| In the 1970s research investigating the attributional styles of women generally indicated that females, unlike males, tend to attribute their failures to factors within themselves and their successes to other, external, or environmental factors. Since that time, such theory has played a large role in perceptions of women's achievement attitudes as exhibiting self-derogatory biases, fear of failure and low expectancy of success. More recent developmental theorists have worked to refute such indiscriminate generalities, noting that female subjects presented with subjective and personal tasks drawing on women's innate relationship talents exhibit less externality bias than females presented with objective, goal-oriented tasks.; In 1993 B. G. Dixon conducted a study in which urban adolescent girls performed both objective and subjective tasks: they either succeeded or failed at rigged word puzzles and they also wrote two short essays, one about a personal success and the other about a personal failure. These subjects made attributions more similar to their male counterparts, citing internal reasons for their successes and external causes for their failures. Dixon concluded that the type of task was not as important as its outcome and that the girls valued both individual achievement and success in relationships.; Past research has often indicated that persons in rural areas are sometimes less progressive than their urban counterparts. Not many studies have been published addressing attribution theory as it applies to female adolescents in rural areas. This study replicates Dixon's urban study with a rural population and finds, as Dixon did, that the type of task does have an effect on the girls' attributions and that the subjects are very concerned about both individual accomplishment as well as their interpersonal relationships. However, in contrast to their urban sisters, these rural females attribute both their successes and their failures to internal factors of ability and effort. |
