The substitute teacher

One episode wherein Lisa experienced an emotional devastation is when she had a real special substitute teacher, Mr. Bergstrom. His teaching method was spontaneous and authentic which tremendously excited Lisa. For instance, Mr. Bergstrom arrived to class wearing a 1800s cowboy costume displaying several anachronisms that the children had to notice. Lisa saw right away that the belt that read “The State of Texas” was an anachronism because Texas was not yet a state.

When Mr. Bergstrom left, Lisa was devastated. According to the attribution theory, the cause of her devastation was uncontrollable because it was not the result of doing nor could she do anything about it. Lisa could not really take any action to reverse the course of events. Instead, she would do things like lashing out at her family who looked all the more unrefined as she compared her father, for instance, with the sophisticated Mr. Bergstrom. Therefore, the locus of control was external. The cause of her devastation was also a stable one because it was imminent that Lisa’s teacher would come back to school and Mr. Bergstrom would leave.