The Relationship between Attribution and Achievement Motivation in Sports Situations

The purpose of this study was to clarify the rilationships between the attribution on the change of record and the achievement motivation in sports situations. A questionnaire was designed to measure one\u27s perception of record change (improving or declining), attribution (difficulty, luck, ability, effort, coach, atmosphere, interest or condition), intrisic motivation, achievement motivation and learned helplessness. The subjects were five hundred and ninety college athletes (male n=401, female n=189 All of them were athletes who had experience not less than three years. The data were separately analysed by male and famale as there is the difference between the two. The main results are as follows: 1. On the improving male, the athletes who attributed to ability, effort or interest showed higher intrisic motivation, higher achievement motivation and lower helplessness than the athletes who attributed to difficulty. 2. On the improving female, the athletes who attributed to effort showed higher achievement motivation than the athletes who attributed to difficulty or caoch. 3. On the declining male, the athlete who attribute to lack of ability showed lower achievement motivation than the athletes who attributed to bad condition. 4. On the improving female the athletes who attributed to lack of ability seemed to show lower achievement motivation than the athletes- who attributed to lack of effort. According to these results, the attributinal theory is seemed to applicable to sports situations