Good is mine, bad is yours: perspectives of attribution theory on academic performance of Accounting Majors

Abstract

The way students understand and assess their academic performance, qualifying it as superior or inferior, tends to be associated with common attributive elements, which are depicted by the literature related to the theory of attribution. The general objective of this study was to investigate the existence of association between common attributive elements in literature and undergraduates' performance in accountancy courses in four universities in four different Brazilian states (Ceará, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio Grande do Sul). The instrument for data collecting was a questionnaire applied to 826 students. Among the main results, it was observed that 68% of the students who consider their academic performance superior claim that such performance is due to their own efforts, while less than 10% attribute it to external causes. 24% percent of those who assess their academic performance as inferior blame such failure on external causes such as family, tests, classmates and professors. When asked about the factors that could explain the performance of students from other institutions, the results pointed at the opposite direction, that is, academic success was more often related to external causes and failure was mostly attributed to insufficient individual effort. Thus it has been concluded that superior academic performance is more attributed to internal causes than inferior academic performance is, with an interesting idiosyncrasy among genders. These general results are aligned with the main literature on this theme and with the theory of attribution proposed by Weiner in 1976, which is the basis of this study.