Effort and Strategy Attributions Motivate Distinct Responsesto Failure

Abstract

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” As this quote suggests, improving one’s methods can sometimes be a more effective route to success than sheer perseverance. How can we motivate people to use better strategies? We propose that, compared to effort attributions that encourage intensity, invoking strategy attributions motivates people to reconsider and improve on methods following failure. Traditionally, however, attributional theory classifies effort and strategy as having similar motivational properties (Weiner, 1986, 2013), neglecting this important distinction in their outcomes. Across 3 experiments (N = 646), we compared how people reacted when told that someone had failed because of a lack of effort or ineffective strategy use. Evidence robustly showed that effort and strategy attributions have different motivational consequences in response to failure. When people attributed failure to low effort (vs. ineffective strategies), their advice was to increase intensity—paying less attention to modifying the methods used. In contrast, when people attributed failure to ineffective strategies (vs. low effort), their advice was to search for new, different methods. This distinction between the behavioral outcomes of effort and strategy attributions generalized across a wide range of personal and social achievement domains—including academia, work, sports, and relationships. Our results have important implications for teaching, coaching, motivational interventions, and effective goal pursuit more generally.