30 May 2020 Week 6 Response To Attributional Tendencies

I learned that attributional tendencies are how people attribute success or failure. Internal attribution means a person attributes their success or failure to herself or himself and attributes the success or failure of others to the person who experienced the success or failure. External attribution means a person attributes their success or failure to other people or things and attributes the success or failure of others to people or things who did not experience the success or failure.

Some of my attributional tendencies are typical, according to Professor Ivers, for someone who grew up in the United States and is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And some of mine are not typical. I attribute God and myself for my failures. It's my fault because of something I did and it is God's fault because he allowed the failure to happen. I also attribute successes to myself and God. I succeeded through my efforts and the help of God.

For other people, I do the same. A person failed because of their actions and God allowing them to fail. A person succeeded through their actions and God helping them.

For those I teach and will someday teach I need to be cautious how I attribute failures and successes and more importantly how I express these attributional tendencies to students because what I say can impact their actions and if what I say is the direct opposite of the attributional tendencies they have could cause miscommunications, misunderstandings, and internal turmoil.

Now that I am aware of these attributional tendencies I will learn about them for the cultures for my students and do what I can to reduce misunderstandings. I am unlikely to remember the differences between my culture's attributional tendencies and those of other cultures however I can simply ask my students how they attribute success and failure to themselves and to others and then use that to reduce misunderstandings.

I would not begin to think I could somehow come up with a way to help improve my home culture based on something I didn't consciously realize existed until about 45 minutes or more ago when I watched a video and read a little about it. I don't know which attributions are better than others or not and am actually of the opinion that it might be better to not use attributional tendencies at all but don't see how we as people could possibly avoid attributing our success and failure to someone or something. I can't see people thinking I succeeded because I succeeded or my success is not the cause of anything I or anyone else or thing did it simply is a fact that I succeeded.