Pattern: Students can blame a lot on outside factors such as environment or peers or something 'uncontrollable and external'. There are also internal and controllable factors such as who they hang out with or their own internal feelings of intelligence or effort. Students are more likely to put in effort if they attribute their good or bad performance to their effort. If students attribute their performance to effort they are more likely to be confident in their academic ability and challenge themselves even more.   

Cause: This is caused by their experiences and how they have affected them. Being around peers who aren't a good influence, can affect your motivation and learning. When it comes to effort, if they put in a lot of effort and good performance but fail, that is a big downfall in their self-esteem and a reason why they won't pursue their learning. Students tend to blame outside factors because the student wants to distance their own character from negative things like their failures.

Pattern: Having a fixed mindset leads to students exerting less effort. They believe their intelligence is fixed, and they cannot learn anything new. They are more focused on how others perceive them as smart or not. They don't recover well from setbacks. Generally, they don't like to put effort because it makes them look "dumb". On the other hand, a growth mindset helps students realize they can grow and learn new things through effort over time. (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Dweck, 1999, 2007) 

Cause: With a fixed mindset, the feeling of being helpless in the face of mistakes has a big impact. These students don't find failure or challenges as a learning opportunity; this is why they see themselves as dumb, and intelligence never changes. Situations that can lead to a fixed mindset are bad grades. For example,  if a student always gets below a 'C' they will get used to the bad grades and assume there is no point in putting effort if they always get the same grade with no change.

Pattern:  Low self-efficacy leads to learned helplessness. This happens when they lose motivation because they are so used to failure and they don't want to try anymore. If they don't believe in their academic ability, their motivation to apply effort lowers, so they don't bother trying. For example, a student who struggles with word problems might look at a long word problem with lots of numbers and decide to give up without even reading the whole thing because they keep telling themselves they are "bad" at word problems so there's no point in trying.  If this student had high self-efficacy, they might read the whole thing, break it down and even ask others for guidance. 

Cause: With no positive outcome, these students don't see any reason to continue in their learning. Their mistakes easily become their worst nightmare which causes them to think failure will always be the result. For instance, with a growth mindset, instead of seeing mistakes as a learning opportunity, their self-esteem lowers, and so does their motivation. Peers are also a reason for low self-efficacy due to negative encounters that have a long-lasting effect on their learning.