Accuracy of self-assessment and task performance:: Does it pay to know the truth?

An integration of conceptions about attributional antecedents with those of attributional consequences is applied to achievement behavior. The model assumes realistic attributions to be functional. It was tested with a paradigm in which task performance is conceptualized as the sum of the performances on various subtasks requiring different abilities. In Study 1, participants who were induced to make realistic attributions spent more time on tasks for which they had demonstrated high ability than on tasks for which they had demonstrated low ability. This preference for tasks out of areas for which one possesses high ability was correlated with overall performance. Study 2 replicated these results and revealed better posttest performance for individuals with realistic feedback than for individuals with unrealistic feedback.