No abstract

Motivation of band members was tested by asking them if they had ever challenged for I chair positions and how frequently, if they felt they were correctly placed, what their expected performance level was for 3 months later, what degree of satisfaction and feeling of success they experienced with their current level of performance, and how much they enjoyed playing their instruments. Degree of satisfaction with one's instrument and the factors to which one attributes one's current level of performance were also assessed. Three comparable-size bands (total N = 234) representing urban, suburban, and rural areas completed a questionnaire anonymously. Results supported the hypothesis that if one perceives success and satisfaction with one's current level of performance, one will challenge more and probably attribute that success to internal factors such as effort, natural musical ability, and technical knowledge of the instruments. Failure and lack of satisfaction with one's current level of performance resulted in fewer challenges and external attributions.

The purpose of this study was to empirically validate subjects' classification of 11 attributions (mood, skill, knowledge, chance, effort, competence, help, ability, task, bias, luck) according to dimensions of locus, stability, controllability, predictability, and globality. The sample of 200 subjects (100 males and 100 females) consisted of 50 undergraduate education majors, 50 graduate education majors, 50 undergraduate psychology students, and 50 naive lay individuals (over 35 years of age) who had never attended a college or university. Attributions were placed on separate pages of a questionnaire, followed by a random ordering of the five dimensions presented on 7-point scales. The results indicated that subjects' dimensional assignment of five of Weiner's (1979) original eight attributions differed significantly from Weiner's assignment of those attributions. In addition, there were significant differences in the classification of attributions according to predictability and controllability. In 62% of the possible instances, the results of this study were in agreement with the theoretical assignments of attributions from the literature.A theory of classroom motivation (Weiner, 1979(Weiner, ,1980 has emerged that attempts to articulate cognitions and emotions in causal attributions. Causal factors other than Weiner's (1979) original four (ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck) have been documented (Elig & Frieze, 1975,1979, such as stable effort, other people, mood, personality, and physical appearance. Still other causal factors continue to emerge (see Cooper & Burger, 1980).Although the term luck is most frequently used in the causal-attribution research literature, chance may well be a less confusing term, particularly with respect to the stability dimension. Chance is clearly random and unstable. However, when one speaks of luck, one can think of either the randomness of the concept or the trait aspect, which is indicated in the phrase "he is a lucky person."Similarly, ability may be consistently categorized as stable. But if one defines ability as skill, knowledge, or competence, The authors are grateful to Bernard Weiner for his encouragement and his many suggestions.Request for reprints should be sent to Theodore A.

Until much more research is done, caution should be exercised in possible misuse of these ratings.

This study examines attributions (ability, effort, task, and luck) for success and failure in both achievement and affiliation domains across cultures as a means of evaluating whether gender differences are associated with cultural variations. Participants included 684 university students (314 males; 370 females)from India, Japan, South Africa, the United States, and Yugoslavia currently enrolled in teacher training, physicial science, and social science. While there were statistically significant differences between males and females across all five countries for achievement attributions to task and for the internal/ external dimension, the differences of attributions to ability, effort, and luck, as well as for the stable/unstable dimension, were not significant.