Attribution of perceived achievement in school in general and in maths and verbal areas: relations with academic self‐concept and self‐esteem

This study examined 6th ( N =350) and 9th ( N =352) grade Norwegian students' attributions of their perceived results in school in general and in mathematics and language arts (Norwegian) in particular. Strong self‐serving attributional biases were found both for perceived results in school in general and for results in maths and Norwegian. Also, students who had high maths self‐concept and low verbal self‐concept or low maths self‐concept and high verbal self‐concept attributed their perceived results in the two school subjects differently and according to a self‐serving prediction. Sixth grade students with low academic self‐concept had higher self‐esteem if they attributed their results in school to effort or external causes than if they attributed their results to ability. Among 9th grade students attributions were not systematically related to self‐esteem.