How you think about achievement is more important than the achievement itself

This chapter seeks to systematise how students in achievement-related contexts attribute causes to academic outcomes, and how those attributions affect future motivation and performance. Building on the pioneering work of Fritz Heider in the 1950s, Bernard Weiner establishes the fact that causes within achievement contexts are broadly ascribed to a set of internal and external factors. Weiner developed this idea in the 1970s when he noted that within both of these domains, some causes are stable whereas some are prone to fluctuation. Furthermore, students tend to attribute academic outcomes to one of the following four causes: ability, effort, task difficulty, or luck. Of these four, ability and effort were cited as the most common. Weiner details the emotional response to attributing different causes to performance. Following the outcome of an event, individuals will experience an initial positive or negative reaction or what is described as a “primitive” emotion.