Attribution of Perceived Academic Results and Relations with Self‐esteem in Senior High School Students

Abstract

The present study investigated 575 10th grade students’ attributions of their perceived general results in school and how attributions of perceived results related to self‐esteem. Strong self‐serving attributional biases were found for both males and females, showing more attributions to effort and fewer attributions to ability for students who perceived themselves to achieve poorly in school, while no self‐serving bias in terms of more external explanations of poor than of good results was found. Self‐esteem varied significantly with attributions for students who perceived themselves to achieve poorly in school, but not for students who perceived themselves to achieve well.