What Coaches Can Learn from Athlete Perceptions

Abstract

Competitive athletes attribute their successes and failures to factors such as ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck. Research shows that the type of attribution athletes use to define outcomes affects both motivation and performance: It is therefore important for coaches to fully understand the attribution process. Heider <1944) categorized behavioral outcomes into effective personal force (ability and effort> and effective environmental force <task difficulty and luck>. Based on his theory the four attributions of ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck influence future success and failure. In 1972, Weiner restructured Heider's four attributions into a two-dimensional framework he called locus of causality. Locus of causality has two components: stability and locus of control.