BOUNDARY-CONDITIONS FOR SELF-SERVING ATTRIBUTIONS - ANOTHER LOOK AT THE SPORTS PAGES

Attributions (N=310) by professional athletes were extracted from news papers, and coded along the dimensions of locus, stability, controllab ility, and globality. Findings confirmed the existence of self-serving attributional biases, but showed these to be limited in extent/intens ity by personal (ability and experience level) and situational (team v s. solo sport) factors. Losses were ascribed to external and wins to i nternal causes among athletes of low experience, high ability, and/or engaged in solo sports-but not under other circumstances. A similar pa ttern of results emerged only on the controllability dimension. Beyond indicating boundary conditions to the bias, results suggested that it might not even be ''self-serving,'' or hedonistic, in nature. Difficu lties in this type of research, and possible improvements, are discuss ed.