Understanding Attributional Motivations, Emotions and Sport Type in Male College Athletes
Understanding Attributional Motivations, Emotions and Sport Type in Male College Athletes
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Date
1990
Authors
Barton, William Elliott
Advisor
Bennett, Stanley
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Abstract
sports and sport type were used as a vehicle for
examining attributions for success/failure, pride and
anxiety of 111 college-aged athletes. It was shown that
both individual-team sport athletes and team sport
athletes differ little in their emotional reactions and
attributions to outcome.
Internal and external attributions were shown to be
two separate factors. Experienced college-aged athletes
exhibited both high internality and high externality for
success and both low internality and low externality for
failure.
As expected, level of pride was found to be greater
for success than failure. Greater anxiety occurred after
failure than success, but postcompetition anxiety
reactions were shown to be attribution independent
emotions.
Previous research on self-serving, self-enhancing and
self-protecting biases was found to be inadequate in explaining the intricacies and diversity of attributional
responses present in this field study. It is suggested
that differences in findings across studies regarding
attributional biases may be based on the methodologies and
instruments used, limitations on the number of
attributions available to subjects, differences between
subject populations tested, the way in which researchers
conceive of attributional findings and finally the way in
which attributions are defined. The findings lend support
to the cognition or "information processing" theoretical
viewpoint.