ABSTRACT

Since the work of Heider (1958) on inter-personal relations, causal attribution has become a popular area of social psychological inquiry. In particular, Weiner and colleagues (1971) have postulated an attributional model of achievement behaviour which maintains that individuals assume more personal responsibility for success than failure. Specifically, people appear more inclined to ascribe success to ability (stable) and effort (unstable), whereas failure is attributed, when possible, to external factors of task difficulty (stable) and luck (unstable). These attributions have been explained in terms of a self-serving bias in which the individual attempts to protect or enhance his self-esteem. The uniqueness of the sport environment has suggested that other attributions, such as unstable ability, i.e. a player's ‘form’, team function, playing conditions and match officials are important considerations (Roberts and Pascuzzi, 1979).