Psychological Review Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1985, Vol. 92, No. 4, 548-573 0033-295X/85/S00.75 An Attributional Theory of Achievement Motivation and Emotion Bernard Weiner University of California, Los Angeles A theory of motivation and emotion is proposed in which causal ascriptions play a key role. It is first documented that in achievement-related contexts there are a few dominant causal perceptions. The perceived causes of success and failure share three common properties: locus, stability, and controllability, with intentionality and globality as other possible causal structures. The perceived stability of causes influences changes in expectancy of success; all three dimensions of causality affect a variety of common emotional experiences, including anger, gratitude, guilt, hope- lessness, pity, pride, and shame. Expectancy and affect, in turn, are presumed to guide motivated behavior. The theory therefore relates the structure of thinking to the dynamics of feeling and action. Analysis of a created motivational episode in- volving achievement strivings is offered, and numerous empirical observations are examined from this theoretical position. The strength of the empirical evidence, the capability of this theory to address prevalent human emotions, and the potential generality of the conception are stressed. In 1645, Miyomota Musashi was contem- of the Redwood National Park for their sorry state. Tim plating the causes of his past success as a war- Skaggs, the union business agent, shrugged. 'You could spend a lifetime fixing blame,' he said. (Martinez, 1982, rior. In A Book of Five Rings he mused, Pt. 5, p. 1) When I reached thirty I looked back on my past. The pre- vious victories were not due to my having mastered strategy. And even the former coach of my favorite Perhaps it was natural ability, or the order of heaven, or football team found it necessary to soul search that other schools' strategy was inferior. (1645/1974, p. 35) about causality following a series of losses. About 275 years later, and approximately Again from the Los Angeles Times: 11,000 miles away, the editors of Scientific Here it is Thanksgiving week, and the Los Angeles Rams American were wondering why America was are looking like the biggest turkeys, in town. Coach Ray flourishing. They reasoned, "The wealth and Malavasi has eliminated bad luck, biorhythms, and sun- general prosperity of the country are largely spots as the reasons why his football team has lost 9 of its last 10 games. Now he's considering the unthinkable pos- due to the intelligence and energy of its people, sibilities that: (a) he has lousy players or (b) they aren't but it can hardly be disputed that it is equally really trying. (Robert, 1982, Pt. 3, p. 3) due to the natural wealth of the country" (Staff, 1926, p. 228). Unfortunately, battles are lost Why this constant pursuit of "why"? A as often as they are won, and countries undergo number of explanations come to mind (see economic decline as well as enrichment. Dur- Forsyth, 1980; Weiner, 1985). We might just ing our recent financial recession the Los An- want to know, that is, to understand the en- geles Times reported, vironment, to penetrate ourselves and our sur- roundings. This familiar motivational inter- Timber industry experts blame high interest rates, the pretation is known as the principle of mastery housing slump, tough logging regulation, and expansion (White, 1959). In addition, it clearly is func- tional to know why an event has occurred. As Kelley (1971) stated, "The attributor is not This article was written while the author was supported simply an attributor, a seeker after knowledge; by Grant MH38014 from the Public Health Service, his latent goal in attaining knowledge is that National Institute of Mental Health. of effective management of himself and his en- The author wishes to thank Sandra Graham for her vironment" (p. 22). Once a cause, or causes, helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Requests for reprints should be sent to Bernard Weiner, are assigned, effective management may be Department of Psychology, University of California, Los possible and a prescription or guide for future Angeles, California 90024. action can be suggested. If the prior outcome 548 ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION AND EMOTION 549 was a success, then there is likely to be an at- generalizability of the theory beyond the tempt to reinstate the prior causal network. achievement-related theoretical focus. On the other hand, if the prior outcome or event was undesired—such as exam failure, Perceived Causes of Success and Failure social rejection, political loss, or economic de- cline—then there is a strong possibility that In the opening paragraphs of this article, there will be an attempt to alter the causes to far-ranging examples of causal search are pro- produce a different (more positive) effect. vided. Many investigations have been con- Desire for mastery and functional search, ducted that more systematically examine two of the generators of causal exploration, do causal perceptions, particularly the perceived not seem to specifically characterize one geo- causes of success and failure in achievement- graphical area or one period of human history. related situations. Two appropriate research The Japanese warrior in the Middle Ages and procedures have been followed. In one, subjects today's union representative are engaged in the are provided only with outcome information, same endeavor: attempting to assign causality. namely, that success or failure has taken place. Indeed, one might argue that adaptation is not The outcome might be imagined, induced, or possible without causal analysis. The warrior have occurred in a real setting, and might per- needs to know why he is winning battles so he tain to the subject or to another who is being can survive the next one, just as the union rep- judged. The subjects are then asked to explain resentative needs to explain why the industry the outcome, using a free-response procedure is doing poorly in order to urge wiser actions where the possibilities that come to mind are in the future. Because of the apparent pan- listed. In a related methodology, participants cultural, timeless aspect of causal search and are provided with a large list of causes and rate exploration, and because of the evident adap- the contribution of each cause to the outcome. tive significance of this activity, causal ascrip- These causes often were ascertained in pilot tions are proposed to provide the building research using a free-response methodology, blocks for the construction of a theory of mo- and represent the dominant perceptions or tivation and emotion. embracing categories. This article advances an attributional theory A summary of 10 pertinent studies is pre- of motivation and emotion, with achievement sented in Table 1. Table 1 reveals the source strivings as the theoretical focus. Initially, the of the data, the characteristics of the sample most salient causes of success and failure in and task, and the four most dominant causal achievement-related contexts are identified. ascriptions for success. The data for failure re- The basic properties of these causes, or the veal an identical story and are not presented. structure of causal thinking, is then deter- The message of Table 1 is clear, particularly mined from both a dialectic and an empirical inasmuch as the research investigations made perspective. Three causal dimensions are dis- use of a variety of types of subjects judging a covered: locus, stability, and controllability. variety of achievement situations, and involv- The structure of causal thinking is next related ing the self or another. A virtually infinite to emotion and motivation. Thus, this article number of causal ascriptions are available in progresses from a description of causal per- memory. However, within the achievement ceptions to causal structure, and then from domain, a relatively small number from the causal structure to an examination of the dy- vast array tend to be salient. The most domi- namics of action. It is documented that causal nant of these causes are ability and effort. That stability influences changes in goal anticipa- is, success is ascribed to high ability and hard tions, while the three causal dimensions de- work, and failure is attributed to low ability termine the emotional experiences of anger, and the absence of trying. This holds true for gratitude, guilt, hopelessness, pity, pride, and the majority of cultures that have been ex- shame. Guided by Expectancy X Value theory, amined (see Triandis, 1972). The economy or I presume that expectancy and affect direct simplicity in causal thinking evident in the motivated behavior. Examples of research on achievement domain appears in the explana- the disparate topics of parole decisions, smok- tion of other outcomes, such as wealth and ing cessation, and helping behavior suggest the poverty (Feather & Davenport, 1981; Furn- 550 BERNARD WEINER ham, 1982a, 1982b) and affiliative acceptance achievement-related activities, such as ability and rejection (Anderson, 1983a; Sobol & Earn, and effort, may be quite unlike the perceived in press). However, relatively few studies have causes of social acceptance and rejection, such been conducted outside of achievement-related as personality or physical attractiveness. One contexts. puzzle that arises is the relation or the com- parability between the various causal expla- The Structure of Perceived Causality nations—in what way(s) are ability and effort, or ability and physical beauty, alike and in I now turn from causal description and what way(s) do they differ? A taxonomic struc- identify the underlying structure of perceived ture enables this question to be answered, for causality. A reasonable initial question to raise by finding the underlying properties of causes, is why does one want to determine causal or their common denominators, previous in- structure? What purpose or role does this play comparable qualitative distinctions can be re- in the goal of theory construction? In response placed with quantitative causal comparisons.