Replicating the Theoretical Associations: A Laboratory Course in Attribution Theory

Abstract

Hungry rats typically run faster for food than do satiated rats, and the greater the amount and quality of the incentive, the quicker they run. People tend to resume tasks that they have not completed. In achievement contexts, those high in achievement needs prefer intermediate-difficulty tasks. Success at a chance task produces lesser increments in the subjective expectancy of future success than does success at a skill-related task. These facts provided the needed empirical foundations for the respective theories of Hull (1943), Lewin (1935), Atkinson (1964), and Rotter (1966). This is not to assert that the empirical relations outlined above cannot be interpreted with alternative conceptions: The desire for intermediate risk can be explained without the concepts of expectancy and value used by Atkinson, and expectancy changes in skill and chance settings can be accounted for without recourse to the locus-of-control concept adopted by Rotter and his colleagues. Nonetheless, these facts did provide the building blocks for the respective development of achievement theory and social learning (locus of control) theory.

In which the author shows off his faith in the theory by contending that the specified associations can be replicated in front of a classroom. A laboratory course is designed for that purpose.