Convergent and Incremental Effects of Cohesion on Attributions for Self and Team

Abstract

Midseason and postseason measures taken from female collegiate basketball players provided information about their perception of team cohesion, personal and team success, and attributions for their own and their team's performance. First, it was hypothesized that players from highly cohesive teams show more consistency between self and team attributions than players from teams with low cohesion. This prediction received partial support, in that at the end of their season, players on cohesive teams demonstrated greater convergence between attributions for self and team than did players from less cohesive teams. Players associated with less cohesive teams made greater luck attributions and lesser task attributions for their performance than for the performance of their team. No significant differences were found for either effort or ability attributions. The second hypothesis predicted that cohesion influences players' team attributions over and above any influence of team outcome. Only for unsuccessful teams did cohesion affect attributions independently of team outcome. Finally, Schlenker and Miller's (1977b) notion of “fairness” in self-attributions as a function of high cohesion was explored.