Parent-Child Agreement on Attributional Beliefs

Abstract

The present study explores the extent to which parents and their adolescent children agree with respect to their attributional beliefs. First-born Australian children of Anglo and Italian background, and their parents, ranked talent, effort and teaching according to their relative importance in the development of six areas of skill art, music, mathematics, sport, writing a story, and science. The patterns of attributions varied across the six areas of skill. It varied even more strongly according to whether the attributions were given by parents or children. Children were more likely than their parents to stress the role of effort; parents were more likely than their children to stress the role of talent. Stress on effort was particularly marked among boys of immigrant background. The results were interpreted as providing support for hypotheses concerning the self-enhancing value of particular attributions and the information base used in making judgments.