Achievement Motivation
- motivation: a psychological construct designed to explain why people vary in the amount of time, energy, and talent they invest in the tasks they confront
- we recognize motivation by observing behavior
- choice of behavior / direction
- willingness or eagerness to engage
- effort and persistence (grit)
- quality of cognitive engagement
- depth of processing
- Sample and Methodology
- Terms to Understand
- attributions: how people explain the causes of their stress and failure
- influence self-efficacy
- people naturally look for understanding of why events occur
- effort and ability are the most common attributions
- causal dimensions:
- locus of control
- internal: attribute factors to qualities about you
- external: attribute factors to something outside yourself
- stability: how will these factors change over time?
- personality is stable
- luck is unstable
- controllability: effort is controllable, personality isn’t
- achievement goals: focus on competence
- performance-approach: demonstrating high competence to self and others
- focus on looking good
- tend to have self-efficacy
- prefer tasks easy for self, hard for others
- avoid personally difficult tasks
- expend effort when it indicates high ability
- avoid effort when it indicates low ability
- when efficacy is in doubt students may shift to performance-avoidance
- performance-avoidance: avoiding demonstrating incompetence to self or others
- with high efficacy
- fear of failure
- exert high effort to avoid failure
- success brings relief but not satisfaction
- with low efficacy
- fear of failure
- self-handicapping: failing on purpose to avoid feeling bad
- avoid internal attributions for behavior
- learning goals: improving or increasing competence
- self-efficacy compared to others is not an issue
- prefer personally moderate challenge
- exert effort and persist
- use deep processing and self-regulation