Expectancies in Relation to Success and Failure,Causal Attributions,and Perceived Task Similarity

This research examined the influence of causal attributions (ability, effort) concerning actors' successes and failures on observers' expectations for the stimulus persons' subsequent performances at similar and dissimilar tasks. It was found that persons who failed at a prior task which was similar to the subsequent one due to lack of ability were expected to perform worse than those who failed due to lack of effort. However, stimulus persons who initially failed due to lack of effort were expected to do worse at a subsequently dissimilar task than those who failed because of low ability. For initially successful outcomes, expectations were higher for ability attributions at similar tasks and higher for effort attributions at dissimilar ones. In addition to performance expectations, certainty ratings for these judgments were assessed.