Educators are becoming increasingly concerned with social psychological variables affecting classroom behavior. This study attempts to determine if the achievement attribution model is supported in an actual classroom setting with college students actually taking an important exam. Participants were 35 volunteers from an introductory social psychology course. Three short questionnaires were completed: one pre-test, one post-test but before the student knew the test score, and the third after the individual test scores and class distribution of scores were returned. The students did slightly worse than they expected or wanted to do. The majority attributed the cause of their exam outcome to effort. The results gave only limited support for the attribution model of expectancy changes being mediated by the stability of the causal attribution. Affect and self-reward were positively correlated with effort and ability ratings. Contrary to prediction, the highest correlations were not for the intentional effort attribution but rather for ability. Affect and self-reward were more related to subjective appraisals of success than objective performance. The results showed that the theoretical attribution model was generally supported, but suggested a far more complex model of attributions in the classroom than originally expected. (Author/JL)