Liz Murray: Attribution

When Liz was in elementary school, she could easily get 100 on the test without going to school a lot. When the teacher asked how she did it, and she attributed her cause to reading The Encyclopedia at home. She loved reading, which was her internal attribution, and the results on her test encouraged her to continue reading. When her teacher told her that she got 100 on the test, she did not show much surprise or happiness on her face. Instead, she was very happy to show her neighbor Eva and her mother that she got a 100 on the test when she went home. Even though Liz was not accepted by her classmates, and she did not have any good friends at school, a good result brought her pride because she was affirmed by the score. Because she passed all the promotion exams in her elementary school years, I believe the attribution of loving reading is a stable and controllable reason. 

The love of reading formed her mastery approach goal and supported her long-term motivation to read. Throughout the whole movie, the only thing that Liz kept doing was reading. She always read whether she was at home, homeless, in the subway, or doing her part-time job. Besides the enjoyment of the reading, reading also brought her the emotion of gratitude and hope during her life. Throughout her life, her family did not take care of her, and she had to eat the food from the garbage to fulfill her hunger. She desired love from her parents; however, her dad did not care about her, and her mother was addicted to drugs and had no extra energy to show love to her. At school, Liz’s had no friends because they all thought she smelled stink. Finally, she got a friend in the middle school but left her very soon after her mother died. The loneliness always surrounded Liz in her growth, and reading provided her a certain degree of emotional comfort, so she held the gratitude for reading. Moreover, Liz knew that she needed to continue learning if she wanted to change her future, so reading also brought her the hope of having a bright life. 

When Liz accepted the New York Times scholarship, one person asked her how she did it, and she responded, “How could I not do this?! My parents showed me what the alternative is.” Liz attributed her success as an external, stable, and uncontrollable cause: because her family showed her the life that she did not want to be in, she chose to learn and use her own effort to get out of the situation that she was born in, and she wanted to see if she could make any changes with trying as hard as possible. Her parents’ situation brought Liz a short term of sadness and negative emotions because she did not grow in a loving family. She was raised this way, and she mentioned that any sense of security had pulled out from her, so she was forced to look forward. However, when she was asked if she could change anything, Liz said she would give it all back if she could have her family back. Even though her family was not a perfect family, even worse than an average family, she learned from her parents and appreciated all the love they tried to give her. She held gratitude to her family and the pity because she could not do anything to have her family back.