title: Self-esteem and performance on word tasks.
abstract: The authors investigated word-task performance of 192 postgraduate Indian women, grouped according to high or low self-esteem, after different causal attributions for failure. The subsequent performance of the low-self-esteem (LSE) participants improved after reattribution training. When the LSE participants were induced to attribute their prior failure to external causes, the external attribution not only reduced their natural tendency toward self-blame but also broke the self-defeating cycle, thereby enabling them to improve their subsequent performance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, India.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mavi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D011340:Problem Solving; D012649:Self Concept; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology