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To test directly cognitive and motivational explanations of self-serving biases in the field, 141 male and 116 female alpine ski racers provided attributions for their performance in competitions varying in rank on a 5-level hierarchy developed by the United States Ski Association. This hierarchy, which reflects the importance of races, functioned as a naturally-occurring manipulation of ego-involvement. Results supported the cognitive rather than the motivational explanation of divergent attributions for success versus failure. Racers made more internal attributions (to ability and effort) when they did well rather than poorly, but their ego-involvement in the race had no effects on their attributions. Consistent with previous field research, external attributions (to task difficulty and luck) were not affected by performance outcome.
Riess et al. (Sat,) studied this question.