ATTRIBUTION IN GROUPS - ESTIMATIONS OF PERSONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO COLLECTIVE ENDEAVORS

Group members' estimations of their contributions to a collective ende avor were investigated by assessing perceptions of responsibility foll owing completion of an additive group task. As an information-processi ng approach to attributions in groups suggests, only those who perform ed well at the individual level internalized success and externalized failure. Those who failed tended to take more responsibility for their group's failure rather than success. Group members also displayed a g roup-serving tendency; they gave more responsibility to others after s uccess rather than failure. The results suggest that attributional asy mmetries following group performance may result from group members' ex aggeratedly positive appraisals of their personal competencies.