Attributional retraining: facilitating academic adjustment for failure-prone individuals in an achievement setting

Abstract

Although some individuals excel during the transition from high school to university, many struggle to adjust and experience repeated failures. To facilitate academic adjustment in those most at-risk of failure, vulnerable students were identified based on their pre-existing levels of preoccupation with failure (PWF; low, high) and primary control (PC; low, high). These factors were combined to create four distinct psychosocial typologies (e.g., low PWF, low PC). Students were subsequently presented with Attributional Retraining (AR), a control-enhancing treatment intervention. An AR (no- AR, AR) by group (failure-acceptors, failure-ruminators, achievement-oriented, over- strivers) 2 x 4 pre-post, quasi-experimental treatment design examined longitudinal differences in causal attributions, achievement emotions, PC, and achievement outcomes. AR encouraged all students to de-emphasize two uncontrollable attributions for failure and emphasize a controllable attribution. Most interestingly, AR was particularly beneficial for at-risk students. Notably, only failure-acceptors (low PWF, low PC) and failure-ruminators (high PWF, low PC) receiving AR reported more adaptive activity emotions and higher PC than their no-AR peers. For only failure-ruminators, those in the AR condition exhibited more adaptive attribution-related emotions than their no-AR peers. Conversely, only failure-acceptors receiving AR had higher grade point averages and fewer voluntary withdrawals than their no-AR counterparts. Results suggest the efficacy of AR in facilitating functional causal thinking for all students, whereas they also underscore AR’s value in promoting adaptive emotions, PC, and academic achievement for failure-prone students.