Implications of research on explanatory stylesAccording to Seligman (1998), research on attributional style has several practical
implications for sport performance. First, an optimistic explanatory style is not something
that is immediately apparent to coaches. As this author put it, the ASQ “measures
something you can’t. It predicts success beyond experienced coaches’ judgements and
handicappers’ expertise” (p. 166). Second, athletes’ or players’ levels of optimism have
implications for when to use them in team events. Thus, in general, pessimistic players
should be used only after they have done well—not when they are in a run of poor form.
Third, in talent search programmes, optimists may be better bets than pessimists as they
will probably perform better in the long run. Finally, pessimistic athletes can be trained to
become more optimistic. As Seligman put it, “unlike IQ or your waistline, pessimism is
one of those characteristics that is entirely changeable” (cited in DeAngelis, 1996, p. 33).
Having learned about the nature of athletes’ attributional tendencies, can these
thinking patterns be changed through professional intervention? On the basis that this
practice has produced some encouraging results in clinical psychology (see Fosterling,
1988), attributional retraining may be worth trying in sport settings. For example, if a
coach could change a lazy athlete’s tendency to make attributions to unstable/internal
dimensions, then such a performer may discover that the expenditure of additional effort
is helpful. Conversely, performers who are prone to “depressogenic” attributions (e.g., by
ascribing unwanted outcomes to stable/ internal factors) may be helped by encouraging
them to externalise their explanations. In general, coaches can help athletes to become
more self-reliant by helping them to decrease their tendency to use external attributions
after poor performances and instead to use internal attributions. For example, a golfer
may confide in her coach that she had been lucky to get away with a bunker shot that
barely skimmed the rim of the bunker before landing on the green. This attribution to an
external unstable factor (e.g., luck) may erode a player’s confidence over time. But if the
golfer could be trained to rephrase this attribution to an internal source (e.g., “If I
concentrate on getting more elevation on my sand shots, I will become a much better
bunker player”), then she will probably be more motivated to practise her bunker play
more assiduously.
In a study of this topic, Orbach, Singer and Price (1999) investigated the effects of an
attributional training programme on the manner in which thirty-five tennis players
explained failure on a tennis skills test. Performers were assigned to one of three
treatment groups: those involving controllable and unstable attributions (CU group),
those involving uncontrollable and stable attributions (US group) and those in a non-
attributional control condition. Results showed that not only is it possible to alter people’s
attributions for their performance—but that such modified attributions remained stable
for at least three weeks afterwards. Interestingly, attributional retraining has also been
applied successfully to young athletes. Thus Sinnott and Biddle (1998) tested twelve
children whose ages ranged between 11 and 12 years. Half of these children rated their
performance on a ball-dribbling task as being poor while the other half rated themselves
as performing this skill successfully. Following attributional retraining, the former group
showed significant increases not only in their self-ratings but also in their level of
intrinsic motivation (see Chapter 2). Although the potential value of attributional
retraining is impressive, a great deal of additional research is required to evaluate the
nature and scope of this phenomenon in sport and exercise psychology.
Motivation and goal-setting in sport 51