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Do attributions really matter?
It is sometimes tempting to dismiss attribution theory as being more relevant to philosophy than to psychology. After all, what evidence is there that attributions actually influence behavior? In fact, the evidence is pretty good that attributions shape behavior in important ways. As we saw with self-serving biases, people often use attributional logic to make excuses for poor performances. "The sun was in my eyes." " didn't know you were going to cover that chapter on the test." "He's not mad at you. He's just been under a lot of pressure at work." Excuses ease social interaction and provide comfort for wounded egos.
Sometimes people go beyond providing excuses and actually end up sabotaging their own performance in order to protect their self-esteem. Imagine, for example, that you have a big test in a difficult class. The night before the exam a friend comes by who needs to talk. You know you need to study, but your friend needs your help. So you postpone studying and help your friend. One thing leads to another and before you know it, the night is gone and the exam is at hand. Exhausted, you struggle to the exam and, with bleary eyes, take your best shot. Now imagine that you fail the exam. Why did you fail? From an attributional perspective, it is not clear. You might have failed because you lack ability in the subject, but you also might have failed because you were simply too tired to pass. In a strange way, although your failure to study certainly increased the odds that you would do poorly on the exam, it provides an attributional out that allows you to maintain the belief that you have the ability to pass even though you failed.
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Steve
Berglas and Edward Jones <REF>(1978) refer to this attribution-based
strategy for protecting self-esteem as 