Psychology of Sport and Exercise 9 (2008) 77–101 Attributional feedback-induced changes in functional and dysfunctional attributions, expectations of success, hopefulness, and short-term persistence in a novel sport David Le Foll a,Ã , Olivier Rascle a , N.C. Higgins b a UFR APS Rennes, Universite´Rennes 2, France b Department of Psychology, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 5G3 Received 6 March 2006; received in revised form 17 January 2007; accepted 22 January 2007 Available online 12 February 2007 Abstract Objective: This experiment investigated the influence of functional and dysfunctional attributional feedback on causal attributions, expectations of success, emotions, and short-term persistence during failure in a novel sport. Methods: Thirty novice golfers who made either dysfunctional or functional attributions for failure in a pre-test were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups: (1) functional (i.e., internal, controllable, and unstable) attributional feedback; (2) dysfunctional (i.e., external, uncontrollable, and stable) attributional feedback; or (3) non-attributional feedback. Participants completed four test trials (all involving failure) consisting of six putts each. The feedback was administered after the second test trial. Results: Analysis of the pre- and post-intervention measures of attributions, expectations of success, affective reactions, and behavioral persistence revealed that the attributional feedback-induced changes related to the type of feedback. Functional attributional feedback produced improvements in causal attributions about failure, as well as in success expectations, hopefulness, and persistence after failure. In contrast, dysfunctional attributional feedback produced deterioration in causal attributions about failure, and lower success expectations, hopefulness, and persistence after failure. The effects of the attributional feedback overrode individuals’ initial functional or dysfunctional attributions about failure; that is, improvement or deterioration depended on the type of feedback received rather than the initial attributions. ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/psychsport 1469-0292/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2007.01.004 Ã Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: david_lefoll@yahoo.fr (D. Le Foll), olivier.rascle@uhb.fr (O. Rascle), nhiggins@stu.ca (N.C. Higgins).