Deck 3: Attribution and Cognition

Question 1

Which of the following is an internal factor that could influence the outcome of an athletic performance?

A) Working hard during training
B) Weather conditions
C) Referee officiating
D) The amount of time the opposing team practiced during the days leading up to the game

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which of the following is an external factor that could influence the outcome of an athletic performance?

A) Weather conditions
B) Natural athletic ability
C) Effort
D) Intelligence

Answer 2

A

Question 3

According to the attribution theory, if an athlete performs poorly during a game, and blames their poor performance on internal and stable factors, they are likely to _________ in their next game.

A) Perform poorly
B) Perform well
C) Blame external factors
D) Show the hot hand effect

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Athletes who have a ______ are more likely to give up if they put in good effort and then are told that they performed poorly.

A) Pessimistic explanatory style
B) Hot hand effect
C) Optimistic explanatory style
D) Self-serving attributional bias

Question 5

Attribution theory describes how people explain their successes and failures based on locus of causality and:

A) Stability
B) Luck
C) Effort
D) Task difficulty

Question 6

Athletes expect to be able to perform well in the future if they make __________, stable, and ___________ attributions for successful outcomes.

A) Internal/controllable
B) Internal/uncontrollable
C) External/controllable
D) External/uncontrollable

Question 7

The famous experiment that involved shocking dogs is a demonstration of:

A) Learned helplessness
B) Self-serving bias
C) Locus of causality
D) The hot-hand effect

Question 8

Which of the following influences the types of attributions people make?

A) All of the above
B) Gender
C) Race/ethnicity
D) Culture

Question 9

How might attribution styles vary between athletes from the United States and athletes from Japan?

A) All of the above
B) U.S. athletes may be more likely to focus on internal attributions for success
C) Japanese athletes may be more likely to attribute success to help from their coaches and teammates
D) U.S. athletes may be more likely to mention their own hard work and desire to win

Question 10

Which of the following may be the most functional type of attribution for an athlete to make following a poor performance?

A) Internal, controllable, and unstable
B) External, uncontrollable, and stable
C) Internal, uncontrollable, and stable
D) External, controllable, and unstable

Question 11

The tendency for goalies to move during penalty kicks, and ________________, are examples of how athletes and those involved in athletics tend to prefer to act, even when the action may not lead to a better outcome.

A) For teams to fire their coaches when the team is not performing well
B) For coaches to punt on the fourth down
C) For female athletes to attribute success to experience and luck
D) For male athletes to attribute success to experience and luck

Question 12

Which of the following is a skill athletes can practice to build self-confidence and develop more constructive thought patterns?

A) All of the above
B) Disrupting strategies
C) De-catastrophizing
D) Assessing personal assumptions

Question 13

Why is it important that athletes are taught that their poor performances are due to controllable and unstable factors?

A) This allows for effort to play a role in future success
B) This attributes failure to external factors, which can be controlled
C) This shows the athletes that most success is due to luck
D) This allows for natural ability to influence future success

Question 14

Which of the following helps improve athletes' expectations for future success, leads to more positive emotions, and increases persistence on skill-building tasks?

A) Attribution training
B) Learned helplessness
C) The hot hand effect
D) Self-serving bias

Question 15

Which of the following is NOT included in the four dimensional model of attribution theory?

A) Efficacy
B) Ability
C) Effort
D) Luck

Question 16

An athlete who feels that their success and failures are out of their control, making their efforts useless, is experiencing:

A) Learned helplessness
B) The hot hand effect
C) Self-serving bias
D) Positive explanatory style

Question 17

An athlete with an optimistic explanatory style would explain good events as:

A) Internal, stable, and global
B) External, unstable, and specific
C) Internal, unstable, and specific
D) External, stable, and global

Question 18

An athlete with a negative explanatory style would explain bad events as:

A) Internal, stable, and global
B) External, unstable, and specific
C) Internal, unstable, and specific
D) External, stable, and global

Question 19

Which of the following athletes is MOST LIKELY to have their success attributed to athletic ability?

A) A white, American male
B) A Chinese female
C) A black, American female
D) A Latino male

Question 20

Which of the following athletes is MOST LIKELY to attribute their own success to the expectation of others and rigorous training?

A) A Chinese female
B) A white, American male
C) A Latino male
D) A black, American female

Question 21

Accepting credit for success, but blaming failure on external factors is called:

A) Self-serving attribution
B) Learned helplessness
C) Hot hand effect
D) Locus of causality

Question 22

An examination of media coverage of the 2010 Olympic Games shows that commentators are more likely to attribute American athletes' success to ________ than they were for non-American athletes.

A) Commitment and intelligence
B) Rigorous training and team work
C) Past experience and luck
D) Task difficulty and coaching

Question 23

Which of the following is true among rookie athletes?

A) They are more likely to attribute external factors for losses
B) They are more likely to attribute their success to teammates and coaching
C) They are more likely to attribute failure to their own inexperience
D) They are more likely to attribute their success to uncontrollable and external factors

Question 24

If it is true that people tend to feel worse about negative outcomes if they did not act, which of the following should be true?

A) A basketball player will try to make a buzzer-beater throw from half court, even if making the shot is extremely unlikely
B) A team will hesitate to make changes in the coaching staff, even if the team is not performing well
C) A baseball player will refuse to try to steal a base
D) A goalie will stay in the middle of the net when trying to block a penalty kick

Question 25

Which of the following is evidence in support of the hot hand effect?

A) NBA players who make their first free throw attempt are more likely to make their second attempt than those who missed the first shot
B) A player who makes a shot is more likely to try to take the following shot, and take it from further away, increasing the difficulty of the shot a lowering the probably of success
C) Although some players show evidence of "streakiness" during certain years, you can expect that simply by chance
D) Many players and fans believe in the hot hand effect

Question 26

Why is it beneficial for players to go through attribution training?

A) All of the above
B) Changes in thinking may lead to better outcomes
C) It may lead to an increase in motivation and drive
D) It increases persistence on skill-building tasks

Question 27

Which of the following was a finding in the study on attributional training in children?

A) All of the above
B) Children who received attributional training after feeling unsuccessful at a task felt much better about their performance on the second task
C) Children who received attributional training made more adaptive attributions
D) Children who received attributional training were higher in internal motivation than children who were initially successful on this task

Question 28

Blaming the officiating for your team's loss would be attributing failure to _________ factors.

A) External
B) Stable
C) Controllable
D) Internal

Question 29

Filtering, over-generalization, and all-or-nothing thinking are types of:

A) Destructive thoughts
B) Self-serving bias
C) Internal and stable factors
D) All of the above

Question 30

Why is it important to stress the power of effort?

A) This allows athletes to feel that they can influence their performance in a positive way
B) This allows athletes to rely on their natural ability
C) This rules out any possibility that luck can determine the outcome of a performance
D) None of the above

Question 31

Natural athleticism is an effort outcome (internal and unstable).

Question 32

Luck, or chance, would be categorized as an external, unstable, and uncontrollable factor.

Question 33

A study on learned helplessness showed that if a person is not aware how they have performed, and are told that they performed worse than they actually did, they will have a poorer performance on a subsequent task.

Question 34

Performances by both female and male athletes are usually attributed to similar factors.

Question 35

During a basketball game, calling a time-out after the opposing team has scored several points is a way to disrupt the "hot hand effect".

Question 36

White athletes tend to show a more optimistic attribution style than do athletes of color.

Question 37

Athletes need to experience success early on, so that they increase in their confidence that they can perform well.

Question 38

The conditioning of your team can improve with time. This factor can be described as unstable.

Question 39

People's expectations for their performance do not influence how they feel and the attributions they make.

Question 40

If an athlete has a pessimistic explanatory style, they are more likely to play better when their team is losing.

Question 41

People tend to expect their favorite team to win about 50% of the time, the same as expected for a non-favored team.

Question 42

The same region of the brain that is active when good things happen to our own team is also active when bad things happen to a rival team.

Question 43

Athletes tend to give as much credit to their own performance as their teammates' when experiencing a failure.

Question 44

Attributional training is used to teach athletes how to ignore how their own effort impacts their performance.

Question 45

People feel worse about a negative outcome if they did not act, rather than if they chose to act.

Question 46

Describe how an individual with an internal-stable, controllable attribution style would likely explain why a particular sports team lost a recent game. What about a person with an external-unstable, uncontrollable attribution style?

Question 47

Does knowing the location of activity in the brain help explain an athlete's behavior? Why or why not?

Question 48

Describe how an individual with an optimistic explanatory style would explain a team's victory. What about a team's defeat?

Question 49

What attributional style is best (in terms of promoting better future performance) for a professional athlete to use in describing a loss? Why is this style beneficial?

Question 50

Which attribution bias do you think is the most common? Do you think knowing about these biases can reduce their frequency? Why or why not?