The impact of inhibiting or facilitating causal factors on group members' reactions after success and failure

Group members' attributions and self-presentations following performance were examined by giving groups working under the direction of an expert or novice leader either success or failure feedback. As predicted, (a) members offailure groups led by a novice reacted as positively as the success-group members, while (b) members offailure groups led by an expert were more likely to seek external explanations for their failure, reported less satisfaction with their group, and suffered more negative affective reactions. These findings are explained in terms of augmenting and discounting attributional processes: the presence of a facilitating factor in the group exacerbated the negative consequences offailure while the identification of an inhibiting factor ameliorated these consequences.