Introduction: The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between sociometric types, behavioral categories and self-attributions for academic failure ("Ability", "Effort" or "External Causes") in "Reading", "Mathematics" and "General". Method: The total sample was composed of 1349 Spanish adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16 years. Sociometric student identification was obtained using the "Socio" program, and the "Sydney Attribution Scale" (SAS; Marsh, 1984) was administered analyzing academic self-attributions. Results: Results show that students with negative peer nominations obtained significantly higher scores in attributing failure to "Ability" and "Effort" in "Reading", "Mathematics" and "General" than students nominated positively by their peers. Discussion and conclusions: Sociometric types were a significant predictor of self-attributions for academic failure, given that students who received negative peer nominations were more likely to attribute academic failure to internal causes like "Ability" and "Effort" than were those with positive nominations.