Third, commitment rationales are the multiple possible self-explanations a person can
hold for their commitment to a given target, i.e., how one makes sense of or rationalizes their
commitment. According to Klein et al. (in press), an individual can have multiple rationales for a
particular commitment, those rationales can change over time, and may be conscious or
unconscious. Commitment rationales are in some ways analogous to attributions. Attributions
are not the performance itself but are the individual’s self-explanation for why they performed
the way they did (Weiner, 1985). Similar to attributions, commitment rationales may not reflect
the “objective” antecedents of commitment, yet those rationales still determine the individual’s
reactions and responses.