Attribution and motivation.

Hello!😉

 This post is my most educational one. I would like to draw your attention to a very significant topic, which social psychology is concerned with. I hope it will be helpful!

          Attribution theory in general is concerned with how individuals interpret events and how this affects their behavior. Today we will find out how success and failure change the way we see ourselves and influence our attribution for achievement.

         
A little bit of theory_________________________________

J. Rotter developed the concept called locus of control, which is the degree to which people believe they have control over the events in their lives. Locus of control is a significant aspect of personality studies.

Locus of control

                                          ↙️                            ↘️
                              internal                                   external

                    event is under control             event is out of control

       B. Weiner identified ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck as the most important factors affecting motivation. He found out that highly motivated people tended to consider themselves responsible for both success and failure, while low motivation made people explain their results by outside factors.

      When we succeed or fail, we inevitably try to find reasons, we need some explanation for the outcome. These reasons are subjective and influenced by the way we see the world. They were characterized by locus of reason, stability and control. But eventually, the main aspect proved to be the locus of control.

   
     According to M. Seligman, pessimists and optimists have different explanatory styles. And these styles are characterized by the following criteria:

     Thus, pessimists usually view problems as personal, pervasive and permanent, while optimists – as external, specific and temporary.

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      This was a theoretical part, now I would like to use this knowledge and analyze   my attribution. 

     I am lucky to have my self-evaluation posts (the first and the second), because  then I did not know how the mechanism of attribution worked and did not realize the real nature of my words.

     These are the reason which, according to me, explain why the first speech was a failure and a couple of reasons explaining why I succeeded in several things.

spent time trying to hunt out some suitable photos and struggling with the local network	External Specific Temporary
find it uncomfortable to speak about personal things in front of not-so-close-to-me public.	External Specific Permanent
people do not necessarily lead a busy and bright life	External Pervasive Permanent
considering it was not a real speech	External Specific Temporary
I am pretty content with the voice volume (I was good at it)	Personal Specific Temporary
as I am really bad at hiding my horrible emotional state, in this video I don't look as horrified and was good at pulling myself together	Personal Pervasive Permanent Personal Specific Temporary
I need to improve my spontaneity.(I am bad at it)	Personal Pervasive Permanent
I have to find safe ways of dealing with difficult topic (I don’t know how yet)	Personal Pervasive Permanent
To do phonetic exercises before speaking is vital, though seldom possible.	External Specific Permanent

 And these are the quotes from my second self-evaluation post.

I felt much more enthusiastic that day than the previous week and as a result it looked nicer and...	External Specific Temporary
The main problem was the lack of time to write, to learn and train	External Specific Temporary
because speaking on the spot is not available yet.	External Pervasive Permanent
I rewrote the text completely […].It sounded better.	Personal Specific Temporary
I made eye-contact as much as I could	Personal Specific Temporary
And despite all my effort one phrase suddenly left my mind	External Specific Temporary

        As you can see, I classified them to find out what explanatory style I have. Some of the reasons sound ambiguously, for example, I felt much more enthusiastic seems to be personal, but in fact I did not do anything specific to raise my spirit. Speaking on the spot is not available yet should be personal, but I put it as a fact, which is not really my fault. So you should read between the lines and see what you really mean.

       If we look at the first characteristic, we'll see that I tend to explain success by personal reasons, while failure by external. 

        That would mean I am an optimist, but at the same time, every positive result is explained by specific and temporary reasons, every negative - by pervasive and permanent. Such contrast proves that I am more of a pessimist, than optimist, but still good at shifting the blame. Remember anyway, that being 100% optimist is not really good, a little bit of pessimism can help us to be alert and have an adequate self-esteem.

       Firstly I was surprised by the results, because I didn't think it would be so unbalanced and gloomy. But than I realized that these results do not characterize me as a person, they refer only to my struggle to become a better speaker. And as there is still more of a failure and more of a problem, it's difficult to find the balance. I see success as luck, while the rest of the time I feel like I am constantly influenced by some outside factors, which won't let me reveal myself. Certainly none of us should blame ourselves, but it's important to see the adequate reasons and feel responsible for overcoming your difficulties.

Let me know if you tried this method too! Were the resuls surprising?