Causal Attribution and Behavioral Response to Failure

Abstract

This paper uses a survey of social science authors to address the link between causal attribution of a real achievement event and future behavior. The achievement event studied is the decision of a refereed journal not to publish a submitted paper. Using regression procedures designed to handle interaction effects, we relate author's attributions, sex, professional status variables, and past experience to immediate publication strategy following the rejection. We find that this behavioral response is directly influenced by past experience, and, among women, the stability of causes attributed for the rejection. Sex interacts with stability attribution and status in predicting whether an author will continue trying to publish the paper.