Students' beliefs about why they may or may not be successful in various pursuits can influence the extent to which they are likely to invest effort in these pursuits and which in turn affects the level of achievement likely to be experienced. Attributional beliefs assign causes for success and failure to a range of factors, including ability,…

Two studies are described in which the causal attributions of unemployed school-leavers are studied. The leavers who were out of work favored more external attributions. Prior to leaving school the groups did not differ, but the employed shifted toward more internal causal ascription. (Author)

This study compared the motivational orientations and metacognitive abilities of 143 Grade 7 intellectually gifted students in an Australian selective school with 133 average-achieving age peers attending comprehensive schools. Gifted students had greater confidence in their own control over successes or failures in school tasks, demonstrated more…

In a sample of 559 fifth-grade students, measures were collected to assess: (1) dimensions of self-attribution for causes of academic outcomes; (2) multiple dimensions of self-concept; and (3) academic achievements. The empirically-derived dimensions of academic self-attribution replicated and extended results of previous research, but failed to…

The self-serving effect (SSE), often depicted as a bias, is the tendency to accept responsibility for one's own successes but not one's own failures. Two studies of Australian fifth graders (n=226, n=559) were further analyzed to investigate individual differences in SSE. The Sydney Attribution Scale measured students' perceptions of the causes of…

One hundred and thirty final year high school students were administered scales tapping optimism/pessimism, self-esteem, external career barriers, career decision-making self-efficacy, career focus and career indecision. It was hypothesised, first, that cognitive style optimism/pessimism) would predict both internal (self-esteem) and external…