Explain each of the following situations using what you have learned about attributions

Question

a. After a history of school failures, Marcus eventually stops trying to do well.
b. A fifth-grade teacher gives her class a difficult mathematics test, and many of her students fail it. She tells her class that she will give them a different test over the same material tomorrow. Many of the boys in the class say they will go home and study again. Some of the girls say that they already studied once, and it didn't do much good, so why bother?
c. Sandra's mother helps her study for a spelling test on Tuesday and a vocabulary test on Thursday. Samantha passes the spelling test and is quite proud of herself. She fails the vocabulary test and blames her mother for not helping her enough.
What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Responses to various parts of the question are as follows:
a. Youngsters with a history of failure are likely to develop the belief that success is beyond their control—for instance, that they lack the necessary innate ability. Marcus is possibly developing learned helplessness about academic subject matter.
b. Males tend to attribute their failures to a lack of effort; therefore, they will be relatively optimistic about their chances for future success. In contrast, females tend to attribute their failures to a lack of ability; therefore, they will be relatively pessimistic about their chances for future success. This gender difference is most often observed for traditionally "male" subject areas such as mathematics.
c. Youngsters have a tendency to attribute their successes to internal causes and their failures to external causes.