As Failures Mount: Affective and Cognitive Consequences of Ability Demotion in the Classroom.

What happens when explanations externalizing the cause of one's achievement failures are no longer credible? College undergraduates experiencing successive subjective failure in classroom tests gave postdictive explanations for failures, indicated shame, and rated expectancy for future success. Self-worth predictions suggest despair occurs when students fail at protecting a sense of personal competency. (Author/CE)