Great expectations: how do athletes of different expectancies attribute their perception of personal athletic performance?

The self-fulfilling prophecy has received a vast amount of attention in a variety of contexts including economics and politics (Scholfield, 1959), romantic relationships (Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, & Khouri, 1998), psychological therapy (Sibicky & Dovidio, 1986), and, extensively, in the academic classroom (Jussim, 1989; Jussim & Eccles, 1992; Robinson, 1993; Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968; Weinstein, Marshall, Sharp, & Botkin, 1987). However, recently sport psychology research has started to address aspects of the self-fulfilling prophecy by examining how coaches' expectations may lead to a difference in the quality (Rejeski, Darracott, & Hutslar, 1979) as well as the quantity of feedback (Sinclair & Vealey, 1989; Solomon, DiMarco, Ohlson, & Reece, 1998) and individual perceptions of the coach (Solomon, Striegel, et al., 1996). To date, the research has not examined the area of coaches' expectations and the attributions that athletes make for their performance.

Coaches' expectations have the potential to play an important role in how athletes cognitively process their athletic achievement. Part of that processing may involve examining the perceived causes of behavior or reflecting on what caused performance outcomes. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the differences between high and low expectancy athletes' perceptions for the causes of their performance. Darley and Fazio's (1980) Expectancy Confirmation model was used as the framework for assessing the expectancy process. More specifically, the model consists of six stages: (1) the coach forms an expectancy about an athlete, (2) the coach behaves in a manner congruent with the expectancy, (3) the athlete perceives and interprets this behavior, (4) the athlete responds to the behavior, (5) the coach interprets the athlete's response, and (6) the athlete interprets his/her own response (see Figure 1). Unlike the four-step models that have been previously used in sport psychology research (see Solomon, et al., 1998; Solomon, Wiegardt, et al., 1996) that only views the expectancy process from the coach's perspective, this model takes into account the cognitive processing that occurs for both the athlete and coach. This six-stage model illustrates that the self-fulfilling prophecy process does not end when the athlete's behavior becomes congruent with the coach's expectation but when the athlete has formed attributions for his/her personal behavior. The additional stages in Darley and Fazio's model allows the researcher to place athletes' attributions related to the expectancy process in an appropriate context.

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Attributions are perceived causes people give for the occurrence of an event related to themselves or others (B iddle, Hanrahan, & Sellars, 2001). Using Heider's (1958) work as a point of departure, Weiner (1979, 1985) argued that attributions may be classified along four causal dimensions: locus of causality (internal/external), stability (stable/unstable), personal control (personally controllable/uncontrollable) and external control (externally controllable/uncontrollable). Following an outcome in an achievement context, an attributional search may elicit a variety of emotional responses that have the ability to shape affective responses, expectations (Biddle, Hanrahan, & Sellars, 2001) and future behavior (Gernigon & Delloye, 2003).

Specifically, the emotional responses related to self-esteem, such as pride or shame, are associated with internal attributions for success and failure, respectively. Furthermore, positive or negative affect maybe felt towards another person who influences the success or failure outcome (Vlachopoulos, Biddle, & Fox, 1997). Emotional reactions, such as hope or dejection, are associated with future expectations in the achievement situation and are related to stability attributions. Specifically, the stability dimension can determine expectations for future success if the outcome was perceived to be stable (Weiner, 1985). Finally, the controllability dimensions link emotional responses to outcomes (success or failure) along with the behavioral and affective reactions of others to that outcome (White, 1993).