Ability, effort or luck? What is the secret of Elizabeth Harmon's successes and failures?

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In this post, I want to look at Elizabeth Harmon's success and failures from the perspective of the Attribution Theory.

According to the Attribution Theory, there are the following causes of success/failure (i.e., attributions): ability, effort, task difficulty, luck, and lack of knowledge. They share three common properties: locus, stability, and controllability. In regard to these properties, the aforementioned attributions can be categorized as internal/external (locus), stable/unstable (stability), and controllable/uncontrollable (controllability) (Weiner, 1985).

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At first, it seems that Beth Harmon relies solely on her own abilities and effort. In one of her interviews, she tells the journalist: "The board is the entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it. And it's predictable. So, if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame." Beth likes to think that she can control the outcome of her games. And the best way to control it for her is to master the knowledge and the skills.

We see Beth practicing and learning all the time. She reads chess magazines and replays games on the plane, in hotel rooms before and after her tournaments, and even in the spa salon where she goes with her adoptive mother. She never takes a break, constantly working on improving her skills. If she were to take one of the surveys, based on the Attribution Theory, she would score highly on ability and effort attributions. She believes that causes of her success (and failures) are internal and controllable. And most of the time stable. Until someone points out that her attributions are not as fixed as she thinks.

Beth is replaying her games in Cincinnati.

The first time Beth gets to doubt the causes of her failures is when Benny Watts point out a mistake in her game with Beltik. "Beltik could have bit me," - she says desperately to Alma. "But he didn't." "But he could have. I was so proud of myself when I found an error in a Morthy's game, and now someone's done it to me. So stupid!" This is the first time when Beth starts to think about looking at her games and finding alternative endgames.

"What are you reading?" "Pawn structure analysis." "Sounds exciting." "It is."

In Mexico, during Beth's first international championship, she spends all of her time in the hotel room and doesn't go out. Her adoptive mother tries to persuade her to take a break, and they have the following exchange:

– Tomorrow at 10 o'clock I play black against Octavio Marenco. He's 34 and an International Grandmaster. If I lose, we'll be paying for this trip out of capital. If I win, I'll be playing someone even better than Marenco in the afternoon. I need to study my endgame.

– You're what they call an intuitive player, are you not?

– Yes, I have been called that before. Sometimes, the moves come to me.

– I've noticed the moves they applaud the loudest are the ones you make rather quickly... Intuition can't be found in books. There's no player in the world as gifted as you are. 

Alma points out that Beth's success comes not only from her knowledge and abilities. She says that there is something more to victories. She calls it "intuition." It doesn't quite fit within Weiner's classification of attributions. Intuition is not luck. They are both mostly uncontrollable and unstable, but luck is external, and intuition is internal. Can we look at "intuition" as a kind of secondary control powers? Or maybe, yet another kind of power? In anyway, intuition plays a large part in Beth's success and it doesn't come only with practice. It needs to be inborn. As we learn from a dialogue between Beth and Beltik, very few players have it.

During her journey to Mexico, Beth loses her adoptive mother. Alma dies suddenly of hepatitis. Beth returns home alone. While she is walking around her empty house, she receives a call from an old friend. It is Harry Beltik. He is in town and he offers to bring some chess books over. He ends up staying with Beth and teaching her how to play even better. From their dialogues, we learn new things about Beth and her strategies in achieving her goals.

"I see players at tournaments after their games have finished, sitting there studying opening variation or middle-game strategy, endgame theory like it would have made a difference," - she says to Beltik. "Don't you ever study?" - he asks her surprised. "I analyze games. What actually happened, not what could have happened. And I play it by ear." This is the first time we hear from Beth that she actually DOES use her intuition (and maybe luck) when she plays.

Later, we see Beth and Beltik playing a game. "What was your plan?" - asks Beltik at the end of the game. "To beat you. I don't know what it was." "Exactly. You're still improvising." "I can beat Borgov with a little more work," - adds Beth confidently. "You can beat Borgov with a lot more work. Years more work," - disagrees Beltik. This is the first time Beth openly admits that she is not strategic in her games. She doesn't have a plan. What does she rely on? She relies on her knowledge and effort. She is also using her intuition. But she is not using them strategically.

Up to this point of the series, we see Beth relying on her internal knowledge and abilities. She doesn't receive any external feedback other than losing a game to Borgov. She needed someone to point this out to her in order to change the perception of her successes and failures and pick a new strategy in achieving her goals. Her goals grow bigger (e.g., bit the world champion, Borgov), and she needs new ways to achieve these goals. Changing her attributional patterns with the help of her friends is one of the ways which will lead her to a new level of mastery.

References

Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of  achievement motivation and emotion. Psychology Review, 92(4), 548–573. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.92.4.548