5th and 8th grade pupils’ and teachers’ perceptions of the relationships between teaching methods, classroom ethos, and positive affective attitudes towards learning mathematics in Japan

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the “false consensus effect” (Fiske et al., 1991). Age differences have been found in
individuals’ self-serving bias, probably because children’s attributional styles move from
external to internal as they grow up. Skaalvik (1990) reported that Norwegian 6^th graders
who attributed their poor performance to external causes had higher self-esteem than
those attributing it to internal causes. For 9^th graders, attributing their poor performance
to lack of effort maintained high self-esteem.

The attribution of causes for others’ achievements has also been explained. Ascribing
others’ negative outcomes to uncontrollable aspects produced sympathy, while ascribing
others’ negative outcomes to controllable aspects produced anger. Sympathy prompted
people to help, anger led people to neglect to offer help to the person in need. Weiner et
al. (1970, 1986) indicated that success due to effort in spite of lack of ability was
assumed most likely to deserve rewards, while failure because of lack of effort in spite of
possession of ability was assumed most likely to deserve punishment. Stahelski et al.
(1987) indicated that sympathy and pity dominated ratings when failure was paired with
low ability and high effort, while anger and disgust were the most evident emotions when
failure was induced by low effort in spite of high ability. Brophy (1981) showed that
teachers were likely to deal with pupils’ controllable problems with punishment and
threatening actions, while they were likely to offer support for pupils’ uncontrollable
problems. Similarly, peer helping was more likely to occur when the learner needed help
due to uncontrollable and stable reasons such as lack of ability rather than lack of effort
(Barnes et al., 1979; Bennett, et al., 1998; Weiner, 1980).

There is a high possibility that teachers and pupils will have different attributions of an
event, because of the tendency to make biased attributions (Fiske et al.1991; Nisbett et
al. 1980). Pintrich (1996) explains these biased attributions. The fundamental attribution
error involves the attribution of other’s behaviour to a disposition or personal factors,
ignoring situational factors that might be partially or even more causally related to the
outcome. The Actor-observer perspective refers to attribution errors induced by
attributing one’s own behaviour to situational features, whereas observers will attribute
actors’ behaviour to some personal or dispositional characteristic of the actor.

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