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Effects Of Casual Attributions Of Performance Outcome On Nature Of Self-Statements And Self-Esteem, Samuel Horace Wood

Master's Theses

36 college students participated in a study to determine the role of causal attributions of success and failure on the modification of self-esteem. Although Brockner (1979) has suggested that the key to augmenting self-esteem is the increasing of positive self-evaluation that follows success, several studies suggest that it is not the positive self-evaluation after success but the negative self-evaluations after failure that are crucial in determining one's level of self-esteem. Thus it was hypothesized in the present study that if external attributions were made for failures while internal attributions for success were maintained, self-esteem would increase. Subjects high and low …