The Relationship of Self-Blame and Responsibility Attributions and Motivations, for Schoolwork and Conduct, to Self-Worth and Self-Perceptions.

Focusing on failure experiences, two studies explored the attributions of self-blame and responsibility and the motivational patterns of avoidance and increased diligence in elementary and middle school students. In the first study, 298 third through sixth grade students and 396 sixth through eighth grade students completed a self-report questionnaire to describe their attributions, motivations,' and feelings following scholastic failure and misbehavior. As part of the questionnaire, students performed sentence-completion tasks and then selected their affective response to scholastic failure and misconduct from the following affects: worried, depressed, ashamed, frustrated, mad at themselves, sad, mad at someone else, and shamed by someone else. Ia the second study, which used a simplified version of the original questionnaire, students were assigned to an attribution and motivation group based on their response to one question. Analysis revealed that students making self-blame attributions reported lower levels of self-worth, perceived scholastic competence, and hopefulness, and greater worry about school than subjects making responsibility attributions. Students with avoidant motivational orientations reported lower ratings of the importance of academic success, scholastic competence, and hopefulness and reported greater conditionality of their fathers' support than subjects who endorsed effortful motivational orientations. Similar patterns for attributions and motivations regarding behavioral conduct were found. (MM) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** The Relationship of Self-Blame and Responsibility Attributions and Motivations, U . ,! PARTMENT OF EDUCATION for Schoolwork and Conduct, to Self-Worth and Self-Perceptions. Office of Educat.onat Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION Eric A. Johnson, Department of Psychology, University of Denver CENTER (ERIC) )5Ths document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating a C Minor changes haw: been made to improve reproduction Quality ABSTRACT Points of new or opinions stated in true document do not necessarily represent official OEM post 0o or 001.CY Attribution literature has focused attention on the concept of internal locus of control, for success as well as failure, especially in the academic environment. The present research makes a distinction between self-blame, the attribution of failure to a fault within the self, and responsibility, the recognition of playing a role in a failure without attributing it to a deficit in the self, in the areas of schoolwork as well as conduct. In addition, two motivational patterns, avoidance and increased diligence, were studied in conjunction with the different attributional styles. Two studies were conducted to explore the distinction between self-blame and responsibility, in elementary and middle school children. The relationship between different attributions, motivations, and affects after school failure and misconduct were explored. Subjects who made self-blame attributions reported lower levels of self-worth, perceived scholastic competence, and hopefulness, and greater worry about school than subjects making responsibility attributions. Subjects with avoidant motivational orientations reported lower ratings of the importance of academic success, perceived scholastic competence, and hopefulness and reported greater paternal conditionality than subjects who endorsed effortful motivational orientations. Similar patterns were found for attributions and motivations regarding behavioral misconduct. Self-blaming attributions in both domains were related to lower levels of selfworth and hopefulness. Self-blaming attributions and avoidance motivational orientations were also related to greater frequencies of negative self-affects. These results indicated that the type of internal attribution self-blame or responsibility and motivational style avoidance and increased diligence play important independent mediating roles in the lives of young adolescents. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY E c% cPt -Zo\t-vr.str. TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)" This research was supported by a NICHD grant awarded to Dr. Susan Harter. These results were presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development held in New Orleans, LA, March, 1993. Special thanks to Dr. Susan Harter and Dr. Stephen Shirk, for their () guidance and contributions to this research. We would like to thank the school personnel and students from Flood Middle School, Englewood, CO, and Indian Ridge Elementary School, Denver, CO for no their cooperation in making this research possible. A more extensive and complete version of this paper, co-authored with Dr. Susan Hailer, will be available in Summer, 1993. Please do not cite findings in this paper without the permission of the author. Inquiries may be sent to Eric Johnson at the Department of Psychology, University of Denver, 2155 S. Race Street, Denver, CO, 80208.