Why do managers tend to make excuses for poor results or performances by their
teams? One obvious explanation is that managers may use excuses in order to preserve
their sense of self-esteem in the fickle world of sporting success. Another possible

Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction 46