ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews earlier research on achievement attributions. It explores cross-cultural issues, identifying work on cultural constructions of the self that raises questions for attribution theory and research. The chapter provides a new model of achievement and specifically of achievement attributions. Traditional attribution research has suggested that achievement attributions are related to affect as well as performance. Examinations of gender, attributions, and achievements have focused less on methodological artifacts and more on “real-world” contextual factors. The distribution of cultures into collectivistic and individualistic categories has to do with the emergence of certain themes that occur consistently within a culture. Researchers have also expressed concern with the failure of psychological theories to recognize the individual as existing within a network of social groups. The chapter argues that such events occur in diverse circumstances and for diverse individuals who hold interdependent values that have diverse origins, including gender and ethnicity.
