Wilson & Linville, 1985: Learning and reflecting about academic difficulties as normal and temporary improved academic performance among undergraduates
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Summary:
Two studies replicating Wilson and Linville, 1982 were conducted but combined statistically. The first was very much like the original study. In the second, the treatment was represented as an effort to give high school students more information about what to expect in college. Students wrote essays for high school students describing why academic difficulties in the transition to college are normal and temporary, and were encouraged to attribute early academic struggles in college to unstable causes (e.g., “not knowing how to take college tests”). Combining these replications, the attributional retraining treatment again raised students’ GPA. However, not enough students dropped out of college in these samples (1 out of 74) to examine treatment effects on dropout.