Wither attribution theory?

• Date: 01 June 2019
• Author: Bernard Weiner
• Published date: 01 June 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2398

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Wither attribution theory?

Bernard Weiner

Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, California

Correspondence

Bernard Weiner, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, California.

Email: weiner@psych.ucla.edu

KEYWORDS

attribution, motivation, relational attribution

1|INTRODUCTION

The Bible tells that for everything there is a season. A time to live

and a time to die; a time to expand and a time to decay; a time to

hold 'em and a time to fold 'em. For the motivational theorist, the

former of these alternatives—life, expansion and holding, is indeed

quite short.

To illustrate this harsh conclusion, consider the major empirically

based motivation theories. The initial conception to sweep the field

was Hullian drive theory. This theory burst forth around 1930 and

by, say, 1975, was either dead or in the throes of death. Thus, we

can put its life span at approximately 45 years. Nearly that same ini-

tial time, two other conceptions, proposed by Tolman and Lewin,

and another a decade or so later by Rotter, also came into existence.

They all could be (but were not) labeled Expectancy X Value theo-

ries. However, they did not give rise to a body of theory‐generated

hypotheses and data, and thus I can't trace their life span inasmuch

as they never really reached full life. They did influence subsequent

thinking and theorists and are very important, but they nonetheless

were not influential theories in their own right.

In the middle 1950s, two additional motivation theories were pro-

posed: cognitive dissonance, by Festinger,and achievement risk‐taking,

by Atkinson. They both had spectacular rises, generating a large number

of experiments and followers, but rather quickly fell from grace. I would

place their demises about 1980. Thus, each had roughly 25 years of

major influence.

2|WHY THE DEMISE?

There are many factors that help account for the life or death of a sci-

entific conception. I will consider only two here: (a) the relational fer-

tility of the theory, that is, the number and breadth of the predictions

that it can make and (b) the reliability of the findings. I next apply

these two determinants of motivation theory life to the three concep-

tions that I believe lived a reasonable life span: drive, cognitive disso-

nance, and achievement risk‐taking theory

Concerning drive theory, the main empirical findings are without

doubt: hungry rats run for food faster than satiated rats and rats

who know the way to the food due to prior reinforcement run faster

than naïve rats. In addition, the hungry, smart rats really run fast,

that is, there is an interaction or a multiplicative function between

drive and habit. That is a remarkable set of data and should set

the stage for a long life. But a theory of human motivation that

excludes thoughts and feelings cannot last too long—it has relatively

little relational fertility. This in part resulted in the demise of drive

theory.

Dissonance theory concerns conflict between thoughts, so it does

not have the cognitive exclusionary property embraced by drive theo-

rists. Furthermore, it does appear that conflicting cognitions are moti-

vating, although the reported esoteric studies in the literature are not

always replicable. But the theory is restricted to this one principle and

construct, so it has a very limited range of predictions. How can it

explain the running behavior of Hull's hungry rats? Or the risk‐taking

choices of Atkinson's motivated people? One also would anticipate a

relatively short life span for this conception.

Turning to Atkinson's theory of risk‐taking, this conception gen-

erated very few predictions. First, persons considered high in the

need for achievement were believed to be more motivated at

achievement‐related tasks than those regarded as low in need for

achievement. Furthermore, these differences were hypothesized to

be most evident when undertaking tasks of intermediate difficulty,

which were thought to be most motivating for the high achievers

and most demotivating for low achievers. In addition to the theory

being low in relational fertility, these predictions (especially the inter-

action) have not been upheld. It appears that most everyone prefers

tasks that are intermediate in difficulty. Again, a short life span would

be anticipated.

DOI: 10.1002/job.2398

J Organ Behav. 2019;40:603–604. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 603