Attributions for failure and success at primary school: a person-centered approach to causal dimensions

Over the past fifty years, extensive research has examined the influence of causal attributions on cognitions, emotions, and behaviours in educational contexts. However, these studies often relied on inferences about dimensional properties of attributions, and not on students' perceptions of them. This study innovates by directly assessing these perceptions to identify students' attributional profiles. 410 French elementary students were randomly assigned to a success or a failure condition and reported their perceptions of their attribution on the locus of causality, stability, and controllability dimensions. Latent profiles analyses (LPA) identified three attributional profiles for both students in the failure condition ('Hopeless', 'Negligent' and 'Unsure'), and the success condition ('Competent', 'Industrious', and 'Dependent'). LPA also revealed associations between certain profiles and cognitive, emotional and behavioural outcomes, highlighting the relevance of combining direct assessment of causal dimensions and LPA when studying attributions for success and failure and their consequences.