Achievement Motivation and Attributions for Success and Failure

The relationships of attributions for success and failure with achievement motivation were investigated in 110 academically talented high school students. Subjects were administered the Mathematics Attribution Scale and measures of self-esteem, anxiety, and achievement motivation. Attributions of success to effort were correlated .42 with achievement motivation, and attributions of failure to lack of effort were correlated -.22 with achievement motivation. First-order partial correlations between attributions and achievement motivation controlling for self-esteem and anxiety did not differ from the zero-order correlations.