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Optimistic Attributional Style as a Predictor of Well-Being and Performance in Different Academic Settings

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The Human Pursuit of Well-Being

Abstract

The existing findings on the relationship between optimism and academic performance are rather contradictory. Two studies were undertaken to investigate the relationship between attributional style, well-being and academic performance. A new Russian language measure of attributional style for positive and negative events (Gordeeva, Osin, & Shevyakhova, Measurement of optimism as attributional style for negative and positive life events: Success and failure attributional style questionnaire, 2009) with stability, globality and controllability subscales was used. In the first study, optimistic attributional style for good events was associated with higher academic achievement in high school students and mediated the effect of academic performance upon self-esteem (N = 224). In the second study, unrealistically optimistic attributional style for negative events predicted success in passing three difficult written entrance examinations in university entrants and optimistic attributional style for good events predicted success with success expectations as a mediator (N = 108). The results indicate that attributional styles for positive and negative events are both related to well-being but are not uniform in their relationship to achievement in different academic settings.

The preparation of this paper was partially supported by a Visiting Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust to the second author.

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Dmitry Leontiev for his useful comments, as well as Oleg Sychev and Valentina Shevyakhova, who assisted in the data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

    Tamara O. Gordeeva

  2. State University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Evgeny N. Osin

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  1. Tamara O. Gordeeva
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  2. Evgeny N. Osin
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Correspondence to Evgeny N. Osin .

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  1. Fac. Arts & Sciences, University of Rijeka, Slavka Krautzeka bb, Rijeka, 51000, Croatia

    Ingrid Brdar

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Gordeeva, T.O., Osin, E.N. (2011). Optimistic Attributional Style as a Predictor of Well-Being and Performance in Different Academic Settings. In: Brdar, I. (eds) The Human Pursuit of Well-Being. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1375-8_14

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