Post 6: Sheldon's competence: Internal, uncontrollable, and stable

    The Attribution Theory aims to explain people’s reasons of motivations and emotional outcomes. Depending on the outcomes being positive or negative, certain types of accompanying emotions arise as a result of life events. That is, if the life event is related to happiness, the following emotions could be pride, gratitude, hope, which were positive in nature. In contrast, if the life event has sadness and frustration in it, the emotional outcomes could be in the spectrum of anger, pity, guilt, and shame, which are regarded as negative. 
    

    Weiner’s attribution theory categorizes the reasons whether they are external or internal (locus of control), controllable or uncontrollable, and stable or unstable. Although the theory is somewhat outdated today in capturing more mixed emotions, it is still powerful in explaining basic human behavior and considered as seminal in the psychological research. Depending on contextual factors, the attributions can vary in between of these components. 

    Although it is fair to categorize Sheldon’s motivation and emotion into certain type of descriptive attributions, he seems to follow similar patterns in his life circumstances. If we were to look at his beliefs on his perceived-competence, it is stable, internal, and uncontrollable. 

It is stable because Sheldon has this belief that his competence is given to him and it is an innate talent that he has. Thus, it is not controllable and comes from inside. Accordingly, his perceived-competence is internal. This is a bit interesting in a sense that when most people think that they are talented and smart, they might tend to believe that they do not have to put so much effort in achieving tasks because it is within them rather than developing entity. But even though Sheldon seems to be firmly believing that his skills are inborn, God-given just like his mother believes, he spends most of his time in doing physics. evidently, starting from his childhood. His career choice is also aligned with his so-called "given" skills. Because he loves physics and his one of the biggest desires is to be the best physicist in the planet, he hold strong and intense emotions toward success and failures outcomes related to physics.

If he successfully completes a task about physics, he has so much pride. On the contrary, when he experiences a failure (recalling the competition that he lost) he has anger and shame. This is due to the firm belief that his competence was given, and the failure outcome almost does not make sense considering his high competence. More specially, because Sheldon attributes this negative outcome to an internal and uncontrollable cause. Consequently, he always tries to protect his identity with pride along with his high achievements in his career. His huge ego cannot take any failure for that matter and thus organically reveals the emotional side of Sheldon: Angry and more angry! We shall see if Sheldon would be able to change his fixed mindset on his perceived-competence and find a way to mitigate his emotional reactions in more productive directions.