ADVANCES IN MOTIVATION AND ACHIEVEMENT Series Editors: Timothy C. Urdan and Stuart A. Karabenick Series Editor for Volumes 1–15: Martin L. Maehr Recent Volumes: Volume 10: Volume 11: Volume 12: Volume 13:
Volume 14: Volume 15:
Advances in Motivation and Achievement – Edited by Martin L. Maehr and Paul R. Pintrich The Role of Context: Contextual Influences on Motivation – Edited by Timothy C. Urdan New Directions in Measures and Methods – Edited by Paul R. Pintrich and Martin L. Maehr Motivating Students, Improving Schools: The Legacy of Carol Midgley – Edited by Paul R. Pintrich and Martin L. Maehr Motivation and Religion – Edited by Martin L. Maehr and Stuart A. Karabenick Social Psychological Perspectives – Edited by Martin L. Maehr, Stuart A. Karabenick and Timothy C. Urdan
ADVANCES IN MOTIVATION AND ACHIEVEMENT VOLUME 16A
THE DECADE AHEAD: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MOTIVATION AND ACHIEVEMENT EDITED BY
TIMOTHY C. URDAN Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA
STUART A. KARABENICK Combined Program in Education and Psychology, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China
Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2010 Copyright r 2010 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact:
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Awarded in recognition of Emerald’s production department’s adherence to quality systems and processes when preparing scholarly journals for print
This one is for Frank
CONTENTS LI ST OF CONTRIBUTORS
ix
PREFACE
xi
SE LF-EFFICACY IN EDUCATIONAL SETT INGS: RECENT RESEARCH AND EME RG ING DIRECT IONS Roberl M. Klassen and Ellen L. Usher
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EXPECTANCY-VALUE THEORY: RETROSPECT IVE AND PROSPECT IVE Allan Wigfield alld Jellfla Cambria
UP AROUND T HE BEND: FORECASTS FOR ACHIEVEMENT GOAL THEORY AND RESEARCH IN 2020 Chris S. H ulfemeJII alld Corwin Sellko
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIVE M INT-TH EOR IES OF SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY: AN HI STOR ICAL OVERV IEW , EMERGING TRENDS, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Matll'l ell Vmlsleellkisle, Chris lOphel' P. Niemiec alld Barr Soellell s
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SE LF-CONCEPT AS PERSONS' UNDERSTANDING AND EVALUATION OF THEI R OWN ACTIONS AND EXPER IENCES: LOOKI NG BACKWARD AND FORWARD FROM WHERE WE ARE
167
Jack Marlill
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IMPLICIT MOTIVES: CURRENT TOPICS AND FUTURE DIRECT IONS Olive!" C. ScJlllllheiss, Andreas G. Rii~c", Maika Ra ll'o/le. Anllelle Kordik and Sracie Graham INTEREST IN THE DYNA MICS OF TASK BEHAVIOR: PROCESSES THAT LI NK PERSO N AND TASK IN EFFECT IVE LEARN ING Mary Ainley
CONTENTS
/ 99
235
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Mary Ainley
University of Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Jenna Cambria
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Stacie Graham
Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, Germany
Chris S. Hulleman
James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA
Robert M. Klassen
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Annette Kordik
Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, Germany
Jack Martin
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Christopher P. Niemiec University of Rochester, NY, USA Maika Rawolle
Technical University, Munich, Germany
Andreas G. Ro¨sch
Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, Germany
Oliver C. Schultheiss
Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, Germany
Corwin Senko
State University of New York, New Paltz, NY, USA
Bart Soenens
Gent University, Belgium
Ellen L. Usher
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
Maarten Vansteenkiste Gent University, Belgium Allan Wigfield
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA ix
PREFACE The continuous outpouring of studies from motivation researchers begs for a periodic taking of stock, as well as prognostications about future directions in the field. The dawning of a new decade presents a worthwhile opportunity for such a reflective examination. This volume, the 16th in the Advances in Motivation and Achievement series, published in 2010, offers this reflection on where we stand and where we are going as a scientific discipline in the decade ahead. Volume 16 is divided into two books. This, the first book, Part A, contains 7 chapters that focus on the most of the major theoretical orientations that have guided research on motivation and achievement over the last 30 years. This field is distinguished by several theoretical orientations, and many of them (expectancy-value theory, self-determination theory, self-efficacy research from social-cognitive theory, achievement goal theory) are included. The second book of Volume 16, Part B, focuses on connections among motivation constructs and other constructs, contextual influences on motivation, and applications of motivation research for classrooms and educational policy. The contributors represented in the two books are all either emerging or established leaders in their respective subdisciplines in motivation science research, and they represent several countries including the United States, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, and Australia. Chapters in this first book of Volume 16, which spotlight major theories of motivation, are designed to accomplish three objectives: describe the general theoretical framework, summarize the current state of knowledge that has been generated by research using that theoretical lens, and prognosticate about where research guided by that theoretical framework is likely to progress in the second decade of the 21st century. The book begins with a chapter that reviews research and theory on self-efficacy by Robert Klassen and Ellen Usher (Chapter 1). In this chapter, Klassen and Usher consider both self- and collective-efficacy. After reviewing the definition and effects of these constructs, they consider the role of efficacy beliefs in educational settings. In Chapter 2, Allan Wigfield and Jenna Cambria review research conducted within the expectancy-value framework. The third chapter, authored by Chris Hulleman and Corwin Senko, takes a critical look at research on achievement goals. In their review, they argue that the xi
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PREFACE
achievement goal construct has suffered from a lack of conceptual and measurement clarity, thereby obfuscating the conclusions of achievement goal research. Also included in this book is an extended consideration of the roots and future directions of Self-Determination Theory by Maarten Vansteenkiste, Christopher Niemiec, and Bart Soenens (Chapter 4). In this chapter, the authors consider the five mini-theories that have informed the evolution of SDT, and offer a list of suggestions for future directions in this field. This chapter is followed by Jack Martin’s critique of research in the area of selfconcept (Chapter 5). Martin offers a fascinating historical overview of the concept of self to highlight problems in the definition and measurement of self-concept. Martin describes the tension between those who advocate advances in methodology versus those who argue for fundamental changes in the conceptualization of self-concept as solutions to these problems. Oliver Schultheiss and his colleagues then review research and theory on implicit motives (Chapter 6). Although most of the motivation research over the last three decades has focused on the cognitive, conscious beliefs and goals that affect behavior, humans are also influenced by factors beneath the level of awareness. These implicit motives are reviewed by Schultheiss and his colleagues. In the final chapter, Mary Ainley provides a close examination of the construct of interest (Chapter 7). Using a dynamic systems theory perspective, Ainley first reviews the state of the research on interest and then considers how contextual factors combine with the self-system to influence situational and longer-term interest. To rephrase the rationale that prompted this volume, sometimes research on motivation and achievement can feel like a runaway train. Scores of studies are published each year, representing a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Even the most diligent scholar can quickly become overwhelmed by the volume of studies and ideas. The two books in this edition of the Advances in Motivation and Achievement series is designed to slow the train down just long enough to take stock of where we are and where we might be headed.
SELF-EFFICACY IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS: RECENT RESEARCH AND EMERGING DIRECTIONS Robert M. Klassen and Ellen L. Usher Without question, our beliefs shape our behavior, and although skills and knowledge provide the tools for success in educational settings, the beliefs we hold about our capabilities to use these tools can make the difference between success and failure. In a recent interview, self-efficacy researcher Frank Pajares noted, ‘‘We are, to a very great extent, the very beliefs we carry inside our heads’’ (Bembenutty, 2007, p. 665), and one hundred years before that, William James wrote to Helen Keller, ‘‘The great world, the background, in all of us, is the world of our beliefs. That is the world of permanencies and immensities’’ (James, 1908, p. 135). Since Albert Bandura’s introduction of the theory of self-efficacy in 1977, researchers in virtually every domain of social science have explored the role selfefficacy beliefs play in influencing people’s behaviors. Self-efficacy, defined as ‘‘beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments’’ (Bandura, 1997, p. 3), has been shown to be a crucial factor associated with educational success, not just for students, but for teachers; and not only at the individual level, but at the group or collective level. In educational settings, self-efficacy beliefs provide the underpinning for motivation, well-being, and achievement and ‘‘are rooted in the core belief that one has the power to effect changes by one’s actions’’ (Bandura, 2004, The Decade Ahead: Theoretical Perspectives on Motivation and Achievement Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Volume 16A, 1–33 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0749-7423/doi:10.1108/S0749-7423(2010)000016A004
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p. 622). Unless students and teachers believe that their actions can produce desired outcomes, they have little incentive to act or to persevere in the face of difficulties. The factors that influence behavior are embedded in the belief that one has the capability to accomplish that behavior. Typically, people will choose to engage in activities that they value and in which they feel competent, and avoid activities that are not valued or in which they perceive a lack of competence. This is particularly critical in educational settings, where teaching and learning are dependent on surmounting a host of doubtinducing intellectual, social, and motivational challenges. Self-efficacy beliefs provide students with the needed impetus to master learning activities and academic subjects and also provide teachers with the staying power needed to motivate students and promote learning, even in the most difficult settings. Although self-efficacy research in educational settings is a vibrant and growing field, few attempts have been made to systematically document the focus of the research, or to address problems that have traditionally hampered research progress. In this chapter, we review selfefficacy research conducted in educational settings from 2000 to 2009 and highlight five promising directions for future research.
SELF-EFFICACY AND SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY For half a century, psychologist Albert Bandura has worked to advance a cognitive interactional model of human functioning that emphasizes the role of cognitive and symbolic representations as central processes in human adaptation and change. In his seminal 1977 publication, Bandura emphasized that these representations – visualized actions and outcomes stemming from reflective thought – form the basis from which individuals assess their personal efficacy. An efficacy belief, he contended, is the ‘‘conviction that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce the outcomes’’ one desires (p. 193). Efficacy beliefs serve as the primary means by which people are able to exercise a measure of control over their lives. During the next two decades, Bandura (1986, 1997) advanced his social cognitive theory, in which people are viewed as selforganizing, proactive, self-reflecting, and self-regulating rather than as solely reactive organisms, products of environmental or concealed inner influences. From this agentic perspective, people are seen as contributors to their life circumstances, not just recipients of them. In this way, people are ‘‘partial architects of their own destinies’’ (Bandura, 1997, p. 8).
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According to Bandura (1997), self-efficacy is created and altered as a result of the interpretations people make of efficacy-relevant information from four primary sources. First, and most powerful, are individuals’ interpretations of their mastery experiences, or previous successful experiences. In educational settings, the successes students experience typically build their self-efficacy whereas failure experiences undermine it. Mastery experiences are most powerful in building self-efficacy when the tasks at hand are challenging and valued. Observation of successful others, or vicarious experience, also influences self-efficacy. In school activities, immediate performance feedback is not readily available, and appraisals of capabilities in relation to others’ attainments provide valuable information about one’s relative competence. Individuals are particularly sensitive to the performances of social models who they perceive share similar characteristics with them (e.g., gender, race, age). A third source of self-efficacy – social persuasion – serves as an additional source of self-efficacy. Students who are persuaded verbally that they are capable of carrying out academic tasks display effort and perseverance, at least temporarily, when faced with challenging tasks. Finally, people’s confidence in their capabilities is influenced by their physiological and affective states when undertaking challenging activities. Individuals interpret various indicators of stress, anxiety, and fatigue when evaluating their capabilities to handle everyday challenges. A student encountering a new activity may interpret bodily states of sweating, tensing, or trembling as indicative of a lack of competence to carry out that task, and may be less likely to engage in that activity. Information from these four sources is not inherently enlightening without close consideration of whether individuals view an event as diagnostic of their ability. Changes in self-efficacy occur only when people cognitively interpret information from each of the sources described above. In fact, appraisal the sources of self-efficacy is not well understood but is believed to involve an interpretive process in which an individual sifts through a multitude of often-contradictory stimuli and selectively chooses and weighs selected factors. Thus, in educational settings, there is no onesize-fits-all approach to building self-efficacy through providing prescribed sources of self-efficacy information to students. Social cognitive theory marks human functioning as the product of a dynamic interplay of personal, behavioral, and environmental influences. These factors exert their influence through a process of reciprocal determinism, by which (a) personal factors in the form of cognition, affect, and biological events, (b) behavior, and (c) environmental influences interact
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(Bandura, 1986). In this view of human functioning, the beliefs that people hold about themselves are critical elements in the exercise of control and personal agency. In this process of triadic reciprocality, individuals are able to serve both as products and as producers of their own environments, their social systems, and their behaviors. Therefore, social cognitive theory is rooted in a view of human functioning in which individuals are agents, proactively engaged in their own personal and social development. The selfbeliefs people hold enable them to exercise a measure of control over their thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Collective Efficacy and Social Cognitive Theory Few humans live their lives in isolation. In many settings, people work together in groups where they develop shared beliefs about their capabilities and common aspirations to better their lives. A group’s shared beliefs about its capabilities to carry out a desired course of action, or collective efficacy, is believed to be an emergent property that forms as groups interact. Collective efficacy plays a critical role in school settings. Kurt Lewin (1943) commented, ‘‘all education is group work’’ (p. 115), and in modern school settings, teachers work collectively to influence students, and students work together not only in class groups but in a variety of temporary groups with fluctuating members. In fact, the development of group work skills has been deemed so important that policy makers in some jurisdictions have mandated that students be given the opportunity to work together in small learning groups (Webb & Mastergeorge, 2003). Research has generally supported the relationship between collective efficacy beliefs and group performance in adults and has shown that adult groups’ motivation beliefs develop through shared experiences and tend to stabilize over time (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006). In spite of widespread agreement on the importance of collective interaction and motivation in schools, almost all collective efficacy research in educational settings has focused on teachers’ beliefs, and very little attention has been paid to understanding the collective efficacy beliefs of children and adolescents. Some have argued that self-efficacy is more relevant in western individualist contexts, whereas collective efficacy is a more important motivating factor in nonwestern collectivist settings, but individual and collective endeavors are common features in all cultural settings. In collectivist settings, much weight is placed on individual attainment, albeit often in the service of the in-group or collective. Likewise, in predominantly
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings: Recent Research and Emerging Directions
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individualist settings, much importance is placed on the work conducted by people working in groups. For example, in educational settings, individual performance in teaching is acknowledged and encouraged despite the fact that schools are collective units comprising individuals who work together for student success. Hence, self- and collective efficacy are equally applicable to human functioning in collectivistically oriented societies as well as individualistically oriented ones.
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings Reviews of self-efficacy research have highlighted the ways in which selfefficacy beliefs powerfully influence people’s attainments in diverse fields. Investigations of self-efficacy have been prominent in educational contexts, where researchers have established that self-efficacy is an excellent predictor of academic motivation and achievement. Results of investigations conducted over the last 30 years have demonstrated that students’ beliefs about their academic capabilities powerfully predict a wide range of academic behaviors (see Bandura, 1997; Pajares & Urdan, 2006; Schunk, 1995). Even well over a decade ago, Graham and Weiner (1996) concluded that self-efficacy has proven to be a more consistent predictor of academic outcomes than have any other motivation constructs. This is in part because self-efficacy initiates and sustains motivation, and enhances the development of academic skills (Schunk, 1991). Self-efficacy also influences cognitive development and functioning through its activation of cognitive, motivational, affective, and selection processes. In general, researchers have reported that, consistent with Bandura’s (1997) contentions, self-efficacy beliefs help determine how much effort students will expend on an academic task or activity, how long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will be in the face of adverse situations. Efficacy beliefs engender effort, persistence, and resilience, by which they can powerfully influence the level of accomplishment that one ultimately achieves. In his review of almost 20 years of self-efficacy research, Pajares (1996) concluded that self-efficacy researchers focused their attention on two primary academic areas: linking efficacy beliefs with college major and career choice, and exploring the relationships among self-efficacy, other psychological constructs, and academic achievement. Findings from the first two decades of research supported the multiple roles played by efficacy beliefs: mathematics self-efficacy predicted mathematics interest and course
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selection for undergraduates; academic self-efficacy mediated the effects of skill levels or other self-beliefs on academic performance; and academic selfefficacy levels influenced persistence, self-regulatory strategies, and effort in students, regardless of their ability level. Pajares also demonstrated that the degree of influence of self-efficacy on achievement varied according to the level of specificity and correspondence with the outcome or criterial task: when self-efficacy beliefs corresponded closely with the task, prediction was enhanced; when self-efficacy was measured using a generalized or global measure, and was mismatched with the criterial task, the magnitude of prediction waned. Previous studies have shown that self-efficacy influences self-regulatory processes such as goal setting, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and strategy use (see Zimmerman, 2002; Zimmerman & Cleary, 2006, for reviews). Academically confident students embrace more challenging goals, engage in more effective self-regulatory strategies, and persist longer than do those who lack confidence in their academic capabilities. High levels of selfefficacy influence the academic persistence necessary to maintain high academic achievement for university students enrolled in science and engineering courses (see Hackett, 1995). Pintrich and DeGroot (1990) suggested that self-efficacy facilitates cognitive engagement such that raising self-efficacy likely leads to higher achievement by increasing use of cognitive strategies. Students who believe they have the means for performing successfully are apt to feel efficacious about doing so. As the auspicious cycle goes, students work on tasks and apply strategies, they note their progress, and their self-efficacy beliefs are in turn strengthened. In their metaanalysis on self-efficacy, Multon, Brown, and Lent (1991) found that self-efficacy was positively related to academic outcomes, and this relationship was stronger for high school and college students than for elementary students. Effect sizes were stronger in studies in which researchers developed self-efficacy measures that were congruent with performance indexes. In a metaanalysis focused on self-efficacy in vocational settings, Stajkovic and Luthans (1998) found that the average weighted correlation between self-efficacy and work-related performance was (G)r ¼ .38, which transforms to a 28% gain in performance explained by self-efficacy. Correlations between self-efficacy and academic performances in investigations in which self-efficacy corresponds closely to outcomes have ranged from .49 to .70; direct effects in path analytic studies have ranged from b ¼ .349 to .545 (Pajares & Schunk, 2001). Self-efficacy explains approximately 25% of the variance in the prediction of behavioral and academic outcomes when instructional variables are controlled.
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings: Recent Research and Emerging Directions
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Self-efficacy is responsive to changes in instructional experiences and plays a causal role in students’ development and use of academic competencies (Schunk, 1995). Most research suggests that self-efficacy is strongly predictive of academic performance; in fact, it is typically as good a predictor of academic success as previous achievement or mental ability (Pajares & Kranzler, 1995). Some critics have suggested that efficacy beliefs are mere reflections of current abilities, rather than causal factors that motivate human functioning. In school settings, critics contend, high-performing students naturally hold higher self-efficacy beliefs than low-performing students because beliefs mirror past performance. This may often be the case, but social cognitive theorists have long shown the shortsightedness of this line of thinking. Beliefs in one’s personal efficacy provide a motivating force to help people through the many challenges that come their way. As Bandura (1989) has argued, ‘‘If self-efficacy beliefs always reflected only what people could do routinely, they would rarely fail but they would not mount the extra effort needed to surpass their ordinary performances’’ (p. 1177). In other words, educators should not hope for a perfect correlation between students’ selfefficacy and performance, but rather that self-efficacy slightly exceeds one’s current ability level (Bandura, 1997). Indeed, researchers who have artificially manipulated self-efficacy beliefs have found that students with artificially heightened self-efficacy beliefs set higher goals for themselves are more efficient problem-solvers, and display superior performance compared to students with equal ability but artificially depressed self-efficacy beliefs (e.g., Bouffard-Bouchard, 1990). Clearly, self-efficacy’s influence is not limited to academic achievement. As we have mentioned, people’s efficacy beliefs partly influence what challenges they undertake, how much effort they expend, how long they persevere when confronted with challenges, and how they view failures (Bandura, 1997). Readers can easily conjure up the sad image of a capable student who, despite her strong academic record, is plagued by a persistent self-doubt. Such perceived inefficacy can have devastating consequences for the student’s subsequent academic and career choices, and, hence, the course her life takes. Self-efficacy operates as both a direct and indirect influence on behavior. As a direct motivator, self-efficacy increases effort, persistence, and eventually, achievement. For example, a student with high self-efficacy for writing will be more likely to initiate work on a challenging essay than a student wracked with doubts about his writing capabilities. Findings from recent research show that students with higher self-efficacy to organize and
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monitor their learning are less likely to delay important tasks (Klassen, Krawchuk, & Rajani, 2008). In other words, self-efficacy beliefs directly motivate constructive academic behavior. Self-efficacy also operates in an indirect fashion on academic behaviors by influencing emotions (like anxiety) and outcome expectancies that operate reciprocally to influence motivated behaviors. Students with low initial expectations for success may find their anxiety decreasing and their expectations rising as their confidence in their capabilities rises from academic successes, verbal persuasion, and observation of successful others. The student who doubts his capabilities may avoid challenging tasks, whereas the student with high self-efficacy to complete the task is more likely to engage in the task and display successful performance.
Challenges in Self-Efficacy Measurement Previous reviewers have noted persistent difficulties in self-efficacy research. For example, Pajares (1996) noted that self-efficacy research was ‘‘plagued’’ by a range of measurement problems (p. 547). He warned that unless researchers followed theoretical guidelines in devising self-efficacy measures, problems with a lack of specificity of measurement and correspondence with criterial tasks would result in an atheoretical measurement of broad attitudes about general capabilities that shares only a passing resemblance to self-efficacy. Henson (2002) expressed similar concern about measurement dilemmas in teacher self-efficacy research. In particular, he argued that problems of construct validity caused by a ‘‘foreclosure on instrument development before sufficient validation of scores across studies was evidenced’’ (p. 147). In their reviews of writing self-efficacy research, both Klassen (2002a) and Pajares (2003) reported gender differences in writing self-efficacy, but mentioned continuing measurement problems in the research. More recently, Usher and Pajares (2008b) have pointed to serious measurement problems in studies assessing the hypothesized sources of selfefficacy. Other critical reviews in the last decade have examined such diverse areas as the efficacy beliefs of preservice reading teachers (Haverback & Parault, 2008), computer self-efficacy (Moos & Azevedo, 2009), and the selfefficacy beliefs of students with learning disabilities (Klassen, 2002b). Although empirical research and reviews of research are proliferating, the field lacks a stocktaking in which the directions and domains of recent selfefficacy research are catalogued, and the persistent problems are examined.
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Goals of Current Chapter The broad goal of this chapter is to review self-efficacy research in educational settings over the last 10 years. The specific goals of the chapter include identifying trends and patterns in the research, examining the status of measurement of the construct, and highlighting promising avenues for future research. In order to achieve our goal, we conducted a two-phase review of self-efficacy research, with the first phase providing a description of self-efficacy research conducted in a wide range of education and psychology research journals, and the second phase focusing on an examination of the measurement of efficacy beliefs. Research investigating self-efficacy in educational settings has grown tremendously over the last few decades, but there has been little attempt to systematically examine the methodology used, the characteristics of participants in self-efficacy studies, the domains of focus of self-efficacy research, or the theoretical fidelity of the measures used to carry out the investigations. The exploration of self-efficacy in this chapter is restricted to educational settings, where self-efficacy has been described as ‘‘an essential motive to learn’’ (Zimmerman, 2000) and recognized as the key belief for the exercise of control and personal agency (Bandura, 1997).
LOOKING BACK: A SNAPSHOT OF SELF-EFFICACY RESEARCH IN THE LAST DECADE In this section, we report the findings from a review of self- and collective efficacy research reported in educational psychology and educational research journals from 2000 to 2009. The review was conducted to answer three questions: How, where, and with whom has self- and collective efficacy research been conducted over the last decade? To answer these questions, we conducted a comprehensive review aimed at painting a picture of the last decade of self- and collective efficacy research. We agreed upon several a priori criteria to delimit our initial search for relevant studies. First, we limited our search to publications in peerreviewed journals accessible through Web of Science and PsycINFO, two databases commonly used in education research. We searched all English language journals that fell under the Web of Science category of ‘‘Education/Educational Research’’ or ‘‘Educational Psychology’’ and under the PsycINFO category of ‘‘Education’’ or ‘‘Psychiatry and Psychology.’’ This rendered 165 journals.
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Second, we searched within each journal for any articles that included the word ‘‘efficacy’’ in the title. We beg our readers’ indulgence here for a brief but important semantic parenthesis. Some researchers have incorrectly used the terms ‘‘efficacy’’ and ‘‘self-efficacy’’ interchangeably. The term ‘‘efficacy’’ is defined as the capacity or power to produce a desired effect (e.g, the efficacy of a treatment; an efficacious instructional method). Bandura (1977) put forth the term ‘‘self-efficacy’’ to refer to people’s beliefs in their efficacy, that is, their beliefs in their capability to perform a given task. Terms such as ‘‘efficacy beliefs,’’ ‘‘perceptions of efficacy,’’ and ‘‘collective efficacy beliefs’’ are germane to Bandura’s definition; ‘‘efficacy’’ by itself, however, is not, as it suggests competence or effectiveness rather than perceived capabilities. We would like to emphasize that our decision to search for the word ‘‘efficacy’’ rather than ‘‘self-efficacy’’ was only so as to query as many studies as possible that may have used titles with alternate phrasing (e.g., ‘‘perceptions of efficacy,’’ ‘‘teaching efficacy,’’ and ‘‘collective efficacy’’). We were careful to select only those studies that used the term ‘‘efficacy’’ as it pertains to beliefs of efficacy, whether personal or collective. We believe that limiting our search to the articles’ titles increases the likelihood that the studies selected featured efficacy beliefs as a central construct. Last, we selected only those articles pertaining to education and learning, broadly defined. Based on the above criteria, we selected 244 articles from 65 journals (see next section for a list of journals that most often featured self-efficacy studies). For each study, we recorded the following information: authors, year, journal, subject area in which the study was conducted, country of origin of the sample, sample description (e.g., sample size, level), methodology/design used, and domain in which self-efficacy was measured. For the sake of space, we elected neither to include a comprehensive table of these findings nor to include all 244 articles in reference. Rather, we have tried to summarize our returns in a manner we hope readers will find more digestible.
Design and Methodology Typically Used in Studies of Self-Efficacy Of the self-efficacy articles we reviewed, 82% were quantitative studies and 4% were qualitative (see Table 1). Another 7% of the studies employed a mixed-methods approach, and 7% of the articles were not empirical in nature (i.e., conceptual papers or literature reviews). Survey methods dominated the research: more than 90% of studies investigating self-efficacy
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings: Recent Research and Emerging Directions 11
Table 1.
Methodology and Sample Sizes Used in Self-Efficacy Studies Conducted from 2000 to 2009.
Design/Methodology
Frequency
% of All Studies
Mean Sample Size
Median Sample Size
Quantitative Qualitative Mixed methods Conceptual/review
199 10 18 17
82 4 7 6
692 9 269 n/a
278 10 43 n/a
Survey Phased/longitudinal Experimental/quasiexperimental
206 57 41
91 25 18
673 389 177
269 176 88
Note: Studies were counted as ‘‘phased/longitudinal’’ if self-efficacy data were gathered at more than one time point.
relied on surveys and questionnaires to gather data from participants. We were encouraged to see that a growing number of researchers have employed multiphased designs (i.e., collected data from several cohorts across time) or have taken a longitudinal approach (n ¼ 57). Fewer have conducted experimental studies (n ¼ 41), but this number may reflect the fact that most studies of self-efficacy in the educational sphere have taken place in natural settings that make experimentation more difficult. Studies of selfefficacy have been characterized by a relatively large sample size compared with much educational research. Samples sizes across the studies ranged from 1 to 32,968 (median sample size for quantitative studies, N ¼ 278).
Sample Characteristics The empirical studies reviewed were carried out in 27 different national contexts on six continents (see Fig. 1). Nevertheless, the majority of studies were carried out within the USA (58%), with major non-American representation from China (6%), Taiwan (5%), Canada (5%), and Australia (4%). Only six (2%) of the studies were conducted in more than one national context. Participants in the studies reviewed were K-12 students (31%), university students (27%), school personnel (41%), and other adults (4%). Table 2 summarizes the nature of the participants by subgroups. As indicated, most of the self-efficacy studies conducted in the past decade have featured teachers or teachers-in-training.
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Fig. 1. Self-Efficacy Studies Conducted from 2000 to 2009 by Continent of Study Participants. Note: Five studies were intercontinental and were counted under all participating continents. Studies are taken from English language journals only.
Domains of Study We used two methods to verify the domain of investigation of the studies reviewed. We coded each study for its general domain of investigation and for the domain in which self-efficacy was measured. Because these two domains were almost always similar, we present one table summarizing the general domain of investigation (see Table 3). As noted, studies featuring the efficacy beliefs of school personnel were by far most prevalent in our search, making up 36% of all studies reviewed. These were followed by studies conducted in the general domain of academic learning (17%) and those conducted in the area of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM; 17%), where most studies (n ¼ 18) were focused on technology use. Fewer studies focused on the humanities, the bulk of which were conducted in the area of writing. Studies pertaining to physical and psychological health and career choice followed.
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Table 2.
Participants in Self-Efficacy Studies Conducted from 2000–2009.
Study Sample Included y K-12 students Elementary school students (Grade K-5) Middle school students (Grade 6–8) High school students (Grade 9–12) University students Undergraduate students Graduate students School personnel Preservice teachers Elementary school teachers Middle school teachers High school teachers Teachers (level unspecified) Early interventionists School administrators Other Parents Other adults
Frequency
% of All Studies
71 27 33 30 61 57 8 94 36 33 19 28 13 1 5 10 5 5
31 12 15 13 27 25 4 41 16 15 8 12 6 0 2 4 2 2
Note: Studies that included samples from multiple categories are counted under all relevant categories, with the exception of preservice teachers, who were not doubly counted as undergraduate or graduate students. For this reason, summed subgroup scores do not equal larger group scores.
The domains and target populations in which efficacy beliefs were measured generally followed this pattern. The self-efficacy beliefs of teachers were measured most often, followed by students’ academic self-efficacy, students’ and teachers’ collective efficacy beliefs, students’ self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, and teachers’ and students’ computer self-efficacy. It bears noting that 10 studies used a general self-efficacy measure, which did not specify an academic context or specific tasks. As we will point out later, such a measure is of little use in predicting specific academic outcomes. In addition to the search described above, we conducted an exploratory search of the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database for the term ‘‘efficacy’’ (used in the sense described above) in manuscript titles. We limited this search to English-language papers but did not specify the academic discipline. Because of the overwhelming results, we counted only those dissertations and theses produced during the 2008 calendar year. This search rendered an impressive 238 dissertations and theses, a number that
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Table 3.
Domains of Focus Across Self-Efficacy Studies Conducted from 2000 to 2009.
Study Domain of Focus General academics Academic – general Self-regulated learning Humanities Communications Language arts – general Literacy and reading Writing Second language learning Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) STEM – general Mathematics Statistics Science Technology, internet, and computing Physical and psychological health Adjustment to college Aggression, bullying, victimization Coping Health and nutrition Physical activity and sports Other domains Career Business Medical school Memory Measurement of self-efficacy Sources of self-efficacy Teaching General teaching Collective efficacy Teaching with technology Teaching language & literacy Teaching science Teaching physical education/sports School administrators
Frequency
% of All Studies
41 35 6 21 2 2 2 11 4 41 2 13 2 6 18 17 2 4 3 3 5 19 8 2 2 2 3 2 96 60 12 7 4 7 4 2
17
9
17
7
8
36
Note: Only domains with two or more studies are listed. Only one study reflected the following domains: collective efficacy beliefs for learning in groups, social studies, psychology, school climate, early intervention, character education, and engineering.
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we think suggests that research on the important role of efficacy beliefs is thriving both in the educational sphere and across diverse domains of human functioning. We want to close this snapshot by acknowledging two important limitations inherent in the search method we selected here. First, recall that we limited our search to articles that included the word ‘‘efficacy’’ in the title. Using a topic search rather than a title search would have yielded at least twice as many studies on self-efficacy, which could have painted a different profile of the self-efficacy studies conducted in the past decade. For example, a Web of Science title search for ‘‘efficacy’’ in Teaching and Teacher Education and Contemporary Educational Psychology, the two journals from which we found the most articles in this search, yielded 30 and 23 hits, respectively. A topic search for ‘‘efficacy’’ in these journals yielded 58 and 59 hits. Clearly, much more research on self-efficacy has been done than what we have reflected here. Second, our search was limited to journals categorized by Web of Science and PsycINFO as falling within the domain of Education and Psychology. We know of other reputable outlets in which self-efficacy articles have been published that could reveal different patterns than those used here. Alas, we feel confident that the present snapshot offered is just that, a snapshot of where self-efficacy research has traveled within the last 10 years. We feel certain that this review generally mirrors what would be found by a more comprehensive search.
REVIEW OF MEASUREMENT OF SELF- AND COLLECTIVE EFFICACY Valid measurement is a keystone of scientific inquiry; problems with measurement hamper progress in knowledge building and in practical application of research findings. Unfortunately, measurement problems plagued self-efficacy research in its first two decades (see Pajares, 1996; Henson, 2002; Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy, & Hoy, 1998). The key features that differentiate self-efficacy from other self-constructs have been described clearly and often, and a variety of authors have provided explicit directions for constructing valid self-efficacy measures. Pajares (1996), for example, provided instructions about constructing measures with an eye to the specificity, correspondence, and generality of self-efficacy beliefs. Bandura (1997) contrasted the role of self-efficacy beliefs with the role played by preexisting skills: ‘‘Perceived self-efficacy is not a measure of the
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skills one has but a belief about what one can do under different sets of conditions with whatever skills one possesses’’ (p. 37), and ‘‘items (on selfefficacy scales) are phrased in terms of can do rather than will do. Can is a judgment of capability; will is a statement of intention’’ (p. 43, italics in original). In their conceptual review of self-belief research, Bong and Skaalvik (2003) noted that academic self-concept is concerned largely with perceived competence and ‘‘knowledge and perceptions about oneself in achievement situations’’ (p. 10), whereas self-efficacy focuses on perceived confidence and ‘‘convictions for successfully performing given academic tasks at designated levels’’ (p. 10). Bandura has long provided interested researchers with a Guide for Constructing Self-Efficacy Scales, which was published in a recent edited book, Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents (see Bandura, 2006). His guide warns against generalized self-efficacy measures with ‘‘items cast in general terms divorced from the situational demands and circumstances’’ (p. 307). The use of valid measurements of self-efficacy is critical for ongoing health of the field, and examining the degree of theoretical and measurement fidelity gives current and future researchers an idea of the current condition of self-efficacy research.
Examining the Measurement of Self-Efficacy: 2000–2009 To examine whether and how researchers have responded to the cautions and dictums provided by past reviews, cautions, and guidelines, we analyzed a cross-section of research from the last decade. From our general review of self-efficacy research described above, we targeted journals that published at least 10 self-efficacy (or collective efficacy) articles in 2000–2009. We chose journals that published the greatest number of self-efficacy articles in order to understand how authors who published in the most active self-efficacy research outlets measured self-efficacy. Seven journals met this criterion (the number of articles with ‘‘efficacy’’ in title is in parentheses): Teaching and Teacher Education (28), Contemporary Educational Psychology (21), Educational Psychology (14), Educational and Psychological Measurement (13), Journal of Educational Psychology (12), Computers & Education (10), and Journal of Educational Research (10), for a total of 109 articles. Initial analysis revealed that 15 of the articles did not include a self-efficacy measure (i.e., were review or qualitative articles) leaving a total of 96 articles, of which 87 included only self-efficacy measures, 6 included selfand collective efficacy measures, and 3 included only collective efficacy measures. The seven journals represent a range of research foci, from broad
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings: Recent Research and Emerging Directions 17
educational psychology and educational research, to narrower domainspecific research (i.e., teaching, computers), and measurement. The journals also represent a range of quality, as defined by impact factor, with the selected journals representing low, mid, and high levels of one- and five-year impact factors and cited articles according to Journal Citation Reports. Table 4 presents the results from our examination of the adherence of 96 self- and collective efficacy measures to the tenets of self-efficacy theory and measurement guidelines, as espoused by Bandura (1997, 2006), Bong (2006), Henson (2002), and Pajares (1996). We critiqued measures from the clear guidance offered by Bandura (2006), and rated each self- and collective efficacy measure as either Congruent or Not congruent with a Bandurian view of self- and collective efficacy. First, each measure was analyzed for specificity rather than decontextualized global assessments, by asking: Do
Table 4. Congruence Congruent with theory
Congruence of Self- and Collective Efficacy Measurement with Theory. n ¼ 96 47 (49%)
Key Features Specificity
Conceptualization
Not congruent with theory
49 (51%)
Specificity
Conceptualization
Collective efficacy
Examples (a) I am confident that I can master the content covered in Science class. (b) How well can you arrange a place to study without distractions? (c) Rate your degree of confidence of getting 30–100% correct on this writing task. (d) How much can you do to motivate students who show low interest in math? (e) I can usually handle whatever comes my way. (f) I have all the skills needed to do very well in school. (g) I have confidence in my schoolwork. (h) When my class is asked to write, my paper is one of the best. (i) The amount a student can learn is primarily related to the influence of the home environment. (j) In general, I am good at computers. (k) Few teachers in my school can do a better job than I can. (l) The principal lets the staff know what is expected of them. (m) Teachers here need more training to know how to deal with these students.
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the items in the measure reflect a particular context? Second, measures were assessed for conceptual congruence by asking, Do the items ask for an evaluation of confidence to carry out a task, and not competence, intention, skill level, social comparison, self-concept, self-esteem, or outcome expectancies? Do the items measure capability rather than ability? The self-efficacy measures were assessed for congruence in a global fashion, which is to say that we did not assess the congruence and incongruence of individual items but for measures as a whole. Thus, a measure with one theoretically weak item and a remainder of theoretically congruent items was rated as ‘‘Congruent with theory,’’ but measures with a majority of weak items were labeled as ‘‘Not congruent with theory.’’ Articles with multiple self-efficacy measures or with self-efficacy and collective efficacy measures were given an overall rating of congruence or incongruence. Using this rating scheme, slightly over one-half (51%) of the articles included measures that were rated as ‘‘Not congruent with theory.’’ There were significant differences in the proportions of congruent measures by journal, w2(6) ¼ 31.24, po .001. Although the more influential journals (as measured by impact factor) tended to publish articles with selfefficacy measures that were more strongly aligned with theory, theoretically incongruent measures were found in all journals. The relationship between theoretical congruence of measures and journal impact (as measured by total citations to a journal in 2008) was significant but modest (r ¼ .43). Theoretical congruence rates ranged from 70% congruent for Contemporary Educational Psychology, to 29% congruent for Teaching and Teacher Education. Articles on teacher self- and collective efficacy are widely published in Teaching and Teacher Education, and the influence of the widely critiqued Gibson and Dembo (1984) Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES) measure of teachers’ self-efficacy remains strong in articles published in this journal. In brief, the Gibson and Dembo measure conceptualizes teachers’ self-efficacy as a combination of Personal Teaching Efficacy (e.g., ‘‘When a student does better than usual, many times it is because I exerted a little extra effort’’), and General Teaching Efficacy (e.g., ‘‘The hours in my class have little influence on students compared to the influence of their home environment’’). As several researchers have noted, neither of these elements match up well with current conceptualizations of self-efficacy (see Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). Henson (2002) pointed out the importance of the TES in moving teacher efficacy research forward, but cautioned that it suffers from ‘‘numerous psychometric infirmities’’ (p. 144) and should be abandoned. Unfortunately, the measure continues to be used by numerous researchers who have apparently failed to heed the
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cautions issued about the measure. An appealing alternative for teacher selfefficacy researchers can be found in Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy’s (2001) Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES), which measures teachers’ self-efficacy for implementing effective instructional strategies, managing classroom behavior, and engaging students, even in challenging situations. Many of the less congruent measures suffered from a lack of specificity to a particular context. This is problematic because self- and collective efficacy are contextualized beliefs that focus on judgments of capabilities to carry out specific tasks or in a specific domain. Examples (a) and (b) from Table 4 illustrate items from measures that adhere to the principle of specificity: Example (a), I am confident that I can master the content covered in Science class, directs the individual to consider a particular context and a specific domain when assessing personal capability. Similarly, example (b), How well can you arrange a place to study without distractions?, refers to a particular task (studying) in a particular setting (in a place without distractions). In contrast, examples (e) through (g) do not refer to specific domains, tasks, or situations, and so do not adhere to the principle of specificity. In addition, these three items do not correspond closely with usual academic outcomes, which are rarely assessed at this general level. A wide range of measures continue to be labeled as ‘‘self-efficacy,’’ when, in fact, they bear little resemblance to theory-based definitions of the construct. Bandura (2006) counseled researchers to phrase items with the words can do, indicating a judgment of capability, rather than will do, reflecting intention. Examples (c) and (d) illustrate conceptualizations of self-efficacy that reflect the idea of confidence, or judgments of the capability to carry out a task (e.g., Rate your degree of confidence of getting 30% to 100% correct on this writing task). Despite Bandura’s directive, less congruent measures labeled as self-efficacy measures are still prevalent. Examples (h) through (j) illustrate this departure from theory-based definitions. They variously assess social comparison, outcome expectancies, and self-concept rather than judgments of capability to execute given types of performance. No studies in this cross-sectional review examined the collective efficacy beliefs of students, but items (k) through (n) offer examples from the teachers’ collective efficacy measures. Once again, these items reflect a variety of faulty conceptualizations, with a focus on social comparison (Few teachers in my school can do a better job than I can) and a hodge-podge of school-related factors (e.g., The principal lets the staff know what is expected of them). Conceptually congruent measures of collective efficacy
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are rare, with only a few examples that reflect a group’s confidence in domain-specific capabilities. Bandura (2006) offers suggestions for developing measures of whole-school efficacy to promote specific academic tasks (i.e., mathematics), and Tschannen-Moran and Barr (2004) devised a useful 12-item collective teacher efficacy measure, with factors explaining instructional strategies and student discipline (e.g., How much can school personnel in your school do to control disruptive behavior?). Evidence for the cross-cultural validity of this latter measure has recently been reported (Klassen, Usher, & Bong, in press). Measurement problems continue to taint self-efficacy research, and faulty conceptualization of the construct was widespread in the research we reviewed. The pervasiveness of mismeasurement creates a serious threat to the future of self-efficacy research. When more than half of studies published in influential journals include flawed or atheoretical measures, the future of self-efficacy research as a theoretically grounded means of understanding human behavior is threatened. The proliferation of ambiguous and invalid measurement can be thwarted by researchers who are committed to using measures congruent with theory and who are vigilant in evaluating the quality of self-efficacy measures when they are serving as reviewers or academic advisors to the next generation of researchers.
LOOKING AHEAD Our chapter has thus far taken a retrospective look at self-efficacy research: the examination of research from 2000 to 2009 has uncovered a heartening diversity of research approaches, participants, and research findings. The results from this review not only point out the strengths but also the weaknesses of the research conducted over the last decade, and like previous reviewers (e.g., Pajares, 1996), we are forced to offer cautions to researchers about problems in faulty conceptualization and measurement of self- and collective efficacy that continue to pervade research in the field. In the next section, we take the optimistic stance that measurement issues will be resolved by conscientious researchers, and we point out five areas of selfefficacy research that we believe hold great promise to deepen our understanding of human behavior in educational settings: sources of selfefficacy, collective efficacy of students, cross-cultural explorations of efficacy beliefs, self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, and neurobiological selfefficacy research.
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings: Recent Research and Emerging Directions 21
Sources of Self-Efficacy A logical next step for researchers is to work toward a clearer understanding of how efficacy beliefs develop and take root so that appropriate interventions can be tailored to improve individuals’ self- and collective efficacy beliefs. Fortunately, researchers are beginning to give increasing attention to investigating the role of the four hypothesized sources of selfefficacy (see Usher & Pajares, 2008b, for a review). Despite these initial efforts, more research in this area is warranted. Just as self-efficacy is most predictive of outcomes that are measured in similar ways and at similar levels of specificity, so might the sources of self-efficacy be context specific. Moreover, Bandura (1997) contended that the relationship between the hypothesized sources and self-efficacy varies considerably as a function of contextual factors. Researchers measuring the sources should keep these points in mind, particularly given the diverse contexts in which self-efficacy can be measured. To date, most research works on the sources of self-efficacy have been conducted in the area of mathematics. In a recent attempt to develop a psychometrically and theoretically sound measure of the sources in this context, Usher and Pajares (2009) developed a 24-item Sources of Middle School Mathematics Self-Efficacy scale. The measure included six items representing each of the four hypothesized sources of mathematics selfefficacy: mastery experience (e.g., I make excellent grades on math tests), vicarious experience (e.g., Seeing kids do better than me in math pushes me to do better), social persuasions (e.g., I have been praised for my ability in math), and physiological state (e.g., My mind goes blank and I am unable to think clearly when doing math work). Adapting such a measure for use in other contexts would provide a useful next step in research on the sources. For example, over the past decade, researchers have placed greater attention on efficacy beliefs related to the use of technology. What makes some individuals more confident in using various technologies (e.g., computer, Internet, online courses)? Exploring the sources of technology-related selfefficacy would be a fruitful step in understanding how this motivation construct develops in 21st-century learning contexts. Our review shows burgeoning interest in teacher self-efficacy research, and theoretically sound measures now exist to measure the construct (e.g., Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001). The time is ripe for researchers to extend their investigations to the study of the sources of teacher selfefficacy (Henson, 2002; Labone, 2004; Shaughnessy, 2004). Such investigations should explore the mechanisms underlying teachers’ confidence to
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handle issues related to their academic subject matter, classroom management, lesson structure and design, interactions with parents, differential instruction, and student learning. What role, for example, do principals and administrators or teacher mentors play in nurturing teachers’ self-efficacy? Do the sources of self-efficacy function differently for teachers across area of expertise, ability level, or grade level? Researchers could also examine whether the sources inform the efficacy beliefs of prospective, novice, and expert teachers in dissimilar fashion. Such an undertaking may be particularly timely in the USA, where Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan wagered his indictment of teacher preparation programs in American universities as ‘‘mediocre’’ (Duncan, 2009). Developing sources of teaching self-efficacy measure that could be used with novice and experienced teachers might reveal important differences in the interpretations teachers make of efficacy-relevant information. Such research might identify the characteristics of student teaching placements that are particularly effective in building young teachers’ self-efficacy. For example, teacher residency programs would expose neophytes to skilled teachers who convey skills that boost their perceived teaching efficacy. These programs would also provide ample opportunity for new teachers to build their experiential repertoire in diverse teaching settings and to receive feedback from experts. An understanding of the sources of teachers’ self-efficacy not only has the potential to inform how teacher education and supervision programs are designed, but it also cannot be far removed from influencing teacher practices that nurture the self-beliefs of young people. In spite of numerous studies investigating teachers’ collective efficacy, we have found no research that investigates the sources of collective efficacy in school settings. Of first order is to conduct investigations that determine whether the sources undergirding individuals’ self-efficacy are also those that create and nurture collective efficacy. The multilevel efficacy structures present throughout educational settings are also fertile ground for research. What, for example, are the critical factors that contribute to the collective efficacy of a particular class or learning community, and how can these collective beliefs be nurtured? What are the sources of collective efficacy among teams of teachers, administrative teams, and grade levels? Qualitative inquiry has the potential to provide rich answers to such questions, as do sophisticated analytical techniques such as hierarchical linear modeling. The often complex interplay among the sources of self-efficacy and between the sources and other environmental contingencies may create
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings: Recent Research and Emerging Directions 23
situations in which any given source is neither most influential nor especially predictive of self-efficacy in a particular context or with a particular group. Likewise, sources other than those hypothesized might inform efficacy beliefs in certain contexts. Researchers examining the sources should keep these possibilities in mind.
Collective Efficacy Beliefs of Students Our review reveals that although a growing number of studies investigate teachers’ collective efficacy, research investigating the collective efficacy of students is rare (i.e., 2 of 227 studies), in spite of theoretical and empirical arguments that collective efficacy plays an important role in educational settings for teachers and students. In school settings, most collective efficacy research has focused on the motivation beliefs of teachers, not students, even though collaborative learning environments are receiving growing research attention (Webb & Palincsar, 1996), and student work groups are an everyday feature of many classrooms from kindergarten to grade 12. Scant research has explored the small group collective efficacy beliefs of children or adolescents, in spite of the ubiquity of group work in schools. A recent study by Klassen and Krawchuk (2009) was conducted to examine the collective motivation beliefs of early adolescents working in small groups. In their study, two groups of early adolescents – a younger group with a mean age of about 11.4 years and an older group with a mean age of about 13.5 years – completed a series of three cooperative small group tasks, along with individually completed measures of self- and collective efficacy and group cohesion. For the older students, collective motivation beliefs appeared to become more closely linked with performance as the groups worked together on interdependent tasks: collective efficacy and group cohesion did not make a significant contribution to performance on the first task, but emerged as significant predictors of performance by the third task, whereas the level of group members’ self-efficacy beliefs diminished in importance over the three tasks. This result is consistent with Bandura’s theorizing (1997), as well as with previous research (e.g., Baker, 2001), that suggests that although groups do not experience emotions, group-based motivation beliefs and performance become more strongly related as groups work together over time. In contrast, for the younger participants, only individual academic ability and group past performance significantly predicted group performance. The results suggest that collective
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motivation beliefs, such as collective efficacy and group cohesion, may evolve as groups of adolescents work together in short-term small groups, but may not operate in the same way for younger and older students. These initial findings investigating small group efficacy help build our understanding of the development of collective motivation in young people, and may prove to be of practical importance for group work in educational settings.
Cross-Cultural Investigations of Self- and Collective Efficacy The results of our review show that most self- and collective efficacy studies to date have been conducted in a single, frequently culturally Western setting, with little attention paid to how efficacy beliefs might operate differentially across cultural contexts. Cross-cultural comparisons are useful in building theory because they provide researchers with ‘‘a valuable heuristic basis to test the external validity and generalizability of their measures, theories, and models’’ (Marsh & Hau, 2004, p. 59). One of the characteristics of a growing psychological theory is the attention it receives in contexts removed from its origins, and the extent to which the theory is valid across settings. Cross-cultural self- and collective efficacy research also provides valuable practical understanding of how motivation operates in the multicultural environments that are increasingly common in many schools. Over the last three years, Klassen and colleagues have conducted a series of cross-cultural investigations of self- and collective efficacy beliefs in educational settings (e.g., Klassen et al., 2008, 2009; Klassen et al., in press). We believe that cross-cultural research extends our understanding of how self-efficacy operates in diverse contexts and also provides insight into how people in contrasting settings function in educational settings. Klassen et al. (2008) used a mixed-methods approach to examine teachers’ self- and collective efficacy, SES, and academic climate (the extent to which academic excellence characterizes a school) in Canada and Singapore. Results from the quantitative study revealed that teachers’ self- and collective efficacy were significantly correlated with perceptions of academic climate in both countries, but that in Singapore, student SES was largely mediated by teachers’ beliefs in their collective efficacy, whereas in the Canadian context, SES was a powerful influence on school climate, but this influence was not mediated by teachers’ collective efficacy. The qualitative results provided some explanation for the quantitative findings. Canadian teachers reported facing more serious social challenges, and expressed less
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings: Recent Research and Emerging Directions 25
control over the learning of students experiencing social problems than did Singaporean teachers. Overall, the findings suggested that teachers’ individual beliefs make a difference in student achievement, but the collective efficacy of teachers also have a positive influence on students (Tschannen-Moran & Barr, 2004). The use of a cross-cultural approach in this study revealed insights into the universal and culturally distinct properties of teachers’ efficacy beliefs that would not have been apparent using a monocultural approach. Another cross-cultural study of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs was conducted in response to Henson’s (2002) warning about the problem of ‘‘foreclosure on instrument development before sufficient validation of scores across studies (is) evidenced’’ (p. 147). In response, Klassen and colleagues (2009) explored the validity of Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy’s (2001) Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) across six groups of teachers from five countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. Through the use of multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, results showed that the TSES was invariant when all six groups (from two teaching levels) from five countries were compared simultaneously. In addition, the TSES was positively related to job satisfaction across settings. Results from this validity study provide rare evidence for cross-cultural invariance of a selfefficacy measure and build the foundation for future use of the measure. A third cross-cultural study examined collective efficacy, job stress, and levels of collectivism for teachers in Canada, the USA, and Korea (Klassen et al., in press). The study was among the first to examine teachers’ collective efficacy beliefs using a cross-cultural framework, heeding Pajares’ (2007) counsel that motivation research in educational settings will only have practical value if studies and findings are ‘‘understood as being bounded by a host of situated, cultural factors that must be attended to’’ (p. 19). In short, teachers’ collective efficacy was positively and similarly related to job satisfaction across settings, but the role of the cultural dimension of collectivism varied according to cultural context. Female teachers reported higher levels of job stress than male teachers across settings, and perceptions of collective efficacy for managing student behavior significantly mediated job stress from student behavior across cultural settings. The results from the study highlighted not only the importance of considering geographical context in teacher motivation research, but also the role played by teachers’ cultural values. These three cross-cultural studies of efficacy beliefs represent only a very early understanding of how self- and collective efficacy operate in contrasting contexts, and future studies are needed to continue to build a universal understanding of the construct.
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Self-Efficacy for Self-Regulated Learning Few would argue that being a successful learner requires a strong selfregulatory repertoire that enables individuals to organize their work, set goals, seek help when needed, engage effective learning strategies, and manage their time (Schunk & Zimmerman, 2007; Zimmerman, 2002, 2008). Self-regulation is a metacognitive process through which students explore their own thought processes, evaluate the results of their actions, and plan alternative pathways to success (Pintrich, 2002). The belief in one’s selfregulatory capabilities, or self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, has been shown to be an important predictor of student’s successful use of selfregulatory skills and strategies across academic domains (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 2001; Bong, 2001) and is also related to their motivation and achievement in diverse academic areas such as mathematics (Usher & Pajares, 2008a). Self-efficacy for self-regulated learning is a facet of academic self-efficacy that has been typically measured as it pertains to functioning across academic subjects. For instance, a frequently used self-efficacy for selfregulated learning item asks students, How well can you study when there are other interesting things to do? In contrast, a domain-specific writing selfefficacy scale item might ask, How confident are you that you can correctly spell all words in a one-page essay? Both judgments can be considered indicative of a student’s academic self-efficacy. To be successful, students need to feel capable of regulating their learning environment (e.g., organizing school work, managing technological distractions, planning ahead) and of performing subject-specific tasks (e.g., crafting a strong topic sentence, writing a coherent paragraph, spelling words correctly). Researchers might even examine subject-specific judgments of self-regulatory skills (e.g., How well can you resist checking Facebook or Twitter while writing an essay for class?). Self-efficacy for self-regulated learning has been shown to decline in adolescence, with boys experiencing a steeper decline than girls (Caprara et al., 2008). The construct has been linked with important academic outcomes, like students’ decisions to stay in school (Caprara et al., 2008), school grades (Usher & Pajares, 2008a), and academic procrastination (Klassen et al., 2008). With this in mind, researchers should continue to look for ways to improve learners’ self-regulatory skills set and their beliefs in their capabilities to exercise control over their learning environment to optimize their efforts. New learning tools and distractions to the learning process are surfacing at an ever-increasing pace, challenging both young and old learners to
Self-Efficacy in Educational Settings: Recent Research and Emerging Directions 27
develop new strategies to manage their time effectively, regulate attention, control the flow of information, and reduce cognitive load. Self-efficacy measures should be tailored to assess beliefs in one’s capabilities to manage this host of new tasks. For example, the oft-used item asking students to rate how well they remember the information in their school books should be complemented by new items that ask them to rate how well they can navigate the internet to find relevant information quickly or how well they can ‘‘unleash’’ themselves from electronic media when other work must be done. Researchers have also pointed to the need to account for differences in students’ self-regulatory efficacy. Some have reported that girls possess a stronger sense of efficacy and demonstrate more self-regulated learning behaviors than do boys (Pajares, 2002; Pastorelli et al., 2001). In their longitudinal study, Caprara et al. (2008) reported that self-regulatory efficacy beliefs in junior high school were positively related to high school achievement and negatively related to high school dropout, even when prior achievement was controlled. This finding suggests that early interventions should be targeted to help learners develop adaptive self-regulatory habits that convince them that they have what it takes to manage even the most challenging learning environments they may face.
Neurobiological Research A team of researchers at Korea University is pursuing a promising avenue for motivation research that may shed light on the neurological pathways involved in the formation of self-efficacy beliefs. Kim, Lee, and Bong (2009) recently presented results from an investigation of students’ motivation beliefs that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine task interest and perceived competence on brain activation during interesting and uninteresting tasks. Although the researchers state that they manipulated perceived competence rather than self-efficacy per se, the description of the procedures suggests that participants’ self-efficacy beliefs were plausibly influenced by the experimental manipulation. In short, the researchers measured brain activity while manipulating perceived competence/self-efficacy by providing participants with bogus positive and negative feedback during practice trials of a perceptual judgment task. The fMRI results showed that different brain regions were activated depending on whether the negative feedback was provided after interesting or uninteresting tasks. Perceived competence/self-efficacy moderated the effects
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of negative feedback for participants in the low perceived competence/selfefficacy condition. Different brain regions were activated depending on level of perceived competence and task interest, suggesting that individuals with high perceived competence/self-efficacy are more likely to monitor performance when provided with negative feedback even on uninteresting tasks, whereas individuals with low perceived competence/self-efficacy only monitor performance with interesting tasks. In other words, certain brain regions of individuals with high perceived competence/self-efficacy do not seem to be as influenced by task interest as individuals with low perceived competence/self-efficacy. Neurobiological research holds promise to illuminate the brain-based processes underlying self-efficacy and related motivation beliefs. Personal correspondence with one of the authors revealed that future research will include measurement and manipulations of self-efficacy beliefs (Mimi Bong, personal communication, May 14, 2009). Carefully designed neuroeducational research will need to be conducted to investigate the affective and motivational mechanisms underlying how feedback is processed in light of the specificity and frequency of performance feedback. In particular, the research team proposes to explore the adolescent motivation and brain functions, noting that certain aspects of adolescent brain functioning differ from those of adult brain functioning. The neurobiological approach to self-efficacy research holds real promise, although translating these research findings into practical application in educational settings may be some ways off.
CONCLUSION If researchers are to develop a more thorough understanding of why and how people make choices, expend effort, and display persistence in educational settings, it will be necessary to expand the scope of research, heed the warnings of past theorists and researchers, and to dig down into the processes underlying how self-efficacy operates. After having taken a closer look at where we have been in the last decade, we are encouraged by many of the trends that have emerged. Self-efficacy research is beginning to show greater methodological diversity, with at least a few studies moving away from quantitative-only accounts of functioning, with about 1 in 10 studies using qualitative or mixed-methods approaches to understand self-efficacy. An increasing number of researchers are moving beyond survey research and are using longitudinal and experimental or quasi-experimental approaches. An exciting program of research exploring self-efficacy through brain
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imaging is now being carried out, and the next decade of research may bring a more sophisticated understanding of self-efficacy through this and other new technological advances. In schools, self-efficacy research is well represented at elementary through university levels, and many academic domains are well represented. Self-efficacy is increasingly of interest internationally, and substantial numbers of articles have emerged from Asia and Europe over the last decade, with many non-English language articles published but not included in this review. Some nagging problems continue to haunt the research, however. The problem of faulty measurement is still unresolved; in fact, the guidelines and warnings published in the last 20 years seem scarcely to have influenced the measurement choices made by researchers. Measurement problems continue to pose the single greatest threat to growth in the influence of self-efficacy research in educational settings. Over the next decade, researchers will do well to examine self-efficacy through research approaches that pay attention to the cultural and social variations present in our diverse societies. Self-efficacy beliefs are not formed in social isolation but are influenced by the cultural forces that shape our understandings of how to learn, teach, act, think, and live. Researchers have decried the lack of attention to the ways in which social and cultural context influences efficacy beliefs, and although a few researchers have begun to examine the interaction of culture and self-efficacy in educational settings, most research conducted in the last decade has not examined human functioning with attention to contextual or cultural factors. Influential researchers have called for culturally attentive research in educational psychology that examines human functioning in social and cultural contexts, regularly includes samples from diverse social and cultural groups, and attends to the complex relationships between cultural background, social class, and economic factors (Pajares, 2007). Self-efficacy research ranges on a continuum from largely decontextualized studies, represented by cross-sectional quantitative research that ignores contextual elements, to deeply contextualized studies represented by richly described, long-term case studies where attention is paid to multiple levels of social and cultural influence. Exploring how context influences self-efficacy beliefs reflects the increasing recognition that understanding human learning and motivation requires attention to general principles and particular situations. We conclude this chapter with a challenge and word of warning from selfefficacy researcher, friend, and mentor, Frank Pajares (2007): Students’ academic achievement is too complex a matter to permit the contention that such achievement is caused by any particular motivation construct at any particular time
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ROBERT M. KLASSEN AND ELLEN L. USHER in a particular place for any particular student or group of students y such outcomes are deeply dependent on the local conditions that cultural variation creates (p. 36).
Our hope for self-efficacy research is that we pay attention to local and cultural contexts, increase our commitment to high quality measurement, and forge a deeper understanding of how self-efficacy is formed and operates in educational settings.
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EXPECTANCY-VALUE THEORY: RETROSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTIVE Allan Wigfield and Jenna Cambria OVERVIEW Expectancy-value theory is prominent in different areas in psychology, and a number of educational and developmental psychologists who study the development of achievement motivation have utilized this theory in their work (see Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2006; Weiner, 1992; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992; Wigfield, Tonks, & Klauda, 2009 for overviews). In this chapter, we discuss current expectancy-value theoretical models of achievement motivation and review research based on these models. Much of this research has focused on the development of children’s expectancies and values, and how expectancies and values relate to performance, choice of different activities, and emotions. We discuss the major findings from each of these areas of research. We also provide suggestions for future research based in this theory for the next decade. We focus our review and suggestions for future research primarily on elementary and secondary school students, but include some relevant work done with college students.
The Decade Ahead: Theoretical Perspectives on Motivation and Achievement Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Volume 16A, 35–70 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0749-7423/doi:10.1108/S0749-7423(2010)000016A005
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MODERN EXPECTANCY-VALUE MODELS IN DEVELOPMENTAL AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Modern expectancy-value theories (e.g., Eccles, 1987, 1993, 2005; Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983; Feather, 1982, 1988; Pekrun, 1993, 2000, 2006; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992, 2000, 2002) are based on seminal work by theorists such as Lewin (1938) and Tolman (1932) who defined the expectancy and value constructs, and also on Atkinson’s (1957, 1964) expectancy-value model of achievement motivation (see Wigfield & Eccles, 1992; Wigfield et al., 2009, for discussion of the history of this theory). Current theories differ from the earlier work in several ways. First, both the expectancy and value components are defined in richer ways, and are linked to a broader array of psychological, social, and cultural determinants. Second, these models have been tested in real-world achievement situations rather than with the laboratory tasks often used to test Atkinson’s theory.
The Eccles et al. Expectancy-Value Model Eccles and her colleagues’ expectancy – value model proposes that these two constructs are the most immediate or direct predictors of achievement performance and choice, and are themselves influenced by a variety of psychological, social, contextual, and cultural influences (e.g., Eccles, 1987, 1993, 2005; Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983; Eccles & Wigfield, 1995; Meece, Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990; Wigfield, 1994; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992, 2000, 2002). In their research, Eccles and her colleagues have focused on how expectancies, values, and their determinants influence choice, persistence, and performance. They also have examined the developmental course of children’s expectancies and values and how they are influenced by different educational contexts. They initially developed the model to help explain gender differences in mathematics expectancies and values and how these influenced boys’ and girls’ choices of mathematics courses and majors. They broadened the model to other activity areas, most notably sport and physical skill activities (e.g., Eccles & Harold, 1991). Fig. 1 depicts the model. Moving from right to left in the model, expectancies and values are hypothesized to influence performance and task choice directly. Expectancies and values themselves are influenced by task-specific beliefs such as perceptions of competence, perceptions of the
1. Gender role stereotypes 2. Cultural stereotypes of subject matter and occupational characteristics
Child's Perception of... 1. Socializer's beliefs, expectations, and attitudes 2. Gender roles 3. Activity stereotypes
Socializers' Beliefs and Behaviors
Differential Aptitudes of Child
Self-schemata Short-term goals Long-term goals Ideal self Self-concept of one's abilities 6. Perceptions of task demands
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Child's Interpretations of Experience 1. Causal attributions 2. Locus of control
Previous Achievement-Related Experiences
Child's Goals and General Self-Schemata
Child's Affective Memories
Subjective Task Value Importance Interest Utility Cost
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Cultural Milieu
Fig. 1. Eccles and Colleagues’ Expectancy-Value Model of Performance and Choice. 37
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difficulty of different tasks, and individuals’ goals and self-schema, along with their affective memories for different achievement-related events. These beliefs, goals, and affective memories are influenced by individuals’ perceptions of other peoples’ attitudes and expectations for them, and by their own interpretations of their previous achievement outcomes. Children’s perceptions and interpretations are influenced by a broad array of social, contextual, and cultural factors. These include socializers’ (especially parents and teachers) beliefs and behaviors, children’s specific achievement experiences and aptitudes, and the cultural milieu in which they live (see Wigfield, Eccles, Schiefele, Roeser, & Davis-Kean, 2006, for discussion of the socialization of children’s expectancies and values).
DEFINING THE EXPECTANCY, VALUE, AND ABILITY BELIEF CONSTRUCTS IN THIS MODEL Eccles and colleagues broadened Atkinson’s (1957) original definitions of both the expectancy and value constructs. They defined expectancies for success as children’s beliefs about how well they will do on an upcoming task currently or further into the future (e.g., How well do you think you will do in math next year?). They distinguished conceptually expectancies for success from the individual’s beliefs about competence or ability. These latter beliefs refer to children’s evaluations of their current competence or ability, both in terms of their assessments of their own ability and also how they think they compare to other students. Ability-related beliefs are prominent in many achievement motivation theories (see Schunk & Pajares, 2009; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000, for distinctions among these constructs). The construct of self-efficacy is one primary example. Perceptions of ability in the Eccles et al. model can be distinguished from self-efficacy in the following ways. In Eccles’ work ability beliefs are most often measured at the domain-specific level (although they could be measured at greater or lesser levels of specificity), and students are asked to think about their ability relative to other students, and to other activities that they do. Self-efficacy is defined as beliefs about capabilities to accomplish a certain task, and measures of it generally ask how confident the individual is that he or she can do the task (Bandura, 1977, 1997; see also Schunk & Pajares, 2009). The comparative aspects thus are not included, and so self-efficacy is one’s judgment about one’s own ability to accomplish a task without regard for whether others can do it.
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In the literature, values have both broad and task-specific definitions (see Higgins, 2007; Rohan, 2000; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992, for review of some of these definitions). Broader values have to do with individuals’ sense of what are appropriate things to do, desirable end states of activities, and desirable behaviors to produce those positive end states (see Rokeach, 1973, 1979). Eccles and her colleagues focus on task-specific values in that they define values with respect to the qualities of different tasks and how those qualities influence the individual’s desire to do the task; hence the term task value (Eccles, 2005; Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992). This definition is similar to Higgins’, stressing the motivational aspects of task value. Further, these values are subjective because they are students’ own beliefs about the activity and thus there is variation among students in them. Eccles (Parsons) et al. (1983) proposed four major components of achievement task values: attainment value or importance, intrinsic value, utility value or usefulness of the task, and cost (see Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983 and Wigfield & Eccles, 1992, for more detailed discussion of these components). Building on Battle’s (1965, 1966) work, Eccles (Parsons) et al. defined attainment value as the importance of doing well on a given task. Attainment value incorporates identity issues; tasks are important when individuals view them as central to their own sense of themselves, or allow them to express or confirm important aspects of self. This component of value has some conceptual similarities with the identified regulation and integrated regulation components of motivation in Deci and Ryan’s (Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2009) Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which concern engaging in activities because they are important to individuals for attaining their goals and are consistent with students’ identities. Intrinsic or interest value is the enjoyment one gains from doing the task. This component is similar in certain respects to notions of intrinsic motivation and interest (see Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Schiefele, 2009) in that when children intrinsically value an activity they often become deeply engaged in it and can persist at it for a long time. However, it is important to note that in this theoretical model, it is the task that produces the enjoyment. Utility value or usefulness refers to how a task fits into an individual’s future plans, for instance, taking a math class to fulfill a requirement for a science degree. In certain respects utility value is similar to extrinsic motivation, and more specifically, to the SDT construct of identified regulation because when doing an activity out of utility value, the activity is a means to an end rather than an end in itself (see Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2009). However, the activity also can reflect some important goals that the person
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holds deeply, such as attaining a certain occupation. In this sense, utility value also connects to personal goals and sense of self, and so has some ties to intrinsic motivation or integrated regulation, the most autonomous form of regulation in the SDT model. Cost refers to what the individual has to give up to do a task (e.g., Do I do my math homework or call my friend?), as well as the anticipated effort one will need to put into task completion. Is working this hard to get an A in math worth it? Eccles (Parsons) et al. (1983) emphasized that cost is especially important for choice. Choices are influenced by both negative and positive task characteristics, and all choices are assumed to have costs associated with them because one choice often eliminates other options. For instance, choosing to major in history means that one cannot major in another field that also may have some value to the individual. Despite the theoretical importance of cost to choice, to date, cost has been the least studied of the different components of subjective values.
Pekrun’s Control-Value Model Pekrun (1993, 2000, 2006, 2009) developed a model of achievement motivation based in the expectancy-value tradition. He calls his theory a control-value theory, using the construct of ‘‘control’’ to capture different kinds of beliefs having to do with individuals’ appraisals of different possible cause–effect relationships between actions and outcomes in achievement settings. Indeed, the notion of appraisal is fundamental to his work; he argues that individuals’ appraisals of their actions, the likelihood that the action will produce certain outcomes, and the appraisal of the values of both actions and outcomes are fundamental determinants of motivation. He also has been quite interested in linkages between control beliefs, value, and motivation. Pekrun (1993, 2000, 2006, 2009) distinguished three kinds of expectancy beliefs that comprise the main control beliefs in his model. Situationoutcome expectancies are expectancies that a situation will produce an outcome; thus the individual’s own action is not essential when these linkages operate. Action-outcome expectancies refer to individuals’ beliefs about the consequences of their own actions. Action-control expectancies concern individuals’ beliefs about whether they can do a certain action, which are conceptually similar to Bandura’s (1997) self-efficacy construct; Pekrun prefers the term action control because it deals directly with
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individuals’ beliefs about whether they can successfully control their actions, and also ties to the literature on volition. Pekrun (1993, 2000, 2006, 2009) also distinguished different kinds of achievement values, or value cognitions, to use his term. He differentiates between the value of outcomes and the value of actions, and further separates intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of each. Intrinsic values of outcomes concern the intrinsic enjoyment of an outcome, whereas extrinsic outcome values reflect the instrumentality of an outcome. In the same vein, intrinsic values of action have to do with the inherent value of the action to the individual, whereas extrinsic action values have to do with actions that lead to an instrumental outcome (e.g., studying to get a good grade on a test in order to maximize one’s chances of getting into graduate school). One important aspect of this model is Pekrun’s (1993) specification of how individuals’ appraisals of different activities leads to motivation to undertake an action or not, and also to their performance. The process starts with an appraisal of the value of a given outcome; if it is valued, then the individual forms situation-outcome expectancies, action-outcome expectancies, and action-control expectancies. If the situation totally determines an outcome the other expectancies do not function; however, if it does not then both action-outcome and action-control expectancies determine motivation, particularly if the action is valued. Ultimately, the individual’s motivation is determined by the complex interplay of these appraisals. Pekrun reviews empirical evidence from his longitudinal work showing that different kinds of expectancy and value cognitions relate positively to one another. Expectancies and intrinsic values predict adolescents’ academic effort and also their grades. Further, Pekrun presents some evidence that the motivation variables and achievement relate reciprocally over time. Much of Pekrun’s recent work focuses on relations of motivation and emotion (e.g., Pekrun, 2006, 2009; see also Schutz & Pekrun, 2007). Pekrun distinguishes three general kinds of emotions. Anticipatory (or prospective) emotions are those that occur before an individual undertakes an achievement activity, and Pekrun argues that these are influenced by individuals’ expectancies and values for the activity. For instance, if the individual expects to do well at the activity and values it, then she will experience emotions such as hope and joy. If not, anxiety and hopelessness will be experienced. Concurrent emotions are experienced as the individual does different activities, and Pekrun stated that enjoyment and boredom are two fundamental emotions that occur as an activity is ongoing. Finally, retrospective emotions occur as individuals reflect on an activity. These emotions include joy, pride, sadness, or shame, and again are based in the
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individual’s appraisal of the activity and its value to him or her. We review below some specific findings with respect to these different emotions. The two models just reviewed are similar in a number of ways. Important differences between them are that in Pekrun’s (2000, 2006) model the expectancy construct is more elaborated. There also is a clearer distinction of action and outcome in this model. Eccles and her colleagues discuss a wider variety of components of task value. They also include a more elaborate set of antecedents of both expectancies and values.
MAJOR RESEARCH FINDINGS ON EXPECTANCIES AND VALUES Researchers have done extensive work on children and adolescents’ expectancies and values. We focus on three main research areas: change over time in students’ expectancies and values; their relations to one another; and their relations to performance, choice, and emotions.
Development of Expectancy-Related Beliefs and Values One important developmental question is how distinct the expectancy and value constructs are in children of different ages. Eccles and Wigfield (1995) and Eccles, Wigfield, Harold, and Blumenfeld (1993) factor analyzed children’s responses to questionnaire measures of each construct. The major findings from these analyses were: (1) children’s expectancy-related beliefs and values formed distinct factors in children as young as 6; (2) within a given domain (e.g., reading, math, sports) children’s beliefs about their current competence, expectancies for success, and perceived performance load on the same factor, suggesting that these components comprise a single concept for children aged 6–18; (3) within a given domain the components of achievement values identified by Eccles and her colleagues can be distinguished factorially in children in fifth grade and beyond; and (4) across activity domains competence-related beliefs form distinct factors in children as young as 6, indicating that children differentiate across domains with respect to these beliefs (e.g., expectancy-related beliefs in math are factorially distinct from expectancy-related beliefs in reading). The same is true of achievement values; the value children attach to reading factors separately from the value they attach to math.
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A second important developmental question is how the level of children’s expectancy-related beliefs and values change across age. The general pattern is that children’s competence beliefs for different tasks decline across the elementary school years and through the high school years (see Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998; Stipek & Mac Iver, 1989; Wigfield et al., 2006, for review). Many young children are quite optimistic about their competencies in different areas, and this optimism changes to greater realism and (sometimes) pessimism for many children. Researchers in the US have examined change over the entire elementary and secondary school years in children’s competence beliefs for math, language arts, and sport (Fredricks & Eccles, 2002; Jacobs, Lanza, Osgood, Eccles, & Wigfield, 2002), and Watt (2004) looked at change across middle and senior high school in Australia. Jacobs et al. found that children’s perceptions in each area were strongly positive early on. However, the overall pattern of change was a decline in each domain. There were some differences across domains with respect to when the strongest changes occurred, particularly in language arts and math. In language arts, the strongest declines occurred during elementary school and then little change was observed after that. In sports, the change accelerated during the high school years. The decline in math competence beliefs was steady over time. Fredricks and Eccles and Watt also found declines over time in competence beliefs and values, although the specific trends were somewhat different across these studies. This is most likely due to the somewhat different ways in which the constructs were measured in each study and (potentially) cultural differences in the samples (see further discussion below in the section on gender differences). Two caveats about these findings should be mentioned. First, most of the research just described is normative, describing mean-level change across groups of children. Researchers have shown that these patterns do vary for children achieving at different levels (Harter, Whitesell, & Kowalski, 1992; Wigfield, Eccles, Mac Iver, Reuman, & Midgley, 1991). Second, it also has been shown that some preschool children react negatively to failure (see Dweck, 2002; Stipek, Recchia, & McClintic, 1992). Children reacting negatively to failure early on may be more likely to be pessimistic about their abilities even in the early elementary school years (Burhans & Dweck, 1995). Thus not all young children are optimistic about their abilities in different areas. Factors Influencing the Development of Expectancy-Related Beliefs and Values What explains these changes in children’s competence beliefs and values? Researchers have considered this question more fully with respect to the development of children’s competence beliefs, and have discussed two main
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kinds of influences. First are children’s own experiences of mastery and failure with different tasks, the kinds of feedback children get from parents about their accomplishments, and how children interpret and come to understand this information about their performance. Bandura (1997), Dweck (2002), and Wigfield et al. (2009) provide further discussion of these influences. The second influence is the kinds of experiences children have in the home and school environments (see Wigfield et al., 2006; Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). Parents provide children with many different kinds of evaluative feedback and often provide them with a set of opportunities to participate in different activities. This feedback and activity involvement influences children’s developing sense of what they are good at and what they value. In school, children are evaluated more systematically, formally, and frequently than they are at home, and these evaluations become more prevalent and important as children go through school. These evaluations in different areas lead children to develop distinct ideas about their competencies in these areas, and also to have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses in each area. The ways in which these evaluations are done can have either positive or negative effects on children’s competence beliefs and motivation. For example, the strong push for high-stakes testing in school can weaken the competence beliefs and motivation of students doing poorly on such tests (Deci & Ryan, 2002). Children also have more frequent opportunities in school to engage in more social comparison activities because they spend so much time with same-age peers and receive information about how others are doing (Ruble, 1983; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2002). Such information begins to influence children’s sense of their own competence, with the effects noticeable at least as early as ages six or seven. More broadly, the contextual organization of classrooms and schools with respect to reward structures, kinds of achievement tasks and outcomes emphasized, and opportunities for decision making and collaboration can influence the development of students’ expectancies and values (see Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Wigfield et al., 1998). Less has been written about how these and other factors influence the development of children’s achievement values, although work on the development of children’s interests is relevant to the development of children’s intrinsic value (see Schiefele, 2009; Wigfield et al., 2006, for review of the work on the development of interest). Children’s own experiences with different activities can influence how much they like or are interested in different activities; for instance, some children will find reading fascinating, and others will find it boring. Parents and teachers provide children with
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feedback about the importance and usefulness of different activities (e.g., doing well in school is important; you need to learn math so you can become a scientist), which can influence children’s own valuing of them (Wigfield et al., 2006). Parents and teachers also may be more enthusiastic about children’s participation in some activities rather than others, which could influence how children value them. Children also likely compare their interest in different activities to those of their peers, and these kinds of value-related social comparisons may influence children’s own valuing of the activity. More broadly, cultural norms and ideas about what is appropriate for different children to do can influence the value children place on different activities (see Eccles, 2005). For instance, there are gender stereotypes about which activities are more appropriate for boys and girls. Wigfield (1994) and Wigfield et al. (2009) discussed developmental trajectories of the different components of task value, postulating that interest may be the first to emerge, followed by importance and utility value. Importance ties to individual’s sense of self, which develops quickly during the elementary school years. Utility has to do with the perceived usefulness of different activities, and ideas about this take shape across the school years. Higgins (2007) provides a discussion of sources of influence on adults’ task values (see Wigfield et al., 2009, for a developmental analysis of these sources).
Relations of Expectancy-Related Beliefs and Values How do the expectancy-related beliefs and values relate to one another over time? Wigfield et al. (1997) studied change across the elementary school years in children’s expectancy-related beliefs and values in several domains (measuring the usefulness and interest components of value). In contrast to Atkinson’s (1957, 1964) view that expectancies and values are inversely related, in this study at all grade levels and in all domains relations among the constructs were positive. The positive relations increased in strength across age. For instance, at first grade children’s competence beliefs and values in math and reading had a median correlation of .23. By sixth grade the median correlation of these variables in these domains was .53. Thus children’s task values, expectancy, and competence beliefs increasingly are positively related, suggesting that children come to value what they are good at. Indeed, Wigfield et al. (see also Wigfield & Eccles, 1992) explained the differences between their work and Atkinson’s by stating that in realworld achievement situations individuals value the tasks at which they think
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they have a good chance of doing well. Similarly, Harter (2006) has argued that being competent at activities one thinks are important is an important positive predictor of self-esteem. When one lacks competence at activities deemed important then self-esteem can suffer. A further interesting question from a developmental perspective is whether competence-related beliefs or achievement values have causal priority. That is, do children come to value activities at which they are competent, or do children learn to be competent at things they value? Bandura (1997) argued that efficacy beliefs are the prior causal factor; children learn to enjoy those activities at which they are competent. Jacobs et al. (2002) reported data that supports this claim in their longitudinal study of first through 12th grade children. They found, first, that children were more likely to value math, sports, and language arts activities when they believed they were competent at those activities. Further, change in competence beliefs predicted strongly the developmental trajectory in children’s subjective task values, accounting for over 40% of the variance in these trajectories. Thus change in children’s values was based strongly in how their competence beliefs changed. Marsh and his colleagues examined relations of self-concept of ability and achievement and found that they are reciprocally related (e.g., Marsh & Yeung, 1997, 1998). Marsh, Ko¨ller, Trautwein, Lu¨dtke, and Baumert (2005) extended this work by including a measure of interest along with achievement, to examine reciprocal relations across all three variables in the domain of math. The interest measure asked how much students enjoy math, how important it was for them to be good at math, and if they would do math in their spare time. The major findings of this work were that math self-concept and achievement related reciprocally over time, and math interest and achievement (while correlated) did not relate reciprocally. Math self-concept and interest did relate reciprocally, but there was stronger evidence for the prediction of math interest from math self-concept than the reverse, findings that are similar to those of Jacobs et al. (2002). Thus, it appears that competence beliefs may be what drives children’s values and interests, at least for the kinds of achievement-related activities these researchers studied.
Expectancies, Values, Performance, and Choice There is clear evidence from a variety of longitudinal and cross-sectional studies in different domains that individuals’ expectancies for success and
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achievement values predict their achievement outcomes, including their performance, persistence, and choices of which activities to do (e.g., Bong, 2001; Eccles, 1993; Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983; Denissen, Zarrett, & Eccles, 2007; Durik, Vida, & Eccles, 2006; Marsh et al., 2005; Meece et al., 1990; Pekrun, 1993, 2009; Simpkins, Davis-Kean, & Eccles, 2006; Xiang, McBride, & Bruene, 2004). Students’ expectancies for success and beliefs about ability are among the strongest psychological predictors of performance, even when the effects of previous performance are controlled. These relations become reciprocal as children get older (Marsh & Yeung, 1997, 1998). Students’ subjective task values predict both intentions and actual decisions to persist at different activities, such as taking mathematics and English courses and engaging in sports activities. Because, as just discussed, expectancies and values themselves are positively related, it is important to note that each has indirect as well as direct effects on performance and choice. That is, children’s task values indirectly influence their performance through their relationship with children’s expectancies for success, and children’s expectancies influence their choice of activities through their relationships with task value. The relations of expectancies, values, and performance are evident in children as young as first grade, although they strengthen across age (Eccles, 1984; Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983; Eccles & Harold, 1991; Meece et al., 1990; Wigfield, 1997). These relations of expectancies, values, and choice extend over time; Durik et al. (2006) reported that the importance children gave to reading in fourth grade related significantly to the number of English classes they took in high school. Also, children’s interest in reading measured in fourth grade indirectly predicted (through interest measured in 10th grade) high school leisure time reading, career aspirations, and course selections. In another longitudinal study looking at relations of performance, ability beliefs and values, and choice, Simpkins et al. (2006) found that children’s participation in math and science activities in late elementary school related to their subsequent expectancies and values in these areas, which in turn predicted the number of math and science courses they took through high school. Interestingly, in this study it was children’s abilityrelated beliefs in high schools that predicted choice more strongly than did students’ values; Simpkins et al. speculated that this may have occurred because students know the importance of such courses for college entrance, and are more likely to take them when they expect to do well in them. These findings suggest that there may be developmental and/or situational differences in how ability beliefs, expectancies, and values relate to choice; this is an important topic for future research.
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Battle and Wigfield (2003), in one of the few studies to include the cost component of achievement values, found that attainment and utility value were positive predictors of college students’ intentions to enter graduate school, but the perceived psychological cost of graduate school attendance was a negative predictor. Thus, when students value something they also report they are more likely to engage in the activity. When the activity is seen as having too great a cost, they will be less likely to engage in it.
Expectancies, Values, and Emotions As previous authors have noted (Schutz & DeCuir, 2002; Schutz & Lanehart, 2002; Pekrun, 2006, 2009), there is a growing need to understand the associations between emotions and achievement motivation. Recently, there have been studies revealing associations between emotions and selfregulation (see Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002; Schutz & Davis, 2000; Turner & Husman, 2008), attributions (Perry, Turner, & Meyer, 2006; Weiner, 2000), and goal orientations (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002; Turner, Meyer, Schweinle, 2003) and expectancies and values (Frenzel, Pekrun, & Goetz, 2007). As discussed earlier, Pekrun (1992, 2009), in his control-value theory of motivation, stated that students’ expectancies and values can have emotional consequences. When students expect to do well, value the activity, and perform well, positive emotions occur. When they have lower expectancies and perform poorly, they can become anxious about the activity, and experience other negative emotions. Work by Turner and Schallert (2001), Frenzel et al. (2007), and Pekrun (1992, 2000) examined associations between emotions, expectancies, and values. Turner and Schallert (2001) evaluated expectancies and values as predictors of shame following test feedback in an undergraduate psychopharmacology course, specifically whether expectancies and values predicted shame reactions after feedback. The expectancy block of variables was comprised of perception of academic ability, certainty of academic ability, and self-efficacy. These variables together positively predicted shame reactions, but did not individually predict. The values block of variables was made up of importance of academic ability, extrinsic goals, intrinsic goals, and task value. This block of variables together positively predicted shame reactions and individually only intrinsic and extrinsic goals predicted shame reactions (both positively). Turner and Schallert also found that expectancies negatively predicted shame, and task value did not explain additional variance in shame when added into the regression. These findings
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are slightly complicated by the expectancies and value scales that were formed. The composite value variable included intrinsic and extrinsic goal items, which are not generally found in task-value scales. In addition, the expectancy measurement seems to more accurately measure efficacy since it described current ability beliefs as opposed to future beliefs. Nevertheless, this study showed the complex associations between motivation and academic emotions. Frenzel et al. (2007) extended Turner and Schallert (2001) by evaluating additional motivations and gender differences in the associations of expectancies, values, and emotions. Frenzel et al. examined the association between gender, emotions, competence beliefs, and values for math in a large sample of fifth and sixth grade students. They found that females had lower competence beliefs, domain values, and equal achievement values as males, and that gender differences in emotions were mediated by these beliefs and values. Initially, the associations between gender and emotions were significant, with males rating themselves more highly on enjoyment and pride and females on anxiety, hopelessness, and shame. However, when competence beliefs, domain values, and achievement values were entered into the regression all the non-mediational betas became nonsignificant (except for enjoyment). Frenzel et al. (2007) also investigated gender as a potential moderator of the associations between mathematics grade, competence beliefs, domain value, and achievement value. Gender moderated the positive association between competence beliefs (favoring girls) and domain value (favoring boys) and the associations (all negative) between predictors (i.e., competence beliefs and values) and hopelessness were all larger in magnitude for females. The associations between domain and achievement values and pride were higher for boys. Another interesting point is that the association between prior achievement and pride was nonsignificant for females. An interesting extension would be to examine how these associations and gender interactions might change developmentally from fifth and sixth grade as studied here through high school. Of all the academic emotions, test anxiety has received the most attention (Schutz & DeCuir, 2002; Schutz & Lanehart, 2002). In a study of the relations between test anxiety, achievement, and expectancies, Pekrun (1992) found that effort-control expectancy was negatively associated with test anxiety and subjective valence (importance) of failure was positively moderately correlated with expectancy of failure in a large study done in Germany. In addition, in fifth through eighth grade students’ achievement was associated with lower test anxiety, and failure expectancies were associated with higher test anxiety (Pekrun, 2006). He also commented that
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achievement and anxiety did not have a direct association, which offers evidence that they may be mediated by expectancies. Pekrun (2009) described the current state of empirical evidence on academic emotions. He reported that test anxiety is consistently positively correlated with failure expectancies and that failure expectancies, valuing achievement, and effort-control expectancies are antecedents of test anxiety in younger students as well as university students (cf. Pekrun, Goetz, Perry, Kramer, & Hochstadt, 2004). Based on these studies, it is clear that there are associations between expectancies, values, and emotions. Further, these associations between these variables are altered when feedback and gender are considered. Additional work might consider how these associations may change in different domains.
PROSPECTIVE: NEW RESEARCH DIRECTIONS There are numerous important topics for future research on children’s expectancies and values that build on the research reviewed in this chapter. We focus on several areas that we believe are key: (1) extending the achievement value construct; (2) considering links of achievement values to future instrumentality of education; (3) studying expectancies and values in diverse groups of children and adolescents from different cultures; and (4) attending to the role of context. We also make some measurement and other methodological recommendations.
Extending the Achievement Values Construct We believe there are at least three important ways that work on achievement task values should be extended. First, as we noted in the section above on definitions, researchers studying achievement values have looked at both broader values about the kinds of action that are desirable both on their own and to reach certain goals (e.g., Rokeach, 1973, 1979), and the components of task-specific values focused on in expectancy-value models in the achievement motivation field. Rokeach distinguished between terminal values (things such as wisdom, freedom, equality, and happiness) or desired end states, and instrumental values (things such as honesty, responsibility, and independence), which are ways to attain the terminal values. It would be interesting to examine connections between Rokeach’s broader human values and achievement task values as a way to see how individuals’
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approaches to different tasks relate to their broader values. To our knowledge the only researcher who studied these connections was Feather (1982, 1988). Feather found that college students’ instrumental values as defined by Rokeach predicted the value they attached to different college courses in math and English, and that the task-specific values predicted choice of college major. These relations should be examined developmentally to begin to determine when students begin to define their core instrumental and terminal values, and how these impact their task-specific values. One intriguing possibility is that children’s interests and task values may partly determine their broader core values; children’s more generalized values might emerge from their specific experiences with different activities rather than the reverse. Researchers could use the existing measures of these constructs to study these relations in children and adolescents, although the measures of broader values developed by Rokeach and Feather likely would have to be adapted for use with young children. A second area for future research on achievement values is to ask whether there are other components of task value beyond the intrinsic, importance, and utility components that have been the focus of most of the research. Or do these three components capture achievement values fully, at least with respect to predicting relevant achievement outcomes? Here are some additional possibilities. Some tasks or activities may be valued because they are exciting or stimulating or perhaps even risky; stimulation and risk are related to interest value but perhaps extend beyond it. Risk taking has been described as characterizing the adolescent developmental phase (Arnett, 1992; Feldstein & Miller, 2006), and so this possible aspect of value might be salient then. Excitement, stimulation, and risk most likely characterize nonacademic activities, but perhaps some academic activities (an explosive science experiment; a daring novel) could be characterized in these ways too. One group of Rokeach’s (1973, 1979) terminal values includes inner harmony, peacefulness, and beauty; perhaps there are certain tasks or activities that promote these kinds of feelings and contribute to an overall sense of calm and well-being. Gaskins (1999) proposed that motivation theories do not deal adequately with how motivation can lead to psychological states such as contentment and inner harmony; in our view SDT perhaps comes closest with its strong focus on well-being. Expectancyvalue theory could be extended in this direction by assessing whether some tasks or activities that individuals do contribute to these kinds of feelings, or terminal values to use Rokeach’s term. From the particular perspective of achievement motivation such additional components of value would be most relevant if they related clearly to children’s performance on different
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activities or choice of them. Such linkages could be assessed if measures tapping these other possible aspects of value were developed. In addition to exploring possible new components of task value, we also believe the cost aspect of value deserves further exploration. Battle and Wigfield’s (2003) study with college students showed that cost related negatively to importance and utility value attached to graduate school, and also to intentions to enroll in graduate school. These findings suggest that when individuals believe the cost of an activity is too high they are less likely to pursue it. It would be interesting to extend this work to elementary and secondary school students. Young children often engage in many different academic and nonacademic activities. As they get older each activity potentially gets more time intensive, and children (and their parents, coaches, and teachers) get a clearer sense of which activities children enjoy and are capable of performing, and which are not. As their schedules get more intense they likely consider whether the time spent on a less enjoyable activity continues to be worth it. During early adolescence and adolescence these demands get more intense. Adolescents likely consider cost in at least two ways, within a given activity set (which of these sports activities can I continue to do given time constraints) and across activities (how do I balance time spent on school, social activities with friends, and other nonacademic activities). Relations of cost, the other aspects of task value, and perceived competence and expectancies likely play important roles in these decisions. Thus further considerations of cost would give us a fuller picture of children and adolescents’ decisions about which activities to pursue and which to give up. We suggest that researchers examining children’s expectancies and values include existing measures of cost into their studies, and explore its relations with other motivational beliefs and values, and various outcomes. Researchers interested in studying potential additional aspects of students’ values could start by interviewing students about why they engage in different tasks, and then develop survey measures of them. These components are potentially interesting in their own right, but it also would be informative to see if they predict performance and choice in studies that include measures of the other aspects of task value.
The Long-Term Value of Tasks and Activities Greene, Miller, and their colleagues and Husman, Lens, and their colleagues have discussed another important motivational construct that relates to
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achievement values, the instrumentality of an activity or set of activities (Greene, Miller, Crowson, Duke, & Aikey, 2004; Husman, Derryberry, Crowson, & Lomax, 2004; Husman & Lens, 1999; Miller & Brickman, 2004; Miller, DeBacker, & Greene, 1999). Instrumentality refers to students’ perceptions that tasks they are doing will help them attain future goals. This construct builds on earlier work on the role of the future in motivation by expectancy-value theorists such as Raynor (1982). It also relates to the utility and importance value constructs in Eccles, Wigfield, and colleagues’ expectancy-value model. However, Husman et al. noted that much of the work in the motivation field focuses on motivation for immediate tasks and activities, and that even extant measures of utility value focus primarily on immediate usefulness rather than long-term usefulness. Students’ current motivation obviously is important for their engagement in learning, but students also know that a major purpose of education is to prepare them for the future. Therefore, if students believe that current educational activities are useful to them in the long run, they are more likely to be motivated to achieve (see also Maehr, 1974 for discussion of the related construct of continuing motivation). There are a number of important findings from these researchers’ studies of high school and college students’ perceived instrumentality. One important issue is how distinct instrumentality is from task values. In their factor analytic work both Husman et al. (2004) and Miller et al. (1999) found that instrumentality can be distinguished empirically from items measuring task value and intrinsic motivation, although scales for each of these constructs relate positively to one another (it is important to note that the measures of instrumentality and task values used by these researchers are not identical). These studies provide evidence that the future-oriented instrumentality construct indeed is distinct from the value of current tasks. With respect to relations of instrumentality to other constructs, Husman and Lens (1999) found that students who see the instrumentality of their educational activities to their future success are more positively motivated, self-regulated, and achieve higher GPAs. Greene et al. (2004) found that high school students who viewed the activities they do in class as motivating and believed that teachers support their autonomy had higher self-efficacy, which in turn predicted their instrumentality and reported use of cognitive strategies. Thus students’ sense of the instrumentality of their educational experiences relates to how motivating they see their current activities, illustrating the important connection of current and future motivation. Self-efficacy and strategy use were direct predictors of achievement; instrumentality was an indirect predictor. These latter findings relate to
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Eccles, Wigfield, and colleagues’ work reviewed earlier showing that abilityrelated beliefs directly predict achievement, whereas values are indirect predictors. Instrumentality also predicted students’ mastery and performance approach goals (see Greene, DeBacker, Ravindran, & Krows, 1999, for further research on relations of task values and goals). Recently, Husman and Shell (2008) developed a measure of students’ perspective on the future that includes different dimensions of this perspective. These include extension, or how far ahead into the future the student thinks; connectedness, or how much students see their current activities linked to future possibilities; speed, or students’ sense of how fast time is passing, and valence, which refers to the importance of future goals relative to present ones. Their confirmatory factor analyses provided support for these dimensions of future time perspective. It is clear from this work that instrumentality is important to students’ achievement and relates to a variety of other motivation-related beliefs, values, and goals. Miller and Brickman (2004) proposed a model of futureoriented motivation and self-regulation, based in social cognitive models of self-regulation such as that of Bandura (1986) and work on future goals such as that of Markus and Nurius (1986). There are two parts of the model, one dealing with future regulation and one dealing with proximal regulation. Miller and Brickman also proposed connections between the future and proximal parts of the model; for instance, they discussed connections between individuals’ future goals and the proximal goals they have for completing current tasks, arguing that when individuals have future goals they are more motivated to pursue proximal goals. They also discussed how individuals’ valuing of achievement connects to their future goals, which in turn connect to the perceived instrumentality of the tasks they are doing in school. Miller and Brickman posited that individuals’ beliefs about their ability also relate to their valued future goals. Perceived instrumentality relates to how the current tasks are valued, and also to task engagement, self-regulation, and performance. This model thus connects general educational values, future goals, the instrumentality of current tasks, ability beliefs, and the value of current tasks. A number of the links in the model are similar to those presented in Eccles and Wigfield’s and Pekrun’s expectancy-value models reviewed earlier. Two important differences in these models are the clearer specifications of links of values and goals in the Miller and Brickman model, and the clearer connections of present and future motivation (Miller & Greene, personal communication, August 14, 2009). Expectancy-value researchers interested in choice of activities and long-term relations of expectancies and values to performance
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and choice should consider including measures of instrumentality in their studies as well, to explore further links between current and future aspects of motivation. Another important direction for research looking at instrumentality, achievement values, performance, and choice is to examine developmentally when children begin to have a clear sense of the instrumentality of different activities, when these beliefs are distinguishable from the components of task value, and how they relate to choice and performance in children of different ages. As noted earlier in Eccles and colleagues’ work with younger children, it appears that utility and importance factor together (Eccles et al., 1993). During the early school years children do not have a clear sense of how different tasks could be useful to them. Children’s sense of the instrumentality of different activities likely develops during later elementary school and through middle school. Dimensions such as the extensivity of their future time perspective likely are limited at least until high school. Looking at the developmental relations among these constructs using the measures now available in the literature, and their relations to expectancy beliefs, performance, and choice, is an important direction for future research in the expectancy-value tradition.
Gender, Ethnic, and Cultural Differences in Expectancies and Values Researchers studying children’s expectancies and values have long been interested in group differences, with a particular focus on gender differences in expectancies and values (see Wigfield & Eccles, 2002; Wigfield et al., 2006, for detailed review). This work shows that boys’ and girls’ expectancies and values tend to follow gender stereotypic patterns, with boys having more positive expectancies and values in domains such as math and sports, and girls in reading/English and music (Eccles, 1984; Eccles et al., 1993). However, recent studies of gender differences in expectancies and values have revealed a somewhat different picture. Jacobs et al. (2002) did not find significant gender differences in value of math, though gender differences in competence beliefs in math (favoring boys) and English (favoring girls) were found, along with gender differences in English value (favoring girls) and sport value and competence beliefs favoring boys. Fredricks and Eccles (2002) hypothesized that gender differences in competence beliefs and values in math and sport would increase over time because of the gender stereotypic nature of these activity domains, but found instead that math
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competence beliefs and sports interest and intrinsic value converged for boys and girls. Watt (2004) examined gender differential trajectories in the associations between talent perceptions, intrinsic value, utility value, success expectancies, perceptions of difficulty, and effort required in math and English in 7th–11th grade Australian students. She found that males generally rated themselves more highly on math talent, expectancies, and values than did females for math, and females generally followed similar patterns for English (except math utility value, English expectancies for success and talent perceptions which were not significantly different). Watt (2004) commented that the differences between her findings and those of Fredricks and Eccles (2002) and Jacobs et al. (2002) may be due to differences in measurement. Watt measured talent perceptions as ability, which is less influenced by achievement experiences than competence beliefs (the measure used by Fredricks & Eccles, 2002). In addition, differences in results concerned with values may be due to the different types of values that were assessed. Jacobs et al. (2002) assessed a combined task values that contained items from all three aspects of value defined by Wigfield and Eccles (2000). Fredricks and Eccles (2002) measured interest and importance, and Watt measured intrinsic and utility value. These conflicting findings from the studies done in different cultural contexts, and the gender differences in US children’s beliefs and values, demonstrate the complexity in the development on different types of task values. For these and other reasons is it important to continue to evaluate gender differences in achievement motivation. Researchers also have been interested in ethnic differences in expectancies and values, and related motivation constructs, as well as interactions of gender and ethnicity (see Graham, 1994; Graham & Taylor, 2002; Meece, Glienke, & Burg, 2006; Guthrie, Rueda, Gambrell, & Morrison, 2009; Wigfield et al., 2006, for review). Some of this work shows that African American children have more positive competence beliefs than do European American children, but that these beliefs do not relate as strongly to achievement for the African American children (see Graham, 1994). Graham, Taylor, and Hudley have found interesting interactions of ethnicity and gender, using a peer nomination measure asking who students admire in their school that they describe as a way to measure task value (Graham, Taylor, & Hudley, 1998; Taylor & Graham, 2007). They found that African American, European American, and Hispanic American females chose students who were fashionable, athletic, and high achievers as ones they admired, as did European American boys. African American
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and Hispanic American males nominated classmates that were fashionable and athletic, but were not high achievers. This work shows why it is important to consider gender and ethnicity together, as there are different patterns for boys and girls in different ethnic groups with respect to valuesrelated beliefs. Additional research is needed to explore these patterns further. Other researchers have examined broader issues tied to ethnicity that can impact children’s expectancies and values. In a qualitative study, Sanders (1997) interviewed 28 African American middle school students about their perceptions of racial barriers for success and found that there were three categories of boundary: denial of racism and barriers, moderate awareness of them, and high awareness of them. These perceptions were positively associated with academic achievement, particularly for the high awareness group. This group viewed racism as a challenge and an opportunity to work harder. Taylor and Graham (2007) found a positive relation between perception of racial barriers and nomination of low achievers as admired or valued for African American boys in middle school, but not for female middle school students or elementary school students. This association was not found in the Hispanic American portion of the sample. This study may offer insight into the development of the association between perception of racial barriers and values. Future work might use similar protocols in order to continue to evaluate perceptions of gender and ethnicity boundaries simultaneously and associations with values and expectancies for success. Researchers increasingly are interested in cross-cultural differences in expectancies and values and other motivation-related constructs. Wigfield et al. (2009) reviewed studies that assessed expectancy-related beliefs and values in students from various countries in order to evaluate the relations and developmental associations of the key constructs in expectancyvalue theory. In terms of competence beliefs they noted that researchers find similar decreases in competence beliefs in students in Hong Kong. Generally, students in western societies have higher mean levels of competence beliefs than do students in Asian countries in various subject areas, even though the Asian students’ achievement often is higher. There are fewer cross-cultural studies of task values; extant research indicates that the different components of values can be identified in Korean students (Bong, 2001). Less is known about relations of task value to performance and choice of activities. Clearly more work is needed to elucidate similarities and differences in expectancies and values across cultures, and their relations to performance and choice, to provide information about the relevance of this theory cross-culturally.
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When discussing these cultural differences it is imperative to assess the fidelity of the instruments cross-culturally as well as potential interpretation differences of participants in different countries. For example, Stevenson and Stigler (1992) discussed the potential differences in the measurement of utility value in Eastern cultures in which value of teachers may play a more significant role when responding to items. Similar points may apply to measures of expectancies and competence beliefs.
Methodological Issues There are a number of well-validated self-report measures of expectancies, values, and related constructs in the literature that have provided the foundation of our knowledge in this area and can continue to be used in future research (see Wigfield & Cambria, 2010, for review). There are many reasons why student self-report is a good way to measure motivation; if one is interested in measuring individuals’ beliefs then self-report needs to be used. These measures can be plagued by social desirability, however. For instance, it can be difficult for children to state on a questionnaire that school is not important to them. Further, self-report measures can be problematic in developmental studies with young children. Researchers have made strides in developing appropriate measures for young children and ways of administering them to help children answer them well (e.g., Eccles et al., 1993; Marsh, Ellis, & Craven, 2002), but care still must be taken in their use. Karabenick et al. (2007) described their program of work focused on studying the cognitive processes used by respondents as they complete surveys. The purpose of this work is to help researchers understand how individuals respond to self-report items and thereby improve the validity of these measures by developing items that are understood by participants in ways compatible with researchers’ intentions in developing the items. Part of this work involves cognitive pretesting of items to be used on surveys. Karabenick et al. provide examples from motivation research of how respondents understand different measures used frequently in work on motivation. It may be especially important to do this kind of work with young children, in order to understand more clearly how they interpret different items and the constructs they measure. An important issue to consider is the problem of shared method variance in response to self-report measures when researchers rely solely on them; this problem can result in inflated correlations among the variables. We urge researchers to include other kinds of measures along with participant
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self-report measures, to get a more complete picture of students’ expectancies and values, their interrelations, and relations to outcomes. Studies reviewed earlier include other measures such as different performance measures, decisions about what activities to continue, and so on that broaden the work beyond student self-report. Other possibilities include having teacher or parent ratings of children’s motivation; researchers have used such measures successfully and they have been shown to relate to various achievement outcomes (e.g., Guthrie et al., 2004). Having multiple informants and multiple kinds of measures adds complexity to a study, but has many benefits as well. Another alternative is to use ‘‘indirect’’ self-report measures such as those used by Graham and her colleagues (Graham & Taylor, 2002; Taylor & Graham, 2007) to measure task value; such measures have the potential of avoiding some of the concerns about social desirability of the direct measures. Another issue concerns the kinds of statistical analyses to use when doing studies that include multiple related measures of motivation, performance, and other outcome variables. Many of the studies discussed earlier used traditional variable-centered approaches such as hierarchical regression analyses or multivariate repeated measures ANOVAS to look at predictive relations among variables and change over time, factor analyses to look at the dimensionality of different constructs, and correlational analyses and structural equation modeling to look at relations among them. Recently, researchers doing studies that include multiple related measures have been using other kinds of analytic techniques and approaches that may prove to be especially beneficial for this kind of work. Shell and Husman (2008) used canonical correlation to look at relations of a set of motivation variables to a set of self-regulation variables. This analytic technique allows researchers to look at latent linear combination of variables and provides information about which correlations among the set of variables are meaningful to interpret. Another useful analytic technique is HLM, which allows the researcher to look at variation both within and between classes. Tsai, Kunter, Lu¨dtke, Trautwein, and Ryan (2008) used this analytic technique to examine how different contextual and personal factors related to situated interest. Finally, there is increasing interest in using person rather than variablecentered approaches when studying motivation. Peck, Roeser, Zarrett, and Eccles (2008) and Roeser and Peck (2003) discuss these kinds of approaches. Pastor, Barron, Miller, and Davis (2007) provide a review and critique of different person-centered approaches and describe the advantages of latent class or profile analysis for researchers who measure a variety of motivation constructs and examine their relations to different outcomes.
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We have focused throughout this chapter on developmental issues. Researchers have used successfully both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies to look at relations among expectancies and values and their development. We believe some of the most interesting questions about how these relations change over time, which construct may take causal precedence, and how they relate to performance and choice require longitudinal designs. New longitudinal studies would be build on the important work of Fredricks and Eccles (2002), Jacobs et al. (2002), Marsh et al. (2005), and Watt (2004).
Expectancy-Value Theory and Context Motivation researchers increasingly are interested in how children’s motivation is affected by the different educational contexts that they experience (e.g., Hickey, 1997, 2008; Hickey & Granade, 2004; Nolen, 2007; Nolen & Ward, 2008; Perry et al., 2006; Turner et al., 2002; Turner & Patrick, 2008; Urdan, 1999). These (and other) researchers make the essential point that children’s motivation is not a stable individual characteristic that operates similarly in different settings. Instead, children’s motivation is situated in and strongly influenced by what occurs in classrooms: the kinds of tasks and activities they experience in different subject areas, how teachers organize and structure these activities and the classroom environment more generally, students’ relations and interactions with other students, to give just a few examples. Nolen and Ward (2008) separated situated and sociocultural approaches to motivation into three broad categories (sociocultural, person in context, situative), and provide an informative discussion of the similarities and differences in these approaches. One important difference across these approaches is whether the context is seen as influencing the individual (according to Nolen and Ward researchers taking sociocultural and person in context approaches take this view) or whether the individual is part and parcel of the social context rather than just influence by it (researchers taking a situative view). Over the last 25 years researchers have learned much about how different classroom contexts, structures, and activities influence students’ motivation (see Ames, 1992; Maehr & Midgley, 1996; Perry et al., 2006; and Stipek, 1996, for review), and this work has led to a better understanding of how teachers can organize their classrooms to promote motivation. Such work has generated a set of principles having to do with fostering positive motivations in classrooms These principles have to do with the kinds of
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tasks and activities to provide, the goal structure to emphasize, the importance of active learning opportunities, and others, However, researchers focusing on situative and contextual influences also note that the variation in children’s motivation across different situations means that there are limits to these general principles and that children’s motivation reflects a complex interplay of the individual and the contexts they experience (e.g., Hickey & Granade, 2004). Indeed, Hickey and McCaslin (2001) discussed how situated views emphasize the ways in which specific motivational practices (e.g., the provision of incentives) impact the ways students negotiate shared meaning in different educational contexts, which will influence how those practices operate in the different context. Thus such practices may not necessarily operate similarly in different classroom contexts (see also Nolen & Ward, 2008). Expectancy-value theorists have considered contextual influences on children’s motivation in a number of ways. As noted earlier, Eccles, Wigfield, and colleagues’ model includes a variety of social, cultural, and contextual influences on children’s expectancies and values (see Eccles, 1993; Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Eccles et al., 1998; Wigfield et al., 1998). These include cultural views and stereotypes about what are appropriate activities for different children to do; socializers’ beliefs and provisions of opportunities in different areas; and classroom characteristics, activities, and structures. All of these influences are dynamic and situation bound. Further, as discussed earlier measures of children’s expectancies and values are situated at least to the domain-specific level, and could be made more specific. In these and other ways context and situation are an integral part of expectancy-value theory, and researchers adopting this view have examined how a variety of contextual and situation factors influence children’s expectancies and values in reciprocal ways (see Eccles et al., 1998; Wigfield et al., 1998, for review). Having said that, there are potential and actual points of disagreement between some theorists focusing on context and situation and expectancyvalue theorists on the nature of motivation and its influences on learning. This debate centers around assumptions of the nature of knowledge, learning, motivation, and where they reside (see Hickey, 2008; Hickey & Granade, 2004; Nolen & Ward, 2008). Sociocultural and situative theories of learning and motivation are based in part Vygotsky’s (1978) work, and a major premise of his work is not just that contexts influence individuals, but that knowledge and learning actually are part of the context, not necessarily an individual phenomenon; this is the approach researchers categorized by Nolen and Ward (2008) as adopting a situative approach take. Individuals’ motivation thus reflects their engagement with the community of learners in
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their classrooms, and meaningful engagement is not possible by a given individual if the whole community is not engaged. This ‘‘distributed’’ view of knowledge and motivation rests on different assumptions about the nature of motivation than the assumptions made by social cognitive theorists about the importance of individual beliefs, beliefs, values, goals, and other motivation-related constructs residing in the individual that are seen as determinants of motivation. Such beliefs, values, and goals may become less relevant if motivation is part and parcel of the context rather than the individual (see Hickey, 2008). Our own position is that individuals’ ability-related beliefs and values (among other individual characteristics) remain important influences on students’ achievement, choices, and engagement in different activities. Contexts and situations can moderate these influences in important ways, but the individuals’ perceptions of these influences and their self-beliefs and values remain key to understanding their motivation. These different kinds of assumption have implications not only for how motivation and engagement are characterized, but also how it is studied. The traditional self-report measures utilized in much research based in social cognitive models of motivation may not be responsive enough to situations to capture fully their influence, or perhaps more important, capture how engagement exists in the interactions of the individual and context rather than just the individual. Hickey and Granade (2004) and Turner and Patrick (2008) discussed some alternative methodologies to capture situated motivation (see also Ainley & Hidi, 2002), and Hickey and Granade noted the importance of doing research that includes measures coming from both social cognitive and sociocultural perspectives as a way to begin to test some of the different assumptions and predictions coming from these different perspectives. Nolen and Ward (2008) discussed how in situative and other sociocultural approaches to motivation considering the context or community as a unit of analysis (rather than the individual) is crucial, as is researchers’ participation in the community. Use of these different kinds of methodologies and analysis approaches will provide further insight into students’ motivation, how it is influenced by context, and the interplay of the context and individual, that will help the field continue to move forward.
CONCLUSION Expectancy-value theory has been a vibrant theoretical perspective on motivation, and as we hope is clear from this chapter, researchers continue
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to uncover new and interesting things about students’ expectancies and values, and their relations to a variety of outcomes. Over the next ten years we anticipate important new findings about how expectancies and values relate to various motivational, behavioral, and emotional outcomes; vary in different groups of children; and are influenced (and influence) different contexts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Much of the research by Eccles, Wigfield, and their colleagues on the development of children’s expectancies and values discussed in this chapter was supported by Grant HD-17553 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and also by Grant MH-31724 from the National Institute for Mental Health, HD-17296 from NICHD, Grant BNS-8510504 from the National Science Foundation, and grants from the Spencer Foundation. We would like to thank Stuart Karabenick, Barbara A. Greene, Raymond B. Miller, and Reinhard Pekrun for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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UP AROUND THE BEND: FORECASTS FOR ACHIEVEMENT GOAL THEORY AND RESEARCH IN 2020 Chris S. Hulleman and Corwin Senko ‘‘Come on the rising wind, we’re going up around the bend.’’ Creedence Clearwater Revival, Up Around the Bend, 1970
The editors of this volume asked us to summarize the current state of achievement goal research and to predict the next 10 years of research. A relatively simple task, one might think. Ten years is not that much time. Yet predicting the future is, as any doomsday cultist can attest, fraught with error. This is due to the simple fact that our immersion in the present hinders us from recognizing how we might think or feel differently in the future. Invariably, the predicted future is a somewhat flawed variation of the present, because, as Gilbert (2007) notes, ‘‘we fail to recognize that our future selves won’t see the world the way we see it now’’ (p. 121). Thus, any prophecies we might offer are likely to be anchored to the particular theoretical, methodological, and ideological positions that we currently hold. Given this blind spot, we resolved to not make any predictions at all and instead offer a ‘wish list’ for achievement goal research over the next 10 years. This list covers topics that we personally think are compelling and The Decade Ahead: Theoretical Perspectives on Motivation and Achievement Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Volume 16A, 71–104 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0749-7423/doi:10.1108/S0749-7423(2010)000016A006
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exciting new areas that hopefully will help stimulate new advancements in achievement goal theory. We begin this chapter with a review of achievement goal theory and research from the early 1980s to the present. We then identify several vital issues that theorists and researchers are currently grappling with, or at least in our view ought to be grappling, in order to advance the field. Finally, we provide a wish list of research directions for the next 10 years of achievement goal research that focuses on three interrelated areas: methods (of research), mechanisms (of goal effects), and multiple goal dynamics.
A (BRIEF) REVIEW OF ACHIEVEMENT GOAL RESEARCH Achievement goal theory traces people’s behaviors, thoughts, and emotions in achievement situations to the broad goals they pursue in that activity, whether in education, sports, work, or other achievement domains (Dweck, 1986; Maehr & Midgley, 1991; Nicholls, 1984). Two goals have featured prominently: mastery goals (also sometimes called learning goals) and performance goals (also called ego goals or ability validation goals). Both goals concern the pursuit of competence and the assessment of one’s own skill level, yet they do so in distinct ways. People pursuing a mastery goal strive to develop their skill or expertise, while those pursuing a performance goal instead strive to demonstrate and validate their existing skill, typically by outperforming peers. As such, those pursuing mastery goals typically use self-referential standards to define success versus failure, while those pursuing performance goals instead use normative standards to define success versus failure. Over a decade into the theory, several theorists (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Middleton & Midgley, 1997; Skaalvik, 1997; VandeWalle, 1997) furthered the bifurcation of performance goals into approach (i.e., desire to outperform others) and avoidance forms (i.e., desire to avoid doing worse than others) that was suggested but undeveloped in early achievement goal theorizing (Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984). The approach-avoidance distinction, which helped align achievement goal theory with a key element of traditional achievement motivation theories (e.g., Lewin, Festinger, Dembo, & Sears, 1944; McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953), was widely welcomed, and for good reason: studies routinely showed much more negative effects of performance-avoidance goals than performance-approach
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goals, the latter tending for the most part to yield neutral or beneficial effects (Elliot & Moller, 2003; Harackiewicz, Barron, Pintrich, Elliot, & Thrash, 2002). Theorists later proposed a similar separation of mastery goals into approach (i.e., desire to improve or learn) and avoidance (i.e., desire to avoid a decline in skill or failing to learn) forms (Elliot & McGregor, 2001; Pintrich, 2000). This split seems to be fruitful as well, with mastery-approach goals producing positive effects and mastery-avoidance goals negative effects (Moller & Elliot, 2006). Nonetheless, for reasons discussed later, this separation of mastery goals has not been widely adopted by all theorists. Hundreds of studies have compared the various correlates of masteryapproach goals and the two performance goals. They generally take one of two thematic approaches. One is to explore the antecedents to achievement goal pursuit. In educational research, for example, many studies have traced goal adoption to (a) student-centered variables such as personality (e.g., trait anxiety, conscientiousness, need for achievement), epistemological sophistication, and task confidence (e.g., Bra˚ten & Strømsø, 2004; Elliot & Church, 1997; Zweig & Webster, 2004); (b) classroom-centered factors such as the evaluation procedures or the classroom climate (e.g., Maehr & Midgley, 1991; Mueller & Dweck, 1998); or (c) students’ interpersonal relationships with peers, teachers, and parents (e.g., Anderman & Anderman, 1999; Elliot & McGregor, 2001). The second and vastly more common theme of the research is to explore the consequences of goal pursuit. Volumes of research in the education context, for instance, have explored goal correlations with achievement (e.g., exam or course grades), interest in the course material, or the many behavioral (e.g., help-seeking, study strategies, cheating), emotional (e.g., pride, anxiety), and cognitive (e.g., self-regulation, working memory) processes that may link goals to achievement and interest. On the whole, the literature shows uniformly positive effects of mastery-approach goals on a variety of desirable educational outcomes. For example, these goals promote interest and engagement with the topic, self-efficacy, persistence, adaptive help-seeking, and effective self-regulation (e.g., Harackiewicz, Barron, Tauer, Carter, & Elliot, 2000; Karabenick, 2003; Nolen, 1988; Pintrich, 2000; Wolters, Yu, & Pintrich, 1996). Truly, the only blemish on mastery-approach goals’ otherwise spotless record is their weak and inconsistent relationship with actual achievement (see Hulleman, Schrager, Bodmann, & Harackiewicz (2010), for a metaanalytic review). This is no small blemish, though, if you take the view that any theory of achievement motivation must account for achievement.
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The extant research shows much different effects for the two performance goals. Performance-avoidance goals clearly yield maladaptive consequences, including high anxiety, disorganized study habits, help-avoidance, selfhandicapping, and often low achievement and interest as well (e.g., Elliot & McGregor, 2001; Midgley & Urdan, 2001; see Elliot & Moller, 2003, for a review). Performance-approach goals instead yield a much narrower set of outcomes (see Elliot & Moller, 2003; Payne, Youngcourt, & Beaubien, 2007). They tend to be unrelated to many of the negative outcomes often shown for performance-avoidance goals – for example, high levels of anxiety and worry, threat appraisals, and disorganized study strategies (Elliot & McGregor, 2001; Senko & Miles, 2008). They also tend to be unrelated to many of the positive outcomes shown for mastery-approach goals – for example, course interest, deep learning strategies, adaptive help-seeking, and open sharing during problem-solving (Darnon, Muller, Schrager, Pannuzzo, & Butera, 2006; Harackiewicz et al., 2000; Karabenick, 2003). This is not to say performance-approach goals lack predictive value. They not only do consistently predict a few ‘‘negative’’ correlates such as acceptance of cheating or the use of ‘‘surface’’ learning strategies that focus on rote memorization, but also some ‘‘positive’’ correlates such as effort, persistence, and, curiously, achievement in the classroom (Elliot & Moller, 2003; Hulleman et al., 2010; Kavussanu & Roberts, 2001).
MASTERY GOALS VS. MULTIPLE GOALS Our research review shows that performance-avoidance goals are associated with many negative outcomes, mastery-approach goals associated with many positive outcomes with the notable exception of achievement, and performance-approach goals associated with fewer negative or positive outcomes but do, importantly, appear to facilitate high achievement. In recognition of these disparate findings, and prior research showing that some students do pursue both goals (Meece & Holt, 1993; Pintrich & Garcia, 1991), theorists proposed a multiple goals perspective that highlights the positive potential of both mastery-approach and performance-approach goals (Harackiewicz, Barron, & Elliot, 1998; Harackiewicz et al., 2002; Pintrich, Conley, & Kempler, 2003). Their perspective, departing as it does from the traditional mastery goal perspective that favors mastery-approach goals only, stirred a lively ongoing debate about the relative merits of performance-approach goals (Brophy, 2005; Harackiewicz et al., 2002; Midgley, Kaplan, & Middleton, 2001; Kaplan & Middleton, 2002).
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Before noting the points of tension between these two perspectives, we first highlight two often-overlooked areas of agreement. First, proponents of each perspective agree that mastery-approach goals promote an extensive array of adaptive and beneficial effects (Harackiewicz et al., 2002), and also that researchers and practitioners should find ways to promote masteryapproach goals in real world contexts. Second, neither group suggests that teachers and coaches should actively encourage performance-approach goals in the classroom or sports field. This point is particularly important, as multiple goal theorists are often misunderstood as advocating that teachers and coaches promote performance-approach goals for students and athletes. In our view, the main dividing point between the two perspectives concerns whether performance-approach goals ought to be discouraged. Mastery goal theorists have argued that performance-approach goals should be discouraged for several reasons, foremost among them a concern with educational egalitarianism. Achievement goal theory has long held that only mastery goals can promote equality in learning and motivation (e.g., Ames, 1992; Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1979). Performance goals, due to their reliance on normative rankings, are believed to obstruct some students from succeeding and, consequently, undermine the motivational processes necessary for students to develop to their potential (Brophy, 2005; Kaplan & Middleton, 2002; Midgley et al., 2001; Nicholls, 1979). Thus, mastery goal theorists have long held that performance goals disenfranchise some students. Mastery goal theorists have also marshaled two other reasons for discouraging performance goals. One is their hypothesis that the benefits of performance-approach goals are limited to college-aged American students taking rudimentary classes that require only a superficial understanding of the course content. Thus, in their view, the positive benefit of performance-approach goals on achievement is to be decried instead of heralded. The second is their hypothesis that performance-approach goals, despite their apparent benefits, carry several hidden costs to students’ overall educational experience and quality of learning, such as increased cheating, superficial learning, or vulnerability to performance-avoidance goals and the many costs associated with them. We address each of these hypotheses in our Wish List section of the chapter. Multiple goal theorists take a different perspective. They note that performance-approach goals provide some students important benefits that they do not receive from mastery goals, and argue that it may be risky and unwise to actively discourage those students from pursuing goals that seem to work well for them (Harackiewicz et al., 1998). The primary position of multiple goal theorists is to further explore the inner-workings of
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performance-approach goal effects, rather than dismiss the goal as unworthy or ignoble (Harackiewicz et al., 2002). To some degree, this debate traces to the mastery goal perspective being rooted in philosophical concerns about how education ought to work, and the multiple goals perspective instead being rooted in efforts to accommodate the unexpected goal effects into goal theory. In other words, it is, at a crude level, a distinction between idealism and realism (Roeser, 2004; Urdan, 2001). Elliot (2005) summarizes this tension and hints to its resolution: These desires are not incompatible or antagonistic and, on the contrary, it may be argued that these dual foundations are part of what makes the achievement goal approach so generative and achievement goal research so invigorating and satisfying to conduct. However, disagreements in the achievement goal literature seem to arise when one desire takes precedent over the other – when theoretical work begins to lose its tether to real-world considerations, or when real-world considerations alone begin to drive data interpretations and summary. (p. 67)
We agree and also believe that the theoretical focus of the multiple goal perspective can ultimately inform the idealistic perspective in ways that might appeal to all theorists. In particular, by conducting research on performance goals we can better understand how to imbue masteryapproach goals with the same qualities that enable performance goals to lead to achievement. Potentially, this could lead to mastery-approach goal striving that promotes both learning and achievement. This belief, which has undergirded some of our own research (Senko & Harackiewicz, 2005a; Senko & Miles, 2008), requires a keen focus on the possible mechanisms linking goals to learning and achievement (see Wish #2 later in the chapter).
CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES CONCERNING ACHIEVEMENT GOAL CONSTRUCTS The debate between the mastery and multiple goal perspectives illuminates three conceptual disagreements within the field. Each issue focuses on the achievement goal construct: the conceptual breadth of what defines an achievement ‘goal’, the structure of the achievement goal model (i.e., the value-added of mastery-avoidance goals), and the core components that define mastery and performance goals.
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Conceptual Breadth of an Achievement ‘Goal’ Since its inception, goal theory has maintained that achievement goals organize and provide meaning to achievement-related experiences (Maehr, 1984), by reflecting beliefs about the relationship between effort and ability (Dweck, 1986; Molden & Dweck, 2000; Nicholls, 1984), for example. Though all theorists agree that goals organize and provide meaning, they disagree on how to best model this in the theory and in the operational definitions of achievement goals. Some theorists favor a ‘‘goal orientation’’ approach that encompasses the different elements of one’s experience (affect, attributions, interest) into the broad goal schema (see Kaplan & Maehr, 2007). In their view, these elements are all integral to the goal orientation, and should thus be represented together in the operational definitions of the goals. For example, they contend that a mastery goal orientation by definition comprises focusing on the task, experiencing positive affect and high interest, and possessing an incremental view of intelligence (Maehr, 2001). These elements have, therefore, been included in their goal measures. For example, some measures are imbedded with interest (‘‘I like to learn something interesting’’; Skaalvik, 1997) or affect (‘‘I feel really successful when I am the smartest’’; Duda & Nicholls, 1992). Other theorists favor a narrower approach to goal constructs and definitions. Guided by the traditional theorizing about goals more generally (see Austin & Vancouver, 1996; Elliot & Fryer, 2008), they contend that goals should be competence-oriented, with an end-state that individuals are committed to either approach or avoid (i.e., ‘‘goal complex’’; see Elliot, 2005). In their view, any nongoal elements within the goal orientation model should be distinguished, conceptually and operationally, as either antecedents (e.g., needs, prior beliefs) or achievement-related processes and outcomes (e.g., affect, attributions) triggered by goal engagement. Thus, their goals focus strictly on how competence is defined. For example, mastery-approach goal items include, ‘‘One of my goals in class is to learn as much as I can’’ (Midgley et al., 2000) and ‘‘My goal in this class is to perform better than the other students’’ (Elliot & Murayama, 2008), both of which include goal language and clear competence-related outcomes.
Structure of the Achievement Goal Model The debate over the definition of achievement ‘goal’ is related to another debate about the overall structure of the achievement goal model. The original
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extension of the two-goal model to include performance-avoidance goals was a welcome change for two reasons. First, it vastly improved the predictive value of goal theory, which to that point had suffered due to the muddy and inconsistent findings for performance goals. Separating the performanceapproach and performance-avoidance goals, which had to that point typically been confounded in the same measure (e.g., Button, Mathieu, & Zajac, 1996), had given the field much-needed clarity (Rawsthorne & Elliot, 1999). Second, and no less important, the new three-goal model was loosely consistent with the original conceptualizations of achievement goals, especially Dweck’s (1986) hypothesis that performance goals can be beneficial when perceived competence is high (cf. performance-approach goals) but maladaptive when it is low (cf. performance-avoidance goals). Naturally, theorists soon proposed also partitioning mastery goals into approach and avoidance forms, thereby extending the theory to a four-goal model (Elliot & McGregor, 2001; Pintrich, 2000). This addition has been empirically useful: mastery-avoidance goals appear to produce unique negative effects not produced by mastery-approach goals (see Moller & Elliot, 2006, for a review). However, despite the added predictive value they provide, mastery-avoidance goals have not yet become a common staple in goal research. There are likely several reasons for this. One is that masteryavoidance goals may be less common and relevant to younger school-aged populations than to older adults concerned about declining cognitive or physical skills (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). Indeed, elderly adults are much more likely than young adults to pursue these goals (Ebner, Freund, & Baltes, 2006). Division over mastery-avoidance goals also traces to the broader debate about the appropriate breadth of the goal construct. Theorists who have studied these goals tend to endorse the goal complex view that goals should be narrowly defined in terms of competence-based standards. Mastery-avoidance goals, defined narrowly as a goal to avoid failure to learn or to avoid a decline in skill, fit snugly into this rubric. These goals make less sense from the goal orientation view that includes meaning, value, and affect in the goal construct. In fact, as Bong (2009) recently noted, mastery-avoidance goals are somewhat of an oxymoron from this viewpoint, because they are associated with qualities (e.g., entity beliefs, negative affect) that contradict the mastery goal orientation.
Components of Goals It has long been known that theorists disagree somewhat about the specific components of each type of achievement goal (e.g., Ames, 1992; Elliot, 2005;
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Urdan, 1997), but these differences in opinion were widely considered to be trivial. Recently, researchers have begun to inspect these differences more closely (e.g., Donnellan, 2008; Grant & Dweck, 2003; Hulleman et al., 2010). This is nicely illustrated by Smith, Duda, Allen, and Hall (2002), who, after comparing three of the most commonly used measures of achievement goals, concluded that the lack of consistently strong theoretical relationships between achievement goals and outcomes ‘‘may be due to slight differences in the operational definition proffered by the author of each measure, and the subsequent item content of the subscales’’ (p. 185). Even theorists who favor a narrow definition of achievement goals disagree about the primary components of each goal. What, then, is the true essence of a performance goal and a mastery goal? With regard to performance goals, two main theoretical components have been identified in the literature (e.g., Hulleman et al., 2010; Sideridis & Mouratidis, 2008; Urdan & Mestas, 2006): an appearance component (desire to demonstrate and affirm one’s ability) and a normative component (explicit desire to compare favorably to others). In their mixed-methods study of high school students, Urdan and Mestas (2006) found that students reported both competitive (i.e., normative) and appearance reasons for pursuing performance-approach or performance-avoidance goals. Similarly, Grant and Dweck (2003) found that items tapping ability validation (i.e., appearance) and normative ability formed distinct goals in factor analyses. Not surprisingly, the existing performance goal measures vary in how much they emphasize one component or the other. Hulleman et al. (2010) coded the individual items used to measure achievement goals in 243 studies. They found that the most common performance-approach item types were normative (44%) and appearance (23%). The differences in these measures are not coincidental. They reflect a disagreement as to whether normative comparisons are the fundamental aspect of performance goals (Elliot, 2005), merely a ‘‘potentially interesting but non-essential aspect of a performance goal’’ (Grant & Dweck, 2003, p. 542), or should be dropped from the lexicon (Brophy, 2005). There are two other constructs that have sometimes infiltrated the measures of performance goals. One is an outcome goal, such as wanting to attain a specific outcome (an ‘A’ on an exam). Though sometimes embedded in early measures of performance goals (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1991), they ought to be considered separately because they could signify either performance or mastery goal accomplishment. Empirically, outcome goals provide little predictive value: they are equally correlated with both mastery-approach and performance-approach goals, and are not uniquely associated with educational outcomes (Grant & Dweck, 2003).
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Thus, although they have recently been offered as a replacement for normative performance goals (Brophy, 2005), they are more accurately placed in their own category. Second, performance-avoidance goal measures have historically included items that tap anxiety and fear (Elliot & Church, 1997). These items have been removed from the most current instruments (Elliot & Murayama, 2008). In contrast to performance goals, the mastery goal construct has largely managed to escape controversy, as most theorists agree that mastery goals focus on learning and development (Ames & Archer, 1988; Elliot, 2005; Urdan, 1997). The lone debate has concerned the inclusion of a challengeseeking component within mastery goals (Dupeyrat, Marine, & Escribe, 1999; Grant & Dweck, 2003). Grant and Dweck (2003) found that items tapping learning and challenge-mastery subscales formed a single goal in a factor analysis, but recent analyses of their scale in two additional samples instead provide support for separate mastery and challenge-seeking factors (Donnellan, 2008). Similarly, Dupeyrat et al. (1999) found items tapping mastery/understanding formed a separate factor from items tapping challenge-seeking (see also Roedel & Schraw, 1993, as cited in Dupeyrat et al., 1999). The main categories of mastery-approach goal items identified in the Hulleman et al. (2010) metaanalysis were understanding the task (12%), improvement (10%), potential to learn as much as possible (19%), and challenge-seeking (14%). In contrast, scales measuring masteryavoidance goal scales were more likely to measure fear (85%) than the goals themselves (11%). In summary, there has been substantial disagreement about the core elements of performance goals and mastery goals alike. A careful observer might suggest that achievement goals are multifaceted, so it is not a problem if different goal components are being tapped by different measures. Further, one could argue that multicomponent measurement is a strength, rather than a weakness, particularly if the goal measures produce similar patterns of relationships with outcomes. This position is plausible in principle, but it is not well supported by the data. For example, Grant and Dweck (2003) found that the ability validation and normative ability measures of performance-approach goals produced distinct patterns of relationships with outcomes. Likewise, the metaanalysis by Hulleman et al. (2010) found that the various types of performance-approach goal measures and mastery goal measures had distinct patterns of relationships with achievement. As reproduced in Table 1, normatively framed performanceapproach goal scales were positively correlated with achievement, whereas appearance-oriented scales were negatively correlated with achievement.
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Table 1.
Expected Correlation Values for Majority Scale Code Moderator Analyses. Correlation with Achievement
Performance approach (k ¼ 98) Overall Normative Appearance/evaluative No goal No clear majority
0.06 0.14 0.14 0.01 0.03
Mastery approach (k ¼ 95) Overall Potential Task/improve Generala No goal No clear majority
0.11 0.03 0.10 0.20 0.10 0.09
a
Includes challenge-seeking, interest, and novelty items. As reported by Hulleman et al. (2010).
For mastery-approach goals, scales using challenge-seeking or interestbased measures were positively correlated with achievement, whereas scales using task, skill development, or attaining one’s potential were uncorrelated with achievement. This conceptual confusion about the essence of each achievement goals has also been reflected in experimental manipulations of achievement goals, which often lump together distinct constructs. For example, Utman’s (1997) metaanalysis, which is sometimes cited as evidence of the deleterious effects of performance goals on task performance (Kaplan & Maehr, 2007), comprises 24 studies of which only two could be classified as using normative performance-approach goals (Covington & Omelich, 1985; Gianini, Weinberg, & Jackson, 1988). The others instead would be classified as appearance-oriented performance-approach goals or a nongoal construct (e.g., extrinsic motivation).
Summary of Conceptual and Methodological Issues The conceptual and methodological issues we have outlined above – definition of achievement ‘goal’, structure of the achievement goal model, components of goals – have important implications for theory growth and research methods. As presented in Table 2, these broad conceptual issues
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Table 2.
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A Conceptual Summary of the Major Points in the Mastery Goal vs. Multiple Goal Debate.
Issues I. Goal construct definitions a. How should goals be defined?
b. Are MAv goals real and useful contributions to goal theory?
c. What are the essential components of performance goals?
II. Goal mechanisms a. How should the PAp goal link to achievement be viewed?
b. Multiple goal pursuit
c. Goal revision after failure
Mastery Goal Perspective
Multiple Goals Perspective
Goal orientation approach: The goal and accompanying aspects (affect, interest, etc.) all fit a broad schema and should be considered a single construct.
Goal complex approach: The central focus is on a competence-relevant aim or standard. Other aspects should be treated as separate antecedents (e.g., needs) or consequences (e.g., affect) of goal pursuit. Yes, because they meet the definition of a competencebased achievement goal and are commonly pursued by people.
No, because mastery goal orientations are by definition positive, comprising high interest, incremental ability views, and so forth. Desire to demonstrate competence to others and validate one’s own ability. Measures, therefore, feature appearance PAp goals. (e.g., PALS, Midgley et al., 2000). Skeptically. It may be confined to simple tasks (e.g., classes requiring only superficial understanding) or highly competitive contexts. Pursuing MAp and PAp together backfires due to competing goal attainment strategies sapping mental resources, thus undermining learning and achievement. Pursuing PAp goals is risky because failure experiences may lead students to switch to PAv goals, thus undermining learning and achievement.
Desire to outperform others on normative standards. Measures therefore feature normative PAp goals (e.g., AGQ, Elliot & Murayama, 2008).
Cautiously. Mechanisms causing this link need to be explored, as do the potential boundaries of this effect. Many students already pursue MAp and PAp, evidently with success. Research is needed to chart the most effective strategies for multiple goal pursuit. Goal pursuit appears largely stable. When failure does trigger goal revision, this can happen to MAp goals as much as PAp goals.
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Table 2. (Continued ) Issues
Mastery Goal Perspective
III. Recommendations for Practitioners a. Views of MAp goals Should be encouraged by practitioners (teachers, etc.). b. Views PAp goals? Should actively discourage PAp goals, due to the potential risks of these goals.
Multiple Goals Perspective
Should be encouraged by practitioners (teachers, etc.). Should neither discourage nor encourage these goals. They may work well for some students, not for others.
overlap loosely with the mastery/multiple goals debate. For example, multiple goal theorists tend to favor the narrow goal definitions over goal orientations, believe that mastery-avoidance goals are a valid and useful contribution to goal theory, and uniformly use normative-based measures of performance goals. By contrast, theorists who favor a goal orientation perspective, or consider mastery-avoidance goals invalid, or use appearanceoriented measures of performance goals, all tend to support the mastery goal perspective. Our summary is meant to be more illustrative, than definitive, of the types of connections between the conceptual issues within the field. We encourage readers to consider the thoughtful reviews of Kaplan and Maehr (2007) and Elliot (2005) for additional discussion. However, regardless of theoretical perspective, it is clear that the field needs to consider goal definitions much more closely, and investigate the validity of the different types of performance and mastery goal constructs and measures. For example, if separate goal components continue to be differentially related to outcomes (Hulleman et al., 2010), it may become necessary for the field to either unite on a singular definition of each goal or bifurcate each goal into separate components.
OUR ‘WISH LIST’ FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS OF ACHIEVEMENT GOAL RESEARCH: METHODS, MECHANISMS, AND MULTIPLE GOALS In presenting our wish list for the next decade of research, we acknowledge that our perspective is rooted in our social psychological background, which
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focuses more on microprocesses than, say, the ecological validity emphasis of the applied psychology domains. As such, our wish list addresses microlevel issues surrounding three themes: the methods in achievement goal research; the mechanisms linking goals to key outcomes, achievement, and interest in particular; and the dynamics of multiple goal pursuit over time.
Wish #1: Utilize Appropriate Research Methods In order for progress to be made in any field, research methods (e.g., measurement tools, experimental design, analytic techniques, sample selection) need to be appropriate for the research question. When misalignment occurs, it is not possible to draw the conclusions that the researcher would like to draw. For example, correlational and qualitative designs are less appropriate for drawing causal inferences than experimental designs or longitudinal modeling, whereas the reverse is true when construct exploration or ecological validity are the goals (Schneider, Carnoy, Kilpatrick, Schmidt, & Shavelson, 2007). In this section, we outline three major areas of research methods that we believe achievement goal theorists should ponder upon: construct measurement, research design (including analytic techniques), and sample selection. Measurement In psychology, as in other fields, inferences about theoretical constructs are limited by the precision (validity, reliability) of the instruments used to measure those constructs (Campbell, 1969). Achievement goal research is no exception. As noted earlier, the diversity of content in achievement goal measures opens the possibility that diverging patterns of results could be due to researchers applying the same label to different constructs. Thus, our first wish-list item is for achievement goal researchers to improve measurement in two ways. First, it will be important for theorists to determine the essential components of achievement goals, both conceptually and phenomenologically, and then establish valid and reliable measures of these components. This means linking the conceptual definitions and components of achievement goals with their operationalized definitions (i.e., measures). In other words, this conceptual–operational alignment must occur at the level of the items used to assess each type of achievement goal (see Elliot & Murayama, 2008, for an example of this alignment process). Importantly, this means that researchers need to understand the conceptual framework implied by
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how the items are written, and not simply assume that there is a direct correspondence between another researcher’s goal scale label and their theoretical framework. Second, in accord with the goal complex framework, we believe it is vital that achievement goal measures distinguish goals from processes (e.g., affect, attributions) and antecedents (e.g., reasons, needs, personality preferences). This is important on several accounts. Capturing the processes of goal pursuit via self-report items has been shown to be unreliable because people are better at reporting on mental contents (goals, attitudes) than they are at inferring why they feel a certain way (e.g., ‘‘Studying is important to me because y’’) or why they have adopted an important goal (e.g., ‘‘The reason I study hard is to y’’; see Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). People are also equally unreliable at forecasting their affective futures (Gilbert, 2007) as some goal items require (e.g., ‘‘I feel successful when y’’). Further, without distinct measures of goals and processes, it will be impossible to understand the exact nature of their interrelationships, as well as the nature and strength of the goal relationships with interest, achievement, and other outcomes (Pintrich et al., 2003). As Elliot and Murayama (2008) point out: ‘‘Existing measures of achievement goals often include content that more readily belongs in measures of y other constructs. As the achievement goal literature matures it will undoubtedly move more and more in the direction of linking goals to y other constructs in integrative fashion. A conceptually clean achievement goal measure would seem a prerequisite for this integration process to transpire smoothly.’’ (p. 626)
In fact, one reason behind the development of achievement goal theory was a desire to extend the classic need-based approach to achievement motivation (e.g., McClelland et al., 1953) by investigating context-specific motivations (e.g., Nicholls, 1984). If achievement goal research is to extend beyond achievement motives, then achievement goal measures will need to distinguish personality preferences, needs, and affect from situation-specific competence strivings (Elliot & Dweck, 2005). Research Design and Analytic Techniques Adequate tests of any theory require selecting research designs and analytic techniques appropriate to the hypotheses being tested. The American Psychological Association offers useful guidance: Although complex designs and state-of-the-art methods are sometimes necessary to address research questions effectively, simpler classical approaches often can provide elegant and sufficient answers to important questions. Do not choose an analytic method
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CHRIS S. HULLEMAN AND CORWIN SENKO to impress your readers or to deflect criticism. If the assumptions and strength of a simpler method are reasonable for your data and research problem, use it. Occam’s razor applies to methods as well as to theories y Begin with an idea. Then pick a method. (Wilkinson & The Task Force on Statistical Inference, 1999, p. 598).
Peterson (2009) refers to this type of research design as ‘minimally sufficient research’, where the research questions ‘‘direct our methods and analyses, not vice versa’’ (p. 8). It is not advisable to use the newest statistical technique just because it is available. Nor is it advisable to cling to old methods just because a more appropriate technique is unfamiliar. We would like to see achievement goal research use ‘minimally sufficient’ designs and analytic techniques. For example, although some achievement-goal research questions can be best answered using experimental designs and ANOVAbased techniques, other research questions are better suited for more sophisticated analytic methods. Importantly, when sophisticated techniques are used, they must be paired with adequate design and attention to the specific hypothesis. For example, when conducting field research designed to infer causality in a theoretically derived path model (e.g., via structural equation modeling), the variables need to be separated by time, ideally with goals measured at the beginning of the academic period (Senko & Harackiewicz, 2005b) and baseline measures of the outcome variable(s) collected as well (see Maxwell & Cole, 2007). Otherwise, the knowledge gained is extremely limited despite complex statistical analyses. We would also like to see achievement goal researchers integrate field and laboratory research methods. Independently, these methods have their drawbacks, but in concert they produce a robust methodological approach. In particular, many educational researchers use field studies to maximize ecological validity – that is, the extent to which study results can be generalized across settings. However, such observational designs are not well suited to infer causality. In contrast, randomized field experiments allow researchers to make causal inferences within real-world contexts (e.g., Schneider et al., 2007). Yet, even they cannot allow the full experimental control that is provided in the lab. Similarly, it is challenging to chart the various behavioral processes triggered by goals in field settings, and so researchers often end up relying on students’ self-reports of their behavior rather than observing actual behavior. Laboratory studies, by contrast, provide the opportunity to assess causality through experimental manipulation and to directly observe behavior under standardized conditions, both of which can allow meaningful contributions to goal theory when paired alongside the more ecologically valid field studies. Examples abound of interesting and compelling laboratory experiments (e.g., Butler, 1993;
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Darnon, Butera, & Harackiewicz, 2007; Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Poortvliet, Janssen, Van Yperen, & Van de Vliert, 2007). In order for laboratory experiments to provide sufficient tests of achievement goals, however, we believe that they must provide participants opportunities to cultivate and apply the strategies that they employ in the classroom. This generally has not been the case. Most laboratory studies (including our own) introduce participants to a novel task, induce the goal, and then require participants to perform the task immediately. This approach allows only very basic processes to emerge – for example, varying degrees of anxiety and effort – that in turn may help or hinder performance at the task. There is little room in such a procedure for participants to develop and use more complex processes, such as those that we discuss in Wish #2 (‘Investigating Mechanisms’). We recommend that laboratory studies be designed in ways that allow these processes to emerge in order to better simulate the experiences one might have in the classroom or in other achievement domains. Furthermore, given the aforementioned limitations of reporting on mental processes, affective memories and forecasts, and selfreported study strategies (Gilbert, 2007; Winne & Jamieson-Noel, 2003), we also recommend that laboratory researchers observe participants as they work under mastery or performance goal conditions under extended periods of time, rather than ask participants for retrospective reports. In summary, integrating measured and manipulated goal studies in a thoughtful fashion would certainly advance our knowledge of achievement goal theory and application (e.g., Bodmann, Hulleman, & Harackiewicz, 2008), and randomized field experiments would complement these approaches (Schneider et al., 2007). In this same regard, the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods (i.e., mixed-methods designs) could also be productive. In an excellent recent example of a mixed-methods study, Urdan and Mestas (2006) followed-up participants’ responses to close-ended performance goal items with face-to-face interviews.
Sample Selection As with all psychological research, once fundamental issues of construct validity and mechanism are established, it will be vital to examine the generalizability of these goal processes and outcomes. The selection of a diversity of samples will enable researchers to generalize achievement goal findings beyond convenience samples, and integrate research from the wellestablished domains of educational, sport, and organizational psychology. We briefly preview three areas of generalizability that we wish to receive
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systematic research attention in the next decade: age, culture, and achievement domain. First, much of the educational research documenting benefits of performance-approach goals relative to mastery-approach goals has been conducted with college samples. Several theorists have questioned whether those effects are unique to that age and educational context (e.g., Midgley et al., 2001). Systematic reviews have yielded different patterns. One found that this link occurs for all but elementary school children, while the other found that age did not moderate the link (Hulleman et al., 2010; Linnenbrink-Garcia, Tyson, & Patall, 2008). There is clearly more work needed on this issue, ideally entailing direct and systematic within-study comparisons (Elliot, Conroy, Barron, & Murayama, in press; Middleton, Kaplan, & Midgley, 2004). In light of the potentially discrepant effects of different performance goal measures, we encourage such research to use the same goal measures and general procedure when comparing age groups. Second, as presaged by early theorists (Maehr & Nicholls, 1980), motivation research has expanded beyond North America, with interesting cultural differences emerging for achievement goals in particular. One finding is that performance-avoidance goals seem to provide fewer detriments, and even some benefits, in East Asia than in Western cultures. For example, in a study of Korean students, Bong (2005) found that performance-avoidance goals predict high achievement. Her finding is supported by the Hulleman et al. (2010) metaanalysis that found a positive correlation (r ¼ .11) between performance-avoidance goals and achievement across 19 studies using Asian samples. Similarly, other studies have shown positive links between general avoidance-oriented life goals (e.g., to avoid declines in health or income) and high well-being in collectivistic societies (Elliot, Chirkov, Kim, & Sheldon, 2001). In contrast, we are unaware of any such finding with students in Western cultures. Studies are needed now to directly examine the culturally based mechanisms responsible for the surprising positive effects of performance-avoidance goals in collectivistic cultures (cf. Iyengar & Lepper, 1999). Third, studies are needed to compare effects across achievement domains. Achievement goal theory’s origins trace primarily to social (Dweck & Elliott, 1983) and educational psychology (Ames & Archer, 1988; Maehr, 1984; Nicholls, 1984). Similarly, the bulk of the research reviewed in this chapter was conducted either in social psychology laboratories or in educational settings. Over the years, however, the theory has become prominent in the sport psychology and organizational psychology literatures as well (Harwood, Spray, & Keegan, 2008; Payne et al., 2007).
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Research in these achievement domains has overlapped for the most part. For example, studies in each area have tested the fundamental premise that goal effects depend on one’s perceived competence (Dweck, 1986). Likewise, it is now customary in all domains to examine the separate effects of performance-approach goals and performance-avoidance goals. Yet it is not clear if the effects of achievement goals are consistent across these different domains. Consider, for example, the effects of performanceapproach goals on achievement. Two recent metaanalyses suggest the effect may be different in educational settings than in work domains. Hulleman et al.’s (2010) metaanalysis, mostly of studies in educational settings, found a positive effect of performance-approach goals. In contrast, Payne et al.’s (2007) metaanalysis of studies, most of them in organizational settings, found no overall benefit of performance-approach goals. It remains unknown if these differences are due to the domains or instead are an artifact of methodological differences employed in these two areas. For example, the primary performance goal measures used in the organizational research emphasize appearance performance goals (Button et al., 1996; Vandewalle, 1997), whereas measures used in educational research tend to be more normatively focused. It is plausible that the different goal effects in these education and organizational literatures may simply trace to the components of each goal being measured. This possibility awaits systematic testing.
Wish #2: Investigate the Mechanisms Linking Goals to Achievement and Interest For now, let us assume that, after improving construct measures and increasing methodological diversity, the research will continue to reveal the same broad patterns of findings – namely, that mastery-approach goals are consistently related to intrinsic motivation and interest, whereas performanceapproach goals are more consistently related to achievement. How can achievement goal researchers best understand and explain these effects? The goal relationships with achievement are particularly intriguing, considering that they were never anticipated by goal theory’s founders. Indeed, they continue to surprise after over a decade of research supporting them. For example, Brophy (2005) argued that performance-approach goals actually have no effect on achievement. He reasoned that only the most talented students would willingly pursue this goal, in which case the ‘effect’ of performance-approach goals on achievement is due to an underlying ability (or confidence) confound instead of the goal itself. Although an intriguing
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and provocative idea, it is contradicted the data. Studies routinely show that performance-approach goals and mastery-approach goals both correlate with underlying ability and confidence to the same small degree, and yet performance-approach goals remain the more reliable predictor of achievement. Furthermore, their effects on achievement persist even when statistically removing the influence of underlying ability or baseline confidence levels (for a review, see Senko, Hulleman, & Harackiewicz, 2010). If not underlying ability, what does explain why performance-approach goals promote achievement more reliably than mastery-approach goals? There may be many explanations. There certainly has been no shortage of efforts to test the potential ‘‘mediators’’ of this effect. Numerous studies have provided a smorgasbord of possibilities: for example, study strategies, studying time and other effort measures, persistence, anxiety and other emotions, help-seeking, self-efficacy and performance expectancies, and selfregulation and metacognition, among others. All of this work is useful, of course, but also risks being atheoretical if it merely accumulates assorted known predictors of achievement without also offering compelling reasons for why those predictors would explain the surprising goal effects on achievement. Thus, our second wish is that theorists develop clear models for how goals translate into achievement and interest. Knowing the underlying mechanisms will not only advance goal theory, but also perhaps will improve application efforts, introduce possible moderators that have been overlooked, and identify ways to strengthen the mastery-approach goal link with achievement. Fortunately, several possible explanations are now emerging, each of them worthy of continued attention over the next decade. Mirroring the notion that goals both energize and direct behavior, the proffered mechanisms concern either simple effort-related mechanisms or more complex behavioral strategy mechanisms. Due to space limitation, we summarize them only briefly and direct interested readers to Senko et al. (2010) for a fuller treatment of each. Effort Mechanisms Goal setting theory (Locke & Latham, 2002) touts how pursing challenging goals boosts achievement, in large part due to energizing and mobilizing effort. Perhaps a similar effort-related mechanism can help account for the achievement goal effects on achievement. In principle, anyone can attain a mastery-approach goal, but only some can attain a performance-approach goal (Nicholls, 1984). Thus, the performance goal may seem harder to attain than the mastery goal and, as a result, arouse more pressure and effort that,
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for some tasks at least, can aid performance. We found preliminary support for this in a pair of studies, one of which showed that increasing the apparent difficulty of a mastery-approach goal also led to performance improvements (Senko, 2009; Senko & Harackiewicz, 2005a). This hypothesis is also partially supported by Hulleman et al.’s (2010) finding that mastery-approach goals correlated positively with achievement only when measured with challenge-seeking items. Strategy Mechanisms The effort-based mechanism may contribute to achievement, but there is likely more to the story. One possibility is that mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals trigger different behavioral strategies, with different consequences for achievement. We consider two strategy-based mechanisms here, one a long-standing explanation and the other a recent alternative. The first is that performance-approach goals lead students to rely on superficial study strategies (i.e., rote memorization), which put them in good position to succeed in many courses. Mastery-oriented students, by contrast, are thought to rely more on deeper learning strategies (i.e., elaboration of the material, critical analysis) that unfortunately put them at a disadvantage in those same classes. Thus, this explanation traces goal effects on achievement to how achievement is measured; it assumes that performance-approach goals often foster success because many classes, especially the large introductory-level courses often sampled in the research, demand only a surface understanding of the material. In more pedagogically sophisticated classes that value deep comprehension, mastery-approach goals, owing to the deep study strategies they prompt, might foster greater success than performance-approach goals (e.g., Brophy, 2005; Midgley et al., 2001; Nicholls, 1984). This ‘‘depth of learning’’ explanation, like the ability confound argument reviewed earlier, has immense intuitive appeal but is not yet well supported by data. For example, studies show that mastery-approach goals not only promote deep studying strategies but also often surface studying strategies (see Senko et al., 2010). Accordingly, if the explanation were correct, then mastery-approach goals should often predict achievement in those allegedly rudimentary classes so often sampled in the research. The explanation is also debunked, rather compellingly in our opinion, by the simple fact that surface learning strategies do not aid achievement. They instead nearly always produce a null or negative relationship with students’ achievement (see Senko et al., 2010). Thus, it appears that surface learning strategies have little to do with the performance-approach goal link to achievement.
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An alternative explanation for goal effects on achievement has recently been offered. Rather than focus solely on how students study (deep vs. shallow), this explanation focuses also on what students choose to study. Essentially, the two goals, due to their different criteria for determining success, may lead students to pursue different learning agendas that cause distinct effects on their performance in the class. Consider performanceapproach goals first. Attaining these goals in the classroom requires outperforming peers, usually on teacher-set criteria (Elliot, 2005; Nicholls, 1984). It, therefore, behooves students pursuing these goals to adhere closely to the teacher’s agenda, which requires they maintain vigilance for cues (e.g., the teacher’s demands, hints, study guides) that indicate the topic knowledge and skills which the teacher values and is likely to assess on the exams and assignments. In contrast, mastery-approach goal attainment requires satisfying either task-based standards (e.g., solving 80% of problems) or, more often than not, self-referential standards (i.e., improving or feeling one has learned). Students pursuing these goals are therefore freer than performance-oriented students to chase their own learning agenda instead of their teacher’s, and as such are likely to delve more deeply into topics that arouse their curiosity. Recent studies offer preliminary support for this ‘‘learning agenda’’ hypothesis. They show, for example, that performanceoriented students are highly attentive to instructor demands and, furthermore, that they anchor their studying efforts to the material they believe the teacher values), whereas mastery-oriented students tend to direct their study efforts toward personally interesting topics, sometimes even neglecting the duller material that may be tested (e.g., Senko & Miles, 2008; Vermetten, Lodewijks, & Vermunt, 2001). Social Desirability Considerations Another intriguing explanation has been recently offered by Darnon and her colleagues. It is silent about the reasons why performance-approach goals aid achievement, but does offer some explanation for the weak link between mastery-approach goals and achievement. Mastery-approach goals, unlike performance-approach goals, correlate with social desirability indices (e.g., Day, Radosevich, & Chasteen, 2003; see Payne et al., 2007, for a review). Likewise, mastery-oriented students, unlike performance-oriented ones, tend to pursue social goals aimed at pleasing teachers (Anderman & Anderman, 1999) and also tend to believe that their teachers like and care about them (Patrick, Ryan, & Kaplan, 2007). In light of these findings, Darnon posited that students may pursue mastery-approach goals for different reasons, some capturing the pure desire for improvement or task
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mastery but others instead capturing social desirability aims to please teachers (or others). Indeed, when asked to consider which goals would please their teacher, students selected mastery-approach goals instead of performance goals (Darnon, Dompnier, Delmas, Pulfrey, & Butera, 2009). In a similar vein, Dompnier, Darnon, and Butera (2009) recently found that mastery-approach goals predicted achievement only when undiluted by these social desirability aims. Together, their studies spotlight the need to more closely examine the reasons for mastery-approach goal pursuit. It may be that mastery-approach goal endorsement for some students says more about their connection to general proschool values than students’ strivings for improvement or learning. Similarly, the connected with proschool values could also partially explain the strong correlations between masteryapproach goals and self-reported interest. This possibility dovetails with our metaanalysis finding that performance-approach goals also yield more positive effects on achievement when they are purely normative instead of colored by competence demonstration strivings (Hulleman et al., 2010).
Wish #3: Examine the Dynamics of Multiple Goal Pursuit Over Time Recent years have witnessed two debates about multiple achievement goal pursuit over time. One concerns whether students have difficulty pursuing mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals simultaneously. The other concerns whether students switch from performance-approach to performance-avoidance goal in response to adversity. The two debates have rarely overlapped, yet we review them together here because they share several fundamental features and necessitate similar methodological considerations in future research. Prior Work on Multiple Goal Pursuit Theorists often conceptualize mastery-approach goals and performance goals as opposites. Yet the two goals usually are somewhat positively correlated, suggesting that some students pursue both during the semester. This possibility raises questions about the effects of pursuing both goals. For example, is it the case, as proponents of the multiple goals perspective suggest (Barron & Harackiewicz, 2001), that students who pursue both mastery-approach and performance-approach goals together reap the benefits of each? Or, as critics of this perspective suggest (Brophy, 2005; Midgley et al., 2001), do those students instead suffer detriments due to the two goals necessitating different strategies, thus draining mental resources
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and minimizing the benefits normally afforded by the goals? Similarly, students often pursue other goals in achievement situations – for example, social goals to establish status or please teachers, or work-avoidant goals to conserve energy. What are the joint effects of these goals alongside students’ achievement goals? The typical approach to addressing these questions has been to compare the effects of pursuing mastery and performance-approach goals together versus pursuing just one or the other. Most studies fail to find any interactive effects between the two goals, and those that do tend to yield inconsistent findings that render broad conclusions impossible (for a review, see Pintrich et al., 2003). The most persistent finding appears to be that mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals yield independent effects: sometimes the two affect the same outcome (e.g., effort, persistence) in an additive manner suggesting increased benefits to pursuing both goals instead of just one or the other (e.g., Pintrich, 2000; Wolters et al., 1996); other times they affect different desired outcomes (e.g., achievement for performance-approach goals, interest for mastery-approach goals) in a manner suggesting specialized benefits for each goal (e.g., Barron & Harackiewicz, 2001; Harackiewicz et al., 2002). In a similar manner, the few studies that have tested the joint effects of social goals and these achievement goals suggest that they provide independent instead of clear interactive effects (e.g., Wentzel, 1999).
Prior Research on Goal Change Goal theorists generally consider students’ achievement goals to be partly dispositional and partly context-dependent – that is, not only stable enough to energize and direct their experience over time, but also pliable enough to be shaped by others (e.g., teachers, coaches, employers). The research tends to support this long-standing premise. For example, in support of the dispositional view, several studies demonstrate that students tend to pursue similar goals across different domains and also continue to pursue the same goal(s) for a class throughout the semester or academic year (e.g., Bong, 2005; Fryer & Elliot, 2007; Maehr & Midgley, 1991; Meece & Miller, 2001; Middleton et al., 2004; Shim, Ryan, & Anderson, 2008). Yet in support of the contextualized nature of goals, many of those studies also show that changes to the broader school or classroom climate can affect students’ goal pursuit (see also, Ames, 1992; Maehr & Midgley, 1991). For example, the manner in which feedback is delivered can influence students’ desire to master subsequent tasks (Mueller & Dweck, 1998).
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Most of the work on context-driven change in goals has focused on the role of instructor practices (e.g., evaluation procedures) and school climate in shaping students goals. An emerging line of inquiry is exploring how students revise their goal pursuit in responses to the context-dependent vacillations in competence perceptions (Bong, 2005). The prevailing hypothesis has been that failure experiences lead students to switch from performance-approach to performance-avoidance goals (Brophy, 2005; Kaplan & Maehr, 2007; Midgley et al., 2001; Urdan, 2004; see also Nicholls, 1984, for an earlier version of the argument). The underlying message, then, is that performance-approach goals ought to be discouraged because they place students at risk for the ill effects of performanceavoidance goals. This is an intriguing hypothesis, one given primarily as a counterpoint to multiple goals theorists’ emphasis on the positive potential of performance-approach goals. Consistent with this hypothesis, many studies show that baseline competence perceptions positively predict performance-approach goal pursuit and negatively predict performance-avoidance goal pursuit (see Elliot & Moller, 2003). A direct test of the hypothesis, however, requires measuring goals before and after failure experiences. To our knowledge, only three published studies have done this, with mixed results. One study, in support of the hypothesis, found that negative feedback simultaneously decreased performance-approach goal pursuit and increased performance-avoidance goal pursuit (Senko & Harackiewicz, 2005b, Study 1). However, another found no effect of negative feedback on the pursuit of either of the performance goals (Senko & Harackiewicz, 2005b, Study 2), and still another, in apparent contradiction to the hypothesis, found that students pursuing performance-approach goals were more likely to later pursue performanceavoidance goals if they had high instead of low self-efficacy (Middleton et al., 2004). More research is clearly needed on approach-avoidance goal change. We also second Fryer & Elliot’s, 2007 call for researchers to broaden the scope of this analysis beyond just performance goals. Baseline competence perceptions predict mastery goal pursuit as strongly as performance-approach goal pursuit (see Senko et al., 2010), and changes in self-efficacy predict corresponding changes in mastery goals (Bong, 2005). Surely, then, competence-related goal revision is also relevant to mastery-approach goals. For example, some students might switch from mastery-approach to masteryavoidance goals or work-avoidance goals after experiencing failure, and indeed two of the three studies cited above showed that students decreased their mastery-approach goal pursuit after receiving negative feedback (Senko & Harackiewicz, 2005b, Studies 1 and 2).
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Future Directions Our brief reviews of the literatures on multiple goal pursuit and goal change reveal mixed findings for each. The multiple goal studies, on the whole, show no clear detriments to pursuing mastery and performance-approach goals together. Most tend instead to show independent, positive main effects of the two goals. Nor is there yet strong evidence that students pursuing performance-approach goals tend to switch to performance-avoidance goals in response to failure experiences. The inconclusive findings for each area might be due to the methodologies typically employed. For each topic, the custom has been to aggregate across students. This assumes that students experience multiple goal pursuit similarly or respond to failure experiences similarly. As noted elsewhere (Fryer & Elliot, 2007; Pintrich et al., 2003), this one-size-fits-all method might obscure widely varying individual differences in how students experience multiple goal pursuit or goal revision. To illustrate, consider two students who are each pursuing both masteryapproach and performance-approach goals for a class. Maxine considers the two goals highly distinct and develops unique strategies (i.e., goal means, such as study strategies) for attaining each goal: she reads all the assigned material and some that is not (mastery goal), and she also focuses extra attention on the material that she thinks will be on the test (performance goal). In contrast, Minnie considers the two goals highly connected and utilizes the same set of behaviors to attain each: she focuses on the material that she thinks will be on the test (performance goal) and learns it as well as she can (mastery goal). These two students would likely have vastly different experiences. Maxine would probably try to alternate between the two goals, which incurs costs such as fatigue and decreased performance (Shah, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2002), and therefore struggle to attain one or both goals. By contrast, Minnie, having linked the two goals together, would be more apt to pursue them simultaneously and, without having her resources overtaxed in the process, might have higher odds attaining one or both goals. These hypotheses are purely speculative, of course, and readers may well generate alternate hypotheses. Our main point is simply that students are likely to vary in how they mentally represent multiple goals, how they select strategies for attaining those goals, and how effectively they therefore can coordinate their pursuit of those goals. These possibilities necessitate person-centered methodologies, such as cluster analysis and similar procedures, that can distinguish (a) students who coordinate multiple goals effectively from those who do not, and (b) students who are resilient in performance-approach goal pursuit from those who are not.
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Table 3.
A Wish List for Achievement Goal Research.
Wish 1. Utilize appropriate research methods
Description We encourage researchers to utilize research methods appropriate for testing their research questions, including: Measurement: Identify the components of achievement goals relevant to the theoretical framework, and then develop valid and reliable instruments to capture these components; establish distinct measures of goals and processes. Research design and analytic techniques: Conduct ‘minimally sufficient research’ to answer research questions; align achievement goal conceptualizations and goal manipulations; utilize data analytic techniques that match the research question and not those that are comfortable or appear impressive; integrate correlational and experimental methods, and qualitative and quantitative approaches. Sample selection: Examine achievement goals across research samples that differ by age, gender, nationality, culture, and achievement domain.
2. Investigate the mechanisms linking achievement goals to achievement and interest
We encourage researchers to develop theoretical models to investigate why achievement goals have the effects they do, both on performance and interest. Several possible mechanisms look particularly promising and intriguing, including: goal difficulty and effort strategies of goal pursuit social desirability processes and concerns.
3. Examine the dynamics of multiple achievement goal pursuit over time
We encourage researchers to focus attention on the dynamics of multiple goal pursuit over time, in particular: stability and change of multiple goal relationships coordination of multiple goals over time. This area of research could benefit from the utilization of more advanced statistical techniques and integration with other theoretical frameworks, such as goal systems theory (e.g., Bodmann et al., 2008).
In addition, achievement goal researchers might also look to other goal theory frameworks from the broader psychological literature to inform future research endeavors. For example, it may be fruitful to consult the basic social-cognitive models of goal systems (Shah et al., 2002), selfknowledge structures (e.g., Linville, 1987), or cognitive neuroscience
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(Ferlazzo, Lucido, Di Nocera, Fagioli, & Sdoia, 2007) as starting points for theory development. As an example of the potential for integration, Bodmann et al. (2008) demonstrate that incorporating the goal systems distinction between goals (desired end states) and goal means (behaviors that can help one accomplish a goal) can help explain why performanceapproach goals are more consistently associated with achievement than are mastery-approach goals.
CONCLUSION We wish to see advancements in three broad areas of achievement goal research during the next 10 years. These areas, summarized in Table 3, concern the improvements in the selection of appropriate research methods, the investigation of mechanisms causing goal effects, and exploration of the dynamics of multiple goal pursuit over time. Hopefully, pursuing these wishes will engender three interconnected outcomes: (a) a refined focus and broadened scope of achievement goal research, (b) increased usage of minimally sufficient methods to test hypotheses, and (c) an increase in theoretically guided research that facilitates practical application. Refining the definitions and components of achievement goals will facilitate conceptual–operational alignment. Improved alignment will enhance our ability to validly test hypotheses. Achievement goal theory may naturally broaden as researchers will be better positioned to utilize other theoretical frameworks and apply the theory to more diverse samples and contexts. Practically, refined theories with clear findings are more understandable and easier to apply. The interplay between research and practice can optimize our understanding of both real-world and theoretical challenges, such as the dynamics of multiple goal pursuit.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIVE MINI-THEORIES OF SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW, EMERGING TRENDS, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Maarten Vansteenkiste, Christopher P. Niemiec and Bart Soenens Self-determination theory is a macro-theory of motivation, emotion, and personality in social contexts that has been under development for nearly forty years following the seminal work of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. Self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985b, 2000; Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2010; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Vansteenkiste, Ryan, & Deci, 2008) has been advanced in a cumulative, research-driven manner, as new ideas have been naturally and steadily integrated into the theory following sufficient empirical support, which has helped SDT maintain its internal consistency. To use a metaphor, the development of SDT is similar to the construction of a puzzle. Over the years, new pieces have been added to the theory once their fit was determined. At present, dozens of scholars throughout the world continue to add their pieces to the ‘‘SDT puzzle,’’ and The Decade Ahead: Theoretical Perspectives on Motivation and Achievement Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Volume 16A, 105–165 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0749-7423/doi:10.1108/S0749-7423(2010)000016A007
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hundreds of practitioners working with all age groups, and in various domains and cultures, have used SDT to inform their practice. Herein, we provide an historical overview of the development of the five mini-theories (viz., cognitive evaluation theory, organismic integration theory, causality orientations theory, basic psychological needs theory, and goal content theory) that constitute SDT, discuss emerging trends within those minitheories, elucidate similarities with and differences from other theoretical frameworks, and suggest directions for future research.
COGNITIVE EVALUATION THEORY Intrinsic Motivation Cognitive evaluation theory (CET; Deci, 1975), SDT’s first mini-theory, was built from research on the dynamic interplay between external events (e.g., rewards, choice) and people’s task interest or enjoyment – that is, intrinsic motivation (IM). At the time, this research was quite controversial, as operant theory (Skinner, 1971) had dominated the psychological landscape. The central assumption of operant theory was that reinforcement contingencies in the environment control behavior, which precluded the existence of inherently satisfying activities performed for non-separable outcomes. During this time, Deci proposed that people – by nature – possess intrinsic motivation (IM), which can manifest as engagement in curiositybased behaviors, discovery of new perspectives, and seeking out optimal challenges (see also Harlow, 1953; White, 1959). IM thus represents a manifestation of the organismic growth tendency and is readily observed in infants’ and toddlers’ exploratory behavior and play. Operationally, an intrinsically motivated activity is performed for its own sake – that is, the behavior is experienced as inherently satisfying. From an attributional perspective (deCharms, 1968), such behaviors have an internal perceived locus of causality, as people perceive their behavior as emanating from their sense of self, rather than from experiences of control or coercion.
Theoretical Considerations At this point, it is worthwhile to clarify the exact meaning of enjoyment, which is central to IM, and to contrast it with the hedonic approach to well-being (Kahneman, Diener, & Schwarz, 1999). Within SDT, IM does not involve the
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active and explicit pursuit of enjoyment prior to activity-engagement; that is, we do not describe those who are intrinsically motivated as ‘‘enjoymentseekers.’’ Rather, enjoyment is a by-product of full immersion in an activity. This view contrasts with the hedonic approach, which stresses the importance of seeking immediate gratification from one’s pursuits and can resemble a carpe diem approach to life (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). Hedonic activities may be enjoyable, but the positive feelings derived from such pursuits are likely to be superficial and short-lived because hedonic activities may be unrelated to the satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs. In line with this, Steger, Kashdan, and Oishi (2008) showed that daily engagement in hedonic activities (e.g., getting drunk, eating more than intended) did not contribute to daily well-being. In contrast, the enjoyment derived from IM is likely to be personally relevant and long-lasting, and conducive to be conducive to personal growth and eudaimonia (Ryan, Huta, & Deci, 2008). Indeed, De Bilde, Vansteenkiste, and Lens (in press) found that having a present-centered, hedonic orientation was inversely associated with being intrinsically motivated for one’s school work, suggesting that hedonism can be used to compensate for a lack of interest. It is also useful to clarify the meaning of interest as used in CET and the hedonic approach. In CET, interest refers to the attraction one feels toward an activity; in the hedonic approach, hedonic activities serve one’s self-interest or personal benefit. As such, in the hedonic approach (self-) interest represents a form of extrinsic motivation (EM), which refers to doing an activity to obtain some separable outcome (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Empirical Basis of Cognitive Evaluation Theory Undermining External Events CET examines the factors that either undermine or support IM. Because intrinsically motivated behaviors are engaged spontaneously and volitionally, it follows that controlling external events (e.g., monetary rewards), which pressure people to think, feel, or behave in particular ways, can undermine IM. Theoretically, such events prompt a shift in the perceived locus of causality from internal to external, resulting in attenuated experiences of volition and interest. The first studies to examine the effects of controlling external events on IM were conducted by Deci (1971), in which participants worked on an interesting activity either in a rewarding or in a non-rewarding context. The findings suggested an undermining of IM by task-contingent rewards, such that rewarded participants were less likely to persist at the activity once the reward contingency was removed (i.e., during a free-choice period).
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Subsequently, dozens of studies in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated the undermining of IM by such controlling external events as threat of punishment, deadlines, evaluation, competition, and surveillance (see Deci & Ryan, 1985b, for an overview). Other studies showed that controlling external events affect the types of activities in which people decide to engage. For example, Pittman, Emery, and Boggiano (1982) found that rewarded participants preferred less complex (i.e., easier) tasks. Further, controlling external events not only undermine task persistence after the removal of the contingency, but also adversely affect experience during task engagement. For instance, controlling external events were found to predict less cognitive flexibility (McGraw & McCullers, 1979), more shallow learning (Grolnick & Ryan, 1987), less creativity (Amabile, 1979), and less positive emotional tone (Garbarino, 1975). Finally, being pressured to help another has been found to undermine both the helper’s and the recipient’s well-being, suggesting that the adverse effects of controlling contexts can radiate to others (Weinstein & Ryan, 2010). Interestingly, such findings could not be predicted by expectancy-valence theory (Wigfield & Cambria, this volume), which suggests that increasing the amount of motivation would yield positive outcomes. From this perspective, rewarding individuals for engaging in an interesting activity would enhance effort and motivation, as such individuals would have multiple reasons (intrinsic and extrinsic) for doing the activity. However, the findings reviewed above suggest that introducing a reward and then removing that contingency can have a substantial cost, manifest in reduced task interest. Thus, IM and EM were found to have an interactive, rather than additive, relation to each other over time. Over 100 empirical articles have been published on the effects of rewards on IM, and several meta-analytic reviews provided support for the undermining effect (e.g., Tang & Hall, 1995). Others (Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996) found no undermining by most reward contingencies and thus suggested that CET be abandoned. Because these meta-analyses varied considerably in several important ways, Deci, Koestner, and Ryan (1999) conducted a new one and provided detailed insight into for whom and under which types of reward contingencies IM is undermined, enhanced, or unaffected. Results suggested that, on average, rewards undermine IM, although this effect was not evident for unexpected rewards and was less potent for performance-contingent (rather than engagement- or completioncontingent) rewards. Such findings could be predicted by CET. Indeed, Deci and Ryan (1985b) suggested that satisfaction of the psychological needs for autonomy and
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competence form the energetic basis for the development and maintenance of IM and, thus, external events that thwart those needs are expected to undermine IM. Because unexpected rewards are not perceived as controlling, as they are administered after completion of task engagement, they are less likely to undermine IM. Likewise, because performance-contingent rewards convey positive feedback, the accompanying satisfaction of competence may partially counteract the detrimental effects of such rewards on autonomy. Notably, individuals given a less-than-maximum amount of a performance-contingent reward (e.g., Luyten & Lens, 1981) displayed a much steeper decline in IM than those given the maximum amount of a performance-contingent reward (see Deci et al., 1999), as the needs for both autonomy and competence were likely thwarted in the process. Of course, external events do not occur in a vacuum and, accordingly, the social context in which those events occur can affect their functional significance (i.e., attributed meaning). Deci and Ryan (1985b) suggested that external events (e.g., rewards) can be introduced in an informational or in a controlling way. Informational events allow choice and provide competencerelevant feedback, whereas controlling events pressure people to think, feel, or behave in particular ways. Given their presumed differential impact on autonomy, informational events are less likely than controlling events to undermine IM. For example, on average surveillance undermines IM, presumably because surveilled individuals feel evaluated or perhaps distrusted, both of which are controlling experiences. This undermining effect, however, can be offset by the way in which surveillance occurs. If one is given a meaningful rationale for being watched (e.g., curiosity), then surveillance is less likely to be experienced as controlling and has been found not to undermine IM (Enzle & Anderson, 1993). Other research has demonstrated that performance-contingent rewards (Ryan, Mims, & Koester, 1983) and competition (Reeve & Deci, 1996) do not yield deleterious consequences for IM if those events are presented in a non-controlling manner.
Facilitative External Events Because IM is supported by satisfaction of the needs for autonomy and competence, CET posits that external events that are conducive to need satisfaction facilitate task interest and enjoyment. A number of studies have supported this hypothesis. For example, Vallerand and Reid (1984) reported that positive feedback enhanced IM because it supported competence, while Patall, Cooper, and Robinson (2008) conducted a meta-analysis on
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42 studies and found that choice, on average, enhances IM, presumably because it is conducive to the experience of autonomy. Interestingly, similar to how the social context can attenuate the undermining of IM by controlling external events, so too the social context can diminish the facilitative effects of positive feedback and choice on IM. For instance, Ryan (1982) found that when participants were given positive feedback in a controlling way (i.e., ‘‘Good. You’re doing as you should’’), relative to a non-controlling way, they lost their interest in the activity, presumably because they felt that the positive feedback was conditional upon their meeting the experimenter’s standards. Similarly, Moller, Deci, and Ryan (2006) showed that controlled choice, which involved subtly pressuring participants to choose a particular option (e.g., ‘‘The decision you make is up to you, but as there are already enough participants who chose option A, it would help the study a great deal if you chose option B’’) failed to yield a vitalizing effect, relative to the provision of autonomous choice. The effects of choice are also likely to depend on whether (1) making a choice on a particular issue is important for the chooser, which would support autonomy; (2) the available options are considered meaningful (vs. unattractive) by the chooser, such that one is not confronted with the false choice of deciding between two undesirable alternatives, which would thwart autonomy; and (3) the number of available options is perceived as manageable (vs. overwhelming), such that one feels competent to select an option. Regarding the latter issue, Iyengar and Lepper (2000) questioned the motivating power of choice from their finding that the provision of an extensive (i.e., 24 or 30), relative to a limited (i.e., 6), number of options predicted lower quality task engagement and less satisfaction with the selected option. From a CET perspective, however, the critical question is whether the number of options available affects people’s basic psychological needs. In this respect, Iyengar and Lepper did not examine the effect of choice on autonomy per se, but rather examined the effect of one’s felt effectiveness to make the decision. Indeed, it is interesting to note that participants who were given extensive options reported the decision-making process to be more difficult and frustrating, compared to those who had limited options, and also expressed more regrets about their chosen option. It is reasonable to suggest that being given too many trivial options (e.g., selecting among 24 different flavors of exotic jams; Study 1) may have thwarted participants’ competence by creating stimulus overload, which may account for Iyengar and Lepper’s conclusion that ‘‘choice is demotivating.’’ This analysis speaks to the importance of examining how
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choice affects both the needs for autonomy and competence to understand whether choice truly has a motivating effect (see also Katz & Assor, 2007). Choice seems to be most vitalizing when one feels confident to select a particular option and when the selected option is self-endorsed and reflective of personal interests and values. Directions for Future Research Several potential directions for future research on CET deserve mention. One direction is to examine the effects of both controlling and informational external events on satisfaction of autonomy and competence, which are theorized to carry the effects of external events on IM (see Houlfort, Koestner, Joussemet, Nantel-Vivier, & Lekes, 2002, for an example). A second direction is to assess the effect of repeated exposure to external events. Most, if not all, research on CET has looked at the effect of a single exposure to an external event (e.g., rewards, deadlines). Mouratidis, Vansteenkiste, Lens, and Sideridis (2009) showed that students’ withinperson variation in their interest in and enjoyment of physical education covaried with experimentally varied, successive exposures to a series of physical education classes in which choice was provided or denied, such that students reported more IM when their physical education teachers provided choice. Such class-to-class oscillation in IM underscores the motivating potential of the immediate social context. A third direction for research is to examine the factors that promote or undermine the generalization (or transfer) of behaviors (see also Maehr, 1976), as previous work within CET was primarily concerned with the phenomenon of persistence (or maintenance). Persistence refers to the continued engagement in a requested activity once the socializing figure who introduced the activity is no longer watching. Persistence constituted the central outcome in the classic free-choice paradigm (Deci, 1971) developed within CET, as it involved the unobtrusive observation of engagement in an activity once the external contingency was removed. Generalization, however, refers to the transfer of a behavior to a different social context or to a different activity. Cross-context generalization describes a situation in which an activity performed in a particular context is transferred to a different context, whereas cross-activity generalization describes a situation in which the dynamics around an activity performed in a particular context are transferred to a different activity. For both cross-context and crossactivity generalization, we hypothesize that the motivational dynamics operative during initial task engagement will determine whether the behavior will be carried over to different contexts and to new activities.
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Specifically, if external events prompt a controlled engagement in an activity, it is unlikely that the activity will be performed in a new context or will radiate to new activities. This is because the exposure to controlling external events can frustrate one’s basic needs, such that one has less energy available to continue the behavior in a different context or to engage in new (albeit related) behaviors. Within CET, only a small number of studies have examined generalization and, indeed, only cross-activity generalization has been considered. For example, Flink, Boggiano, and Barrett (1990) conducted an experiment showing that 4th-grade children whose teachers pressured them to perform well on an initial learning task displayed a performance deficit on a subsequent novel task, relative to those who were not pressured. Such results demonstrate that the adverse consequences of a controlling context during task engagement can radiate to new activities. Likewise, Enzle, Wright, and Redondo (1996) reported that when a task was introduced in an autonomy-supportive, relative to controlling, manner, participants showed heightened IM for a novel activity.
ORGANISMIC INTEGRATION THEORY Extrinsic Motivation Especially with age, the majority of behaviors in which people engage are not inherently interesting or enjoyable. Rather, adults spend much of their time meeting responsibilities and fulfilling important duties. This suggests that the concept and processes of IM, which are central to CET, are less or even not relevant for some activities (e.g., health-behavior changes, following traffic laws). When interest and enjoyment are absent, behavioral engagement requires EM, in which the activity is perceived as a means to a separable outcome. In early theorizing, IM and EM were considered separate and antagonistic (deCharms, 1968; Harter, 1981); specifically, IM was thought to be fully self-determined and EM was said to lack personal causation. Empirical examinations in the early 1980s (Koestner, Ryan, Bernieri, & Holt, 1984; Ryan, 1982), however, added important new pieces to the SDT puzzle, as they indicated that EM can vary in the degree to which it is experienced as autonomous versus controlled and, thus, suggested that different types of EM can be distinguished (Ryan & Connell, 1989).
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Such work formed the basis for the postulation of a second manifestation of the organismic growth tendency, namely internalization. The process of internalization involves endorsing the value of extrinsically motivated behaviors (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and is critical for the self-initiation and maintenance of socially important, yet non-intrinsically motivated, behaviors. As such, internalization is central to successful socialization because when an individual has personally endorsed societal norms and rules, that person is more likely to follow them willingly, even in the absence of socializing agents (e.g., parents, teachers). Therefore, internalization can facilitate social responsibility through the adoption of cultural values and is at the heart of organismic integration theory (OIT; Deci & Ryan, 1985b), SDT’s second mini-theory.
Toward a Differentiated View of Extrinsic Motivation In an important study that helped lay the foundation for OIT, Ryan (1982) experimentally showed that people’s interest in an activity can be diminished not only by salient external controls, but also by intra-individual pressures. One example of a controlling internal event is ego involvement, in which people perceive their self-worth as dependent on successful completion of a particular task. In Ryan’s study, participants either were told that their performance on an activity was indicative of their creative intelligence (ego involvement) or simply had their attention drawn to the activity (task involvement). After receiving positive feedback on their successful task completion, ego-involved participants displayed less IM relative to taskinvolved participants, presumably because ego-involved participants had pressured themselves to do their best. Clearly, then, ego-involved participants were extrinsically motivated, as their task engagement was instrumental for demonstrating self-worth. Yet this type of EM differs from that engendered by having to meet external contingencies (the type of EM central to CET), as the reason for task engagement now resides inside the individual. Of course, the common feature to both is their controlled nature. Nonetheless, this study provided an important first indication of the utility of distinguishing different forms of EM. So far, we have described EM as engendering an experience of pressure and control. It is important to consider, however, whether people necessarily feel like ‘‘pawns’’ (deCharms, 1968), lacking volition and autonomy, when extrinsically motivated. From a phenomenological perspective (Pfander, 1908/1967; Ricoeur, 1966), autonomy need not imply a literal absence of
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external forces affecting one’s behavior, so long as people fully concur with the reason for engaging in the activity. Said differently, EM will be experienced as autonomous to the extent that people feel a sense of ownership over their behavior and have fully endorsed the personal value and significance of the behavior. Koestner et al. (1984) examined the postulate that one can experience EM as volitional if both the value of and the reason for doing the activity are accepted. Before engaging in a painting activity, young children were given a set of norms and expectations about how to keep their art materials clean. The norms were introduced in an autonomy-supportive way or the children were pressured to stick to the norms. Results suggested that children in the autonomy-supportive, relative to the controlling, condition showed greater free-choice persistence at and creativity in their paintings. Thus, although children in both conditions were extrinsically motivated, as while completing the paintings they tried to satisfy external guidelines, those in the autonomy-supportive condition presumably followed the norms willingly and with a personal understanding of their importance, which contributed to their persistence and performance.
The Internalization Continuum These experiments (Koestner et al., 1984; Ryan, 1982) provided an empirical basis for the next development in SDT; specifically, the conceptual differentiation of EM, which had heretofore been a unitary construct. From the perspective of OIT, people possess a natural tendency to transform social norms, mores, and rules into personal values and self-regulations so as to develop a more elaborated, unified sense of self (Ryan, 1993). There is considerable variation, however, in the extent to which the process of internalization functions successfully. Accordingly, four types of EM are distinguished, as depicted in Table 1. The least autonomous form of EM is external regulation, in which people are motivated to obtain a reward or to avoid punishment. The value of the behavior has not been internalized at all and, accordingly, people behave solely to comply with external demands. To illustrate, a patient with anorexia who gains weight to earn a treatment-based incentive (e.g., going home for the weekend) would display external regulation. This type of regulation is rooted in operant theory (Skinner, 1971) and, indeed, external regulation is a powerful form of motivation. Even according to operant theory, however, the problem is with maintenance and transfer, as behaviors controlled by reinforcements will persist only so long as those contingencies
Type of Regulation
Schematic Relation of the Six Types of Motivation According to SDT.
Amotivation
Motivational intensity
Low
Motivational force
Internalization
External Regulation
Identified Regulation
Integrated Regulation
Intrinsic Motivation
High
High
High
High
Discouragement Expectations, and rewards, and helplessness punishment
Guilt, shame, and self-worth contingencies
Personal valuation and relevance
Harmonious and coherent commitment
Enjoyment, pleasure, and interest
No
No
Partial
Almost full
Full
Not required
Underlying feelings Futility and apathy
Stress and pressure
Stress and pressure
Volition and freedom
Volition and freedom
Volition and freedom
Locus of causality
External
External
Internal
Internal
Internal
Extrinsic
Extrinsic
Extrinsic
Extrinsic
Intrinsic
Impersonal
Type of motivation Amotivation
High
Introjected Regulation
Controlled Controlled Motivation Motivation
Self-Determination Theory
Table 1.
Autonomous Motivation
Source: Adapted from Ryan and Deci (2000).
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are in effect, as such contingencies formed the very reason for behavioral engagement. The next form of EM is introjected regulation, in which people are motivated to comply with a partially internalized contingency to gain pride and self-esteem, or to avoid feelings of guilt and shame. For instance, a person who recycles to avoid feeling guilty would display introjected regulation. Introjection, which commonly manifests as ego involvement, is etymologically rooted in the Latin words intro (inside) and jacere (to throw). In other words, the reason for doing the behavior has been ‘‘thrown inside’’ the individual and no longer requires external contingencies for enactment. Thus, the contingency underlying the behavior, which was formerly applied by others, is now applied to oneself. However, the regulation of the behavior has been ‘‘swallowed whole’’ (Perls, 1973) rather than ‘‘fully digested,’’ engendering feelings of internal control. Such intrapersonal pressure is quite energy-depriving, which might explain why introjection only predicts shortterm persistence (Pelletier, Fortier, Vallerand, & Brie`re, 2001). The third form of EM is identified regulation, in which people understand and endorse the personal value and significance of a behavior and, as a result, experience a sense of freedom in doing it. For example, an obese teenager who decides to diet so as to take responsibility for his health would display identified regulation. Identification, which can involve finding meaning and choice in behavior even when faced with adverse circumstances, corresponds to the tenets of existential thought (Ryan & Deci, 2004). As with introjection, identification involves behavior that is regulated by intrapsychic forces. However, rather than being accompanied by feelings of pressure, identified regulation is guided by personal values and selfendorsed commitments. As such, the regulation of the behavior has almost been fully internalized. A final step toward full internalization involves the assimilation of identified values and goals, and alignment of those identifications with other aspects of the self. The fourth form of EM, integrated regulation, involves the synthesis of various identifications to form a coherent and unified sense of self, a process that likely requires considerable effort, reflection, and self-awareness. To illustrate, a smoker who understands the health benefits of cessation and wants to quit so that she might live to see her grandchildren grow up would display integrated regulation. At times, people understand the personal importance of a behavior, but they experience the identification as compartmentalized and inconsistent with other aspects of the integrated self. Consider, for example, a person who gives money to charity to help those in need while employing ‘‘black-market workers’’
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to avoid paying taxes. Interestingly, the importance of integration has been questioned by some postmodern thinkers. Gergen (1991), for instance, argued that adopting a chameleon-like personality could be an adaptive response to a world with multiple and at times competing demands. Such claims conflict with an organismic approach to personality in which the experience of multiple, but compartmentalized, identities represents fragmentation and non-optimal functioning (Ryan, 1993). In line with this, Downie, Koestner, ElGeledi, and Cree (2004) reported that the integration of multiple cultural identities into the self was conducive to tricultural individuals’ psychological well-being.
Theoretical Considerations Clarification of several conceptual points seems warranted. First, IM does not represent the end point of the internalization process. Behaviors that initially were prompted by external sources can be internalized and, when integrated into the self, are enacted with a full sense of volition. However, this does not imply that such behaviors are experienced as inherently interesting or enjoyable. According to SDT, intrinsically motivated behaviors are themselves satisfying and performed for non-separable reasons, whereas well-internalized, extrinsically motivated behaviors are performed for separable outcomes and, thus, cannot – by definition – be intrinsically motivated. Nonetheless, it is possible that the integration of EM co-occurs with the development of IM (Deci & Ryan, 1985b). Second, internalization represents a developmental process. That is, there is a natural inclination toward integration of the salient norms and values in the social environment (Deci & Ryan, 1985b). For instance, whereas adolescents may pursue particular hobbies to make a good impression on others, older individuals might behave according to their personal interests. In line with this, evidence suggests that with age children tend to regulate socialized behaviors more autonomously given sufficient environmental support (e.g., Chandler & Connell, 1987). We speculate that this trend would emerge because during development the integrative tendency can engender greater awareness and understanding of personal interests. Also, older individuals may find that acting in line with personal commitments yields more satisfaction than acting to meet external demands, which can encourage further exploration of one’s values and interests. Similar assumptions have been made by researchers who focused on concepts such
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as ego-identity (Erikson, 1968), personal expressiveness (Waterman, in press), and ego-development (Hy & Loevinger, 1996). Third, the recognition that some forms of EM are relatively autonomous has resulted in a conceptual shift in SDT. Whereas the distinction between IM and EM was central to CET, this paradigm has been replaced by a distinction between autonomous motivation and controlled motivation. Autonomous motivation involves the regulation of behavior with the experiences of volition, psychological freedom, and reflective selfendorsement; the behavior has an internal perceived locus of causality. Both identified regulation and integrated regulation, in addition to IM, are autonomous forms of motivation. Controlled motivation, in contrast, involves the regulation of behavior with the experiences of pressure and coercion to think, feel, or behave in particular ways; the behavior has an external perceived locus of causality. Both external regulation and introjected regulation are controlled forms of motivation. Importantly, the shift toward a distinction between autonomous motivation and controlled motivation does not negate the findings and core principles of CET, which focuses on IM and the external events that undermine or support it (i.e., the extreme poles of the self-determination continuum). Thus, new pieces were added to the growing ‘‘SDT puzzle’’ while previous pieces were left intact. According to OIT, both autonomous motivation and controlled motivation reflect high involvement in an activity, although these two types of motivation have very different qualities (Vansteenkiste, Lens, & Deci, 2006b). Further, autonomous motivation and controlled motivation are contrasted with amotivation, in which people lack intentionality. Such non-intentional behavior can result from a perceived non-contingency between behavior and outcomes, from feeling incapable to perform the behaviors necessary to achieve desired outcomes, or from a lack of valuation of the activity (Deci & Ryan, 1985b). Fourth, it is useful to link autonomous motivation and controlled motivation to the concept of value, as discussed in expectancy-valence models (Vroom, 1964; Wigfield & Cambria, this volume). Within such models, values (along with expectancies) are considered to be the determinants of motivated action through their effects on valences (Feather, 1992). Many studies have shown that the value of an activity is an important predictor of behavioral choice and performance. An important question from the OIT perspective, however, concerns the reason one attaches high valence to a particular activity. Such strong valuation could be motivated either by external demands, internal pressures, or a personal endorsement of the behavior. Indeed, Vansteenkiste, Lens, De Witte, and Feather (2005)
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showed that unemployed individuals’ valence of a future job (employment value) was strongly correlated with both autonomous and controlled reasons for job search. Thus, a strong valuation can be driven by qualitatively different reasons (viz., autonomous and controlled) for the activity, which yield differential relations to adjustment.
Empirical Basis of Organismic Integration Theory The Benefits of Internalization The differentiation of EM has generated dozens of studies since Ryan and Connell’s (1989) seminal article on the internalization continuum. During the first half of the 1990s, the internalization continuum was examined in several domains representing central aspects of people’s lives, including relationships, religion, work, education, prosocial behavior, and parenting. Subsequently, this research was extended to such domains as life goals, politics, physical activity, and the environment. Most recently, domains holding particular relevance for some people have received empirical attention, including psychotherapy, unemployment, migration, health care, eating regulation, and gaming. In contrast to CET, the studies conducted within OIT often relied on selfreport questionnaires, rather than experimental manipulations, to assess the antecedents and consequences of the motives for behavioral engagement. Such research considerably broadened the scope of the macro-theory and provided evidence for the ecological validity of SDT. This was important because some had criticized CET for studying a phenomenon (viz., IM) that is seldom observed in daily life (cf. Gagne´ & Deci, 2005), although several real-life experimental studies have been conducted within CET (e.g., Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Soenens, & Matos, 2005a). Thus, the empirical investigations testing OIT naturally complemented the work within CET. OIT suggests that greater internalization is predictive of enhanced physical, psychological, and social wellness. At least three methodological approaches to the statistical aggregation of the internalization continuum have been used to examine this hypothesis. First, some researchers have examined the correlates of the different forms of EM as well as IM (e.g., Ryan & Connell, 1989; Burton, Lydon, D’Alessandro, & Koestner, 2006). Second, others have assessed the independent effects of autonomous motivation and controlled motivation (e.g., Vansteenkiste, Zhou, Lens, & Soenens, 2005b). Third, some have used a relative autonomy index to predict outcomes, in which the forms of EM are differentially weighted according to
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their location along the continuum of self-determination, with controlled regulatory styles weighted negatively and autonomous regulatory styles weighted positively (e.g., Niemiec et al., 2006). Regardless of the methodology used, studies have indicated that more autonomous, relative to controlled, motivation is associated with greater persistence, performance, social functioning, and physical and psychological wellness (for review, see Deci & Ryan, 2000). The Facilitation of Internalization Given that internalization is conducive to myriad positive outcomes, it is important to consider the factors that facilitate this process. Just as autonomy and competence form the natural ingredients for IM, contexts that support these needs are thought to promote internalization (Deci & Ryan, 2000). That is, to the extent that people can feel choiceful and effective in undertaking non-enjoyable behaviors, they are more likely to personally endorse those actions. Furthermore, in considering the factors that facilitate internalization, it became necessary to introduce the need for relatedness (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Ryan, 1995) as a third basic psychological need and a new piece of the ‘‘SDT puzzle.’’ Relatedness refers to the need to experience mutual care and concern for close others. Indeed, social norms and values are more likely to be adopted and internalized when introduced by socializing agents to whom people feel close, rather than distant. Children are, for instance, more likely to accept norms and guidelines introduced by their parents, relative to strangers. Thus, full internalization is most likely to occur in social contexts that are autonomysupportive (rather than controlling), competence supportive (rather than chaotic and demeaning), and relatedness supportive (rather than rejecting and withholding). In contrast, partial internalization is likely to occur when social contexts support only the needs for competence and relatedness (Markland & Tobin, 2010). Dozens of questionnaire-based studies in a variety of life domains, but far fewer experimental studies, have lent credence to the importance of needsupportive contexts in facilitating internalization (e.g., Niemiec et al., 2006). Herein, we discuss three illustrative experiments. Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, and Leone (1994) did a study in which participants performed a boring vigilance task. Three need-supportive ingredients were manipulated in a 2 (rationale vs. no rationale) 2 (acknowledgement of feelings vs. no acknowledgement) 2 (low vs. high controllingness) design. Interestingly, participants’ engagement time increased linearly according to the number of need-supportive factors. Also, participants’ quality of persistence was
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examined by inspecting the correlations between engagement time and three self-reported variables related to the task (viz., choice, usefulness, interest/enjoyment) in two groups – persistent participants exposed to zero/ one versus two/three need-supportive factors. Importantly, among those who received need support, the correlations were positive and significant (indicating integrated regulation), whereas among those who did not receive need support, the correlations were negative (indicating introjected regulation). This examination of within-cell correlations underscores the importance of moving beyond only considering the quantity of persistence to examine its quality, as engagement time can be congruent with or alienated from one’s affective experiences. Joussemet, Koestner, Lekes, and Houlfort (2004) reported the results of two experimental studies assessing the effects of autonomy support and engagement-contingent rewards on the internalization of motivation for a dull task. Deci et al.’s (1999) meta-analysis pointed out that rewards had no impact on free-choice persistence at an uninteresting activity. However, the studies included in the meta-analysis were limited by their considering only the quantity of participants’ persistence and it is possible that under reward contingencies people may display a qualitatively different type of persistence. Joussemet et al. found that although rewards do not undermine the quantity of engagement, they do create a more fragmented and alienated form of behavioral regulation when administered in a controlling way. That is, the association between behavioral persistence and affect was negative for those in the controlling reward condition, whereas that correlation was positive for those in the autonomy-supportive condition, suggesting that their behavior was congruent with their emotional experiences. Such results argue against the common socialization practice of using rewards to force people to engage in non-intrinsically motivated behaviors. Recently, in a field study Jang (2008) examined the motivational power of one component of autonomy support – provision of a meaningful rationale. Rationale provision was found to enhance engagement time on an uninteresting learning activity. Interestingly, the motivational benefits of rationale provision increased over time. Moreover, internalization of the motivation for the uninteresting activity fully explained the direct positive effect of rationale provision on behavioral engagement. Directions for Future Research There are many important directions for future research on OIT. One direction is to examine whether the theoretical continuum of
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self-determination requires further refinement. Assor, Vansteenkiste, and Kaplan (2009) posited that introjected regulation could be bifurcated into approach and avoidance subtypes. They suggested that behavior might be regulated with an experience of internal pressure to avoid such negative feelings as shame, guilt, and anxiety, or to approach such positive feelings as self-aggrandizement and pride. Consistent with the approach-avoidance tradition in motivation (e.g., Atkinson, 1958; Elliot, 1999), Assor et al. found that introjected avoidance regulation yielded more negative correlates than introjected approach regulation. Further, identified regulation was a stronger predictor of positive outcomes than both subtypes of introjected regulation. Interestingly, identified regulation was more strongly correlated with introjected approach regulation than with introjected avoidance regulation, suggesting that introjected approach regulation is somewhat more autonomous than introjected avoidance regulation. This seems logical given that avoiding negative outcomes is more stressful and autonomythwarting than approaching positive outcomes (Elliot & Sheldon, 1998). These findings underscore three important points. First, they disconfirm Carver and Scheier’s (1999) criticism that the differential correlates of autonomous motivation and controlled motivation are due to autonomous motivation’s being approach-regulated and controlled motivation’s being avoidance-regulated. Assor et al. (2009) found that feeling internal pressure to achieve contingent self-worth (i.e., introjected approach regulation) was associated with less adaptive outcomes than willingly endorsing one’s behavior (i.e., identified regulation), although both forms of EM are approach-regulated. Second, they call for an examination of whether the approach-avoidance distinction may be incorporated across the internalization continuum. For example, external regulation can manifest as either avoiding punishment or approaching a reward. Further, identified regulation can manifest as approaching one’s personal values and commitments, although failing to do so might engender feelings of guilt and anxiety that one would aim to avoid. Such feelings are likely to be ontological (May, 1983), as they arise when an individual is unable to personally express oneself. Third, they underscore the importance of designing domain-specific measures of internalization that include a balanced number of approachand avoidance-regulated items. A second direction for research is to examine whether not engaging in a particular activity is necessarily a reflection of amotivation or whether the reason for non-engagement can be internalized and thus experienced as more or less autonomous. In other words, having reflected upon a particular request, some might choose not to engage in an activity to give priority to
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alternative actions. For instance, a driver might deliberately choose not to follow prescribed traffic rules (e.g., not speeding) because he believes the situation is safe enough to do so. Alternatively, others might feel pressured not to engage in a requested activity. Consider, for example, a student whose mother suggests that she search for a summer job, but the student’s friends prefer that she be available to hang out during the summer and thus pressure her into not searching for a job. Such controlled non-engagement might also take the form of defiance, as when people defy another’s request so as to ‘‘save face’’ or to maintain independence. For instance, an adolescent with anorexia might simply reject her parents’ wish for her to eat more because she believes that her parents’ request is illegitimate. Such rebellious reactions are controlled, as they are driven by a reaction against external forces that one resists obeying. In short, then, it is possible for both activity engagement and non-engagement to be experienced as either autonomous or controlled. In this respect, Vansteenkiste, Lens, De Witte, De Witte, and Deci (2004) examined the motives given by unemployed individuals for searching and not searching for a job, and found that autonomous motivation not-tosearch related positively to the experience of being unemployed and to general well-being, whereas controlled motivation not-to-search related negatively to the experience of being unemployed. Notably, autonomysupportive contextual factors may promote autonomous non-engagement in an activity. For example, Vandereycken and Vansteenkiste (2009) examined the effects of allowing patients with eating disorders to make an informed choice about whether to continue or to terminate treatment after the first few weeks of treatment. The implementation of this autonomy-supportive strategy reduced patients’ drop-out rate during subsequent treatment, relative to another program in which such choice was denied. This choice implementation likely facilitated autonomous engagement in therapy among those who continued treatment, as well as autonomous disengagement from therapy among those who terminated treatment. A third direction for research is to examine individuals’ motivational profiles as they relate to outcomes, thereby using a person-centered rather than a dimensional approach. Such an approach is instructive for various reasons. For instance, the person-centered approach offers a more in-depth understanding of the different types of motivational profiles that can be used to characterize individuals, which might also be instructive for practitioners (e.g., therapists, school counselors) interested in developing programs for different individuals. Also, this data-analytical technique provides new ways to test competing hypotheses. For instance, the argument
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maintained in expectancy-valence theories and echoed by lay beliefs that being highly motivated (regardless of the type of motivation) yields beneficial effects can be contrasted with the SDT perspective, which suggests that the type of motivation is also useful in predicting important outcomes. Using a person-centered approach to test this hypothesis, Ratelle, Guay, Vallerand, Larose, and Sene´cal (2007) and Vansteenkiste, Sierens, Soenens, Luyckx, and Lens (2009) found that students characterized by high levels of autonomous motivation and low levels of controlled motivation displayed better academic outcomes, relative to those characterized by the opposite motivational profile, although both groups had equal amounts of motivation. These findings are in line with SDT but contradict quantitative perspectives on motivation, as they suggest that being highly motivated does not necessarily yield beneficial effects, especially when one’s motivation is controlled. A fourth direction for research is to examine whether internalization predicts generalization (or transfer) of behaviors, similar to our recommendation for future research on CET. For example, some governments encourage their constituents to recycle by selling expensive garbage bags, thereby deterring people from filling those bags with recyclable materials. One of the critical questions is (1) whether people continue recycling while on vacation when garbage bags are free (i.e., cross-context generalization) and (2) whether they engage in a broad array of pro-environmental behaviors, such as conserving water or driving in an ecologically responsible way (i.e., cross-behavior generalization). According to OIT, autonomous motivation is conducive to both behavioral persistence and generalization because, when more fully internalized, behavior is not dependent on external contingencies of reinforcement. In line with this, Hagger, Chatzisarantis, Culverhouse, and Biddle (2003) found that high-school students who reported more autonomous reasons for physical education were more likely to exercise during their leisure time, suggesting that the benefits of autonomous motivation in physical education radiated to a new context. Further, in an experimental study, Vansteenkiste, Simons, Soenens, and Lens (2004c) found that an autonomy-supportive introduction of a new exercise (viz., Tai-Bo) during a physical education class promoted enrollment in a Tai-Bo club four months later. Some recent studies provided initial evidence for cross-activity generalization. Muraven, Gagne´, and Rosman (2008) showed that controlled, relative to autonomous, engagement in a relatively boring activity that required self-control (e.g., not typing the letter e) predicted poorer performance on a subsequent, unrelated self-control task, as mediated by reduced vitality. Finally, Mata et al. (2009) reported that exercise motivation
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was associated with more healthy eating regulation in an intervention program among obese individuals that primarily targeted physical activity change, thus suggesting a motivational spill-over effect. A fifth direction for research is to examine whether OIT’s taxonomy of EM adds explanatory precision to domain-specific approaches to motivation. For instance, Allport and Ross (1967) distinguished between intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations. Those with an intrinsic religious orientation have internalized their religious beliefs (e.g., humility, compassion) ‘‘without reservation’’ and accommodate or reorganize other goals to bring them into harmony with their religious convictions. Those with an extrinsic religious orientation, in contrast, approach religion in an instrumental way to attain ‘‘self-centered’’ ends (e.g., safety, solace). Recently, Neyrinck, Lens, Vansteenkiste, and Soenens (in press) showed that Allport and Ross’s intrinsic–extrinsic distinction does not correspond to SDT’s distinction between IM and EM. Specifically, the intrinsic religious orientation related positively to well-internalized EM, but was unrelated to IM, suggesting that such an orientation might more accurately be labeled as internalized EM. A similar conceptual refinement could be applied to the motivation measure for smoking cessation developed by Curry, Wagner, and Grothaus (1990), which is primarily grounded in the intrinsic–extrinsic motivation distinction that formed the basis for CET.
CAUSALITY ORIENTATIONS THEORY Autonomous, Controlled, and Amotivated Functioning at the Dispositional Level In contrast to CET and OIT, which examine motivational dynamics in particular life domains or situations, causality orientations theory (COT; Deci & Ryan, 1985a), SDT’s third mini-theory, focuses on individual differences in global motivational orientations. That is, COT adds a new piece to the ‘‘SDT puzzle’’ by applying the dynamics of behavioral regulation to an understanding of people’s personality-level functioning. The term ‘‘causality orientation’’ contains the Latin root causa, which refers to the reason behind, or the cause of, behavioral initiation (deCharms, 1968). According to COT, individuals differ in how they typically perceive the source of their behavioral initiation. People who are high on the autonomy orientation tend to act in accord with their own emerging interests and self-endorsed values, interpret external events as informational, and thus
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typically regulate their behavior autonomously. In contrast, those who are high on the control orientation tend to act in accord with external or internal demands, interpret external events as pressuring, and thus typically regulate their behavior with an experience of control. Finally, people who are high on the impersonal orientation tend to perceive their life experiences as beyond personal control and, accordingly, are prone to pervasive feelings of helplessness, ineffectiveness, and passivity; such an orientation is the dispositional equivalent of amotivation and is conceptually related to Rotter’s (1966) concept of external locus of control. Deci and Ryan’s (1985a) specification of causality orientations was later adopted in Vallerand’s (1997) hierarchical model of motivation, which suggests that motivation can be studied at three hierarchically organized levels – global individual differences, social contexts, and specific situations. Consistent with the proposed interrelation among these three levels of motivation, research has shown that the causality orientations are meaningfully related to domain-specific motives. Williams and Deci (1996), for instance, reported that the autonomy and control orientations were associated with autonomous and controlled reasons for participating in a medical interviewing course, respectively.
Theoretical Considerations Because causality orientations are relatively stable individual differences, it is important to distinguish them from other personality constructs, particularly the Big Five traits. Whereas the Big Five traits can be considered core personality dimensions (Asendorpf & van Aken, 2003), as they are highly stable and have a substantial genetic basis, the causality orientations can be considered surface personality dimensions, as they are more malleable and shaped by socialization experiences. Indeed, causality orientations represent dynamic outcomes that develop as a function of the amount of received need support in interaction with genetic and biological factors. Importantly, COT suggests that each of the three causality orientations exists to varying degrees within each of us. As a result, situational cues can elicit otherwise latent causality orientations that, once triggered, influence perception and action. For instance, a braggart may trigger a control orientation in a conversation partner that, in turn, may elicit a competitive and defensive stance toward the braggart. Nonetheless, each individual has a predominant motivational orientation that characterizes his/her disposition in general.
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Empirical Basis of Causality Orientations Theory An Initial Investigation Deci and Ryan (1985a) developed the General Causality Orientations Scale (GCOS) to assess general motivational orientations and found them to be differently related to a broad array of personality and adjustment outcomes. Specifically, the autonomy orientation related positively to ego-development and self-esteem, and negatively to self-derogation. Interestingly, those who scored high on the autonomy orientation also reported a greater tendency to support their children’s autonomy and had children who were more securely attached. Thus, the autonomy orientation may be transmitted intergenerationally through autonomy-supportive parenting. The control orientation, by contrast, related positively to the Type-A coronary-prone behavior pattern and to public self-consciousness, indicating that control-oriented individuals experience substantial tension and stress, and are highly sensitive to others’ evaluations. Bridges, Frodi, Grolnick, and Spiegel (1983) reported that the mothers of resistant babies scored high on the control orientation, suggesting that such children are anxious about losing their mother’s approval, just as their mothers are concerned with others’ approval. The impersonal orientation showed the least adaptive profile of personality functioning and adjustment. Specifically, those who scored high on the impersonal orientation reported greater self-derogation, depressive symptoms, and social anxiety, as well as impaired ego-development and low self-worth. Mothers with an impersonal orientation had children who displayed an avoidant attachment pattern, which may engender feelings of inadequacy at a very young age. Open Versus Defensive Modes of Responding A central line of research within COT has examined the relation of the autonomy and control orientations to openness and defensiveness, respectively. Hodgins and Knee (2002) argued that because autonomyoriented individuals experience more psychological freedom and choice, they likely would process information and interact with others with a sense of openness, engendering greater tolerance and non-biased responding. In contrast, because control-oriented individuals often feel preoccupied with meeting external demands and maintaining self-worth, they likely would feel threatened by intrapersonal and interpersonal pressures. They would react to such pressures by processing information in a biased, self-serving way and would relate to others in a more defensive, strategic, and intolerant manner. Indeed, studies have provided support for this line of reasoning.
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First, the autonomy and control orientations have been shown to yield differential relations to people’s awareness and knowledge of their attitudes, personality traits, and behavior. Specifically, Koestner, Bernieri, and Zuckerman (1992, Study 1) reported that the association between self-report and behavioral (i.e., free-choice persistence) assessments of IM was stronger among autonomy-oriented, relative to control-oriented, individuals. Similar findings were observed between self-report and behavioral (i.e., returning a questionnaire on time) measures of conscientiousness (Koestner et al., 1992, Study 2). Overall, then, autonomy-oriented individuals report higher levels of self-knowledge, whereas control-oriented individuals report more biased and inaccurate self-perceptions. Second, the autonomy and control orientations have been shown to yield differential relations to people’s processing of information that could inform them about their capabilities, interests, and identity (i.e., self-relevant information). Koestner and Zuckerman (1994), for instance, showed that autonomy- and control-orientated individuals react differently to success versus failure feedback on a puzzle task. Whereas individuals high on the autonomy orientation showed the same amount of persistence in the success and failure conditions, those high on the control orientation persisted more in the failure condition. Also, the persistence shown by control-oriented participants related negatively to their positive affect during the free-choice period. This suggests that control-oriented individuals attempted to restore feelings of self-worth by ‘‘proving themselves’’ following failure feedback, resulting in conflicted, ego-involved persistence. In a related study, Knee and Zuckerman (1996) showed that autonomy-oriented individuals did not display a self-serving bias, as manifested in their tendency to adopt a selfaggrandizing attitude after success and to deny responsibility for failure. Such differences between autonomy- and control-oriented individuals in processing self-relevant information also manifest in how they approach the developmental process of identity exploration. For example, Soenens, Berzonsky, Vansteenkiste, Beyers, and Goossens (2005) found that the autonomy orientation was associated with an information-oriented style, in which adolescents engage in an open and flexible exploration of identityrelevant alternatives. In contrast, the control orientation was associated with a normative style, which is characteristic of adolescents who safeguard their adopted identity commitments against discrepant self-relevant information in an assimilative, defensive fashion. Third, the autonomy and control orientations have been related to markedly different interpersonal styles. Whereas autonomy-oriented individuals tend to relate to others with a sense of openness and honesty, those
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with a control orientation tend to relate to others in an intolerant, closedminded, and manipulative way. For instance, Hodgins, Liebeskind, and Schwartz (1996) showed that autonomy-oriented individuals’ provided fewer lies and more mitigating themes (e.g., concessions and excuses) after offending someone than those with a control orientation. Hodgins et al. suggested that following an offense, autonomy-oriented individuals are authentically concerned with the restoration of the relationship, rather than with ‘‘saving face’’ and protecting their reputation. Other studies have shown that control-oriented individuals have a more Machiavellian interpersonal orientation (McHoskey, 1999), and display more aggression in sports (Goldstein & Iso-Ahola, 2008) and while driving (Neighbors, Vietor, & Knee, 2002), because they tend to dehumanize others by considering them as obstacles that need to be removed (Moller & Deci, 2009; Vansteenkiste, Mouratidis, & Lens, 2010). Priming Unconscious Motivational Orientations Rather than relying on self-reports of global motivational orientations, recent studies have made use of priming procedures to activate the autonomy and control orientations outside conscious awareness to examine how these latent, unconscious motivational orientations affect behavior, performance, and well-being. The findings of these studies largely paralleled those obtained using the GCOS. More specifically, primed autonomy and control orientations have been shown to predict open (vs. defensive) intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning, performance, and adjustment in theoretically consistent ways. In one of the first priming studies, Levesque and Pelletier (2003) activated the autonomy and control orientations by using a scrambled sentence task. Autonomy-primed participants descrambled sets of words that contained terms related to autonomy (e.g., choice, freedom), whereas control-primed participants descrambled sets of words that contained terms related to control (e.g., should, forced). Results showed that autonomy-, relative to control-, primed participants reported more enjoyment during a subsequent crossword puzzle task. Using a similar priming procedure, Hodgins and colleagues have shown that control-, relative to autonomy-, primed participants displayed a more defensive intrapersonal orientation, as reflected in a stronger self-serving bias (Hodgins, Yacko, & Gottlieb, 2006, Study 2); reported higher self-handicapping (i.e., making anticipatory excuses for failure; Hodgins et al., 2006, Study 3); and had a larger discrepancy between explicit and implicit self-esteem (Hodgins, Brown, & Carver, 2007). Control-primed individuals also experienced lower implicit self-worth (Hodgins et al., 2007) and displayed poorer performance
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on a rowing machine (Hodgins et al., 2006, Study 3). These findings have been confirmed using both supraliminal and subliminal procedures (Radel, Sarrazin, & Pelletier, 2009).
Directions for Future Research There are many important directions for future research on COT. One direction is to examine stability and change in the causality orientations. If causality orientations reflect surface personality dimensions, then they should be less stable than core personality dimensions. Further, longitudinal research could show that, despite being relatively stable, causality orientations are susceptible to change in response to environmental influences (e.g., need support). A second direction for research is to address the measurement of the GCOS, which was developed in the 1980s when OIT had not yet been fully developed. Although Deci and Ryan (1985a) provided evidence for the validity of the scale, a closer inspection of the items indicates that the operationalization of the autonomy orientation was limited to items tapping emerging interests, whereas the control orientation measure was limited to items referring to monetary rewards and external approval. Thus, the operationalization of the autonomy and control orientations was heavily influenced by the distinction between IM and EM, which is at the heart of CET – the most developed and refined theory at the time. However, given that new pieces have been added to the ‘‘SDT puzzle’’ it seems appropriate to reevaluate the GCOS. Because autonomy involves acting upon one’s interests and personal values, and controlled functioning can take the form of external and internal pressure, it is important to operationalize the autonomy and control orientations in a more inclusive manner. A third direction for research is to examine whether interpersonal supports for autonomy interact with the causality orientations in predicting behavior and well-being. From a match-perspective, it could be argued that control-oriented individuals would benefit from being in a controlling environment, as the motivational orientation would match the contextual dynamics. Because control-oriented individuals’ basic needs would be frustrated in a controlling environment, according to COT such individuals would be expected to suffer in such an environment. To date, most studies on autonomy support (vs. control) and research on causality orientations have been conducted in relative isolation from each other. Black and Deci (2000) examined such interactions and found that students’ autonomous motivation and perceived teacher autonomy support interacted to predict
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performance, but not adjustment. Interestingly, low autonomy-oriented students benefited from perceiving their instructors as autonomy-supportive, which contradicts the match-perspective prediction that such individuals would fare better in controlling contexts.
BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS THEORY A Unifying Principle The concept of basic psychological needs has been woven throughout our discussion of SDT. Within CET need satisfaction was used to explain the effects of external events on IM, whereas within OIT and COT need satisfaction accounted for the effects of the social environment on the internalization of societal norms and rules, and the development of global motivational orientations, respectively. In addition to representing a unifying principle within SDT (Niemiec et al., 2010), the concept of need satisfaction is important in its own right. Basic needs theory (BNT; Ryan & Deci, 2002), SDT’s fourth mini-theory, specifies innate psychological nutriments that are necessary for psychological and physical health, and social wellness. Following the principle of Ockham’s razor (the law of parsimony) and to avoid proliferation of the number of basic psychological needs, a minimal number of needs (i.e., three) have been proposed to account for a maximal number of phenomena across ages, genders, and cultures. The need for autonomy (deCharms, 1968) refers to the experience of volition and psychological freedom. With autonomy, one experiences choice in and ownership of behavior, which is perceived as emanating from the self and is in accord with abiding values and interests. The need for competence (White, 1959) refers to the experience of effectance in one’s pursuits. The need for relatedness (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) refers to the experience of reciprocal care and concern for important others. In line with SDT’s cumulative, research-driven development, this does not preclude the specification of additional needs, but a new need would only be added following strong theoretical arguments and empirical support.
Supporting Basic Psychological Needs Parallel to the basic needs, BNT specifies three dimensions of the social environment that support (rather than thwart) those needs. Specifically,
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autonomy-supportive (rather than controlling) contexts support autonomy, well-structured (rather than chaotic and demeaning) contexts support competence, and warm and responsive (rather than cold and neglectful) contexts support relatedness. Consider each in turn. Autonomy-supportive individuals promote the volition of those they socialize. In doing so, such individuals provide the amount of choice desired by the person being socialized, offer a meaningful and realistic rationale when choice is constrained, and try to understand the other’s perspective. In contrast, controlling individuals direct the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of those they socialize. In doing so, such individuals may use overt, externally pressuring tactics (e.g., controlling language, punishments), or more covert, subtle techniques of manipulation, including conditional regard (Assor, Roth, & Deci, 2004), guilt induction (Vansteenkiste et al., 2005a), and shaming (for a review, see Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010). Several studies in various life domains have shown that perceptions of autonomy support (relative to control) are associated with higher wellbeing, better performance, and more behavioral persistence. Whereas autonomy support promotes the self-initiation of behavior, structure is critical for the competent pursuit of one’s goals. Interestingly, some have proposed that structure and autonomy support are contrasting socialization styles, as if these styles are situated at opposite ends of a continuum (see Reeve, 2009). BNT maintains that autonomy support is not a laissez faire socialization technique in which guidance is lacking and unlimited freedom is granted, which certainly would reflect the opposite of a well-structured environment (Jang, Reeve, & Deci, in press). Indeed, although guidelines may structure and limit behavior, such restrictions are not necessarily experienced as controlling. Rather, people are more likely to personally endorse and volitionally follow social norms that are introduced in an autonomy-supportive way. Thus, both autonomy support and structure are essential for effective socialization, as the former describes the way rules and expectations are introduced and the latter describes the clarity of those norms. Interpersonal support, as described within the socialization literature (Davidov & Grusec, 2006), is provided through warmth (or the ability to amicably connect with others and to partake in mutually enjoyable activities) and responsiveness to distress (or the ability to empathize with and respond to others’ unpleasant feelings in a way that provides solace and comfort). The importance of interpersonal support has been highlighted by such theories as attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988) and acceptance–rejection theory (Rohner, 2004). According to SDT, interpersonal support is
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necessary for the satisfaction of the need for relatedness, as it fosters a sense of connectedness, love, and understanding within relationships.
Advantages of Specifying Basic Psychological Needs There are several advantages to positing the existence of basic psychological needs (Deci, 1992). First, this concept allows for theorizing about the energization of behavior, which, in addition to the direction of behavior, is an important component of motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985b). Many theories of motivation, however, only focus on the direction of behavior. In contrast, SDT maintains that basic psychological needs represent an energetic resource that propels a variety of motivated behaviors. Second, this concept allows for a discussion of human nature and the specific psychological factors that are essential for optimal human development. Various scholars typically fail to address these important questions, either because they focus on a circumscribed phenomenon (e.g., unrealistic optimism), which obviates their grappling with such issues, or because they assume (implicitly or explicitly) that no inherent human nature need to be specified. Other scholars argue that humans are born tabula rasa (blank slates) upon which cultural values and norms are imprinted during socialization, a perspective known as the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM; Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992). According to the SSSM, culturally acquired behaviors are not evaluated according to their compatibility with human nature, but rather according to whether those behaviors are emphasized by the environment, and well-being is expected to result from a match between one’s behavior and ambient social values. In contrast, SDT posits that all humans, regardless of whether their behaviors fit or do not fit the social context, require satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness for psychological growth and wellness (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Third, this concept enables researchers to synthesize a broad range of divergent phenomena. For instance, within SDT the satisfaction versus deprivation of basic needs has been used to explain such positive outcomes as well-being, productivity, and cooperation, as well as such negative outcomes as depression, pathology, and racism, among many others. Fourth, this concept gives researchers a theoretical basis for understanding which dynamics of social contexts (homes, organizations, schools) promote versus hinder high-quality motivation, productivity, and well-being. Related to this, the specification of basic psychological needs is important from an
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applied perspective, as this concept gives socializing agents a means to predict whether their interaction styles, organizational structures, and educational practices will promote optimal outcomes.
Characterization of Basic Psychological Needs Early motivation theorists, most prominently Hull (1943), focused on physiological drives (viz., hunger, thirst, sex), which are non-nervous-system tissue deficits that activate behaviors to reduce those drives. In contrast, the focus of BNT is on psychological needs, which provide an important source of energy (in addition to physiological drives and emotions) and are considered the essential nutriments for optimal functioning. Just as plants require sun, soil, and water to grow, humans require satisfaction of the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness to function optimally at the physical, psychological, and social levels (Ryan, 1995). An important characterization of basic needs, therefore, is that when satisfied they promote humans’ thriving and optimal functioning, and prevent illness. A second important characterization of basic needs is that they are innate, from which three implications can be derived. First, it implies that satisfaction of the basic psychological needs is critical throughout one’s entire life, from birth until death. Second, it implies that the benefits of need satisfaction do not necessarily require conscious, cognitive processing to accrue, as even children as young as one year old benefit from being in need-supportive environments (Grolnick, Bridges, & Frodi, 1984). Third, it implies that the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are universal nutriments necessary for optimal functioning, regardless of gender, social class, and cultural context. A third important characterization of basic needs is that when thwarted, people may cope in a variety of maladaptive ways (Deci & Ryan, 2000). One such maladaptive coping response is to develop need substitutes, which represent strong desires (e.g., material success, a thin body, social approval) that strongly affect cognition, emotion, and behavior. Although achieving such desires may yield some derivative satisfaction, such feelings are short-lived, as those ends fail to satisfy basic psychological needs. For instance, a materialist may experience a derivative sense of competence if he is successful in business, but such satisfaction is likely short-lived and his pursuit of financial success may in time cause work–family conflict (Vansteenkiste et al., 2007b), thus interfering with his satisfaction of relatedness. Consider also an adolescent who has such a strong desire for
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social recognition that she spreads rumors about her classmates. Although this relationally aggressive style may enhance her popularity, it is unlikely to promote her developing close relations with others (Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Goossens, Duriez, & Niemiec, 2008). A second maladaptive coping response is to develop rigid behavior patterns, which may provide short-term feelings of security, stability, and efficacy, but interfere with genuine need satisfaction. For instance, maladaptive perfectionists often obsess about achieving very demanding standards. Although such high standards may provide structure, their rigid pursuit is likely to interfere with the satisfaction of autonomy (Shafran & Mansell, 2001), as such standards preclude opportunities for full absorption in the activity.
Theoretical Considerations Needs as Experiential Inputs Versus Needs as Motives BNT’s definition of basic psychological needs as innate nutriments necessary for integrated functioning differs from the more prominent usage of the concept provided by Murray (1938). According to Murray, psychological needs are relatively stable differences in desires that vary in strength across individuals as a function of their socialization history. From this perspective, individuals learn to associate positive emotions with particular motives (e.g., affiliation, achievement, power) during development, resulting in differences in the strength of those preferences. An important implication of this acquired ‘‘needs’’ perspective is that the satisfaction of these motives is only beneficial for people who desire to have those motives satisfied; thus, people will most likely experience wellness in contexts that match their acquired ‘‘needs.’’ For example, those with a strong desire for achievement are expected to benefit from a context that emphasizes outperforming others (Senko & Harackiewicz, 2002). BNT, in contrast, posits that the basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are innate requirements for psychological growth, even for those who do not place strong importance on those needs. To the extent that basic needs are satisfied, positive outcomes are expected to follow. In line with this, Mouratidis, Vansteenkiste, Lens, and Sideridis (2008) demonstrated that positive feedback enhanced IM, even for those who did not value doing well on the activity. When needs are thwarted, initially an individual is likely to persist in an attempt to satisfy basic needs by looking for new routes to need satisfaction (Deci & Ryan, 2000). For instance, following critical feedback an individual might have an increased desire for competence. Indeed, Sheldon and
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Gunz (2009) showed that experiential deficits in autonomy, competence, and relatedness predicted corresponding motives to overcome those deficits. This study, however, did not examine whether pursuing need satisfaction after an experienced deficit predicted subsequent need satisfaction. We speculate that the extent to which the active pursuit of need satisfaction is associated with actual need satisfaction depends on the motives underlying this pursuit. In the case the pursuit is autonomously regulated, need satisfaction may follow. However, an ego-involved or reactively driven pursuit of need satisfaction is less likely to engender maximal need satisfaction for a number of reasons. First, when needs are thwarted, people may become sensitive to environmental cues that signal opportunities for need satisfaction. For instance, Gardner, Pickett, Jefferis, and Knowles (2005) found that lonely individuals, who presumably lacked relatedness satisfaction, displayed an increased attention to social cues and opportunities for interpersonal interaction. Such heightened sensitivity to environmental cues might lead previously need-deprived individuals to interpret a subsequent needsupportive experience as less supportive than when their needs are satisfied. Indeed, van Prooijen (2009) showed that relative to those whose autonomy was satisfied, autonomy-deprived participants experienced a no-voice decision-making process as less fair. This suggests that previously controlled individuals interpreted subsequent events more strongly as autonomyfrustrating, thereby potentially inducing a negative spiral. Second, when the pursuit of need satisfaction is motivated by egoinvolvement, individuals get preoccupied with potential need-satisfying activities because they base their self-worth on their successful completion of such tasks. When feeling incompetent, for instance, one may have a strong desire to prove oneself as capable and effective. Likewise, when feeling lonely, one may have a strong desire to portray oneself as having an extensive social network. Finally, when feeling pushed around and unable to voice personal preferences, one may have a strong desire to be independent and differentiated from others. Thus, when needs are thwarted, people may actively pursue opportunities for need satisfaction so as to regain self-worth, which is unlikely to contribute to need satisfaction. In fact, Ryan, Koestner, and Deci (1991) and Vansteenkiste and Deci (2003) demonstrated that providing negative feedback to ego-involved individuals engendered inauthentic persistence during a free-choice period. Presumably, such persistence was done to feel competent after having received critical feedback, but the behavior was experienced as internally conflicted and, thus, not genuine. Paradoxically, the controlled pursuit of
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competence may have precluded participants’ opportunity to satisfy their needs, as feeling controlled may have detracted from competently engaging the activity. Although need deprivation appears to prompt heightened attention to social cues and a stronger desire for need satisfaction, this does not preclude the possibility that need-deprived individuals (a) anticipate less satisfaction from subsequent need-satisfying experiences (due to previous experiences of need deprivation) and (b) derive less satisfaction from those new experiences. In line with this, Moller, Deci, and Elliot (in press) used diary and experimental methodologies to show that individuals high in person-level relatedness (i.e., those who reported higher general levels of relatedness) expected greater need satisfaction from a relational event (anticipated value) and experienced days and events in which their relatedness was supported as more satisfying (experienced value). Thus, different from the studies mentioned above, Moller et al. examined subsequent need satisfaction and found that those high in general need satisfaction found subsequent need-supportive events more affectively rewarding and need satisfying. Interestingly, Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, and Ryan (2000) and Moller et al. used the term sensitization to explain their findings and suggested that satisfaction of relatedness makes an individual more sensitive to opportunities for relatedness, leading people to perceive need-supportive events as more important and satisfying. In short, it appears that both need-deprived and need-satisfied individuals are sensitive to new need-satisfying experiences, albeit at different moments and in different ways. Given that need-deprived individuals tend to reactively monitor their environment for need-satisfying signals, they are alert or sensitive to potentially new need-satisfying stimuli before such stimuli occur. Rather than reactively seeking new need-satisfying experiences, previously need-satisfied individuals tend to be spontaneously immersed in ongoing activities. When asked whether they anticipate deriving satisfaction from a new event, their history of need-satisfying experiences may lead them to expect and experience greater subsequent need satisfaction, relative to needdeprived individuals. Thus, for need-satisfied individuals the sensitization process occurs after need satisfaction has occurred. Although need-deprived individuals might initially increase in alertness for and motivation to approach new need-satisfying events (Sheldon & Gunz, 2009), their failure to derive as much satisfaction from new need-satisfying encounters (Moller et al., in press) might lead them to devalue the importance of new needsatisfying experiences over time. Indeed, the initially controlled reactions of need-deprived individuals might be gradually replaced by a sense of
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helplessness; they might feel incapable of getting their basic needs met, leading them to attach less importance to need satisfaction, a process referred to as accommodation or desensitization (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Moller et al., in press). These dynamics await further empirical testing. The Universal Importance of Autonomy Several contemporary psychologists have questioned the importance of autonomy for such groups as Easterners (Iyengar & DeVoe, 2003), women (Jordan, 1997), and the working class (Stephens, Markus, & Townsend, 2007). Herein, we discuss the cultural relativist perspective (Markus & Kitayama, 2003) and later we consider the relevance of autonomy for Easterners, women, the impoverished, and, indeed, all humans. Markus and Kitayama have disputed the universal importance of autonomy by arguing that autonomy is a typical Western concept that is unlikely to yield the same well-being correlates for Easterners, whose culture emphasizes social harmony and interdependence. Such a view is rooted in the SSSM, as it suggests that autonomy will only promote desirable outcomes for those whose culture emphasizes the importance of acting autonomously. Clearly, this view is at odds with SDT and, accordingly, it is important to discuss this complex, multi-faceted controversy. First, SDT and cultural relativists define autonomy in different ways. Whereas cultural relativists typically equate autonomy with individualism, independence, and uniqueness, BNT defines autonomy as the experience of volition, choice, and psychological freedom. When defined as independence, it follows that such a concept would not be relevant to those who value interdependence. However, within BNT the opposite of autonomy is not dependence (i.e., reliance on others to guide one’s behavior and decision making), but rather the experience of pressure or coercion to behave in particular ways (Vansteenkiste et al., 2005b), and we maintain that autonomy will have functional benefits in cultures that emphasize both independence (Western values) and interdependence (Eastern values). When defined as volition and choice, it follows that one can feel either free or coerced to act independently or to remain dependent on others. To illustrate, both a Belgian and a Chinese college senior may feel choiceful (vs. controlled) in her decision to live by herself (i.e., to become independent) or to live with her family (i.e., to remain dependent), with divergent outcomes associated with the degree to which her decision is experienced as autonomous (Kins, Beyers, Soenens, & Vansteenkiste, 2009). Second, and fully in line with the cultural relativist perspective, we recognize that differences in emphasis on independence versus interdependence are
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learned through socialization. Despite mean-level differences in a culture’s emphasis on independence versus interdependence, BNT maintains that the behaviors associated with both types of functioning can vary in the degree to which they are experienced as psychologically free or coerced. A more volitional (relative to pressured) pursuit of either independence or interdependence (regardless of the dominant cultural values) is expected to promote optimal functioning, and this has been confirmed in several studies (e.g., Rudy, Sheldon, Awong, & Tan, 2007). Third, BNT’s claim that satisfaction of autonomy yields positive effects across cultures does not contradict the idea that there exists considerable cross-cultural variation in how psychological needs are satisfied. For instance, Iyengar and Lepper (1999) reported that for European Americans making a personal choice was more intrinsically motivating than having the choice made by one’s mother or the experimenter. However, for Asian Americans having the choice made by one’s mother was comparable to making a personal choice, although both were more intrinsically motivating than having the choice made by the experimenter. At first sight, such findings seem to challenge BNT’s assumption that autonomy is a universal need. However, from the perspective of BNT such findings illustrate the considerable crosscultural variation in how autonomy can be satisfied. For those from an individualistic culture, behaving autonomously (with a sense of volition) implies making a personal choice, whereas those from a collectivistic culture seem to feel volitional when behaving in accord with the choice of someone who they trust (e.g., their mother), perhaps because they have identified with that person’s choice for them. Indeed, Bao and Lam (2008) found that preadolescent Chinese children reported comparable levels of IM when making a personal choice as when the choice was made by an adult (viz., parent, teacher) to whom they felt close, presumably because their need for relatedness was satisfied. Notably, although Bao and Lam obtained their results in a culture that emphasizes social harmony and relationships, BNT posits that similar results would be found among those from an individualistic culture, as relatedness is equally important in both cultures. In short, the specification of innate and universal needs does not preclude differences in socialization affecting how those needs are satisfied. Thus, it is critical to examine the dynamic interplay among the basic needs to understand how the social environment supports need satisfaction in different cultures. Covariance among the Elements of Need Support Although the elements of need support have been isolated and examined separately (Sheldon & Filak, 2008), in daily interactions supports for
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autonomy, competence, and relatedness are likely to covary. Such covariance may occur because the elements of need support are based, in part, on an accurate understanding of another’s perspective. Specifically, autonomy support involves the provision of choice and a meaningful rationale when choice is constrained, competence support involves the provision of a desired amount of information and guidance, and relatedness support involves the provision of a desired amount of care and concern. When an individual truly understands another’s internal frame of reference, the provided choice, information, and concern can be experienced as genuine, helpful, and caring. Thus, accurate empathy seems to be a precondition for supporting all three needs, which may explain why the three facets of need support strongly covary. Further, some elements of need support might satisfy a single need, whereas others might satisfy two or three needs. For instance, a meaningful rationale might help an individual grasp the value of an activity (autonomy support) and provide structure for the activity (competence support). Choice, however, would likely only satisfy autonomy. Thus, because there is no one-to-one association between need support and need satisfaction, the elements of need support are often highly correlated.
Empirical Basis of Basic Needs Theory Basic Psychological Needs and Wellness A central tenet of BNT is that satisfaction of each of the basic needs contributes unique variance to the prediction of psychological wellness, productivity, and social functioning. Empirical evidence supporting this proposition has been obtained in many life domains, including school, work, exercise, and sports. Need satisfaction has even been shown to predict outcomes other than one’s immediate psychological functioning, such as long-term health-behavior change (Williams, Niemiec, Patrick, Ryan, & Deci, 2009a) and medication adherence (Williams et al., 2009b). Further, need satisfaction has been shown to facilitate wellness across the lifespan, from early childhood (e.g., Grolnick et al., 1984) to adulthood (e.g., Vansteenkiste et al., 2007b). The amount of need satisfaction accumulated during one’s life has even been found to negatively predict mortality (Kasser & Ryan, 1999). Other studies have demonstrated that daily variations in need satisfaction contribute independently to within-person fluctuations in well-being (Reis et al., 2000) and to within-person differences in security of attachment (La Guardia, Ryan, Couchman, & Deci, 2000).
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Thus, the ‘‘ups and downs’’ in daily emotional experiences and in the quality of relationships covary with fluctuations in need satisfaction. Need satisfaction not only varies at the between- and within-persons levels, but also at the group level. To illustrate, Kelly, Zuroff, Leybman, Martin, and Koestner (2008) showed that group differences in need satisfaction predicted higher positive affect and performance over and above the differences in need satisfaction between group members. Recently, investigators have examined the importance of having one’s basic psychological needs satisfied to a relatively equal extent (i.e., balanced need satisfaction). Sheldon and Niemiec (2006) found that balanced need satisfaction predicted higher adjustment and lower mother-rated oppositional defiant behaviors among children, even while controlling for the total amount of need satisfaction. Interestingly, not only imbalance among the needs, but also imbalance in need satisfaction across contexts detracts from well-being. Milyavskaya et al. (2009) showed that adolescents who reported imbalanced need satisfaction across multiple contexts had lower well-being and school grades. To explain these findings, Milyavskaya et al. suggested that a lack of balance in need satisfaction may undermine identity development, as such imbalance may reflect their inability to reconcile the demands of multiple, context-bounded identities.
The Universal Benefits of Need Satisfaction BNT suggests that the basic psychological needs are universal requirements for human flourishing. Consistent with this proposition, studies have demonstrated the importance of basic needs for the well-being of people living in both individualistic (Western) cultures, including the United States (Reis et al., 2000) and Belgium (Luyckx, Vansteenkiste, Goossens, & Duriez, 2009), and collectivistic (Eastern) cultures, including Bulgaria (Deci et al., 2001), South Korea (Jang, Reeve, Ryan, & Kim, 2009), Russia (Lynch, La Guardia, & Ryan, 2009), and China (Vansteenkiste, Lens, Soenens, & Luyckx, 2006c). Further, need satisfaction has been found to facilitate health-behavior change among a sample of poor, working-class Americans (Williams et al., 2009a), and to promote the psychological and physical health of men and women alike (Ryan, La Guardia, Solky-Butzel, Chirkov, & Kim, 2005). Together, these findings contradict the reasoning of Markus and Kitayama (2003), Jordan (1997), and Stephens et al. (2007), who combine to suggest that need satisfaction (in particular, autonomy) is only beneficial for Western, working-class males.
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The Importance of Support for Autonomy Within BNT, much research with self-reports has shown that perceived autonomy support promotes well-being in a variety of life domains. In addition, various experimental studies (e.g., Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, & Deci, 2004a) have shown that an autonomy-supportive, relative to a controlling, communication style predicts deep learning and performance. Within adolescent psychology, some psychologists, influenced by separation-individuation theories, equate autonomy support with independence promotion (Silk, Morris, Kanaya, & Steinberg, 2003), which differs in at least two ways from the promotion of autonomy as defined by BNT (Soenens et al., 2007). First, although parents can promote independence in an autonomy-supportive way, independence can also be promoted in a controlling way, such that children feel they have no choice other than to become self-reliant. Second, when parents cannot support their child’s independence, they still can support their volition. Indeed, rules constrain behavior and, thus, limit independence. However, by providing a meaningful rationale for those guidelines and trying to be empathic, parents can support volition even though they limit independence. To examine the distinction between the views of BNT and separationindividuation theories, Soenens et al. (2007) assessed adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ promotion of both independent and volitional functioning, and found that both constructs were moderately positively correlated with each other and with psychological well-being. However, only parental promotion of volition (but not independence) accounted for unique variance in well-being when both constructs were simultaneous predictors. These results suggest it is critical for adolescents to perceive parental support for expressing their preferences and enacting their personal values, rather than to perceive parental support for independence and self-reliance. Whereas some adolescents may choose to be independent, others may act independently for controlled reasons, either because they do not feel ready to be independent (premature independence) or because they wish to rebel against their parents (defiant independence). A subsequent study (Soenens, Vansteenkiste, & Sierens, 2009) showed that parental promotion of both volition and independence differentially related to psychologically controlling parenting. Whereas promotion of independence was orthogonal to psychologically controlling parenting, promotion of volition was antithetical to it. Next, Soenens, Vansteenkiste, and Luyten (2010) developed items assessing parents’ attempts to force children to remain dependent through the use of guilt trips or conditional regard. Soenens et al. (2010) found that the children of such parents
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displayed a more dependent orientation, which in turn predicted depressive symptoms. Together, then, the work of Soenens, Vansteenkiste, and friends suggests that adolescents who perceive their parents as promoting either independence or dependence in a controlling (relative to autonomysupportive) manner experience lower well-being. The Importance of Support for Competence The concept of structure has received far less attention than autonomy support within BNT. Grolnick and Ryan (1989) conducted structured interviews with children in 3rd through 6th grade to obtain ratings of parental autonomy support and structure. They reported that autonomy support related positively to children’s academic autonomous self-regulation and grades, while structure predicted children’s control beliefs. More recently, Cleveland and colleagues examined the relations of parental autonomy support and structure to preschool children’s reminiscence of daily events. In an observational study, Cleveland and Reese (2005) showed that the two parenting styles could be distinguished and that by 65 months of age, children of high structuring parents (i.e., parents who asked openended, elaborative questions) recalled more daily events than those of low structuring parents. Subsequently, Cleveland, Reese, and Grolnick (2007) found that elaborative structure related positively to children’s memory of the details and narrative quality (i.e., coherence) of a standardized event, while autonomy support predicted children’s observer-rated engagement (see also Jang et al., in press). Finally, using self-reports of autonomy support and structure, Sierens, Vansteenkiste, Goossens, Soenens, and Dochy (2009) found that structure only had a positive relation to students’ self-regulated learning when it was provided in an autonomy-supportive way. The Importance of Support for Relatedness Support for relatedness has generally been found to predict a host of positive outcomes, including social competence, empathy, and secure attachments (Rohner, 2004). However, at times socializing agents may be involved and show concern in a controlling way, thus providing love at the expense of autonomy. One such socialization strategy is parental conditional regard (PCR; Assor et al., 2004; Roth, Assor, Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2009), in which parents provide love and affection when their child behaves according to their expectations, but withdraw love and affection when their child fails to meet their expectations. In essence, such parents contingently provide love in order to pressure their child into compliance, thereby pitting the child’s need for relatedness against autonomy. PCR has been shown to
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promote children’s inner tension and resentment toward parents (Assor et al., 2004; Roth et al., 2009). Other studies have revealed harmful consequences of social contexts that pit autonomy against relatedness. For example, a combination of controlling (i.e., autonomy-inhibiting) and supportive (i.e., relatedness-providing) parenting is related to a maladaptive pattern of developmental outcomes in children and adolescents, including poor academic achievement (Aunola & Nurmi, 2004) and poor empathic skills (Kanat-Maymon & Assor, 2010), as well as externalizing problems (Aunola & Nurmi, 2005). Importantly, with conditional support for relatedness, parents love is likely to be driven by their agenda and must be ‘‘earned’’ by the child. Such support is limited, strategic, and not genuine; therefore, conditional regard is unlikely to provide deep, enduring satisfaction of relatedness.
Directions for Future Research Several potential directions for future research on BNT deserve mention. One direction is to validate both domain-general and domain-specific measures of need satisfaction. Researchers have often relied on ad hoc measures, which make it difficult to compare findings across studies. Such validation work has been done in the domains of exercise (Wilson, Rogers, Rodgers, & Wild, 2006) and organizations (Van den Broeck, Vansteenkiste, De Witte, Lens, & Soenens, in press), and future research could extend this work to other life domains. A second direction for research is to examine the etiology of need substitutes. Indeed, recent research has begun to explore these dynamics. For instance, Soenens et al. (2008) showed that patients with eating disorders, relative to a matched control group, perceived their fathers as more psychologically controlling. Such autonomy deprivation presumably leaves individuals vulnerable to adopting self-critical, perfectionist standards that, in turn, promote eating pathology. In a more direct test of this idea, Thøgersen-Ntoumani, Ntoumanis, and Nikitaras (in press) found that adolescents who reported a lack of need satisfaction had a stronger focus on weight-control strategies and, in turn, lower body satisfaction. Qualitative research might provide insight in how need-thwarting experiences give rise to the emergence of need substitutes and psychopathology (Ryan, Deci, Grolnick, & La Guardia, 2006). A third direction for research is to examine whether basic needs explain the impact of various environmental factors on outcomes. Indeed,
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domain-specific theories often identify the critical factors that contribute to optimal development but fail to adequately explain the mechanisms that underlie these effects; the concept of basic psychological needs might fill this gap. To illustrate, Van den Broeck, Vansteenkiste, De Witte, and Lens (2008) showed that need satisfaction is a critical mechanism that explains the health-enhancing and -impairing effects of job resources and job demands (Karasek, 1979), respectively. Further, some (Markland, Ryan, Tobin, & Rollnick, 2005; Vansteenkiste & Sheldon, 2006) have argued that need satisfaction might explain the positive effects of motivational interviewing (Miller & Rollnick, 2002) on clinical outcomes, such as drop-out, behavioral change, and relapse.
GOAL CONTENT THEORY The Content of Life Goals In addition to studying the reasons that underlie behavioral regulation and the concept of basic psychological needs, a growing body of research from SDT has examined the correlates of different types (intrinsic and extrinsic) of life goals, or aspirations, that people pursue (for a review, see Kasser, 2002; Vansteenkiste et al., 2006b). Kasser and Ryan (1996) distinguished intrinsic goals (viz., personal growth, close relationships, community contribution, physical health) from extrinsic goals (viz., money, fame, image) and argued that, whereas intrinsic aspirations are likely to satisfy the basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, extrinsic aspirations are likely to be unrelated to need satisfaction. These goal contents are theorized to have differential relations to basic needs, in part, because intrinsic goal pursuit may engender an inward orientation that is conducive to need satisfaction, whereas extrinsic goal pursuit may engender an outward orientation that is focused on garnering self-worth through achievement and external validation, thus detracting from basic need satisfaction (Vansteenkiste, Soenens, & Duriez, 2008a). Because of their different foci, Ryan, Sheldon, Kasser, and Deci (1996) argued that ‘‘not all goals are created equal’’ and, therefore, are likely to have differential relations to physical, social, and psychological health. Originally, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic goals was incorporated within BNT, as extrinsic aspirations are considered to be compensatory goals that people value and pursue in times of need deprivation. An emphasis on extrinsic goals as need substitutes is fueled
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both by the media and advertising industry, which portray wealth, social recognition, and achieving ‘‘the right look’’ as the ultimate routes to identity development (Dittmar, 2007; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, in press) and happiness (Kasser, 2002). Indeed, individuals who are deprived of need satisfaction and who experience identity diffusion may be more likely to buy into extrinsic goals, hoping that such pursuits will provide a source of identity, meaning, and self-worth (La Guardia, 2009). The problem, however, is that such pursuits are not likely to provide genuine satisfaction of basic needs, which is integral to healthy personality development and wellness. To meaningfully organize the burgeoning research on the content of life goals, it seems appropriate and timely to introduce a fifth mini-theory of SDT, namely goal content theory (GCT). We maintain that the pursuit of intrinsic goals represents a third manifestation of the organismic growth tendency (Vansteenkiste et al., 2006b), along with IM and internalization, which are central in CET and OIT, respectively. That is, we posit that people have a natural tendency to move toward intrinsic goals and away from extrinsic goals, although such shifts do not happen automatically, but require contextual supports for need satisfaction. Accordingly, research has shown that need-supportive contexts promote movement away from extrinsic goals and toward intrinsic goals (Sheldon, Arndt, & Houser-Marko, 2003), whereas need-thwarting contexts hinder such change (Sheldon & Krieger, 2004).
Theoretical Considerations It is important to clarify several conceptual points. First, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic goals is not unique to GCT. For example, Fromm (1976) proposed a distinction between a having orientation and a being orientation, while Van Boven and Gilovich (2003) proposed a distinction between experiential purchases and material purchases. Moreover, the extrinsic aspirations for wealth and an appealing image (viz., the thin-ideal) have been examined extensively by consumer (e.g., Richins & Dawson, 1992) and body dissatisfaction (e.g., Stice, 2001) psychologists, respectively. Second, GCT is not intended to be an all-inclusive theory of goals. The list of goals proposed within GCT is not exhaustive because some goals (e.g., hedonism) are neither used to validate self-worth nor inherently growth-promoting and, therefore, cannot be classified as intrinsic or
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extrinsic. Unlike most other research (e.g., Schwartz, 1992), GCT does not intend to chart the universal structure of human strivings. Rather than being descriptive in nature, GCT is prescriptive in nature, as it formulates clear predictions regarding the correlates of goal contents. These claims are derived from the extent to which goal contents are consistent with human nature and, thus, likely to satisfy basic psychological needs. For instance, individuals who contribute to their community through volunteering are likely to build meaningful relationships and thus satisfy their need for relatedness, whereas those who aim to amass wealth are likely to view colleagues as rivals and experience conflict between their work and family, thereby detracting from satisfaction of relatedness and autonomy (Vansteenkiste et al., 2007b). Third, although related, intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations are distinct from IM and EM, which are central to CET and OIT, respectively. Indeed, both intrinsic and extrinsic goals can be pursued for either autonomous or controlled reasons. For instance, a retiree may volunteer either because he would feel guilty for not contributing to society (controlled motivation) or because he really likes volunteering (autonomous motivation). Similarly, an adolescent may strive for a physically appealing body because her partner praises her good looks (controlled motivation) or because she personally values this goal (autonomous motivation). Thus, although intrinsic goals tend to be pursued for autonomous reasons and extrinsic goals tend to be pursued for controlled reasons (Sheldon, Ryan, Deci, & Kasser, 2004), the content of, and reasons for pursuing, aspirations can be empirically crossed.
Empirical Basis of Goal Content Theory The Structure of Goal Contents Initial work within GCT (Kasser & Ryan, 1993) distinguished the pursuit of financial success from personal growth, close relationships, and community involvement. Kasser and Ryan (1996) subsequently showed that the aspirations fall into two general categories, namely intrinsic and extrinsic. These factor-analytic results have been replicated using samples from cultures characterized as individualistic (Belgium; Vansteenkiste et al., 2007b), moderately collectivistic (Russia; Ryan et al., 1999), and collectivistic (South Korea; Kim, Kasser, & Lee, 2003). Using more refined descriptive techniques (viz., multidimensional scaling analysis), Grouzet and colleagues (2005) showed that the structure of intrinsic and extrinsic goal contents was observed in 15 cultures across the globe.
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The Relation of Goal Contents to Wellness and Performance A central tenet of GCT is that intrinsic and extrinsic goal contents differentially predict well-being and adjustment. One line of research relevant to this hypothesis has examined the importance of intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations, showing that the importance of intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals related positively to well-being and negatively to ill-being. Other work has shown that the effects of intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goal contents generalize beyond individuals’ personal well-being to healthrelated, interpersonal, and societal outcomes. In the health-care domain, smokers who had maintained their aspirations for physical health at oneyear post-treatment were more likely to attain tobacco abstinence at twoyears post-treatment (Niemiec, Ryan, Deci, & Williams, 2009b). Further, the importance of intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals has been found to predict less alcohol and drug use, romantic relationship conflict, and prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes toward immigrants, as well as more trust in romantic relationships. Finally, there are important societal benefits associated with the importance of intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals, including less egoistic responses in scarce-dilemma situations and a smaller ecological footprint (for a review, see Kasser, 2002; Vansteenkiste et al., 2008a). Interestingly, based on the match-perspective (e.g., Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000), which is rooted in the SSSM, it can be argued that the effects of pursuing intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals would depend on the kind of goals that prevail in one’s environment. Therefore, the pursuit of extrinsic goals would not be harmful in an environment that places high emphasis on such goals. This position stands in contrast to GCT, as we underscore the importance of considering which goals are congruent with basic psychological needs rather than with the goals prevailing in the social environment to derive predictions about the adaptive value of goals. A number of studies have examined these conflicting hypotheses. In line with the match perspective, Sagiv and Schwartz found that business students who valued extrinsic (relative to intrinsic) goals reported higher psychological wellbeing, whereas psychology students reported more optimal functioning when they valued intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals. In contrast, in two subsequent studies (Kasser & Ahuvia, 2002; Vansteenkiste, Duriez, Simons, & Soenens, 2006a) extrinsic (relative to intrinsic) goal pursuits were associated with lower well-being and more internal distress among business students, even though extrinsic goals tend to be emphasized in their environment. Furthermore, Sheldon and Krieger (2004) reported that law students shifted away from intrinsic goals and toward extrinsic goals during
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their first year of law school. Given that law schools typically foster statusseeking and image-building (Krieger, 1998), a match perspective would suggest that such changes should be adaptive. In spite of this, these changes predicted a decline in psychological well-being. A second line of research has examined the attainment of intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations. Kasser and Ryan (2001) found that attainment of intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals related positively to the quality of interpersonal relationships and psychological health. Examining the crosscultural generalizability of these findings, Ryan et al. (1999) reported that among US and Russian students, attainment of intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals related positively to psychological health. Further, Niemiec, Ryan, and Deci (2009a) conducted a longitudinal study and found that attainment of intrinsic aspirations related positively to well-being and negatively to illbeing, whereas attainment of extrinsic aspirations was unrelated to well-being and actually contributed to ill-being. Finally, Van Hiel and Vansteenkiste (2009) showed that whereas seniors’ attainment of intrinsic goals contributed to their ego-integrity and death acceptance, extrinsic goal attainment positively predicted despair. Together, these studies qualify the expectancyvalence theory (Wigfield & Cambria, this volume) and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997) views, which suggest that attainment of valued goals, regardless of their content, is conducive to psychological wellness. A third line of research has examined the contextual promotion of intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations. Vansteenkiste and colleagues conducted a series of experiments showing that framing a learning activity as conducive to intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) goal attainment promoted deeper learning, better achievement, and longer persistence. Such results were found regardless of both the specific intrinsic and extrinsic goals that were promoted and the specific learning activities (e.g., exercise, studying) that were taught (for a review, see Vansteenkiste et al., 2006b). Interestingly, the detrimental impact of extrinsic (vs. intrinsic) goal framing emerged even among participants who valued extrinsic goals more strongly than intrinsic goals, suggesting that a ‘‘match’’ does not yield benefits (Vansteenkiste, Timmermans, Lens, Soenens, & Van den Broeck, 2008b). Further, the experimental manipulation of intrinsic and extrinsic goals has permitted a direct comparison of competing hypotheses offered by GCT and expectancy-valence theory on the effect of goal promotion. Vansteenkiste et al. (2004b) contrasted an intrinsic goal framing condition with a double goal (intrinsic and extrinsic) framing condition, while Vansteenkiste et al. (2004c) contrasted an extrinsic goal framing condition with a no-goal control condition. If, as suggested by expectancy-valence
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theory, promotion of any goal would increase the utility value of an activity and thus have a motivating effect, then participants in the double goal framing condition and extrinsic goal framing condition would be expected to show better outcomes than those in the intrinsic goal and no-goal control conditions, respectively. In contrast, GCT predicts that promotion of extrinsic goals would distract the learner from the activity and thus undermine learning, performance, and persistence. In line with the predictions of GCT, results demonstrated that participants in the intrinsic goal framing condition and no-goal control condition showed better learning, performance, and persistence than those in their respective comparison conditions, thereby supporting the proposition that not all goals are beneficial for motivation. In addition to being studied at the situational level (i.e., prior to engagement in a specific learning activity), goal promotion can also be examined at the domain (e.g., organizations, schools) and global levels (Vallerand, 1997). Regarding the latter, Duriez, Soenens, and Vansteenkiste (2008) found that parental promotion of intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals related positively to tolerance toward out-groups. The Relation of Goal Contents to Basic Needs GCT further posits that intrinsic and extrinsic goal contents differentially predict satisfaction of the basic psychological needs, which accounts for the differential relations of goal contents to psychological, physical, and social wellness. A small but growing number of studies have lent support to this hypothesis. For instance, Vansteenkiste et al. (2007b) showed that need satisfaction at work mediated the relations of the importance of extrinsic (relative to intrinsic) work value orientations to job-related outcomes and work–family conflict. In the exercise domain, Sebire, Standage, and Vansteenkiste (2009) found that need satisfaction partially accounted for the relation of intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goal content to psychological well-being, exercise anxiety, and physical self-worth. Thøgersen-Ntoumani et al. (in press) reported that a stronger focus on the intrinsic goal of physical health positively predicted basic need satisfaction, which, in turn, was negatively related to the thin-ideal adoption and engagement in unhealthy weight-management behaviors; in contrast, the pursuit of physical attractiveness was positively related to the thin-ideal adoption. Further, Niemiec et al. (2009a) found that change in need satisfaction accounted for some of the association between change in attainment of intrinsic aspirations and change in well-being; change in attainment of extrinsic aspirations was unrelated to change in need satisfaction.
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The Development of Goal Contents There are at least two possible routes through which people develop strong values for intrinsic or extrinsic goals (Kasser, 2002). First, over time people may come to endorse the salient goals promoted by their culture, similar to a process of modeling. Thus, employees for whom competition and financial success are the central values of their organization may come to value and pursue those same goals. Indeed, Schwartz (2006) showed that those in capitalistic societies tended to value extrinsic values (e.g., achievement, power) more than intrinsic values (e.g., universalism, self-direction). Second, over time people exposed to need-supportive contexts may come to endorse intrinsic goals, whereas those exposed to need-thwarting contexts may come to endorse extrinsic goals. Indeed, the pursuit of extrinsic goals may be used to cope with the irritation, anxiety, and insecurity associated with need deprivation. In line with this, Kasser, Ryan, Zax, and Sameroff (1995) found that teenagers of mothers who supported their autonomy and relatedness placed greater importance on intrinsic goals (relative to financial success), and Williams, Cox, Hedberg, and Deci (2000) found that adolescents of autonomy-supportive parents were more likely to endorse intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals.
Directions for Future Research GCT can be expanded in several different directions. One direction is to consider whether the list of intrinsic and extrinsic goals might be expanded. From the perspective of GCT, new goals would only be added if they are clearly linked to satisfaction of basic psychological needs. If such a relation cannot be made, there is no theoretical basis for predicting whether a new goal would be beneficial or harmful to wellness. One viable candidate to be added as an additional extrinsic goal is power, which was found to co-load with financial success and fame in factor analyses (Ryan et al., 1999; Vansteenkiste et al., 2007b). A second direction for research involves the development of domain-specific assessments of aspirations, as not all goals are equally relevant in all life domains. For example, the intrinsic aspiration for physical health is important in the domains of health care (Niemiec et al., 2009a) and exercise (Sebire et al., 2009), but is less relevant in the work domain. A third direction for research is to examine additional, lowerlevel mediational processes that might account for the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic goals. We propose that need satisfaction represents a
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macro-mediational process between goal contents and outcomes, which may be complemented and enriched by an examination of micro-mediational processes (e.g., attentional and cognitive factors). For instance, a woman who exercises in pursuit of the thin-ideal (an extrinsic goal) might be overly attentive to the number of calories she has burned while running on a treadmill or might spend more time looking at herself in the mirror than looking for opportunities to connect with others, thus detracting from full immersion in the her exercise (Vansteenkiste, Matos, Lens, & Soenens, 2007a). Such preoccupations are likely to undermine need satisfaction. Identifying such lower-level mediational processes might provide further insight into how intrinsic and extrinsic goal promotion and pursuit affect need satisfaction and functioning (Vansteenkiste et al., 2008a). A fourth direction for research is to examine whether the differential relations of goal contents are carried by the motives (autonomous and controlled) that underlie them, as proposed by Carver and Baird (1998). A number of studies at general (Carver & Baird, 1998; Sheldon et al., 2004) and domain-specific (education: Vansteenkiste et al., 2004a; exercise: Ingledew & Markland, 2008; Sebire et al., 2009) levels have examined this issue, but have produced mixed results, with some studies showing independent effects (Sheldon et al., 2004) and others not (Sebire et al., 2009). The independence of the ‘‘what’’ and ‘‘why’’ of goal pursuits might depend on a number of factors (the domain under investigation, the outcomes examined, the formulation of goal items, and the meaning attributed to a goal). For example, it is possible that because goal contents are cognitive in nature they are more predictive of cognitive–attitudinal outcomes (e.g., prejudice), whereas because motives are experiential and affective in nature they are more predictive of affective outcomes (e.g., well-being).
CONCLUSION The literature on SDT has witnessed an exponential increase in the last decade. The theory has attracted the attention of dozens of scholars across the globe, perhaps due to its coherent and internally consistent development. The strong meta-theoretical (i.e., organismic dialectical) foundation of SDT provides an ideal basis to generate and test novel hypotheses that meaningfully account for observed phenomena. Moreover, it provides an antidote against the theoretical eclecticism in modern psychology, a movement that fits within the current postmodern cold-buffet culture where it is ‘‘bon ton’’ to take ideas from diverse theories, compile one’s own
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model, and present oneself as theoretically pluralistic. We hope this chapter will provide a source of inspiration for scholars to further develop SDT, thereby fitting their own piece into the ‘‘SDT puzzle.’’
ACKNOWLEDGMENT We would like to thank Willy Lens, Eline Sierens, and Bart Neyrinck for providing insightful comments on previous drafts of this chapter.
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Sheldon, K. M., & Niemiec, C. P. (2006). It’s not just the amount that counts: Balanced need satisfaction also affects well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 331–341. Sheldon, K. M., Ryan, R. M., Deci, E. L., & Kasser, T. (2004). The independent effects of goal contents and motives on well-being: It’s both what you pursue and why you pursue it. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 475–486. Sierens, E., Vansteenkiste, M., Goossens, L., Soenens, B., & Dochy, F. (2009). The interactive effect of perceived teacher autonomy-support and structure in the prediction of selfregulated learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 79, 57–68. Silk, J. S., Morris, A. S., Kanaya, T., & Steinberg, L. (2003). Psychological control and autonomy granting: Opposite ends of a continuum or distinct constructs? Journal of Research on Adolescence, 13, 113–128. Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York: Knopf. Soenens, B., Berzonsky, M. D., Vansteenkiste, M., Beyers, W., & Goossens, L. (2005). Identity styles and causality orientations: In search of the motivational underpinnings of the identity exploration process. European Journal of Personality, 19, 427–442. Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2010). A theoretical upgrade of the concept of parental psychological control: Proposing new insights on the basis of self-determination theory. Developmental Review, 30, 74–99. Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (in press). On the congruence between the self and identity: Identity development from a self-determination perspective. In: S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds), Handbook of identity theory and research. New York: Springer. Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Goossens, L., Duriez, B., & Niemiec, C. P. (2008). The intervening role of relational aggression between psychological control and friendship quality. Social Development, 17, 661–681. Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Lens, W., Luyckx, K., Goossens, L., Beyers, W., et al. (2007). Conceptualizing parental autonomy support: Adolescent perceptions of promotion of independence versus promotion of volitional functioning. Developmental Psychology, 43, 633–646. Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., & Luyten, P. (2010). Towards a domain-specific approach to the study of parental psychological control: Distinguishing between dependency-oriented and achievement-oriented psychological control. Journal of Personality, 78, 217–256. Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., & Sierens, E. (2009). How are parental psychological control and autonomy-support related? Naturally occurring profiles of psychological control and two types of autonomy-support. Journal of Marriage and Family, 71, 187–202. Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Vandereycken, W., Luyten, P., Sierens, E., & Goossens, L. (2008). Perceived parental psychological control and eating disordered symptoms: Maladaptive perfectionism as a possible intervening variable. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 196, 144–152. Steger, M. F., Kashdan, T. B., & Oishi, S. (2008). Being good by doing good: Daily eudaimonic activity and well-being. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 22–42. Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., & Townsend, S. S. M. (2007). Choice as an act of meaning: The case of social class. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 814–830. Stice, E. (2001). A prospective test of the dual-pathway model of bulimic pathology: Mediating effects of dieting and negative affect. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 124–155.
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Tang, S. H., & Hall, V. C. (1995). The overjustification effect: A meta-analysis. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, 365–404. Thøgersen-Ntoumani, C., Ntoumanis, N., & Nikitaras, N. (in press). Unhealthy weight control behaviours in adolescent girls: A process model based on self-determination theory. Psychology and Health. Vallerand, R. J. (1997). Toward a hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In: M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 271–360). New York: Academic Press. Vallerand, R. J., & Reid, G. (1984). On the causal effects of perceived competence on intrinsic motivation: A test of cognitive evaluation theory. Journal of Sport Psychology, 6, 94–102. Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To do or to have: That is the question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1193–1202. Van den Broeck, A., Vansteenkiste, M., De Witte, H., & Lens, W. (2008). The role of basic need satisfaction in explaining the relationships between demands, resources, well-being and engagement. Work & Stress, 22, 277–294. Van den Broeck, A., Vansteenkiste, M., De Witte, H., Lens, W., & Soenens, B. (in press). Capturing autonomy, relatedness and competence: Construction and validation of a work related need satisfaction scale. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Vandereycken, W., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2009). Let eating disorder patients decide: Providing choice may reduce early drop-out from inpatient treatment. European Eating Disorders Review, 17, 177–183. Van Hiel, A., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2009). Ambitions fulfilled? The effects of intrinsic and extrinsic goal attainment on older adults’ ego-integrity and death attitudes. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 68, 27–51. van Prooijen, J. (2009). Procedural justice as autonomy regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1166–1180. Vansteenkiste, M., & Deci, E. L. (2003). Competitively contingent rewards and intrinsic motivation: Can losers remain motivated? Motivation and Emotion, 27, 273–299. Vansteenkiste, M., Duriez, B., Simons, J., & Soenens, B. (2006a). Materialistic values and well-being among business students: Further evidence for their detrimental effect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36, 2892–2908. Vansteenkiste, M., Lens, W., & Deci, E. L. (2006b). Intrinsic versus extrinsic goal contents in self-determination theory: Another look at the quality of academic motivation. Educational Psychologist, 41, 19–31. Vansteenkiste, M., Lens, W., De Witte, S., De Witte, H., & Deci, E. L. (2004). The ‘‘why’’ and ‘‘why not’’ of job search behavior: Their relation to searching, unemployment experience, and well-being. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 345–363. Vansteenkiste, M., Lens, W., De Witte, H., & Feather, N. T. (2005). Understanding unemployed people’s search behavior, unemployment experience and well-being: A comparison of expectancy-value theory and self-determination theory. British Journal of Social Psychology, 44, 1–20. Vansteenkiste, M., Lens, W., Soenens, B., & Luyckx, K. (2006c). Autonomy and relatedness among Chinese sojourners and applicants: Conflictual or independent predictors of well-being and adjustment? Motivation and Emotion, 30, 273–282. Vansteenkiste, M., Matos, L., Lens, W., & Soenens, B. (2007a). Understanding the impact of intrinsic versus extrinsic goal framing on exercise performance: The conflicting role of task and ego involvement. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 8, 771–794.
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Vansteenkiste, M., Mouratidis, A., & Lens, W. (2010). Detaching reasons from aims: Fair play and well-being in Soccer as a function of pursuing performance-approach goals for autonomous or controlling reasons. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 32, 217–232. Vansteenkiste, M., Neyrinck, B., Niemiec, C. P., Soenens, B., De Witte, H., & Van den Broeck, A. (2007b). On the relations among work value orientations, psychological need satisfaction, and job outcomes: A self-determination theory approach. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80, 251–277. Vansteenkiste, M., Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2008). Self-determination theory and the explanatory role of psychological needs in human well-being. In: L. Bruni, F. Comin & M. Pugno (Eds), Capabilities and happiness (pp. 187–223). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vansteenkiste, M., & Sheldon, K. M. (2006). ‘There is nothing more practical than a good theory’: Integrating motivational interviewing and self-determination theory. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45, 63–82. Vansteenkiste, M., Sierens, E., Soenens, B., Luyckx, K., & Lens, W. (2009). Motivational profiles from a self-determination perspective: The quality of motivation matters. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 671–688. Vansteenkiste, M., Simons, J., Lens, W., Sheldon, K. M., & Deci, E. L. (2004a). Motivating learning, performance, and persistence: The synergistic effects of intrinsic goal contents and autonomy supportive contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 246–260. Vansteenkiste, M., Simons, J., Lens, W., Soenens, B., & Matos, L. (2005a). Examining the motivational impact of intrinsic versus extrinsic goal framing and autonomysupportive versus internally controlling communication style on early adolescents’ academic achievement. Child Development, 76, 483–501. Vansteenkiste, M., Simons, J., Lens, W., Soenens, B., Matos, L., & Lacante, M. (2004b). ‘‘Less is sometimes more’’: Goal-content matters. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 755–764. Vansteenkiste, M., Simons, J., Soenens, B., & Lens, W. (2004c). How to become a persevering exerciser? The importance of providing a clear, future intrinsic goal in an autonomysupportive manner. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 26, 232–249. Vansteenkiste, M., Soenens, B., & Duriez, B. (2008a). Presenting a positive alternative to materialistic strivings and the thin-ideal: Understanding the effects of extrinsic relative to intrinsic goal pursuits. In: S. J. Lopez (Ed.), Positive psychology: Exploring the best in people (Vol. 4, pp. 57–86). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company. Vansteenkiste, M., Timmermans, T., Lens, W., Soenens, B., & Van den Broeck, A. (2008b). Does extrinsic goal framing enhance extrinsic goal oriented individuals’ learning and performance? An experimental test of the match-perspective vs. self-determination theory. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 387–397. Vansteenkiste, M., Zhou, M., Lens, W., & Soenens, B. (2005b). Experiences of autonomy and control among Chinese learners: Vitalizing or immobilizing? Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 468–483. Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and motivation. New York: Wiley. Waterman, A. S. (in press). Eudaimonic identity theory: Identity as self-discovery. In: S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds), Handbook of identity theory and research. New York: Springer.
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Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). When helping helps: Autonomous motivation for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 222–244. White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66, 297–333. Williams, G. C., Cox, E. M., Hedberg, V., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Extrinsic life goals and health risk behaviors in adolescents. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30, 1756–1771. Williams, G. C., & Deci, E. L. (1996). Internalization of biopsychosocial values by medical students: A test of self-determination theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 767–779. Williams, G. C., Niemiec, C. P., Patrick, H., Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2009a). The importance of supporting autonomy and perceived competence in facilitating long-term tobacco abstinence. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 37, 315–324. Williams, G. C., Patrick, H., Niemiec, C. P., Williams, L. K., Divine, G., Lafata, J. E., et al. (2009b). Reducing the health risks of diabetes: How self-determination theory may help improve medication adherence and quality of life. The Diabetes Educator, 35, 484–492. Wilson, P. M., Rogers, W. T., Rodgers, W. M., & Wild, T. C. (2006). The psychological need satisfaction in exercise scale. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 28, 231–251. Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individualdifferences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1271–1288.
SELF-CONCEPT AS PERSONS’ UNDERSTANDING AND EVALUATION OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS AND EXPERIENCES: LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD FROM WHERE WE ARE Jack Martin Self-concept is a term used by a wide variety of psychologists to refer generally to one’s understanding and evaluation of one’s self. Self-concept has been linked to, and at times identified with, related terms such as self-esteem, self-worth, self-image, self-schemata, self-representation, selfpresentation, self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-appraisal, self-perception, self-monitoring, and self-efficacy. However, it is the promise of self-concept research in psychology to tell us something worthwhile about ourselves in ways that might be said to constitute and promote our understanding and evaluation of our actions and experiences that is the most compelling aspect of the large body of research and writing currently extant in this area of psychological scholarship. According to many historians and theorists of the self (e.g., Baumeister, 1987; Cushman, 1995; Danziger, 1997a, 1997b; Seigel, 2005; Sorabji, 2006; Taylor, 1989), currently popular conceptions of selfhood and self-concept The Decade Ahead: Theoretical Perspectives on Motivation and Achievement Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Volume 16A, 167–198 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0749-7423/doi:10.1108/S0749-7423(2010)000016A008
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(that assume an individual’s surveillance and understanding of interior, mental/cognitive processes, structures, or personality traits) are of surprisingly recent origin. Perhaps not surprisingly, such conceptions of selfconcept owe much to popularizations of the theories, researches, and interventions of scientific and professional psychologists (e.g., Herman, 1995; Pfister & Schnog, 1997). Indeed, it is because disciplinary psychology is so deeply implicated in how we contemporaries understand ourselves that a history, appraisal, and tentative forecast concerning psychological inquiry about self-concept are warranted. Some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that disciplinary psychology itself may be understood as a ‘‘technology’’ or set of discursive, measurement, and intervention practices devoted to the construction and perpetuation of distinctively psychological ways of being a person (e.g., Hacking, 1995; Rose, 1998). My overall strategy is to tell the story of the psychology of self-concept through a compilation of the historical analyses and reflections of a number of prominent self-concept researchers (e.g., Harter, 1996; Hattie, 1992, 2003; Keith & Bracken, 1996; Marsh & Hattie, 1996; Pajares & Schunk, 2002, 2005; Roeser, Peck, & Nasir, 2006). Along the way, I will dip into the writings of other historians of psychology (e.g., Danziger, 1997a, 1997b; Greer, 2003, 2007; Nicholson, 1998, 2003) to raise possible alternative interpretations and conclusions to rival the perhaps more optimistically framed, yet nonetheless critical, ‘‘insider’’ histories I feature.1 What I hope to establish through my historical surveying of self-concept scholarship in psychology is that a number of persisting difficulties that attend self-concept theory and research may be traced to the assumption that the self is a psychological entity that is an internal part of a person, rather than simply a person. Even when prominent self-concept researchers have admonished against this tendency to separate selfhood from personhood, the assumption persists in their own work and methods, and in the way in which this work is understood within and outside of disciplinary and professional psychology. Thus, we talk about self-concepts rather than persons’ understanding and evaluation of their own actions and experiences. And, when individuals appear to be experiencing difficulties related to their acting and experiencing, many such difficulties are interpreted as having their genesis in individuals’ self-concepts, and explained accordingly. For example, we frequently are quite content to explain Susan’s behavioral and experiential difficulties by reference to her self-concept, as in ‘‘her self-concept is so low that she cannot act effectively, and she suffers as a consequence.’’ The possibility that the self-concept is an integral part of the actions and experiences of persons is cast aside in favor
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of understanding the self-concept as an inner source of motivation and psychological resilience. In the last part of this chapter, I examine various problems associated with understanding the self as an interior psychological entity. I also recommend and discuss the alternative of construing selves as the understandings and evaluations of persons concerning their own actions and experiences. One particularly interesting difficulty that I address is the possibility that psychological theory and research on self-concept may be contributing to distinctively psychological ways of being persons. These are ways of life that were not available to previous, less psychologically oriented generations. Such psychological perspectives may tend to remove people from their worldly contexts and interactions with others, leading them to orient to their own psychological interiors and needs. What is lost through this interior focus is an active orientation to actions and interactions with others within social and cultural practices. These are practices or ways of interacting that structure things like friendships and family relationships, ways and methods of engaging in particular activities like mathematics or politics, and social life in general. I then conclude by suggesting an alternative framing of persons’ understanding and evaluation of their own actions and experiences. The suggested alternative focuses on the holistic interactivity of persons within interpersonal practices. Importantly, these practices provide contextual criteria for framing understanding and evaluation of actions and experiences, criteria that are not available in isolation from active engagement within our communities and societies.
A HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-CONCEPT Beginnings Almost all historical accounts of psychological work related to the selfconcept begin with the pioneering work of William James (e.g., Harter, 1996; Pajares & Schunk, 2002, 2005; Roeser et al., 2006). James’ distinction between the self as knower and agent (the I-self) and the self as known and object (the Me-self), in the famous Chap. 10, on self-consciousness, in his Principles of Psychology (1890), undoubtedly informs much subsequent work on the self-concept (a term that James never used himself). In particular, the general idea that the self is made up of different constituents
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(e.g., the Me-self contains material, social, and spiritual selves) arranged hierarchically is still very much a basic structural assumption in many contemporary theories of the self-concept, just as James’ assumption that the I-self can create and monitor a variety of Me-selves anchors much selfconcept methodology and process theorizing. With respect to the general aims of self-concept research, James’ framing of self-esteem (a term he did use) also has been extremely influential on subsequent generations of both self-esteem and self-concept researchers. For James, self-esteem is a feeling that ‘‘depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do’’ (James, 1981, p. 310), a feeling that depends on the success with which we achieve those things we set out to achieve.2 Alongside James as the founding father of self-psychology, many commentators on the history of self-concept also point to the theoretical legacies of social, psychological thinkers like Charles Horton Cooley (1902) and George Herbert Mead (1934) (e.g., Harter, 1996; Pajares & Schunk, 2002, 2005), as well as to the influence of ego and identity theorists like Sigmund Freud (1949) and Erik Erikson (1959, 1968) (e.g., Pajares & Schunk, 2002, 2005; Roeser et al., 2006), and developmental thinkers like James Mark Baldwin (1897) and Jean Piaget (1965) (e.g., Harter, 1996, 1999). Central to the social, psychological thought of Cooley and Mead are the roles played by others in the formation of an individual’s self-concept. Social interactions with others reveal their reactions to us in ways that we recognize, imagine, and feel (Cooley) or in ways that lead us to react to ourselves as others do (Mead). Thus, our selves and self-concepts have their origins in our social interactions with other persons and society at large. However, both Cooley and Mead emphasize that we are not passive recipients of others’ regard, but active agents in our internalization and transformation of others’ reactions, attitudes, and perspectives. Mead, in particular, theorized a Me-self that is much more explicitly and thoroughly social than that envisioned by James – a self that is constantly transformed through interactivity and intersubjectivity with others, and through the reactivity of the agentive I-self to these encounters. Somewhat unique for his time, Mead (1934) also developed the idea of a generalized other that reflected the social processes and conventions of entire communities of others, thus providing a conception of sociocultural influence on our self-constructions that goes considerably beyond interpersonal interactivity with particular others. Interestingly, both Cooley and Mead tended to think of the self in a rather holistic way, refusing to draw sharp distinctions among cognitive, affective, and volitional aspects of self-functioning.
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Emphasis on the ongoing interaction between social others and one’s sense of one’s self also is found in the work of the developmental psychologist, James Mark Baldwin (1897). Baldwin maintained that each of us undergoes ‘‘constant modification of his sense of himself by suggestions from others,’’ resulting in ‘‘changes in the content of one’s sense of self’’ (p. 30) that frequently vary across different relational contexts. Not only did Baldwin emphasize the importance of social, psychological processes of imitation in the other-orientation of young children whom he regarded as ‘‘veritable copying machine[s],’’ he also recognized the impact of particular social situations in which such social, psychological processes unfolded. ‘‘[T]he growing child is able to think of self in varying terms as varying social situations impress themselves upon him’’ (p. 37), a point echoed years later by Jean Piaget (1965) who noted young children’s tendency to reason and think of themselves from concrete particular to concrete particular.3 The influence of the ego and identity psychologies of thinkers like Freud (1949) and Erikson (1959, 1968) has been remarked recently by Pajares and Schunk (2002, 2005) and Roeser et al. (2006). As is well known, the Freudian ego acts as a regulatory center for executive functioning directed at balancing psychological and behavioral tendencies of both conscious and unconscious origin (Freud, 1949). However, Freud’s early biological determinism and later pessimism, grounded in the civilized ego’s limitations in the face of powerful forces of aggression and destruction (Freud, 1989), placed rather severe restrictions on what the ego could accomplish, and highlighted the difficulty of self-understanding. Thus, any equation of genuine self-understanding with sets of consciously available self-beliefs was, for Freud, to be resisted. More directly relevant to contemporary self-concept research and theory, especially its motivational features, is the theory of epigenetic identity development across the lifespan developed by Erik Erikson. Roeser et al. (2006) have highlighted Erikson’s contribution to self theory by citing his conceptualization of the I-self as ‘‘an observing center of awareness and of volition’’ (Erikson, 1968, p. 135), which they (borrowing from contemporary neuroscientific and self-regulatory research) redefine as ‘‘a master regulatory mechanism by which attentional, cognitive, and affective resources can be consciously and willfully deployed’’ (Roeser et al., 2006, p. 399). Nonetheless, Erickson’s primary focus, somewhat reminiscent of that of Cooley and Mead, was on developmental processes of psychosocial identity development defined within particular social contexts and developmentally sequenced tasks of living. Thus, Erikson’s focus, as also noted by Roeser et al. (2006), was ‘‘on objective relationships between the person
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and the environment y [and] brought needed attention to the cultural and intergenerational nature of psychosocial identity development’’ (p. 395). Despite the rich theoretical and conceptual frameworks advanced by James, Cooley, Mead, Baldwin, Freud, and others, the behaviorist hegemony within disciplinary psychology, which prevailed during much of the 1930s to the 1960s, dramatically curtailed what came to be regarded (in the absence of programmatic empirical scholarship in the still developing area of selfconcept inquiry) as speculative, philosophical theorizing incompatible with empirical science. Except for the mention of a few self theorists such as Lewin (1935), Goldstein (1939), Lecky (1945), Bertocci (1945), Murphy (1947), Ramey (1948), and Hilgard (1949), the historical reflections of self-concept researchers (e.g., Harter, 1996; Pajares & Schunk, 2005; Roeser et al., 2006) tend to skip the 1930s and 1940s, moving directly to the humanistically framed self-psychologies and empirically focused measurement studies that began to appear and gather intellectual momentum in the 1950s. In many ways, but in one way in particular, this neglect of self-relevant work during the missing years of the 1930s and 1940s deprives the reappearance of self-concept research, following the humanist bridgehead in the 1950s, of an explanatory, historical grounding. Fortunately, recent work in the history of psychology by Danziger (1997b), Nicholson (2003), and others has highlighted the relevance for research on self-esteem and selfconcept of a great deal of psychological theory and research on motivation, personality, and attitudes from the late 1920s to the 1950s. Although it is not possible to devote much space to this topic, the personality psychology of Gordon Allport provides an excellent example of how ideas and measures related to various psychological traits and constructs, including self-concept, emerged in ways that made possible and legitimated what has come to be regarded as the scientific study of the self within psychology. This was a form of study that effectively moved the self and self-concept from the social relational contexts favored by Cooley, Mead, and Baldwin into a psychological interior to which only individuals themselves had privileged access and could report on, especially if assisted by the instruments and measures developed by psychological experts who increasingly claimed the psychological interior as their unique disciplinary turf.
Measuring the Interior Self Alongside, and less remarked than, the behavioral psychologies that captivated American psychology during much of the first half of the
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twentieth century was a newly forged psychology of attitudes, motivation, and personality. For many prominent psychologists like Gordon Allport (1937), the concept of attitude went well beyond a disposition to act. Between the first and second world wars, these psychologists began to talk as if attitudes were real entities interior to, and possessed by, all persons – entities that, by adulthood, became relatively permanent and exerted a causal influence on what persons believed, thought, and did. The natural reality of psychologists’ conceptions of attitudes was confirmed in the minds of psychologists and others when L. L. Thurstone and Rensis Likert developed various methods of measuring attitudes (Danziger, 1997b). One such method, which involved asking people to rate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with a variety of statements concerning whatever it was that was being measured, became especially popular. Although this method was similar to methods then in use for opinion polling, when married to psychological theory to the effect that what was being measured were semi-permanent, psychological entities possessed by respondents, it was seen as an important social-scientific advance. Disciplinary psychology now had a means of measuring attitudes, and (by extension) motivational and other personality traits and characteristics that was thought by many to rival sophisticated methods of physical measurement associated with advances in the natural sciences, especially when the responses of large numbers of people were subjected to apparently meticulous quantifications through a variety of psychometric and statistical procedures. Within the developing tradition of psychological research on attitudes, motivation, and personality, self-concept came to be understood as a causally efficacious, interior component of individuals that was implicated in a wide variety of personal actions and experiences, and one which could be measured through individual responses to appropriately constructed psychological measures with requisite psychometric properties. For many, ratings of the extent to which individuals agreed that statements such as ‘‘I feel good about myself most of the time’’ described themselves came to serve as operational indicators of an interior core of self-understanding and experiencing. Moreover, because self-concept now could be measured, it became a tractable focus for the applications of professional psychology in education, psychotherapy, vocational counseling, and industrial–organizational psychology. In all of these areas and more, applied psychologists now could study scientifically how their interventions might positively affect the self-concept and self-esteem of students, clients, job seekers, and employees. Perhaps no single psychologist was more directly responsible for establishing a psychological science of personality and selfhood than
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Gordon Allport (1937), an individual who directly and indirectly influenced subsequent generations of psychologists and educational psychologists concerned with both self-concept and self-management. Allport’s central contribution was to advance an approach to selfhood that combined concern for scientific rigor and control with humanistic impulses for selfdevelopment and fulfillment. Allport mapped out a self that reflected the new realities of industrial, urban America. This was a self that could be known, governed, managed; it was a self that could be embraced by employers and officialdom and one to which upwardly mobile individuals could aspire. Paradoxically, this was also a self that promised liberation from standardization and a heightened level of individuality. Individual measurement would transform an intangible value – individuality – into an empirical reality and in the process would free Americans from the sociological straitjacket of group-based categories. (Nicholson, 2003, pp. 100–101)
In his attempt to combine science and humanism in the study of self-concept, Allport not only presages contemporary applications and considerations of self-concept with respect to programs of research and intervention linked to both self-esteem and self-regulation, but also provides a powerful example of a psychologist personally committed to both rigor and beneficence through the psychological study of self-related phenomena (Nicholson, 1998).
Research on Self-Concept Explodes By the 1950s, a number of humanistic thinkers in psychology had begun to rebel against the behaviorists’ neglect of inner experience and selfhood. Abraham Maslow (1954) outlined a theory of motivation based on the satisfaction of basic needs that included the achievement of self-actualization, understood as the development of one’s full potential as a human being. Carl Rogers (1957) presented a system of client-centered psychotherapy based on the provision of appropriate conditions for the development of the self and the achievement of self-actualization. The self theory of Rogers was extremely influential in clinical and educational psychology (e.g., Snygg & Coombs, 1959), and helped to fuel a gradual rebirth of interest in the self among mainstream experimental psychologists. Because of Rogers’ emphasis on how individuals view themselves, much of this new, mainstream interest focused on the operationalization and measurement of the self-concept, understood as the sum total of an individual’s beliefs about herself, or at least those that she can articulate.
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By treating the self as self-description, a new generation of self-concept researchers rapidly developed and standardized a variety of paper and pencil measures of the self as self-described. Such measures of self-concept simplified the self, and made it less abstract and elusive. In effect, where James and earlier psychologists had struggled with difficult ontological questions concerning the self, the self-concept researchers adopted a methodological solution that effectively denied the conflictual, multiple, and developmental nature of the self as previously theorized by Freud, James, Mead, and Rogers. The self-concept as an empirical psychological self, operationalized in standardized psychological measures, offered a tractable conception of selfhood that seemed to make it readily accessible to psychological experts and their clients. A voluminous literature quickly developed that reported the development and administration of measures of self-concept, and a variety of interventions targeted at producing changes in individuals’ responses to these measures. By the 1970s, when mainstream psychology’s attachment to behaviorist theories and methods had mostly given way to a new wave of cognitive theorizing and intervention, research on self-concept and self-esteem continued unabated, absorbing and reflecting newly developed models of cognitive information processing, schemata, and memory stores.4 Although in many ways initiated by humanistic impulses to recognize the uniqueness and emotional experience of individuals, the burgeoning literature on self-concept and self-esteem of the 1960s and 1970s soon reflected the kind of joint commitment to science and humanism exhibited by a previous generation of attitude and personality researchers like Gordon Allport. Self-concept research during this period was a growth industry that merged with and utilized the talents of psychometricians on the one hand (resulting in numerous scales and subscales for the measurement of self-esteem and self-concept; e.g., Piers & Harris, 1964), and the models favored by newly minted cognitive psychologists on the other (resulting in theories of selfhood and self-concept framed in terms of information processes and cognitive operations; e.g., Markus, 1977). Perhaps not surprisingly, with all this activity and the multiplicity of measures and models it spawned, the critical attentions of self-concept researchers turned to questions (framed in both psychometric and cognitive terminology) concerning the dimensional structure and organization of the self-concept, a set of issues that, according to most self-concept researchers who have written about the history of their enterprise, was galvanized in the influential review of self-concept research by Shavelson, Hubner, and Stanton (1976).
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The Shavelson, Hubner, and Stanton Review As Marsh and Hattie (1996) point out, structural models of self-concept typically have been influenced by corresponding models of intelligence, and much debate has attended issues such as the dimensional (unidimensional versus multidimensional), hierarchical, and taxonomic nature of selfconcept, debates that have been closely associated with developments in factor analysis, multitrait-multimethod analysis, path analysis, and related statistical procedures. It is generally agreed among contemporary selfconcept researchers (e.g., Marsh & Hattie, 1996; Marsh, Craven, & McInerney, 2003, 2005) that research on self-concept prior to 1980 lacked the theoretical and methodological rigor, and empirical progress displayed in subsequent research, and that an important ‘‘lightening rod’’ for this positive change was the Shavelson et al. (1976) critical, constructive review of this area of inquiry. Shavelson et al. drew critical attention to the general absence of theoretical sophistication in definitions and conceptions of selfconcept, the poor quality of measures of self-concept, a general lack of consistent findings, and a variety of methodological shortcomings – all of which they perceived as typifying the state of play in self-concept inquiry at the time of their review.5 However, Shavelson et al. (1976) also offered suggestions for improving this state of affairs that have been taken up by a subsequent generation of self-concept researchers in ways that have methodologically transformed psychological inquiry in this area. They provided a working definition of self-concept in terms of a person’s (or group’s) self-perceptions formed through experience within the social and natural environment that are potentially useful in explaining and predicting how a person acts. Shavelson et al. thus departed from earlier conceptualizations that viewed the self as an entity within a person. Assuming that a person’s self-perceptions were structured or organized, Shavelson et al. also postulated a multifaceted hierarchy, with perceptions of personal behavior in specific situations anchoring inferences about the self in broader domains (e.g., physical, social, academic), which in turn supported a general self-concept. Of particular interest, with respect to relationships such as that between selfconcept and academic achievement, Shavelson et al. argued (on conceptual, definitional grounds) that academic self-concept would be more highly correlated with academic achievement than social, physical, or general selfconcept, and that self-concept in a particular subject would correlate more highly with achievement in that subject than with achievement in other subjects.
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Shavelson et al. (1976) also noted that if self-concept research was to advance in progressive ways, it must do so simultaneously on theoretical/ conceptual, measurement, and empirical grounds. To this end, they proposed logical, correlational, and experimental procedures for advancing psychological, statistical inquiry concerning self-concept. Logical analysis was, among other things, to develop experimentally testable counter hypotheses based on the interpretations of test scores. Correlational analysis (factor analysis, path analysis, multitrait-multimethod analysis) could be used to investigate relations within hypothesized self-concept structures and between self-concept and related constructs. Experimental methods were appropriate for construct validation (testing the validity of interpretations of self-concept responses) – for example, the extent to which interventions theorized to enhance social self-concept actually did so, or whether interventions targeted at particular facets of a multidimensional self-concept influenced those facets more than others.
Contemporary Research on Self-Concept Subsequent work on the Shavelson et al. (1976) framework and proposals questioned the assumption that general or global self-concept is more stable than domain- or situation-specific self-concept, with global self-concept displaying considerable variability over time, despite measures of global self-concept displaying reasonable internal consistency in any particular administration (e.g., Marsh, 1990; Shavelson & Bolus, 1982). With respect to the much studied and theorized relationship between academic self-concept and achievement, domain-specific academic self-concept was better correlated with achievement than general or global self-concept, and subject-specific self-concept (e.g., mathematics self-concept) correlated even more highly with achievement in specifically related subject areas (e.g., mathematics) (Marsh, 1992; Marsh & Shavelson, 1985; Shavelson & Marsh, 1986). More generally, research on self-concept during the 1980s and 1990s, and into the twenty-first century also began to emphasize developmental features of the acquisition and age-related nature of self-concept, with researchers like Harter (1999) demonstrating that self-concept becomes both more differentiated and integrated with age (also see, Marsh, Craven, & Debus, 1991). Evidence also began to accumulate in support of the idea that ratings of one’s self-concept by significant others also tends to correlate more highly with self-ratings on domain-specific than general measures of self-concept. Complex relationships among self-concept, race, nationality, ethnicity, and
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gender also became a focus of much recent self-concept research (see Crain, 1996; Marsh et al., 2003, 2005), as did research on family self-concept, physical self-concept, social self-concept, and self-concept in multicultural contexts (see relevant chapters in Bracken, 1996 and Marsh et al., 2003, 2005). Comprehensive reviews and histories of different measures of selfconcept developed during the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire – Revised, the Self-Perception Inventory, the various Self-Perception Profiles for Adolescents, Children, College Students, and Learning Disabled Students, and the Self-Description Questionnaire II), as well as previously developed measures initially introduced in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale, Tennessee, Self-Concept Scale), also have appeared (e.g., Blascovich & Tomaka, 1991; Keith & Bracken, 1996; Wylie, 1989), as have reviews and histories of self-concept interventions (e.g., Harter, 1999; O’Mara, Marsh, Craven, & Debus, 2006). Despite being widely viewed as putting self-concept research on a more firm footing and promising course, subsequent research has not supported some aspects of the assumptive framework advanced by Shavelson et al. (1976). Perhaps more importantly, despite the laudatory efforts of major self-concept researchers, like Herbert Marsh (1990; Marsh & Shavelson, 1985; Marsh, Craven, & McInerney, 2003, 2005), to adhere to the generally sensible framework proposed by Shavelson et al. (1976), critical commentaries by ‘‘insiders’’ like John Hattie (1992, 2003) indicate that some of the difficulties that continue to plague the enterprise of self-concept research in psychology may have deeper roots than can be extracted by the current tradition of theoretically informed measurement construction and construct validation inspired by Shavelson et al., and practiced so diligently and competently by Marsh and some others.
A Critical Look at Contemporary Research on Self-Concept Marsh and Hattie (1996) conclude their chapter on theoretical perspectives on the structure of self-concept with pleas that ‘‘empirical tests, theoretical models and instrument construction should be evaluated simultaneously’’ and that ‘‘appropriate compromise[s] should be supported on the basis of theory, intended purpose, instrument construction, and empirical results’’ (p. 83). Their overall point is that construct validation of self-concept instruments/measures must be based on explicit theoretical models and pursued within comprehensive programs of research that span theory,
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analyses of relevant empirical relationships, experiments, and intervention studies (e.g., Marsh & Ko¨ller, 2003; Marsh & Craven, 2005). However, Hattie (2003) more recently has delved historically and critically into a number of basic assumptions concerning research on self-concept that appear to point to deeper difficulties in this area of inquiry. On the surface, Hattie (2003) can be read (and may intend to be read) as advocating a move away from conceptions and inquiries concerning self-concept that derive from the classical model of test theory’s dependence on correlation (e.g., high alphas, large factor loadings on a first factor, and notable discriminations among factors) to more contemporary item response models and generalizability theory focused on understanding change and variability across situations. However, much of what he says, including a thought-provoking example of what he refers to as ‘‘self-toeness,’’ points to conceptual and theoretical difficulties concerning the very idea of selfconcept that are unlikely to be assuaged adequately by methodological and statistical–theoretical means alone. Hattie (2003) asks us to imagine a scale for self-toeness that might include items such as ‘‘I like my big toe,’’ I am proud of my toes,’’ ‘‘I like to show off my toes to others,’’ ‘‘My toes are important to me,’’ and ‘‘I could not bear to part with my toes’’ (p. 131). He goes on to say, Given that there would be high correlations between such items, it would be easy to show via factor analysis and reliability that there is a strong single factor (80% variance explained by the first factor, AGFIW0.95, alphaW0.80, RMSEAo0.05, etc.), that it is discriminant from other aspects about my self, and that it correlates with other related dimensions (e.g., fingerness, eyeballness, and earness). Psychometrically wonderful it would seem. (p. 131)
Later, toward the end of his chapter, Hattie (2003) employs a Wittgenstein (1953) ploy in asking why we use the concept of self when it is a given. A useful question to ask ourselves every time we reach for the ‘self-concept’ lens is whether the same or different question would be asked if we left the term ‘self’ out of the question. For example, rather than asking about the relation between self-concept of mathematics and achievement we ask about the relation between our conceptions of mathematics and achievement. Rather than asking about the development of selfconcept of physical attributes, we ask about the development of conceptions of physical attributes. (p. 141)
Such suggestions are consistent with a more general theme that cuts through many of Hattie’s critical reflections and concerns, that is, that conceptualizing the ‘‘self’’ in self-concept as a kind of interior entity or entities may be counter-productive.
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Of course, the nature and ontological status of selfhood have been much discussed in the philosophy of mind and psychology since Hume (1986) claimed inability to locate the self behind his own impressions, sensations, experiences, perceptions, and memories. More recently, Peter Hacker (2007) has offered a powerful set of arguments for resisting the idea of the self as an interior entity that relate directly to Hattie’s (2003) own Wittgensteinian observations. Hacker notes that ‘‘A person cannot both be and have a self y if the self is some thing within a human being, then he cannot be identical with his self, since the human being cannot be identical with one of his constituent parts’’ (p. 261). ‘‘To speak of myself is not to speak of a self that I have, but simply to speak of the human being that I am. To say that I was thinking of myself is not to say that I was thinking of my self, but that I was thinking of me, this human being familiar to my family and friends’’ (p. 266). On Hacker’s view, it makes sense to talk about the experiences, understandings, and beliefs of a person, but not as matters that require consultation with, or perception of, an interior entity called the self. A person can assess her or his performance and capability in mathematics, baseball, or ballroom dancing. Nothing sensible is added by requiring that the person observe and report her or his self-concept as a mathematician, baseball player, or dancer. To think otherwise is to reify a psychological interior that is a product of our ways of talking and thinking, not a determining source of our worldly conduct. It is precisely such reification, through the application of psychological conceptions and practices of measurement and intervention, to which Hattie (2003) seems to be pointing in his own critical reflections on the state of the art in self-concept research. Consequently, if understood within the context of his concerns with respect to the ubiquitous and in many ways superfluous ‘‘self’’ in self-concept research, Hattie’s recommendations for improving statistical–theoretical and methodological aspects of contemporary research on self-concept are unlikely to have much positive impact if the basic idea of the self as an internal entity that individuals can perceive and report upon remains unchanged. The full implications of Hattie’s critique cut much deeper than he himself seems prepared to acknowledge. If there is any question about the continuing commitment of many self-concept researchers to the self as an interior mental entity or entities, a recent handbook in the second edition of the Handbook of Educational Psychology by Roeser et al. (2006) provides sufficient evidence to conclude that strongly mentalistic, representationalist views of self and self-concept remain the norm in this area of psychological inquiry, just as they do in
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many other areas of contemporary psychology. Thus, Roeser et al., in describing their ‘‘Basic Levels of Self (BLOS) Model,’’ state that: We describe the intraindividual levels of representation (e.g., temperamental, iconic, symbolic, and phenomenological) that function to motivate (energize) and regulate (direct) learning and achievement behavior in school by reference to the Basic Levels of Self (BLOS) heuristic model. This model assumes the foundational role of temperamental traits, moods, and emotions in shaping ‘‘higher order’’ levels of me-self representation from birth onward. (p. 401)
Although Roeser et al. clearly emphasize the behavioral and psychological activity of whole persons within their biophysical and sociocultural contexts, it is clear that they understand internal representations, processes, and psychological experiences of selfhood as the real driving forces behind the worldly activity of persons. Despite their references and use of the ideas of James, Dewey, and Erikson, Roeser et al. ultimately understand the prime movers of the contextualized activity of persons to be internal self-representations and processes. An Example Recent critical historical scholarship by Greer (2003, 2007) examines the historical transformation of the self-concept through the self-research and theorizing of psychologists, and helps to unpack the enduring appeal of the psychological interior for past and current generations of self-concept researchers. Greer’s historical researches lead him to conclude that the transformation of self into self-concept and self-esteem in American personality research has mostly ignored important qualities of selfhood such as agency, intentionality, reflexivity, and moral judgment (all of which have occupied philosophers and scholars from the time of Descartes and Locke). In particular, Greer (2003) argues that by understanding self-esteem and self-concept as interior personality traits and/or cognitive representations that determine our experience and conduct, self-concept researchers have gotten things backwards. Such confusion is further compounded by measurement procedures and statistical methodologies that yield results interpreted as indicating that personality and/or representational variables such as self-concept and self-esteem account for statistically significant amounts of variance in behavior. Although these difficulties have their source (as indicated above) in the attitude, motivational, and personality psychologies of the 1930s to the 1950s, it was with the advent of cognitive and information processing psychologies from the 1960s onward that the
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concept of a hierarchical, information-processing system began to replace earlier notions of the self as a rational and moral agent. Although contemporary theories of self-concept and self-esteem bypass well-known philosophical problems of assuming a homuncular self as a knower within, they effectively reduce the moral and rational agency of persons to cognitive psychological processes of schema-driven inferences or comparison-based perceptions about the quality of our actions, ‘‘a schematized set of ‘self-appraisals’’’ (Greer, 2003, p. 102). As a more viable alternative, Greer proposes that we move away from ideas of selfconcept and self-esteem as interior personality traits and/or cognitive representations and systems, toward understanding self-concept and selfesteem as forms of moral conduct, ‘‘recognizing our conduct as a type of social and moral discourse grounded in our responsibility and relationship to each other (e.g., what makes me feel good is inextricably bound to the fact that I exist in this world with ‘you’)’’ (2003, p. 104). Instead, however, Greer perceives that ‘‘each succeeding generation of self measures presented self-related constructs in an increasingly decontextualized light, with little or no reference to the self,’’ understood as the moral and rational conduct of persons in relation to others and the social world in general (2007, p. 19). In his detailed history of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale for Children, Greer (2007) extends his critique of self-concept measures and research by noting that the current state of self-concept research is both contradictory and confusing – a state of affairs achieved, in large part, through linking the idea of a deeply interior self-concept as personality trait and/or cognitive schema to a set of apparently standardized measurement instruments, practices, and statistical analyses (embedded within an ‘‘objectified, third-person discourse of prediction and control’’) (p. 20). ‘‘The current state of self measures is more a function of the type of research and knowledge-generating practices being employed, and the purposes to which they are geared, than any objective truth about individual psychological reality’’ (p. 20). In general conclusion, Greer (2007) imagines a critical historical antidote for some of what he perceives to ail self-concept research in psychology, ‘‘We must continue to look at these investigative practices, and the products they produce, more in terms of their place in the larger social context, and their historicity, than as the ‘best’ or most objective way of conducting research’’ (p. 20). Self-Concept, Self-Esteem, and Self-Efficacy Researchers of self-concept, self-esteem, and self-efficacy historically have differed with respect to how they define these terms (Byrne, 1996;
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Greer, 2003; Hattie, 1992; Wylie, 1974, 1979). Some use the terms self and self-concept interchangeably, while others seem to equate self and selfesteem. Some draw clear distinctions between self-concept (as comprised of various kinds of self-understanding) and self-esteem (as comprised of various kinds of self-valuation), while others treat both self-understanding and self-valuation as part of self-concept. In the early days of self-efficacy research (Bandura, 1977), most were careful to distinguish clearly between self-concept (and/or self-esteem) and self-efficacy by noting that the latter was an individual’s task-specific judgment of confidence in her ability to perform particular task-relevant actions (such as approaching feared objects or performing particular physical or intellectual skills), as opposed to beliefs about, and/or valuations of, one’s self more generally. However, as already noted, more recent tendencies to examine more domain-specific, even task-specific, forms of self-concept (and self-esteem), as well as the development of more general measures of self-efficacy (e.g., Scherbaum, Cohen-Charash, & Kern, 2008) have tended to erode much of these earlier distinctions. Consequently, some commentators (e.g., Pajares & Schunk, 2005), although still making distinctions for particular purposes, have begun to refer to both self-concept/self-esteem and self-efficacy as varieties of the more inclusive term, self-beliefs. Whatever distinctions are drawn among terms such as self-concept, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, it is clear that over time many self-concept researchers have ceased to worry about defining and conceptualizing the self outside of the particular measures and statistical procedures they employ, leading historians like Greer (2003, 2007) to comment on the disappearance of the self in contemporary self-research. Even researchers like Hattie (1992, 2003) who offer cogent, incisive critiques of conceptual and definitional problems in self-concept research, tend to emphasize and turn (in their own empirical work) to what they regard as improved methods of measurement and statistical analysis as conceptual aids. Yet, it should be clear that no amount of empirical research by itself can repair a lack of attention to basic matters of definition and conceptualization. Perhaps the one exception to the general lack of consistency and coherence in results and interpretations that typifies self-concept research of the past and present, is a growing consensus concerning the domain specificity of correlations between self-concept and achievement – that is, the more specific measures of self-concept and achievement are to particular domains of application/activity, the higher the correlations between them tend to be. Extending this conclusion to include efficacy self-beliefs, Pajares and Schunk (2005) comment ‘‘when either self-belief is globally assessed,
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prediction is diminished; when assessments are domain-specific, and especially when they are task-specific, prediction is enhanced’’ (p. 111). Even more tellingly, Pajares and Schunk continue, ‘‘when self-beliefs do not correspond with – that is to say, match – the achievement outcome with which they are compared, their predictive value is reduced or can even be nullified’’ (p. 111). Nonetheless, Pajares and Schunk conclude that ‘‘both self-efficacy and self-concept are powerful motivation constructs that predict academic achievement at varying levels and differing domains’’ (p. 111). In a manner generally similar to Hattie (2003), Pajares and Schunk, despite noting importantly troubling aspects of contemporary research on self-concept, more or less conclude that progress is being made through a progressive refinement of research measures and procedures that tie selfbeliefs more and more specifically to particular domains and tasks.
General Conclusions In general, the critical theoretical and historical work of self-concept researchers themselves tends to raise important questions concerning difficulties and challenges in self-concept theory and research, but stops well short of the more radically critical challenges articulated by historians of psychology like Danziger (1997a, 1997b), Greer (2003, 2007), and Nicholson (1998, 2003). Nonetheless, the history of this particular area of psychological inquiry is replete with many appropriately informed commentaries (by both insiders and others) questioning the adequacy, even the necessity, of conceptions and measures of focal phenomena (i.e., self, self-concept, selfesteem), and the consistency and coherence of research results. Two matters, in particular tend to stand out. The first of these concerns the viability of conceptualizing the self as a psychological structure and/or process interior to persons, but nonetheless somehow distinctive from persons themselves. Hattie (2003) recognizes this concern when he asks ‘‘whether the same or a different question would be asked if we left the term ‘self ’ out of the question’’ (p. 141). The second concerns the separation of self-concept and related self-beliefs from individuals’ performance on specific tasks and activities. Pajares and Schunk’s (2005) recognition of the task-specific nature of high correlations between self-beliefs and specific performance inevitably raises the question of the extent to which self-concept and other self-beliefs are part of particular performances or actions, rather than psychological motivators that precede performance and action. Putting these two concerns together,
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one might well ask whether or not anything would be lost if self-concept researchers were to talk only about the performance of persons acting holistically in a variety of different tasks and task domains. Such a radical reframing certainly would do away with many of the conceptual confusions that have been discussed in this brief, critical history of self-concept inquiry in psychology, and it would seem to do so without any loss in explanation or understanding of the task-specific nature of findings linking performative competence to particular tasks. Thus, a more radical reading of the extant literature in the area of selfconcept research in psychology is that such research has attempted to separate the actions and performances of persons from their beliefs about, and evaluations of these performances, instead of recognizing that individuals’ understandings/beliefs and evaluations with respect to their actions are integral parts of the contextualized activity of persons understood as rational and moral agents. If so, it is not surprising that actions and beliefs are highly and consistently correlated only when they share a common task focus – such a focus is a necessary part of the integrated acting, understanding, and evaluating of persons. One does not go skating without understanding what one is doing and believing that one can do it. If this is so, perhaps the cleaving of the activities of persons into interior psychological aspects and overt performative aspects says as much or more about the assumptions and interests of disciplinary psychology as it does about the worldly comportment of persons. Perhaps it is in the nature of psychology, not in the nature of persons, to separate actions from beliefs and to treat parts of persons, rather than entire persons, as agents and explanations. What, if anything, would be lost by replacing selves and self-concepts, respectively, with persons and the activity of persons (activity which includes their understanding and evaluation of their own actions and experiences)?
REPLACING SELVES WITH PERSONS, AND SELF-CONCEPT WITH PERSONS’ UNDERSTANDING AND EVALUATION OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS AND EXPERIENCES In 1739, the Scottish philosopher and historian, David Hume, concluded, in his A Treatise of Human Nature, that he could find no substantive self lurking behind his moment-to-moment perceptions. Many subsequent scholars have pointed to the argumentative fallacy (Gregory, 1987) and
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infinite regress (Ryle, 1949) that seem to follow from the postulation of any sort of interior, homuncular entity that perceives and understands. Although no serious contemporary psychologist imagines a little person inside each of us that explains our actions and experiences, talk of cognitive or mental structures and processes, or areas and processes of the brain, making decisions, ‘‘feeling down,’’ or perceiving and understanding come perilously close to classic homunculus difficulties. Such attempts to place the sources and explanations of our actions and experiences in our psychological and/or biological interiors invite reductive accounts that at least parallel such difficulties. With respect to psychological theory and research on the self-concept, if the self is not identified clearly with an individual person, but is postulated as some kind of cognitive schema, belief system, or other psychological/biological part of a person, a contemporary, arguably more acceptable homunculus is apparent, with all of its attendant difficulties. Thus, to explain the actions and experiences of a person by recourse to his or her self may amount to little more than using what needs to be explained as an explanation (Gregory, 1987), or postponing the required explanation through an apparently infinite series of progressively more miniscule selves/ persons within larger selves/persons, metaphorically similar to a set of Russian nesting dolls. As Hacker (2007) argues, the actions and experiences of persons cannot be explained in terms of the actions and experiences of parts of persons, because it is entire persons who act and experience, not their parts. And, as has been argued by many contemporary theorists of personhood (e.g., Bickhard, 2008; Martin, Sugarman, & Hickinbottom, 2010), the actions and experiences of persons must be explicated in terms of the worldly interactivity of persons within relevant biophysical, interpersonal, social, and cultural contexts, practices, and processes. If the self-concept is nothing more than a person’s understanding and evaluation of his or her actions and experiences, why not focus psychological inquiry directly on those actions and experiences as understood and evaluated by the individuals concerned? Notice that in framing this question, it is assumed that persons are the kinds of things that act and experience, and that they also are the kinds of things capable of understanding and evaluating their actions and experiences. Such assumptions are well within commonly accepted definitions of persons as embodied, reasoning and moral agents, with awareness and concern about their existence and activity (cf. Hacker, 2007; Harre´, 1983; Taylor, 1985). Notice also that when the question is put in this way, it is immediately apparent that an investigator needs to know something about the processes of, and criteria for, understanding and evaluation that persons apply to their own
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actions and experiences. Moreover, when an interior self is not posited, it is clear that such processes and warrants of understanding and evaluation are capabilities of the person in interaction with the biophysical and sociocultural world. Understanding and evaluating one’s actions and experiences require evolutionary and developmental histories of interactivity through which persons emerge (within their worldly exchanges with others and things) with these requisite, agentive capabilities. When such a conceptualization of persons and their rational and moral conduct and capability is transported into social, psychological sites of particular interest to self-concept researchers, its advantages can be readily appreciated. Let us take the example of classroom learning, with particular focus on academic understanding, evaluation, and achievement. What the psychological investigator now wants to know about are how students understand and experience classroom tasks, activities, and content, and how they evaluate their understanding and experience. None of these objects of inquiry requires the positing of an interior self whose conceptions need to be measured as separate from the actions, experiences, understandings, and evaluations of particular persons. It is entirely possible to talk descriptively about the classroom actions, experiences, understandings, and evaluations of students, and to interrogate the processes of learning through which different levels and kinds of achievement emerge within the activity and interactivity of the persons involved within classroom tasks and practices, including relevant materials, artifacts, and so forth. All of these now are revealed as the relevant foci and sources for psychological and educational inquiry and knowledge, as well as the primary sources of students’ understanding and evaluation of their actions and experiences of learning. Self-concept researchers and historians like Hattie (1992, 2003), Shavelson et al. (1976), and Wylie (1974, 1979) all recognize the desirability of doing away with the definitional/conceptual turmoil and confusions (especially as embedded in talk of inner perception/introspection) that have, and continue to beset research on self-concept. Yet, the answers they propose are often framed in terms of calls for superior methods of measurement and statistical procedures, as if such increments in technical sophistication somehow will solve the conceptual and ontological problems occasioned by the idea of an interior, measureable self, equipped with capabilities of self-conception and self-evaluation. Even when such authors sensibly warn against the positing of any such a self, in contra-distinction to the person whose actions and experiences are of interest, they continue to pursue a research agenda of ‘‘patching,’’ rather than reconceptualizing.
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Alternatives Rather than continuing to attempt to measure an ill-defined self-concept that courts a dubiously interior metaphysics, we should learn from the past in ways that excise fallacies, confusions, conceptual/logical difficulties, and allow us to work within more clearly conceptualized frameworks that can ensure that our research programs are targeted at what matters, and conducted with methods appropriate to those targets. To illustrate this recommendation, consider a possible alternative to self-concept research in the area of social self-concept. In their review of research on social selfconcept, Berndt and Burgy (1996) state that ‘‘the creation of multidimensional self-concept measures y has been a mixed blessing [in that] measurement issues have received more attention in recent literature than theoretical issues,’’ (p. 202) definitional issues, and intervention issues. They note that the validity of such measures ‘‘should be treated not as an intriguing hypothesis but as a tautology,’’ given that ‘‘items on social selfconcept self-scales are often similar or even identical to items on measures of other constructs such as loneliness and social support’’ and that ‘‘little attention has been given y to the processes by which the realities of people’s social lives affect their self-perceptions and self-evaluations’’ (p. 203). Thus, Berndt and Burgy, like Hattie (2003), worry and suspect that measures of social self-concept may not be necessary to establish that individuals’ understandings and evaluations of their social capabilities and acceptance are rooted in, or part of, their social interactions and experiences, or that changing social interactions and experiences are likely to affect those understandings and evaluations. At the same time as research on self-concept and social self-concept has focused on multidimensional measures, and their validity and relations with other measures, several social, developmental psychologists have been undertaking promising research and intervention studies concerning children’s and adolescents’ social capabilities and their enhancement with little or no attention to social self-concept (or other forms of self-concept) whatsoever. For example, Selman (2003) has experimented with raising children’s social understanding and capability much more directly by encouraging children to work together within activities chosen both to promote cooperation and engender conflicts that need to be resolved. More specifically, Selman’s aim is to ‘‘increase children’s awareness and understanding of the actions and motivations of others as well as themselves – to be able to take another’s perspective and coordinate it with their own, thus linking social
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thought to social action’’ (p. 29). As such, Selman’s work clearly fits within the social psychological theorizing of George Herbert Mead (1934) who emphasized that persons’ understanding and evaluations of their own actions and experiences are forged in the crucible of ongoing, coordinated interactivity with others.6 What is striking about the work of psychologists like Selman (1980, 2003) is that it manages to approach important questions concerning the selfunderstanding and evaluation of persons in relation to others without recourse to the construct of self-concept. Consequently, it is instructive to ask what would be added to their theoretical and empirical work on social understanding and capability with the inclusion of measures of social self-concept. More pointedly, would the inclusion of a broadly, and rather imprecisely defined construct of social self-concept (one that generally claims to probe the internal, subjective sense that individuals have concerning their social standing and competence) be of assistance in helping individuals to develop social understanding and reasonably veridical evaluation of their social capabilities? Or, would such an exercise be functionally superfluous with respect to such an aim? Another example of how some contemporary researchers have avoided what they regard as unhelpful, interior conceptions of selfhood comes form those who have adopted a sociocultural approach to issues of selfhood and identity that treats ‘‘identity as a function of our practices, of our lived experiences of participation in specific communities (and therefore our competencies), rather than our beliefs or values’’ (Hickey & Granade, 2004, p. 233). ‘‘Identity in this sense is an experience and a display of competence that requires neither an explicit self-image nor self-identification with an ostensible community’’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 152). Such an approach is concretized in research by Vadeboncoeur and Portes (2002) and Lave and Wenger (1991) that illustrates how individual and interior conceptions of self-concept are reconceptualized within their sociocultural frameworks. In their analysis of at-risk students, Vadeboncoeur and Portes understand the individual identities of these students as constituted within social and community practices of group membership and intergroup relations. Consequently, students’ individual identities are constantly unfolded within an ongoing process of social negotiation in which the individual is an active participant. In short, it is activity with others within school and extracurricular contexts, not interior reflection, which determines how these students understand and evaluate themselves. Lave and Wenger (1991) provide several examples of the ways in which individuals’ performative competences within different communities of
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practice legitimate different levels of participation (from peripheral to central) in the practices that define such communities. Typically, as individuals enter into new communities of practice (e.g., freshmen starting their first year of high school), they act and are treated as peripheral members of these communities. As they act and react within these environments, they learn to coordinate within the web of sociocultural practice conventions, norms, routines, and niches that, in interaction with their own activities and styles, constitute their identities. Wenger (1998) distinguishes between peripheral and marginal participation–nonparticipation. Being on the periphery is associated with an inbound trajectory of gradual joining into the practices of the community as a full participant. In contrast, being on the margins is associated with an outbound trajectory away from communal participation and acceptance. ‘‘Marginal nonparticipation illuminates the complex motivational reality of the disadvantaged students who often get identified as being at risk of school failure,’’ such that ‘‘by the time students are labeled ‘at risk,’ their mutually constituted trajectory may be so misaligned with the knowledge practices of formal schooling that it is impossible to redirect it’’ (Hickey & Granade, 2004, p. 235). Both social developmental (e.g., Selman, 2003) and sociocultural (e.g., Hickey & Granade, 2004) approaches to students’ competence, motivation, and understanding/evaluation of their own actions and identities focus on individuals’ coordinated interactivity with others within social and communal practices. They are less interested in how students think and feel about themselves in reflective isolation than in how they present and conduct themselves in their interactions with others within those practices that define particular areas of human activity, institutional and otherwise. As such, these theoretical frameworks and empirical research programs offer obvious and distinctive alternatives to programs of psychological inquiry anchored in measures of students’ self-beliefs that are removed from their actual interactive engagement within schools, classrooms, tasks, and projects. None of what is said here is intended to imply that self-concept researchers are unaware of such alternative possibilities or that they are stubbornly pursuing their own agendas. The historical record of self-concept research, as has been seen, is replete with many critical observations and comments offered by leading self-concept researchers themselves. However, the general fact of their continued pursuit of self-concept measurement research clearly reflects the individual and collective beliefs of these prominent researchers that many of the difficulties confronting them and their project will be overcome with improved measures and new avenues of inquiry that make more appropriate use of such technological advances.
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But, as also has been noted, the basic conceptual/definitional and ontological difficulties that beset this field of psychological inquiry appear to run more deeply than such diagnoses and ameliorative strategies assume. For, if the only real and clear sense of self-concept can be rendered in terms of individuals’ understanding and evaluation of their own actions and experiences in context, it is ultimately unhelpful to invent self-entities, structures, and processes that are treated as interior determinants of such actions and experiences. Instead, it seems more sensible to examine systematically and rigorously those actions and experiences as they unfold in real world situations, in the contexts of the lives and circumstances of the persons whose actions and experiences they are. One important reason for examining the social contexts within which actions and experiences unfold is that appropriate levels and criteria for understanding and evaluation (self or otherwise) are much more likely to be located within our interactivity with others than in our more solipsistic individual, psychological interiors. An additional benefit of reframing self-concept as part of the worldly acting and experiencing of persons is a potential decrement in what some (e.g., Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003; Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996; Martin, 2004, 2007) regard as a tendency of many contemporaries to be excessively self-concerned and self-interested, to the detriment of others and social, communal relations and functioning in general.7
CONCLUSION Histories and reviews of research on self-concept conducted by selfconcept researchers themselves often have recognized basic definitional and conceptual difficulties that have plagued psychological inquiry in this area. In the face of such concerns, several leading self-concept researchers have advocated more theoretically driven and statistically sophisticated work to create and establish the validity of better measures of general and domainspecific self-concept. Nonetheless, definitional, conceptual concerns continue to attend contemporary self-concept research. A consideration of critical historical work in the area of personality, attitudes, motivation, and selfconcept/self-esteem conducted by historians of psychology (e.g., Danziger, 1997a, 1997b; Greer, 2003, 2007; Nicholson, 1998, 2003), other than selfconcept researchers themselves, suggests deeper problems concerning the ontological status of the self-concept. In particular, the assumption of an interior homunculus seems to linger in talk and theory that understand the
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self-concept as a set of cognitive schemata, systems, and subsystems. Such an interior self-conception tends to be associated with a wide-spread tendency to treat psychological aspects of the actions and experiences of persons as causes of those actions and experiences, as opposed to integral parts of the actions and experiences that need to be explained. The net result of positing various versions of the self-concept as an interior psychological process or structure that determines actions and experiences has been to shift the attention of researchers away from persons’ contextualized, situation-constrained understanding and evaluation of their own actions and experiences. Thus, research in areas such as achievement motivation and social development has been unnecessarily deflected from the direct study of patterns of interactivity within which persons and developing persons (students, children) come to comprehend and evaluate their actions and experiences. It is not reflection on our hypothetical interior selves, but our coordinated participation in the physical, interpersonal, social, and cultural practices of understanding and evaluation that constitutes our personal understanding and evaluation of our own actions and experiences in various domains of human activity and interactivity, from the building of bridges to the conduct of social negotiations. Psychological and educational researchers interested in advancing our understanding of how persons come to effectively understand and evaluate their own actions and experiences in ways that support sustained, motivated performance in various areas of human activity and interactivity, might do two things. One is to reconceptualize and reconfigure the self-concept in terms of persons’ understandings and evaluations of their relevant actions and experiences. The other is to avoid attributing primary explanatory and causal force to psychological aspects of actions and experiences, and instead, to attempt to uncover the sociocultural and biophysical constituents and determinants of our actions and experiences, and of our understanding and evaluation of them. Perhaps such reconfiguration also might have socially salubrious consequences in restraining possibly dysfunctional levels of self-concern and self-interest.
NOTES 1. I wish to be clear from the outset that I do not regard the eminent psychologists (past and present), to whose ideas and work I refer, to be lacking in critical awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of their enterprise. Many trenchant criticisms of self-concept theory, measurement, and research have been made by ‘‘insiders’’ (e.g., Hattie, 2003; Shavelson et al., 1976; Wylie, 1974, 1979).
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2. Hattie (2003) provides an extremely thoughtful and interesting set of observations concerning specific ways in which James’ ideas have influenced research and theory on self-concept. Hattie also revisits James’ ideas to suggest directions for contemporary self-concept research and theory that he believes might ameliorate some of the difficulties, or right some of the imbalances, he perceives in this area of psychological inquiry. 3. As will become apparent, such highly situational renderings of self-conceptions recently have made a comeback in domain-specific theorizing about the self-concept, as well as in the more task-specific idea of self-efficacy. 4. A search of the PsychINFO database reveals that the total number of entries in psychology, published before 1950 was a comparatively meager 1,434. The 1960s, as might be expected, ushered in the accelerating growth in ‘‘self’’ publications (with 2,904 such articles) that has continued ever since. 5. Interestingly, some 16 years later, Hattie (1992) was to echo these conclusions, extending what he referred to as the ‘‘dustbowl empiricism’’ typical of self-concept research (with a few notable exceptions) considerably beyond the Shavelson et al. review period. 6. More recently, Gillespie (2005, 2006, in press) and Martin (2005, 2006; Martin, Sokol, & Elfers, 2008) have theorized and demonstrated that the taking and exchanging of social positions and perspectives within routinized, repetitive sequences and practices of coordinated interactivity is a primary source of persons’ self-understandings and evaluations. 7. McLellan (2008), drawing on the critical, historical work of Rose (1998) and Hacking (1995, 2006), has suggested that such psychological self-concern has become so pervasive in contemporary education and society that it now is possible to talk sensibly about those who exhibit it as being psychologically constituted individuals, experientially and strategically focused on their own interests and agendas in ways that go well beyond the more socially sensitive and constrained practices of personhood available to previous generations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT The preparation of this chapter was supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Sara Yassin, Ann-Marie McLellan, Rob Klassen, and Lauren McNamara in gathering materials for the historical review of self-concept research and theory that is included in this chapter.
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IMPLICIT MOTIVES: CURRENT TOPICS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Oliver C. Schultheiss, Andreas G. Ro¨sch, Maika Rawolle, Annette Kordik and Stacie Graham 1. INTRODUCTION Implicit motives are capacities to experience specific types of incentives as rewarding and specific types of disincentives as aversive (Atkinson, 1957; Schultheiss, 2008). Because implicit motives determine which stimuli are affectively ‘‘hot’’, they also orient the person’s behavior toward those stimuli, energize behavior aimed at attaining (or avoiding) them, and select stimuli that predict their proximity and behaviors that are instrumental for attaining (or avoiding) them (McClelland, 1987). Research since the 1950s has focused on three major motivational needs: the need for achievement (n Achievement), the need for power (n Power), and the need for affiliation (n Affiliation). Individuals high in n Achievement derive pleasure from mastering challenging tasks on their own and experience a failure to master such tasks autonomously as unpleasant. Individuals high in n Power get a kick out of having impact (physically, emotionally, socially) on others or the world at large and are averse to social defeats. Individuals high in n Affiliation cherish close, affectionate relationships with others and experience signals of rejection and hostility as alarming and unpleasant (McClelland, 1987; Schultheiss, 2008; Winter, 1996). The Decade Ahead: Theoretical Perspectives on Motivation and Achievement Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Volume 16A, 199–233 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0749-7423/doi:10.1108/S0749-7423(2010)000016A009
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These motives are termed ‘‘implicit’’ because they operate nonconsciously. This assumption has guided the field from the very beginning and provides the rationale for why Atkinson and McClelland (1948; for other examples see Smith, 1992) used variants of Morgan and Murray’s (1935) Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), a projective measure of needs, to assess motivational dispositions in humans. However, their approach differed from Morgan and Murray’s in two crucial regards (Winter, 1999). First, instead of relying on psychodynamic theory to determine which aspects of a story are indicative of a motivational need, Atkinson and McClelland (1948) experimentally aroused a need to study its effects on thought content as revealed in the stories participants wrote. Motivational imagery that occurred more often in the aroused group than in a non-aroused control group was considered to reflect the motivational need under study and codified into a scoring system. McClelland and Atkinson (e.g., Atkinson & McClelland, 1948; McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953) furthermore reasoned that a high level of such imagery, if it occurs in the absence of experimentally induced motivational arousal, is an indicator of a chronically aroused need. Individual differences in motivational imagery obtained in stories written under neutral conditions were thus assumed to represent differences in motivational need strength. Many scoring systems that were developed based on this approach have undergone considerable revision and refinement over the years, and most of them have been extensively validated (see Smith, 1992, for original and revised coding systems and summaries of validation research). The second difference from Morgan and Murray’s (1935) approach lies in the assessment procedure itself. Implicit motive researchers usually use picture stimuli (usually 4–8) other than the original TAT cards and obtain written stories, often collected in group testing situations. This approach has been termed the Picture Story Exercise (PSE; McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989). Today, the acronym PSE is frequently used to denote both this assessment procedure and its use with the content-coding systems derived from McClelland and Atkinson’s experimental arousal approach to the development of content-coding systems, although these systems can also be applied to spoken or written text from other sources (e.g., political speeches; see Winter, 1991). Research using the PSE approach has borne out the validity of its underlying premise: Motive scores derived from the PSE do not substantially correlate with scores from self-report measures designed to measure the same motivational needs (also called explicit motives; e.g., Pang & Schultheiss, 2005; Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2001; Spangler, 1992), even if the self-report
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measures are made as similar as possible to the PSE procedure and contentcoding systems employed (Schultheiss, Yankova, Dirlikov, & Schad, 2009). On average, the variance overlap between PSE and self-report measures of motives is less than 1% (Spangler, 1992). Comprehensive reviews of research exploring the validity of the implicit motive construct have been provided by McClelland (1987), Winter (1996), and, more recently, by Schultheiss (2008) and Schultheiss and Brunstein (2010). An up-to-date account of motive assessment with the PSE can be found in Schultheiss and Pang (2007). Our focus here will be on recent developments in this research field that we consider particularly important for advancing our knowledge about the construct validity of implicit motives and some of the ways in which this work could be taken further. We will first review recent advances in theory and research on the fundamental role of cognition in the operation of implicit motives, their relation to explicit needs and goals, and their orienting and selecting functions. We will then present work conducted over the past decade that has helped illuminate the hormonal and brain correlates of implicit motives, discuss the role of affect in implicit motive satisfaction and frustration, provide an overview of research on the role of nonverbal signals as motivational incentives, and review studies that deal with the causes and consequences of the independence between implicit and explicit motives and approaches for increasing congruence between them. Last but not least, we will take a look at recent efforts to evaluate and refine motive assessment.
2. MOTIVES, INFORMATION PROCESSING, AND COGNITION The pervasive finding of independence between self-report and PSE-based measures of motives, coupled with advances in cognitive psychology over the past three decades, has given rise to theoretical models that focus on the role of implicit motives in information-processing and cognitive functions such as attention, learning, and memory. These models can be traced back to the work of McClelland et al. (1989; see also Weinberger & McClelland, 1990), who proposed a two-systems model of motivation according to which implicit motives respond to task-intrinsic incentives (e.g., the pleasure of mastering a difficult task), and influence spontaneously occurring, operant behaviors. In contrast, explicit motives respond to social-extrinsic incentives (e.g., a parent’s demand to complete one’s homework) and shape behaviors
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that respond to specific demands and stimuli in a given situation. McClelland et al.’s (1989) model was the first that integrated several decades of research using PSE and self-report measures of motivation and provided a coherent framework for explaining why implicit and explicit motives predicted different kinds of behavior. Schultheiss (2001, 2008) further refined this model by tying it to theorizing and research in cognitive psychology. According to his informationprocessing model (see Fig. 1), implicit motives are aroused by nonverbal incentives (e.g., facial expressions) and influence non-declarative behavior (i.e., emotional reactions and motivated actions generated by brain systems dedicated to evaluating incentives and acting on conditioned incentive cues; see Section 3). In contrast, explicit motives are activated by verbal incentives (i.e., verbal cues that are consistent with the person’s explicit motives and present an opportunity to put them into action) and influence declarative behavior, that is, verbally represented decisions, judgments, choices, etc. that are based on the person’s sense of self. Building on work by Paivio (1986) and Bucci (1984), Schultheiss (2001, 2008) furthermore proposed that the implicit and the explicit system can be made more congruent through referential processing, that is, the active translation of nonverbal stimuli into a verbal representation format and vice versa. Conversely, a lack of referential processing should promote the functional dissociation of the two motivation systems.
Fig. 1. Information-Processing Model of Implicit and Explicit Motivation (Solid Lines: Significant Correlation/Influence; Dashed Lines: No Significant Correlation/ Influence). From Schultheiss (2008). Reprinted with Permission of Guilford Press.
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The information-processing model of motivation proposed by Schultheiss is supported by past and current research on implicit motives (for reviews of this work, see Schultheiss, 2001, 2008). For instance, Klinger (1967) found that experimenters acting in an affiliation- or achievement-oriented way elicit in their participants increases in affiliation or achievement imagery scored in PSEs – even if participants could not hear his words but only saw him on a video screen, a finding that is consistent with implicit motives’ hypothesized bias for nonverbal incentives. This point is also reinforced by research on implicit motives’ responsiveness to facial expressions of emotion (FEE), described in more detail below. Schultheiss (2007a) pointed out that recasting the functional properties of implicit motives in language and concepts of current research on declarative and non-declarative memory systems and their neural underpinnings could help realign the field of motive research with mainstream research on mental processes and open new avenues for testing for effects of implicit motives on cognitive and behavioral phenomena, an issue to which we now turn. With the advent of more sophisticated models of information processing in cognitive psychology, research on the orienting and selecting functions of implicit motives has expanded considerably in recent years and provided new insights into the effects of implicit motives on behavior. Specifically, researchers have focused on the role of implicit motives in attention to incentive cues, implicit learning of behavior associated with incentive attainment and non-attainment, and memory for motive-related episodes. Although the power of motivational incentives to grab and hold one’s attention is well-documented in research on motivation in general and clinically relevant disorders of emotion and motivation in particular (e.g., Mogg & Bradley, 1999), only a few studies have explored the role of implicit motives in attentional orienting to incentive cues. A study by Atkinson and Walker (1958) on the effects of motives on perceptual thresholds for motiverelated incentives suggested that implicit motives make people more vigilant for incentive cues. Schultheiss and Hale (2007) provided a more systematic test of motives effects on attention. Using a task that assessed visuospatial orienting of attention and nonverbal stimuli (FEE) as incentive cues, they found replicable evidence across two studies that individuals high in n Power or n Affiliation pay more attention to motivational incentives than do individuals low in these motives. Stanton, Wirth, and Schultheiss (2006) replicated and extended these findings by demonstrating that n Power determines how much attention individuals pay to formerly neutral stimuli (abstract shapes) that have been paired with FEE through Pavlovian conditioning.
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Recent research has provided evidence for the role of implicit motives in implicit learning, that is, learning that occurs in the absence of an intention to learn or an awareness of what is being learned. Using tasks that required participants to learn complex visuomotor sequences, Schultheiss and colleagues (Schultheiss & Rohde, 2002; Schultheiss et al., 2005) found that individuals high in n Power showed enhanced learning if performance on the task led to a victory in a contest against another person and impaired learning if task performance led to a defeat. Individuals low in n Power did not show these learning responses to victory and defeat. In another study, Schultheiss, Pang, Torges, Wirth, and Treynor (2005) compared learning on visuomotor sequences that were followed by emotional facial expressions with control sequences that were followed by neutral expressions or no stimulus. Individuals high in n Affiliation or n Power showed better implicit learning on sequences followed by motivationally relevant expressions than on control sequences, whereas individuals low in these motives did not show these differences. This research therefore provides strong support for a fundamental but hitherto untested assumption, namely that implicit motives select behavior through their effects on instrumental conditioning (see McClelland, 1987; Winter, 1996). They demonstrate that implicitly learned behaviors that are followed by motive-specific rewards and punishments are subsequently executed more or less efficiently, respectively, depending on the strength of the person’s implicit motives and hence his or her capacity to experience rewards and punishments as affectively pleasant or aversive. Implicit motives also exert well-documented effects on episodic memory. Earlier research by McAdams (1982) already documented that individuals high in a given implicit motive remember motive-related episodes from their lives as peak experiences. Replicating and extending this line of research, Woike and colleagues studied the effects of agentic (achievement and power) and communal (affiliation and intimacy) motives on individuals’ memory for agentic and communal episodes in their lives (see Woike, 2008, for a summary). Across studies, participants high in agentic motivation recalled more agentic episodes and participants high in communal motivation recalled more communal episodes. Woike (1995) and Woike, McLeod, and Goggin (2003) further differentiated this motive-congruent memory effect by showing that it emerges only for emotional or specific, but not for nonemotional or generalized autobiographical memories. Although episodic memory represents a declarative process (after all, participants can report on their memories), the finding that implicit motives affect episodic memory does not necessarily run counter to the idea that
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implicit motives influence non-declarative but not declarative measures of behavior. Memory for events, although mediated by brain systems supporting declarative processing, is modulated by emotion and thus by brain systems involved in non-declarative processes (Cahill, 2000). As Woike (2008) has shown, implicit motives influence memory only for emotionally charged episodes, and it appears plausible that they do so indirectly, through their effects on emotional brain systems.
2.1 Future Directions Research on the effects of implicit motives on cognitive phenomena and processes holds the promise of a detailed functional analysis of how motives influence behavior. For instance, the finding that implicit motives are involved in implicit learning of behavior that is reinforced by motiverelated incentives could lead to a better understanding of how implicit motives contribute to social and life success. Implicit learning contributes to the development and fine-tuning of social intuition (Lieberman, 2000) and thereby to skills that individuals high in a given implicit motive acquire rapidly and employ automatically to maximize motive satisfaction in everyday life. Perhaps this kind of intuitive behavior is what McClelland (1980) had in mind when he claimed that implicit motives manifest themselves in operant behavior. Research utilizing cognitive concepts and models can also help to shed more light on the functional differences between implicit and explicit motives. Let’s take attention for example. Posner and colleagues (e.g., Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980) have argued that attention is not a unitary process but features three distinct components: alerting, orienting, and executive control, with the first two representing bottom-up influences of external stimuli and the last representing the top-down influence of internal goals and intentions on behavior. We believe it might be informative to compare the influence of implicit and explicit motives on these attentional functions. Do implicit motives affect only bottom-up attentional processes or can they also impact executive control? Are explicit motives predominantly associated with top-down control of attention? What happens to attentional functions if a person’s implicit motives and explicit intentions are at odds, what if they are well-aligned? Studies addressing such questions are likely to yield substantially new insights into how implicit motives shape cognition and behavior.
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3. THE BIOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF IMPLICIT MOTIVES Scattered reports of a link between implicit motives and physiological processes appeared as early as the 1950s (e.g., Ba¨umler, 1975; Mueller & Beimann, 1969; Mu¨cher & Heckhausen, 1962; Raphelson, 1957), but research on the biological correlates of motives really took off only in the 1980s with McClelland and colleagues’ work on n Power, n Affiliation and catecholamine excretion (see McClelland, 1989, for a review). Their studies provided evidence that n Power is associated with increased physiological stress responses and impaired immune system function, whereas n Affiliation is associated with dampened stress responses and robust immune function. In recent years, this line of work was further extended by studies on the role of gonadal steroids (testosterone and estradiol) and cortisol in implicit power motivation. Schultheiss and colleagues have conducted studies in which participants competed against each other in a contest (Schultheiss, Campbell, & McClelland, 1999; Schultheiss & Rohde, 2002; Schultheiss et al., 2005; Stanton & Schultheiss, 2007; Wirth, Welsh, & Schultheiss, 2006). Feedback during the competition was manipulated so that one participant in each dyad won and the other lost decisively. Across studies, n Power interacted with contest outcome to determine gonadal steroid changes. In men, n Power predicted testosterone increases among winners and decreases in losers. These changes also mediated the effect on n Power on implicit learning of a visuomotor sequence inherent in the contest task. In women, n Power determined whether estradiol increased (in winners) or decreased (in losers), an effect that was still detectable 24 h after the contest (Stanton & Schultheiss, 2007). In some studies, n Power was also positively associated with baseline testosterone in men (Schultheiss, Dargel, & Rohde, 2003) and estradiol levels in women (Schultheiss et al., 2003; Schultheiss et al., 2005; Stanton & Schultheiss, 2007), suggesting that gonadal steroids not only change as a function of rewarded or frustrated power motivation but may also represent a stable hormonal component of the disposition to seek an impact on others. Finally, Wirth et al. (2006) provided evidence from two studies that losing a contest leads to elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol in high-power, but not in low-power individuals. Schultheiss (2007b; Stanton & Schultheiss, 2009) has integrated these findings with McClelland and colleagues’ earlier work on the role of n Power in the excretion of the sympathetic catecholamines adrenaline and noradrenaline into a biopsychological model of power motivation. The model states that power-related challenges and successful coping with them
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lead to increases of sympathetic catecholamines, whereas power stress (such as in a defeat) leads to an increase in cortisol. Because in men sympathetic catecholamines stimulate and cortisol inhibits the release of testosterone into the blood stream (Sapolsky, 1987), testosterone increases in powermotivated winners and decreases in power-motivated losers represent the net effect of these changes in stress hormones on testosterone production. It is presently unknown whether this mechanism could also account for the estradiol changes observed in power-motivated women after winning or losing a contest. Another line of work has examined the role of progesterone in implicit affiliation motivation. Schultheiss et al. (2003) observed that in women the use of oral contraceptives containing progestins was associated with higher n Affiliation. Moreover, in normally cycling women high levels of progesterone around ovulation predicted high levels of n Affiliation in the subsequent phase of the menstrual cycle. Schultheiss, Wirth, and Stanton (2004) provided evidence for a causal link between n Affiliation and progesterone by demonstrating that watching an affiliation-arousing movie leads to subsequent increases in progesterone. Wirth and Schultheiss (2006), although not able to replicate the specific progesterone-increasing effect of a romantic movie, found that increases in n Affiliation are generally associated with increases in salivary progesterone levels. Brown et al. (2009) recently reported that experimental induction of social closeness is followed by increased progesterone. Although these authors did not assess n Affiliation, their work is based on the earlier studies on n Affiliation and progesterone, and it appears very likely that their social closeness task was suitable for arousing n Affiliation. Wirth and Schultheiss (2006) speculated that progesterone’s sedating and soothing effects may be at the root of n Affiliation’s stress-relieving and health-promoting effects (see McClelland, 1989). Research on the biological underpinnings of implicit motives has also started to trace motives in the brain. Schultheiss and Wirth (2008) argued that motivation is closely tied to three functionally distinct but closely interacting brain areas: the amygdala, which responds to conditioned cues that signal the proximity of an incentive; the striatum, which mediates the recruitment and energization of suitable instrumental behaviors for incentive pursuit; and the orbitofrontal cortex, which evaluates the hedonic value of an incentive upon its attainment. A recent study by Schultheiss et al. (2008) illustrates the validity of the motivational brain concept proposed by Schultheiss and Wirth (2008). While they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging, individuals high or low in n Power watched
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facial expressions signaling high or low dominance. Compared to low-power individuals, participants high in n Power showed stronger brain activation responses to these stimuli in the striatum, the amygdala and the insula, an area of the brain that represents somatic responses to emotional stimuli, and the orbitofrontal cortex. An explorative reanalysis of participants’ PSEs for n Achievement revealed similar brain activation responses for this motive, whereas n Affiliation was associated with increased activation in the amygdala only and reduced activation in all other motivational brain areas tested (Hall, Stanton, & Schultheiss, 2010). The latter effect may have been due to the socially aversive nature of some of the stimuli (e.g., anger faces). 3.1 Future Directions Studies that anchor implicit motives in the brain and link it to neuroendocrine processes are critical for bolstering the validity of the implicit motive concept, because they identify implicit motives with a continuum of evolved motivational systems that humans share with other mammals. More research on the hormonal and neural underpinnings of implicit motives is therefore not just an intellectually stimulating objective, but a scientific necessity. For n Achievement, in particular, little is known about its hormonal underpinnings, although McClelland’s (1995) hypothesis that this need is linked to the hormone arginine–vasopressin, whose physiological function is to keep water in the body and which also influences memory processes, merits further exploration. n Affiliation’s hormonal correlates have received more research attention, but the precise mechanism by which progesterone promotes social closeness remains to be explored. The same is true for the role of this motive, and perhaps its more reward-oriented intimacy motivation component, in the release of oxytocin, which has become known as a ‘‘cuddle hormone’’ in recent years (Insel & Young, 2001). Finally, the ties of implicit motives to key sites of the motivational brain deserve more systematic study using tasks that highlight the role of motives in each site’s specific function (e.g., learning and execution of instrumental behavior mediated by the striatum, emotional responses to Pavlovian-conditioned stimuli mediated by the amygdala, hedonic responses to incentives mediated by the OFC, etc.).
4. THE AFFECTIVE BASIS OF IMPLICIT MOTIVES Modern theories of motivation view affective responses to incentives and incentive cues as a key feature of the motivational process (Berridge, 2004).
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According to this view, motivated behavior is set in motion through the prospect of the pleasure associated with a reward or the pain (bodily or psychological) associated with a punishment. Earlier, behaviorist accounts of animal behavior eschewed affect as a key concept of motivation, because affect was conceived of as an unobservable, intervening variable and therefore rendered explanations of motivation based on affect circular. But more recent accounts consider hormonal and physiological changes associated with emotion and particularly the nonverbal expression of affect in face, voice, or movement as valid, objective, and independent indicators of affect in the context of motivation (Berridge, 2004). For instance, Berridge (2000) has demonstrated that all higher mammals show specific affective responses to sweet, tasty food (lip licking) and to unpalatable food (nose wrinkle, tongue protrusion) and that the intensity of these responses closely tracks variations in (dis)liking for the food. As we have already pointed out, definitions of implicit motives have always emphasized that motives are based on a capacity to experience motive-specific incentives as pleasurable and disincentives as aversive – that motives act, in short, as affect amplifiers (Atkinson, 1957; Schultheiss, 2008). But given the fundamental role of affect in these definitions, direct evidence for this contention has remained surprisingly scarce. It comes primarily from two sources: research on the effects of motivational gratification or frustration on (a) emotional well-being and (b) nonverbal indicators of positive or negative affect. Evidence for a role of implicit motives in subjective experiences of well-being has started to accumulate since the 1980s. McAdams and Bryant (1987), for example, found that women high in intimacy motivation experienced more general happiness than women low in intimacy motivation. If they were living alone, however, and therefore lacked opportunities to satisfy their dispositional need for intimacy, women high in intimacy motivation reported more uncertainty and lower levels of gratification than women low in intimacy motivation. More generally, and in line with the notion that implicit motives fuel behavior while explicit motives channel it (McClelland et al., 1989), research on goal striving in everyday lives shows that individuals experience increased emotional well-being to the extent that their personal goals and life contexts give them opportunities to satisfy their implicit needs (Brunstein, Schultheiss, & Gra¨ssmann, 1998; see also Section 6). One drawback of these studies is that emotion is assessed introspectively as protracted, mood-like experiences, whereas the precise nature of the person– environment transaction triggering the affective episodes that feed more long-lasting subjective experiences of well-being remain unknown.
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Another line of work has therefore started to examine such microepisodes of affect-generating person situation interactions more closely to document the affect-amplifying function of motives. Finding ways to measure affect, however, can be rather challenging. The applicability of questionnaires and rating scales is quite limited when dealing with implicit motives since they operate outside of people’s awareness. In a study by Winkielman, Berridge, and Wilbarger (2005), for example, 30 participants were subliminally exposed to pictures of happy faces. Although this treatment failed to have any influence on people’s ratings of their subjective feelings they subsequently drank more and rated the drink to be more pleasant than did control subjects. Thus, people’s unconscious affective reactions to the pictures were expressed only in the amount of liquid they consumed. Further, the previously mentioned findings by Schultheiss et al. (2005), who demonstrated that n Power drives reinforcement effects of social victory and defeat on instrumental learning, are in line with the notion that increases and decreases in goal-directed behavior represent indirect indicators of the affect associated with the goal (e.g., Teitelbaum, 1966). In the past decades, psychophysiological measures have gained importance as direct, objective measures of affect. Recordings of cardiovascular activity (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure), facial muscle activity (also called electromyography, or EMG), or electrodermal activity allow insights into the activation of the nervous system in response to stressors and rewards (e.g., Stern, Ray, & Quigley, 2001). Some of these measures, such as blood pressure and electrodermal activity, are good for gauging overall emotional arousal, whereas others, such as facial EMG and subtle changes in heart rate, even allow researchers to differentiate between positive and negative valence of incentives (Bradley, 2000). Peterson (1907), a student of Jung, realized early on that physiological measures track emotional responses to affectively charged stimuli. He described the role of electrodermal activity changes (then still called ‘‘galvanic responses’’) in his word-association experiments as follows: ‘‘It is like fishing in the sea of the unconscious, and the fish that likes the bait the best jumps to the hook [y] Every stimulus accompanied by an emotion produced a deviation of the galvanometer to a degree of direct proportion to the liveliness and actuality of the emotion aroused’’ (p. 805). Facial expressions are viewed as particularly sensitive and valid nonverbal indicators of the hedonic impact of incentive attainment (Berridge, 2000). Studies using EMG measures have shown that the processing of unpleasant events is associated with greater corrugator muscle activity (frown muscle) while processing pleasant events leads to greater zygomatic (cheek) and
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orbicularis (eye) activity (smile muscles; e.g., Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert, & Lang, 2001; Tassinary & Cacioppo, 1992). The coactivation of the obicularis oculi with the zygomatic allows to differentiate between an authentic and an unfelt smile (see also Ekman, Davidson, & Friesen, 1990). EMG measures of facial expressions have been used to demonstrate the affect-amplifying function of implicit motives. Fodor, Wick, and Hartsen (2006), for example, found that people high in n Power expressed stronger negative affective responses in the form of corrugator muscle activation when confronted with a dominant person than people low in n Power. Fodor and Wick (2009) recently replicated and extended this finding by demonstrating that high-power individuals respond with increased corrugator activity to negative audience feedback while they present a talk. Fodor and colleagues have not examined whether power-motivated individuals respond with the increased zygomatic and orbicularis activity, indicators of genuine joy, to power successes, and it therefore remains to be seen whether n Power also drives positive facial affect in response to power-specific rewards. But for n Affiliation, such evidence exists. As McAdams, Jackson and Kirshnit (1984) have shown, individuals with a strong affiliation motive react with more frequent smiles to positive social interactions than do people low in affiliation motivation.
4.1 Future Directions While affect-amplifying effects of n Power and n Affiliation have been explored to some extent, empirical evidence of affective indicators of gratified or frustrated n Achievement, like EMG measures, is lacking. Thus, future research leaves room for the systematic documentation of the affectamplifying function of all motives, including the achievement motive, but also more basic needs such as hunger, curiosity, and sexual motivation using various indicators of affect. Moreover, it might be fruitful to explore potential differences between implicit and explicit motives’ capacity to moderate affective responses to incentives. Dimberg, Thunberg, and Grunedal (2002) found evidence supporting the idea that voluntary facial expressions to positive and negative stimuli can interfere with automatically generated reactions indicating that voluntary and involuntary facial actions are controlled by different neuronal pathways. Combining these results with measures of implicit motives and explicit motives or goals could yield promising insights.
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5. MOTIVES AND NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION Implicit motives determine a good deal of our interpersonal behavior (see McClelland, 1987, for a review). As information-processing models of implicit motives suggest (Schultheiss, 2001, 2008), this is particularly true of the social motives n Power and n Affiliation and for nonverbal types of behavior. Recently Stanton, Hall, and Schultheiss (2010) have proposed a motivational field theory (MFT) model of nonverbal communication that integrates earlier interpersonal field approaches to personality with implicit motives as one key determinant of nonverbal communication and behavior. MFT specifies five basic principles for the organization of nonverbal behavior. Drawing on earlier theories (McClelland et al., 1953, 1989; Schultheiss, 2001, 2008), it states that people influence the elicitation and perception of each other’s (nonverbal) behavior (see also Wiggins & Trobst, 1999). This means that sequences of nonverbal interactions rarely depend on the intentions and needs of only one individual but emerge from the interdependence of both interactants in a dyad. It further builds on the assumption that interpersonal nonverbal behavior can be described by two orthogonal dimensions: (a) affiliation, guiding behavior according to the principle of reciprocity (i.e., if you are friendly to me, I will be friendly to you) and (b) dominance, which forces individuals into the complementary roles of dominance versus submission (i.e., if I want to be dominant, you can’t be, too). In MFT, these basic assumptions are extended by three additional hypotheses that span a full sender - signal - perceiver model of social communication by introducing the influence of implicit motives into this line of theorizing: (1) Nonverbal signals depend on a sender’s motivational needs. A person high in n Affiliation, for example, is generally more likely to send positive and friendly nonverbal signals to an interaction partner (e.g., McAdams et al., 1984). (2) The perceiver’s interpretation of nonverbal signals depends on the signal’s location on the affiliation and dominance dimensions. According to the reciprocal nature of the dominance dimension, another person’s signals of dominance should be evaluated as more negative by a perceiver because these signals force him or her into a submissive role. The opposite relationship is expected for submissive nonverbal signals. For the affiliation dimension the evaluation of friendly versus unfriendly signals again follows the principle of reciprocity. Accordingly, friendly nonverbal signals should be evaluated as more positive, and unfriendly signals as more negative by a perceiver. (3) The interpretation of a nonverbal signal depends on the perceiver’s implicit motives. According to this hypothesis the gradient
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in the evaluation of dominant versus submissive signals as negative versus positive should be more pronounced as perceivers’ n Power increases. The same principle applies to the affiliation dimension. Compared to individuals low in n Affiliation, those high in n Affiliation should perceive nonverbal behavior as more positive if it signals affiliation and more negative if it signals a lack of affiliation or rejection. The principles underlying MFT are consistent with a number of empirical findings, beginning with the previously described studies by Klinger (1967; nonverbal behavior of experimenter influences participants’ n Affiliation scores on the PSE) and Atkinson and Walker (1958; n Affiliation predicts perceptual sensitivity to faces). Evidence for the second assumption that nonverbal behavior can be classified along the dimension of affiliation and dominance comes from Knutson (1996) and Hess, Blairy, and Kleck (2000) who demonstrated that FEE get differentially rated in their meaning as signals of affiliation and dominance. Fig. 2 shows the position of seven fundamental FEEs (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, and neutral) on the circumplex of these two dimensions based on these studies and other evidence reviewed by Stanton et al. (2010). Proceeding on the assumption that FEEs regulate interpersonal behavior, Keltner and his associates (Keltner, Ekman, Gonzaga, & Beer, 2003; Keltner & Haidt, 1999) have argued that FEEs in an interaction partner represent rewards which people work for or punishments that they try to avoid. Applied to the context of implicit motives, this means that a nonverbal signal that represents a sender’s dominance (i.e., disgust and anger, but also joy) should be motivational disincentives and elicit negative reactions in perceivers high in n Power. In contrast, FEEs that signal another’s low dominance (as in the case of surprise) represent motivational incentives and foster positive reactions in a high-power perceiver. Perceivers high in n Affiliation are expected to react more positively to FEEs perceived as highly affiliative (e.g., joy) and more negative to FEEs signaling rejection or a lack of affiliation (e.g., disgust and anger). For a full description of each FEE and its meaning as an affiliation and dominance signal, see Stanton et al. (2010). Schultheiss and colleagues could substantiate these relationships in a series of studies that investigated the influence of different FEEs on behavioral reactions in perceivers depending on their implicit motives. In a study using an implicit learning task (Schultheiss et al., 2005) they found that individuals high in n Power show enhanced learning of visuomotor sequences that were followed by low-dominance FEEs and impaired learning of sequences that were followed by high-dominance
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Fig. 2. Motivational Field Theory Circumplex Model of the Incentive Value of Nonverbal Signals of Emotion. Note: Expressions of anger, disgust, and joy signal high dominance and expressions of surprise, fear, and sadness signal low dominance. Expressions of anger and disgust signal low affiliation and expressions of joy, sadness, and fear signal high affiliation. The extent to which these expressions then represent a positive or a negative incentive depends on the perceiver’s needs for power and affiliation. Adapted with permission from Stanton et al. (2010).
FEEs. Schultheiss and Hale (2007) found a similar pattern of results in their study on attentional orienting to emotional versus neutral faces. Individuals high in n Power allocated more attention to the low-dominance emotion of surprise and less attention on the high-dominance signals of anger and joy. Recently Schultheiss et al. (2008) even traced these differences in the perception of high- versus low-dominance FEEs back to equivalent differences in the activation of brain areas involved in motivation (see above). Less clear is the role of n Affiliation in the studies reported above, a finding that could in part be explained by a greater sensitivity to rejection than to acceptance underlying the affiliation dimension. Neutral faces might therefore already signal a lack of emotional involvement to some extent and therefore represent weak disincentives. Taken together, these results
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emphasize the role of nonverbal signals in human communication, a role that critically depends on the implicit motives of the involved persons. Stanton et al. (2010) also specify moderators for the relationship between nonverbal signals and their motive-dependent influence on perceivers. For instance, they contend that perhaps the most prominent moderator is the match between senders’ and perceivers’ gender. In general, heterosexual perceivers are more sensitive to dominance signals from same-gender senders and more sensitive to affiliation signals coming from senders of the opposite gender, a result pattern that fits well in a framework of intra-sexual and inter-sexual competition (see also Wilson, 1980). 5.1 Future Directions While research on the role of emotional signals in n Power and n Affiliation is already underway, the role of n Achievement in nonverbal communication remains unclear, because it does not easily fit into the MFT circumplex. However, even though this motive is task-oriented, its origins go back to social learning experiences in early childhood (e.g., McClelland & Pilon, 1983; Winterbottom, 1958) and it therefore seems plausible that achievement-motivated perceivers remain sensitive to nonverbal signals suggesting approval of tasks well done and disapproval of suboptimal performance. More research is also needed on the role of the senders’ implicit motives and how their motives are reflected in their nonverbal signals. The study by McAdams et al. (1984) already indicates that there are variations in senders’ nonverbal behavior that can be traced back to their motivational status. It will be the task of future studies to systematically examine the role of channels of nonverbal communication other than faces and to integrate these findings into the circumplex framework of the MFT. This might finally lead to a truly comprehensive understanding of the back and forth of nonverbal signals in complex sender-signal-perceiver interactions.
6. INTERACTIONS BETWEEN IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT MOTIVES Research over the past 50 years has documented a pervasive lack of substantial correlations between declarative (self-report) and non-declarative (PSE) measures of motives (King, 1995; McClelland, 1987; Pang & Schultheiss, 2005; Spangler, 1992). Because correlations between implicit
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and explicit motive measures remain low even if self-report measures of motivation are made as similar as possible to the PSE, Schultheiss et al. (2009) concluded that ‘‘the statistical independence between implicit and explicit motives appears to be genuine and to reflect a true dissociation between the types of motivational preferences individuals spontaneously express when writing imaginative stories and what they declare their motivational needs to be when asked directly’’ (p. 79). This conclusion can also be extended to the statistical relationship between implicit motives and the goals people consciously set and pursue in their daily lives. Despite earlier claims that people’s personal goals and strivings represent specific manifestations of their more general implicit needs (e.g., Elliot, 1997; Emmons, 1989; Murray, 1938) and some findings supporting this view (Elliot & Sheldon, 1997; Emmons & McAdams, 1991), most empirical studies so far have failed to find substantial overlap between people’s implicit motives and their explicit goals (e.g., Brunstein, Schultheiss, & Gra¨ssmann, 1998; Hofer & Chasiotis, 2003; King, 1995; Schultheiss, Jones, Davis, & Kley, 2008; Rawolle, Patalakh, & Schultheiss, in preparation). Anticipating the lack of relationship between implicit motives and personal goals, McClelland et al. (1989) argued that goals are part of the explicit motivational system that channels behavior in line with societal expectations and demands. Moving beyond the mere demonstration that implicit and explicit motives and goals are statistically independent, researchers have started to look into the causes and consequences of (in-)congruence between implicit and explicit domains of motivation.
6.1 Implicit–Explicit Interactions on Outcomes The degree to which personal goals are motive-congruent or motiveincongruent has consequences for goal progress and well-being. According to Brunstein et al. (1998; see also Brunstein, Maier, & Schultheiss, 1999), engagement in motive-congruent goals provides opportunities to satisfy one’s implicit motives and thus allows consummation of affectively charged incentives. Accordingly, progress with motive-congruent goals offers an opportunity for motivational gratification. However, failing to achieve a motive-congruent goal can cause motivational frustration. Since success and failure are associated with strong emotional reactions, striving for motive-congruent goals can be considered an affectively ‘‘hot’’ mode of goal pursuit (Schultheiss et al., 2008).
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Recent research supports this notion. Schultheiss et al. (2008) found that success on goals that were supported by implicit motives was associated with increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms, whereas low progress on such goals was associated with decreased feelings of happiness and increased depressive symptoms. In contrast, progress on goals that were not supported by participants’ implicit motives was not associated with variations in well-being or symptoms of depression. Similarly, Hofer and Chasiotis (2003) found that congruence between implicit motives and goals was associated with enhanced life satisfaction of Zambian adults. However, congruence between implicit and explicit motives is only beneficial for well-being if the person gives free rein to his or her motivational impulses (Langens, 2007), and if the person indeed shows the behavior capable of satisfying the implicit motive (Schu¨ler, Job, Fro¨hlich, & Brandsta¨tter, 2008). Motive-incongruent goals, in contrast, can be considered as ‘‘cold’’ mode of goal pursuit, since neither high nor low goal progress has emotional significance. Commitment to motive-incongruent goals only impairs emotional well-being if it distracts people from pursuing motive-congruent goals and, therefore, from satisfying their implicit motives (Brunstein et al., 1995; Brunstein et al., 1998). Implicit and explicit motives also have different effects on performance. Biernat (1989) found that n Achievement predicted performance in an arithmetic task, whereas self-report measures of achievement striving predicted the person’s preference to volunteer as task group leader (for related findings see Brunstein & Hoyer, 2002, and Brunstein & Maier, 2005). Schultheiss and Brunstein (1999) report similar findings for the power domain: n Power, but not self-reported power motivation, predicted performance in a computer game offering participants the possibility to obliterate competing players’ entries in a high-score list. Furthermore, selfreported power motivation, but not n Power, predicted the commitment to outpace competitors in the high-score list (Schultheiss, 2008). These studies imply that implicit motives predict performance on tasks containing motive-congruent incentives, whereas explicit motives predict commitment to tasks that fit one’s explicit motives. However, implicit motives have the capacity to compensate for lacking goal commitment, probably because they energize and direct behavior automatically. Schultheiss et al. (2008) found that high levels of implicit motivation were associated with increased goal progress and decreased rumination about goals in the absence of high goal commitment. Overly high goal commitment even impaired progress on goals supported by implicit motives (Schultheiss et al., 2008).
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In sum, these findings imply that pursuing motive-congruent goals has favorable effects for well-being and performance. For that reason, it seems desirable to promote congruence between the implicit and explicit motive system, an issue to which we turn next.
6.2 Factors that Influence Congruence What are some of the factors that influence congruence between implicit and explicit motives? One can distinguish between dispositional factors (e.g., personality variables) and situational factors (e.g., processes and mental strategies) that moderate implicit–explicit congruence. With regard to personality dispositions that facilitate congruence, research has documented significant effects of the following individual-difference variables: self-determination (Thrash & Elliot, 2002), identity status (Hofer, Busch, Chasiotis, & Kiessling, 2006), the ability to quickly downregulate negative affect (Baumann, Kaschel, & Kuhl, 2005; Brunstein, 2001), private body consciousness, preference for consistency, and low self-monitoring (Thrash, Elliot, & Schultheiss, 2007). In terms of situational factors, Schultheiss and Brunstein (1999, 2002; see also Schultheiss, 2001) and Job and Brandsta¨tter (2009) argued that goal imagery promotes motive-goal congruence. The goal-imagery technique is based on Schultheiss’s (2001) information-processing model which holds that implicit motives respond preferentially to nonverbal, experiential incentives, and cues. Visualizing the pursuit and attainment of a potential goal entails translating the verbal goal representation into a rich, experience-like mental simulation that can be processed by implicit motives. Depending on the fit between a person’s motives, she or he will respond with positive affect (goal features incentives for a motive), negative affect (goal features disincentives for a motive) or neutral affect (goal features no incentives for a motive or the person does not have a matching motive). This affective response can then be used as a valid guide for making a decision whether to commit to and pursue the goal or not. Recent research (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 1999, 2002; for similar results see Job & Brandsta¨tter, 2009) supports this notion. In a series of studies, participants were given power- or affiliation-related goals and then either mentally envisioned the goal (goal-imagery group) or not (control group). Results show that in the goal-imagery group, but not the control group, declarative (e.g., goal commitment, self-reported activation) and non-declarative (e.g., task performance, expressive behavior) measures of motivation were well-aligned with the person’s implicit motives.
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6.3 Future Directions In line with these findings, Kehr and Rawolle (2008) speculated that visions promote motive-goal congruence. Visions are idealized mental images of the future. Hence, visions are represented in a rich, experience-like mental simulation and therefore have access to the implicit motive system. A person can use the affective responses to his or her vision as valid indicator whether the vision fits his or her needs or not. Therefore, visions should typically be motive-congruent. If concrete goals are derived from an overarching vision, chances that these goals will also be motive-congruent are high (cf., Rawolle, Glaser, & Kehr, 2007). This leads to the proposition that visions promote motive-goal congruence. Here, more research is needed. Another promising attempt to promote implicit–explicit motive congruence is the ‘‘enlightenment approach’’ of providing individuals with feedback about their implicit motive dispositions and how well they fit their explicit goals (Roch, Ro¨sch, & Schultheiss, in preparation; see also Kehr & Rosenstiel, 2006; Krug & Kuhl, 2005). Results from pilot research attest to the usefulness of this approach for increasing motivational congruence, particularly if feedback about motives is combined with opportunities to identify and experience effects of implicit motives in one’s life and to adjust one’s goals to one’s motivational needs.
7. ASSESSMENT OF IMPLICIT MOTIVES 7.1 Picture-Story Measures Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in issues surrounding the assessment of implicit motives. On the one hand, researchers have scrutinized the PSE more closely, focusing on the suitability of specific pictures for the measurement of individual motives as well as on issues of score reliability. On the other hand, they have also started to develop new measures for motive assessment. In our last section, we will provide a brief overview of these developments. Why a particular set of pictures is used for motive assessment and how the choice of individual pictures in the set influences mean, variance, and distribution of the overall score has remained a mystery to many inside and outside of the field. What was missing for a long time were precise data on picture cue properties, particularly on how much motive imagery a given picture elicits on average if a specific coding system is used for scoring
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imagery. Schultheiss and Brunstein (2001) aimed to fill this gap and explored the strength of picture cues across the major three social motives. The authors found that picture cues differ markedly in the amount of achievement, affiliation, and power motive imagery elicited. In their study, 428 German university students were administered the PSE using the following pictures: architect at desk, women in laboratory, ship captain, couple by river, trapeze artists, and nightclub scene. The authors suggest that a picture cue is considered to have a high pull for a given motive if 50% or more of participants respond to the cue with codeable material meeting the requirements of motive imagery (Winter, 1994) and to have a low pull if this threshold is not reached. Using this criterion, women in laboratory, ship captain, trapeze artists, and nightclub scene produced a high pull for n Power; architect at desk, couple by river, and nightclub scene generated a high pull for n Affiliation; and women in laboratory and trapeze artists showed a high pull for n Achievement. Pang and Schultheiss (2005) replicated and extended these findings with a slightly modified picture set and in a large sample of university students in the United States. The authors substituted the architect at desk picture with the boxer picture. Pang and Schultheiss found that the pictures exhibited high pull for the same motives as shown by Schultheiss and Brunstein (2001). Moreover, Pang and Schultheiss (2005) found the boxer to be a more effective picture cue in eliciting motivational imagery, as it turned out to be a strong stimulus for n Power as well as n Achievement. Similar findings were also obtained by Langan-Fox and Grant (2006), who sought to determine what picture cues most effectively elicit motive imagery. They report that women in laboratory, couple by river and trapeze artists exhibited a strong stimulus pull for n Achievement, n Affiliation, and n Power, respectively, results that are comparable to those of Schultheiss and Brunstein (2001). In fact, mean scores for the same pictures, but reported by different authors, obtained with different coding systems and obtained in different cultural settings, are surprisingly similar. For instance, correlations of mean motive imagery scores obtained with Winter’s (1994) integrated coding system in German participants (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2001, Table 1) with those obtained for the same five pictures and using original motive coding systems (Smith, 1992) in Australian participants (Langan-Fox & Grant, 2006, Table 1) are .94 for n Achievement, .90 for n Power, and .97 for n Affiliation. Comparison of the scores reported by Schultheiss and Brunstein (2001) with those reported for US students by Pang and Schultheiss (2005) indicates a similar high level of picture cue similarity. Taken together, these findings suggest that specific picture cues have very robust cue properties
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that can be described precisely and used for the compilation of picture sets that ensure a high yield of motive imagery and normal score distributions. Tables with further information on the motive-pull properties of a wide variety of picture cues can be found in Schultheiss and Pang (2007) and Pang (2010). Researchers have also started to take another look at motive score reliability, an issue that has set off some heated debates in the past because motive scores obtained on stories from one picture typically do not correlate much with motive scores derived from another picture (see Entwisle, 1972; Lilienfeld, Wood, & Garb, 2000; McClelland, 1980; Reuman, 1982). Blankenship et al. (2006) aimed to develop a PSE picture set that maximized inter-item score reliability. The authors utilized the Rasch model which is able to address measurement characteristics and can therefore provide information on how well items or questions (i.e., coders, pictures, and probes) on assessments work to measure the ability or trait (i.e., high n Achievement). Due to the requirement of the Rasch model that the items have to be independent of each other, the original coding system of McClelland et al. (1953) was modified: All categories and subcategories were coded by paragraph, not by story, and some scoring subcategories were dropped due to their innate arbitrariness (i.e., the distinction between block in the world and block in the person; nurturant press; thema; unrelated imagery). After conducting four experiments in which pictures were tested and eliminated iteratively, Blankenship et al. arrived at a picture set that yielded n Achievement scores with satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha W.70; see Blankenship & Zoota, 1998, for a similarly high internal consistency of n Power scores). They also observed that pictures depicting situations with greater physical activity of only one individual are more effective in eliciting achievement imagery compared to those originally used by McClelland et al. (1953). Blankenship et al. (2006) also made an appeal to other researchers to employ the Rasch model in determining if their assumptions hold for other motives as well. Retest stability is more commonly used to establish reliability of the PSE. Recent literature has affirmed retest stability in implicit motive measures. Schultheiss and Pang (2007) reported in a meta-analysis that average retest stability remained constant across the three social motives achievement, affiliation, and power. Moreover, they demonstrated that, while the stability coefficient did decrease over a time interval ranging from 1 day to 10 years, implicit motive scores exhibited moderate stability over time. Schultheiss, Liening, and Schad (2008) investigated retest reliability in a study in which
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the same eight-picture PSE was administered to 90 participants twice over a two-week interval. Schultheiss et al. showed, on one hand, that retest stability was not systematically altered by writing condition (typed vs. handwritten), and, on the other hand, that retest correlations were highly significant and substantial for all three social motives (.37 to .61). Schultheiss et al. (2008) also investigated other measures of reliability. Inter-scorer reliability ranged from acceptable (W.70) to good (W.80) for all three motives over both testing dates. However, motive scores on one picture were not predictive for motive scores on other pictures, as reflected by internal consistency estimates ranging from .02 to .43 (the authors analyzed scores by picture story without further differentiating them by paragraph, as Blankenship et al., 2006, did). Drawing on earlier work by Mischel and Shoda (1995), Schultheiss and colleagues also assessed ipsative stability, defined as the extent to which the profile of scores for a given motive across picture cues remained stable for each participant across assessments. To calculate ipsative stability coefficients, the authors first residualized motive scores for each picture for word count, then calculated an ipsative correlation for each participant’s motive scores for the two testing dates across eight pictures, and lastly determined the average ipsative correlation across all participants for each motive. Schultheiss et al. (2008) established that ipsative stability was positive, significant, and accounted for 4–16% of the variance of motive scores. They interpreted these results as evidence for their hypothesis that PSE retest stability can best be explained by participants exhibiting stable responses to the same picture cues over time. Thus, substantial retest stability despite low internal consistency of PSE motive scores is not a paradox if one accepts that motivational needs are not expressed to the same extent in response to different picture stimuli, but in the same way to the same stimulus across different occasions.
7.2 Chronometric Measures In recent years, there have been increasing attempts in developing chronometric tools that accurately measure implicit motives and thereby provide an alternative to the PSE. Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz (1998) developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) as a way of tapping into self-evaluations that individuals are either unwilling or unable to consciously make. The IAT avoids self-deception and impression management by utilizing reaction-time methodology (Brunstein & Schmitt, 2004,
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2010) and generally assesses individual differences in self variables with a high internal reliability. The IAT is administered on a computer, and participants are presented with two categorization tasks, displayed either in an association-compatible or in an association-incompatible manner. The assumption is that participants will be able to respond more rapidly when categorizing two concepts if the concepts are strongly associated (e.g., maleþmath/femaleþarts) (Brunstein & Schmitt, 2004). The IAT has frequently been used to test discrimination or bias in social cognition. Brunstein and Schmitt (2004) explored if the IAT could effectively be used as an implicit motive measure that would predict the same type of achievement behavior as the PSE n Achievement measure. Brunstein and Schmitt administered an IAT to 88 students, an achievement orientation questionnaire with comparable achievement-related items found in the IAT, and a mental concentration test. Half of the participants were given regular feedback during the mental concentration test. Upon completion of the mental concentration test, participants filled out a short questionnaire on their enjoyment of these tasks. Brunstein and Schmitt were able to show that the IAT, just as the PSE, lacked correlation with the self-report achievement measures, that is, the two assessment types are statistically independent. The authors also presented evidence that the IAT predicted how much effort participants put into boosting their performance after they had received feedback, whereas the self-report measure was prognostic for the enjoyment participants reported (this was not observed for participants without feedback). These results closely paralleled findings obtained with a PSE measure of n Achievement (Brunstein & Hoyer, 2002; Brunstein & Maier, 2005). Brunstein and Schmitt (2010) recently extended these findings by showing that the achievement IAT correlated positively and substantially with a PSE measure of n Achievement across three studies. Moreover, like the PSE measure the achievement IAT predicted participants’ cardiovascular responses to tasks varying in difficulty. Participants who were high in achievement motivation as assessed by either measure showed the greatest systolic blood pressure increases on medium-difficulty tasks. Participants low in achievement motivation did not show this response. Consistent with the authors’ predictions, neither the IAT nor the PSE measure of n Achievement predicted declarative measures of motivation. In summary, these findings suggest that the IAT may represent an alternative approach to the assessment of implicit motives, because it converges with the PSE and its range of predictive validity is similar to that of the PSE.
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7.3 Future Directions Advances in science depend on the development, refinement, and evaluation of reliable and valid measures. One of the great strengths of implicit motive measures has always been that they were derived based on experimental arousal of motivational states in research participants rather than on mere correlations with other measures or psychodynamic theorizing (see De Houwer, Teige-Mocigemba, Spruyt, & Moors, 2009, for a discussion of this issue). But this is not enough to arrive at a thorough understanding of implicit motive measures. The process through which an aroused motive manifests itself in specific imagery in PSE stories needs to be explored. Likewise, we think that it is important to understand why one person expresses a motive predominantly in one kind of imagery (e.g., strong, forceful action in the case of n Power) and in response to one set of stimuli (e.g., ship captain and trapeze artists) while another person expresses it using other types of imagery (e.g., persuasion and manipulation in the case of n Power) and in response to a different set of stimuli (e.g., boxer and women in laboratory). Is there a direct correspondence, a kind of deep congruence between the stimulus-response patterns evident in a person’s PSE stories on one hand and her or his context-behavior patterns in real life on the other? The better we understand these issues, the better we will understand how and why the PSE works as well as it does, and the more we will be able to improve the measurement instrument. The measurement basis of implicit motives needs to be broadened, too. Brunstein and Schmitt (2004, 2010) have already produced evidence that a measure of n Achievement based on the IAT converges with the PSE and also predicts the same kinds of phenomena as the PSE. What still needs to be demonstrated is that the IAT measure of n Achievement is sensitive to experimental arousal of the need to achieve. Such a study could also help pinpoint which IAT stimuli are most sensitive to motivational arousal effects and hence most valid for the assessment of n Achievement. If these forays into IAT assessment of motives turn out to be successful, it would of course also make sense to extend this approach to the assessment of other implicit motives. More generally, while recent efforts to establish new motive measures (such as the Operant Motive Test; see Kuhl, Scheffer, & Eichstaedt, 2003) are laudable, these instruments need to be validated sufficiently based on the criteria sketched out here (i.e., experimental arousal effects; convergent validity with PSE; similar range of predictive validity as the PSE; careful description and evaluation of test characteristics) before they can supplement or replace the PSE.
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Finally, n Achievement, n Power, and n Affiliation represent important social motives, but in all likelihood they are not the only basic motives that operate implicitly. What about hunger, sex, or curiosity? While attempts at assessing these needs have been made in the past (e.g., Atkinson & McClelland, 1948; Clark, 1952; Maddi & Andrews, 1966), these efforts have not been taken any further. Thus, an expansion of implicit motive measurement and research to other biologically rooted needs is overdue.
8. CONCLUSION Research on implicit motives has resurged in the past decade, leading to review papers (e.g., Woike, 2008; Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, & Duncan, 1998), chapters in key handbooks in the field of personality research (Schultheiss, 2008; Schultheiss & Pang, 2007), extensive treatments of the topic in textbooks (Carver & Scheier, 2007; Larsen & Buss, 2008; McAdams, 2009; Winter, 1996), and a new book dedicated entirely to implicit motives (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2010). In the present chapter, we had to be selective and focused on topics that deal with the assessment and core construct validity issues of implicit motives. We have not discussed applied aspects of motives or recent work on the role of motives in societal, economic, or historical processes, although these topics are fascinating and further underscore the fundamental validity and far reach of the implicit motive construct. The interested reader is therefore referred to recent publications documenting these lines of research (e.g., Collins, Hanges, & Locke, 2004; see also the chapters in Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2010). What we hope this review of the state and future of the field, as we see it, reveals is that implicit motives remain a key topic in motivation research, a topic that can be addressed with hard-nosed measurement and experimental approaches and that can yield important insights into domains of human cognition, affect, and behavior that cannot be accessed in any other way.
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INTEREST IN THE DYNAMICS OF TASK BEHAVIOR: PROCESSES THAT LINK PERSON AND TASK IN EFFECTIVE LEARNING Mary Ainley The overriding theme in contemporary approaches to motivation is that motivation concerns the dynamics of behavior and purports to describe and explain what gives behavior direction and intensity. Interest is one of the variables within this broad domain. As is the case with all motivational constructs, current understandings are being expanded through consideration of contextual factors both at the level of interaction between pairs of students, within classrooms of students and in relation to macrocontextual factors operating through the community and through the broader culture (see Wosnitza, Karabenick, Efklides, & Nenniger, 2009). An equally important direction expanding our understanding of motivation is to investigate the same constructs at the microprocess level and to identify underlying processes and combinations of processes that come together to influence students’ achievement. This chapter focuses attention on the microprocess level and advances the argument that understanding processes activated when interest is triggered is central for the productive application of interest research in educational settings. This is equally the case whether
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the focus is on a newly triggered interest or a well-developed individual interest. In this chapter the current status of interest research is examined and some basic propositions from dynamic systems theory are used to guide ways of thinking about motivation. In particular, the dynamic systems’ emphasis on the development of self-organizing units or schemas is used as a framework for representing interest processes.
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS AND SELF-ORGANIZATION The attractiveness of dynamic systems perspectives for expanding thinking about motivation, more particularly interest, lies in the central proposition that the individual is a self-organizing system in which ‘‘novel forms emerge without predetermination and become increasingly complex with development’’ (Lewis, 2000, p. 36). As Lewis further points out, ‘‘self-organization is not a single theory or model. Rather it is an idea y that promises coherent explanation in the study of pattern, change and novelty’’ (Lewis, 2000, p. 42). Thelen and Smith (2006) have proposed that self-organization is a ‘‘fundamental property of living things’’ and ‘‘by selforganization we mean that pattern and order emerge from the interactions of the components of a complex system without explicit instructions, either in the organism itself or from the environment’’ (p. 259). They suggest that understanding change and development concerns ‘‘the elaborate causal web between active individuals and their continually changing environments’’ (p. 271) and refer to specific units of organization within the system as ‘‘patterns assembled for task-specific purposes whose form and stability depended on both the immediate and more distant history of the system’’ (p. 284). To date, dynamic systems perspectives have been applied to a wide range of psychological phenomena, for example, the development of perceptual, motor and cognitive systems in infancy and early childhood (see e.g., Thelen & Smith, 2006). Jo¨rg, Davis, and Nickmans (2007) have argued for a similar approach for the learning sciences. They propose a new complexity paradigm suggesting that more attention needs to be given to understanding the dynamics of the complex systems that make up the science of education and teaching. If we apply these perspectives to the motivation of achievement behavior, distinct motivational variables represent complex organizations of the feelings, cognitions and actions that orient an individual’s behavior in relation to specific learning domains, to specific learning contexts, and to specific tasks within specific domains and context locations. At any point in
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time individual motivational states reflect the current configuration of the system, namely, a unique organization of both the individuals’ immediate experiences and their history of experience within the relevant domain. A new and more complex organization emerges when an existing organization interacts with new experience. Hence, in relation to interest, we would expect to see differences in both the components, and the relations between components, as an individual’s experience with an object or domain increases. For the purposes of the argument presented in this chapter these organizational units will be referred to as schemas. Consider the following example. A young student is known to have a strong interest in finding out about the solar system, and he knows that Pluto is a relatively small planet right at the edge of the solar system. The student then hears on a news broadcast that eminent scientists have declared Pluto is not a planet. Broughton (2008) has used this example in her investigation of students’ conceptual change and has shown how elementary school students report a range of emotions (e.g., surprise, disappointment, sadness) as they work through the definitions and details of Pluto’s status to achieve a new understanding of the meaning of the term planet. The pattern of cognitions and emotions that characterize the Pluto schema for our young student undergo a reorganization. The new information is at first treated with surprise, disbelief and disappointment. He questions his parents and teachers. He searches the web to see whether his trusted astronomy sites are reporting the same information about Pluto. He asks questions and searches over a number of days until he is satisfied that he knows why Pluto is no longer in the list of planets. This example is readily recognized as behavior consistent with the young student having a well-developed interest in the solar system. New information has connected with an existing schema, a unit of organization which is, in Thelen and Smith’s words, the product of ‘‘both the immediate and more distant history of the system’’ (2006, p. 284). The new information, which is inconsistent with the current organization, has triggered emotions, cognitions and actions, and the result is a more complex organization or schema. It is important to emphasize here that these processes gain their identity within a network or nested set of contexts from the microlevel detail of specific tasks that make up the local detail of students’ experience, to the broader cultural perspectives of the macrolevel context in which all their experience is embedded. Self-organizing processes operate at all levels of experience, and part of the challenge for interest research is to identify those combinations of cognitions and affect functioning as interest schema at different levels of interest development.
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CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN INTEREST RESEARCH Over the last two decades, there has been an upsurge of research activity investigating the role of interest in learning and development. Hidi’s (1990) widely cited review described interest as an energizing factor that is associated with ‘‘selection and persistence with information processing activities’’. A major contribution to the development of thinking about interest was Hidi’s emphasis on the distinction between situational (or textbased) and individual interest. This distinction was based on criteria of temporal extension. Situational interest is triggered spontaneously by certain kinds of events and is relatively transient while individual interest develops slowly and once developed can persist over time. Hidi proposed that ‘‘activities associated with interest’’ have an affective component: ‘‘while activities that involve well-developed individual interests are likely to be accompanied by positive feelings activities that are associated with situational interest might not have such intensely affective emotional correlates’’ (1990, p. 551). The two forms of interest were also distinguished by the extent of knowledge and value, with individual interest typically having stronger stored knowledge and value components. The final feature distinguishing these forms of interest concerns expectations or predictions of further reengagement with the interest object or domain, individual interests are likely to be associated with future reengagements. Typically, Hidi’s review referred to interest-based activities defining them as activities that are ‘‘highly motivating, involve attention, concentration, persistence, increased knowledge and value’’ (1990, p. 554). Hidi’s (1990) review foreshadowed a dramatic increase in the volume of interest research (see e.g., Bergin, 1999; Harp & Mayer, 1997; Hoffmann & Haussler, 1998; Schraw & Lehman, 2001; Wade, 2001), and a number of different models can be found in the contemporary literature. The person– object or POI theory (see e.g., Krapp, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005; Schiefele´, 1996, 1999) emphasizes the relational character of interest while Silvia (2001, 2005, 2006) distinguishes interest from interests; this is very similar to the situational interest and individual interest distinction, and most of Silvia’s work is directed to exploring the character of interest as an emotional state (Silvia, 2005, 2008). Other approaches attribute a prominent role for interest in relation to the development of expertise or domain learning (Alexander, 2004), or as a mediating variable in self-regulated learning (Sansone & Harackiewicz, 1996). The output from this research into interest as a resource for learning has been reviewed by Hidi and Renninger in two recent papers where features of the concept have been refined (Hidi, 2006)
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and a four-phase model of interest development described (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). The model describes a sequence consisting of two situational interest phases and two individual interest phases. When a new object or event triggers an interest response in a person this first phase of interest development is referred to as triggered situational interest. If the interest persists and the person spends time exploring and engaging with the object or event this develops into a maintained situational interest. Over time as the person engages and reengages with the content of the situational interest, the personal valuing for the domain increases and the person’s knowledge base expands. As these processes occur, the maintained situational interest becomes an emerging individual interest, the third phase of interest development. The final phase consists of a well-developed individual interest identified by strong knowledge and value components together and the person choosing to reengage with that domain. The fourphase model follows the terminology adopted by Hidi and Baird (1986) of using ‘trigger’ and ‘maintain’ to highlight that the conditions associated with the initial onset of interest may be different from those that support its continuation. Other researchers drawing a distinction within phases of situational interest (e.g., Durik & Harackiewicz, 2007; Mitchell, 1993) refer to ‘catch’ and ‘hold’. The distinction between situational and individual interest is central to the description of the developmental trajectory for the emergence of a well-developed individual interest, and the four-phase model includes a number of specific propositions concerning how this occurs. A newly triggered situational interest is referred to as a state. Through elaboration of both affective and cognitive components, the four-phase model describes the development of increasingly more complex affect–cognition combinations as the triggered situational interest develops into individual interest, which is referred to as a predisposition. The processes that are primarily involved when situational interest is triggered are ‘‘focused attention and positive feelings’’ (Hidi & Renninger, 2006, p. 113). Later phases add components of stored knowledge and value to the positive feelings. The affective and cognitive components of interest are linked to biological systems and this proposition is supported by Panksepp’s (2000a, 2000b) exposition of brain structures that function as an evolutionary seeking system. The four-phase model also identifies a number of psychological processes that have been shown to be associated with the development of interest; ‘‘effort, selfefficacy, goal setting, ability to self-regulate have been found to characterize each phase of interest, and changes in these variables occur when interest develops or recedes’’ (Hidi & Renninger, 2006, p. 114).
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An important direction for the next wave of interest research is to fill in more of the substantive detail associated with these distinguishing features of interest at all phases of development and to do so in ways that lead directly to understanding the implications for educational practice. For example, it is important to establish whether the components and structure of interest schema at different phases of interest development vary across learning domains. This calls for investigations considering interactions of phase of interest development and content domain. It is important to establish whether the indicators of interest at different phases of interest development vary according to students’ age. This calls for investigations considering interactions of phase of interest development, content domain and students’ developmental level. Critical research issues for the next decade are likely to focus on understanding processes that are implicated in the experience; that is, interest from the moment it is triggered, and processes that maintain and support interest developing into an individual interest that is predictive of future engagement with the domain. Research focused on identifying the complexities of interest at the process level will help to give stronger definition to the developmental trajectory across phases of interest development. Hence, a research agenda building on what is currently known will explore: 1. emergence and maintenance of interest, 2. interest processes as affective–cognitive schema, 3. interest within networks of motivation and self-regulatory processes, and 4. broader perspectives on interest in development. This agenda is already underway, and this chapter explores some of the current achievements and identifies future directions within these four areas. However, before examining each of these areas it needs to be acknowledged that biological and neuropsychological systems underpin interest processes at all phases of interest development. Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) fourphase model of interest development makes particular reference to Panksepp’s (1998) research into the evolutionary seeking system, and although the neuropsychological system underpinning interest development will not be examined in detail in this chapter, this is an important area which will generate substantial advances in our understanding over the next decade.
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EMERGENCE AND MAINTENANCE OF INTEREST SCHEMA Current models of interest development have been influenced by Valsiner’s (1992) challenge that the central problem for a theory of interest is the issue of emergence. ‘‘Interest,’’ then, is not in the object, nor in the mind of the child, but it emerges as a result of processes that link the two in irreversible time. Once we have been able to ‘‘diagnose’’ its presence, we have already missed the opportunity to study its emergence y the transformation of a previous pattern of ‘‘interests’’ into a new one in ontogeny cannot be explained by the concept of ‘‘interest’’ as an entity. (Valsiner, 1992, pp. 33–34)
By distinguishing phases (Hidi & Renninger, 2006), or stages (Krapp, 2003), in the developmental trajectory of individual interest, current perspectives have come some way in addressing this emergence issue. In the four-phase model the issue of emergence is handled by defining a developmental trajectory, which starts with a triggered situational interest. The origins of the triggered situational interest are located in the instant when an individual encounters an object or event that has some intrinsically compelling properties, that is, properties that the human system is primed to react to. The ideas and research findings informing this proposition have been strongly influenced by Berlyne’s early work on collative variability (Berlyne, 1957, 1960) and his demonstration that there are certain properties of objects and events that will generally trigger attention, exploratory behavior and information-seeking in most individuals. Today, there is a growing body of research that is confirming that task properties such as novelty, familiarity, difficulty, uncertainty, and ambiguity can trigger situational interest (Mitchell, 1993; Schraw & Lehman, 2001; Wade, 2001). A substantial amount of research focusing on text processing as the content domain, and using student participants from all educational levels has demonstrated that features of the way a text is structured, such as unexpected information, or imagery and descriptive language, can influence situational interest (see e.g., Wade, Buxton, & Kelly, 1999). Yaros (2006) has recently used web-based presentations of science news articles to investigate how different structuring of the text can influence situational interest and understanding of the new content for nonscience major undergraduates. In the area of physical education, a group of researchers identified five critical task dimensions associated with triggering situational interest. Chen and Ennis (2004) reported that for physical education tasks used with middle school students, the critical task dimensions that trigger situational
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interest are novelty, attention demand, optimal challenge, exploration opportunity, and instant enjoyment. In a follow-up study, Sun, Chen, Ennis, Martin, and Shen (2008) confirmed that the same five dimensions applied for physical education tasks with their 3rd–5th grade students. These researchers suggest that awareness of the multidimensional structure of triggers for situational interest can be used by physical education teachers to increase students’ interest in their schooling activities. The need for further research into the operation of these dimensions at different developmental levels is indicated by some of the more subtle differences in how these task dimensions trigger situational interest across the age levels sampled in this research. Of the five critical dimensions, instant enjoyment appeared to be a stronger trigger for situational interest in the middle school students. For the younger students, none of the five appeared to be more influential than the others. Further investigations of the relative importance of specific triggers at different developmental levels and across different learning domains will be informative for the design of learning environments. It is common for contemporary education practitioners and policy makers to focus hopes on motivating students through use of interactive computers. Presentation features such as sound, graphics, and speed of information access are seen as a way of triggering situational interest and thus motivating students. Quite early in the uptake of computers as a medium for increasing student motivation, a number of researchers (Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Mitchell, 1993) demonstrated that the immediate interest triggered using computers was often a novelty effect. Interest is triggered but quickly dissipates as the novel event becomes familiar and is no longer ambiguous or incongruous. Hence, there is a gulf between triggering situational interest and maintaining that interest. Different processes need to be activated if the potentially transient interest is to be maintained. In the past, most of the research on situational interest has focused on properties of the situation. Increasingly research is demonstrating the contribution of existing interest schemas to activation of interest in a new learning activity. When the situation is completely novel the newly triggered interest represents the beginnings of a new unit of organization. Early research building on Berlyne’s ideas found that complete novelty was rare. More commonly some elements in the novel situation are perceived as familiar, and it was necessary to refer to the relative match between students’ existing cognitive categories or schema and the information properties of the novel event (Beswick, 1971; Hunt, 1971). This is another way of saying that each individual has a developmental history, which has the potential to influence students’ perception of the novel activity.
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The effect of students’ existing schemas interacting with task characteristics has been demonstrated in science lessons on electricity with 5th and 6th grade students. Tapola, Dayez, and Veermans (2009) used two different forms of simulation software in a classroom task concerned with learning the basics of serial and parallel electric circuits. Maintenance of situational interest across the task was found to be associated with students’ cognitions concerning task difficulty; higher situational interest was associated with perceiving the task as relatively easy. Mitchell (1993) and others have identified personal involvement as a key factor in the maintenance of interest across the task, and this factor is equivalent to the value component that Hidi and Renninger (2006) identify as a factor in development through the phases of interest. The importance of involvement or personal value for maintaining situational interest has recently been demonstrated in experimental studies in settings as different as high school sports camps and college classrooms (Hulleman, Durik, Schweigert, & Harackiewicz, 2008). Task value, in particular utility value from expectancy-value theory (see Eccles, 2005), was explored as personal or intrinsic utility value, and shown to mediate the effects of mastery achievement goals and initial task interest on continuing task interest. In another study, college-age students learning a new mathematical procedure were asked to write a short essay describing how the new procedure would be beneficial for them. When compared to a control group, those students who wrote about the personal benefit of the new mathematical procedure maintained higher levels of situational interest across the task (Hulleman, Godes, Hendricks, & Harackiewicz, in press). What is emerging and being maintained? At the simplest level, interest refers to the newly initiated psychological state whose characteristics describe a relation between the student and the learning task. Only in rare instances will this state be completely unrelated to students’ past experience. However, at this level the newly triggered interest schema is a relatively loose organization of affects and cognitions concerning the current event and any associated feelings and cognitions activated from past experience. On the other hand, at the phase of well-developed individual interest, the predisposition represents a more complex and tighter organization of affects, knowledge and value components. In the next section, current directions in thinking about the components that combine in interest schema for both situational and individual interest are explored. Special emphasis is given to the place of affective components in the development of interest schema considering ways these might vary at different levels of interest development.
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INTEREST PROCESSES AS AFFECTIVE—COGNITIVE SCHEMA The major perspectives on interest propose that interest involves a number of components. Hidi and Renninger (2006) refer to ‘‘affective and cognitive components as separate and interacting systems’’ (p. 112). Typically, the affective component of interest describes positive emotions accompanying engagement, although there may be situations where negative emotions are aroused. The cognitive component refers to perceptual and representational activities related to engagement. In their description of the four-phase model of interest development, it is clear that the roles of affect and cognition vary across the phases of interest with affect being stronger at the early levels of triggered situational interest while cognitive components associated with stored knowledge and value have increasing importance as the situational interest becomes a well-developed individual interest. Krapp’s POI model of interest (Krapp, 2005) refers to the role of affective and cognitive components as a dual regulation system, a ‘‘cognitiveemotional regulation system that is responsible for both the formation of interest-related intentions or goals and the evaluative feedback during concrete person-object interactions (e.g., learning activities)’’ (2005, p. 383). The emotion regulation system is an immediate feedback system connecting person and situation through appraisal and reappraisal of what the situation requires. The cognitive regulatory system involves conscious cognitions and representations of features of the situation. If both feedback systems are positive, interest develops as a cognitive–affective synthesis. More detailed understanding of these affective and cognitive components and the ways they combine will expand the knowledge base that can inform provision of conditions that support student learning. The first step in this process is to give more definition to the character of students’ immediate responses when they encounter a novel object, event, or activity. According to the four-phase model, the earliest stages of a triggered situational interest consist of ‘‘focused attention and positive feelings’’ and the positive feelings are expressed as ‘‘liking’’ (Hidi & Renninger, 2006, p. 114). To give more substance to the character of these processes, what is known about interest as an affective state and as an emotion will be examined. There has always been some dispute over whether interest is an emotion. A number of major contributors to theory on emotion such as Tomkins (1962), Izard (2007; Izard, Ackerman, Schoff, & Fine, 2000), and more recently Fredrickson (2000) have included interest in their models of emotion. In his writings on the evolutionary seeking system Panksepp (1998) points to
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curiosity and interest as important affective expressions of this system. On the other hand, Pekrun’s extensive work on achievement emotions (see e.g., Pekrun, 2009; Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002) includes enjoyment as a positive achievement emotion but does not include interest. Further exploration of the character of interest at all levels of its development is an important direction for understanding the self-organizing units that function as interest in educational contexts.
Early Expressions of Interest Some appreciation of the adaptive significance of interest as an emotion can be gleaned from studies of interest in infancy. A number of theories describing the emergence of emotions in the first six months of life consider interest along with surprise, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust as primary emotions. At this early developmental stage, the emotion of interest is described in terms of a facial expression and the conditions that are likely to trigger this expression. Izard and Malatesta (1987) described how interest expressions are present from birth and are typically seen in response to novelty or movement. In their descriptions of early infant emotions, they suggest that the general facial configuration associated with interest shows ‘‘tracking, looking, listening, and maintaining a high degree of attention and alertness’’ (Izard, 1977). This facial configuration is generally accompanied by exploratory activity as the young child engages with objects in their immediate environment. Typically young children showing this specific facial expression are described as alert, concentrating, and attentive. Drawing on the work of a number of contemporary emotion theorists, Izard (2007) proposes that once triggered the emotion state regulates cognition and action. These influences are reciprocal, and just as the emotion state influences associated thoughts and actions, simultaneously thoughts and actions influence feelings. This is the beginning of what Izard referred to in his early writings as cognitive–affective combinations, structures, and organizations (Izard, 1977). More recently, this has been restated as cognitive–affective schema organized around the emotion interest (Izard, 2007). For example, a six-month infant is attracted by the sound, color and movement of a novel toy placed within their sight. Their attention is caught, eyes open wide, and their body is oriented toward the novel sights and sounds. The infant reaches out to grasp the toy pulling it closer. The toy is picked up and the sound stops. The toy is turned over and shaken. As the sound starts to come from the toy, the concentration is replaced by a smile.
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What is important here is that a series of emotional expressions and actions have formed a new schema. From the way the child acts and reacts, alternating concentration and smiling, we recognize the beginnings of an organized schema consisting of affective, cognitive and action components. With experience these basic components become elaborated into more complex ways of responding to the object. According to Izard (2007; Izard et al., 2000), coherent personality dispositions develop from the complex associations and meanings that are coupled with the occurrence of basic emotions in recurring situations and events. In the most recent statement of this theory, Izard gives special emphasis to interest as a basic emotion and when developed into more complex interest schema (affective–cognitive organizations) is an important part of the motivation for a wide variety of human activity. (Interest) is most likely to be present in the healthy individual in ordinary conditions. That a simple change in the perceptual field can contribute to the activation or maintenance of interest helps account for its tendency to be omnipresent. Its ubiquity is further enhanced by its effectiveness in engaging and sustaining the individual in person– environment interactions that facilitate exploration, learning, and constructive endeavors and in detecting events and situations (sources of information) that lead to new emotions (Izard, 2007, p. 272).
Consider the educational implications of this position. Some of a child’s earliest experiences with the world of objects are an important source of the development of interest–cognition schema, and therefore it follows that interest schemas generated through early experiences become part of the personal organization through which later experience is processed. This underlines the importance of early experience and early school experiences in the development of students’ interest in the activities and experiences associated with formal schooling. Each student brings to their learning a complex organized system of abilities, goals, values, and relationships with its own configuration of affective and cognitive components all bearing the marks of the individual’s previous experiences. Each component within these organizations adds to the whole. When individual students undertake a new achievement task, their unique network of schemas, including interest schemas, intersect with the new activity and contribute to their distinctive pattern of responsiveness.
Combinations of Emotions One of the key ways our knowledge of interest will expand over the next decade will be through understanding of specific combinations of emotions
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that cooccur and become connected with cognitions and actions in relation to the contents of activities in specific learning domains. In their investigations into situational interest in relation to physical education tasks, Chen and colleagues (Chen & Ennis, 2004; Sun et al., 2008), found that students of different developmental levels are differentially sensitive to situational triggers. Their findings support the idea of developmental changes in the relative salience of components. The typical structure of preschoolers’ interest schemas will be different in important ways from the interest schemas of senior secondary students. For example, Frenzel, Dicke, Goetz, and Pekrun (2009) investigated whether students in 5th grade and 9th grade might have different meanings of the term ‘interest’ when they rated their interest in mathematics. In interviews, students were asked to explain how they interpreted items normally used to measure interest in relation to mathematics. Of particular relevance for the current discussion is their finding that overall, the affective component, represented in terms such as enjoy, fun, like, and love was the most prominent, but it was also more prominent in the younger than older students. The older students included references to value and to personal competence components in their explanations more than did the younger students. When these findings are compared with those of Chen and colleagues both groups have reported differentiation in the interest schema across age levels. These findings also suggest that there are substantial differences across domains. Interest schema in relation to mathematics may be different in important ways to interest schema for social science, literature, physical or biological sciences, and physical education. Adding further complexity, interest schemas are certainly likely to reflect individual student’s idiosyncratic personal experiences. What is currently known about some of the emotion combinations that define developing interest schema? Liking (enjoyment) is the most frequently cited positive affect when referring to the affective component of interest. For example, Hidi and Renninger (2006) refer to the initial phase of interest development, triggered situational interest, as consisting of ‘‘focused attention and positive feelings’’ and the positive feelings are expressed as ‘‘liking’’ (Hidi & Renninger, 2006, p. 113). Much of the literature on the relation between interest and liking has focused on showing that they are separate states. For example, working from a model of interest as ‘‘constructive capriciousness’’, Silvia (2001; 2008) reported how adult appraisals of paintings were used to determine whether interest and enjoyment were triggered by different types of paintings. He found that his adult participants’ appraisals of paintings suggested that complex, unfamiliar, negative, and disturbing paintings were likely to be appraised as interesting
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while simple, positive, and calm paintings were appraised as enjoyable. In a much earlier study of interest within the domain of text processing with undergraduate participants, Iran-Nejad (1987) measured interest and liking after participants had read specially constructed story endings. It was reported that schema incongruity causes interest while positive incongruity resolution causes liking. The experience of incongruity prompts cognitive or intellectual activity, and ‘‘interest is a function of the degree of intellectual activity’’ (Iran-Nejad, 1987, p. 129). On the other hand, it is the positive resolution of incongruity that prompts liking. Although able to be distinguished in this way clearly interest and liking also occur together. Another research approach that may shed light on some of the combinations of feelings occurring when interest has been triggered is coming from research using a cognitive interruption model (Touroutoglou & Efklides, 2009). In this research, students were presented with number sequences and were required to predict the next number in the sequence. For some of the experimental groups, interruptions to the expected sequences occurred on critical trials. After the critical trials, participants rated how they felt on a number of affective dimensions, feelings of difficulty, surprise, interest, and curiosity. The type of interruption, whether it enhanced processing of the sequence or whether it blocked processing of the sequence, influenced the specific combinations of feelings reported. This type of research has the potential to identify the patterns of affective states that are related to student motivation and persistence with achievement tasks. Other research programs have started to investigate the possibility that interest schemas might involve a range of emotions beyond enjoyment. This can be illustrated by some of the findings from studies using the on-line task software [BTL (between the lines)] (Ainley & Ainley, 2006) where students were presented with a number of texts to read and were able to decide the order in which they read separate texts and how many sections of each text they wanted to continue reading (see Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002; Ainley, Hillman, & Hidi, 2002). One of the consistent findings across these studies has been the positive relation between interest triggered in the text title and the overall level of interest sustained across the reading task. However, when given a choice between leaving a text and continuing reading, the level of interest sustained in the section of text immediately preceding the choice, influenced students’ decision. In a similar investigation with a sample of 7th grade students, Ainley, Corrigan, and Richardson (2005) reported associations between the levels of interest triggered by initial exposure to text titles and a range of emotions reported in response to reading the first sections of the texts.
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The record of students’ responses, their reported feelings, and their decisions concerning persistence with the texts, illustrates that there are ranges of feelings and cognitions that are guiding students’ on-task behavior. The resulting organizations of cognitions and emotions associated with text content expanded the initial schema activated by reading the text title. Using a similar methodology with 10th grade students and texts on current social and political issues, Buckley (Buckley, Hasen, & Ainley, 2004) found strong positive correlations between interest and a range of emotions, some were positive emotions – happy, hopeful, sympathetic, relieved – and some were negative – sadness and anger. These findings suggest that there are combinations of emotions coexisting with the psychological state of interest, and that together they support students sustaining their interaction with the activity. The outcome is the development of a rudimentary schema of thoughts and feelings concerning the object of attention, in these studies, the topic of the text. Across all of these studies, students’ initial interest in the topic was significantly associated with patterns of individual interest in the domain from which the topic was selected, or related domains. For students with a prior individual interest in the domain, on-task states of interest and the emotions aroused through association with interest expand the complexity of existing schemas.
On-Task Monitoring of Interest–Emotion Combinations Demonstrating the development of the types of affective–cognitive schemas that occur at different phases of interest requires research techniques where students’ thoughts and feelings are monitored at successive points in a learning episode. Some important studies of this type are currently emerging in the literature. In a recent study Holstermann investigated students’ responses to a new experience in biology classes, dissection of a pig heart (Holstermann, Ainley, Grube, & Bo¨geholz, 2008). Interest and disgust as state measures of the students’ current feelings were administered at a number of points during the dissection experience; after the class activity had been explained but before students had commenced the activity, approximately five minutes after the students had commenced their dissection, and again after they had completed their dissection. The design of this study also included a prior measure of personal interest in the heart topic and a measure of disgust sensitivity. Individual interest in the heart topic was positively related to the interest level recorded immediately after
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the task was explained and negatively related to initial level of disgust. Disgust sensitivity was predictive of initial disgust ratings. Successive measures of the state of interest were highly correlated as were the measures of successive states of disgust. Overall, there was a negative correlation between interest and disgust measured at the same time points. However, of special significance for understanding the developing situational interest in dissection were the interactive effects of on-task states of interest and disgust. There was a negative relation between disgust ratings prior to starting the dissection and interest ratings five minutes into the dissection. Follow-up ratings were recorded four weeks after the dissection class. This allowed some estimation of the longer-term effects of the dissection experience. Higher interest ratings five minutes into the dissection were associated with lower disgust measured four weeks later. The same applied to the relation between disgust recorded five minutes into the dissection and interest measured four weeks after the class; higher disgust was associated with lower interest. What is being measured as interest and as disgust four weeks after the dissection class is a complex organization of affects and cognitions. When these students respond to further questions concerning their interest in dissections in biology, answers are tinged with associated traces of their classroom dissection experiences. Another example of current research that is looking at the complexity of the emotional states that occur with interest when it is triggered and maintained across a task can be seen in some recent research by Tulis (2009). In this case, the task was mathematics and the students were in 5th grade. Students were using individualized mathematics software for one mathematics lesson per week over one school term and were given feedback on their performance. Success feedback was given when a set of problems was 100% correct and failure feedback for sets more than 60% incorrect. Students reported how they were feeling at the end of each problem set using face emoticons with ratings of the intensity of their feelings. Of particular relevance for this discussion were the findings in relation to students choosing ‘interest’ which was found to be closely associated with enjoyment and pride responses. Tulis identified students with a profile of strong interest, enjoyment, and pride scores following success experiences and a smaller group who reported the same set of emotions following failure feedback. The combination of interest, pride and enjoyment associated with failure feedback is likely to generate more positive responses to further mathematics problems than will combinations of negative emotions. An important aspect of the dynamic systems perspective is that selforganizing units cannot simply be deconstructed into their components
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(see Izard, 2007). The components have become parts of a new whole, a new affective–cognitive schema (see Ainley, 2006). Certainly the parts can be identified, but the way they are combined in the new unit is also important for behavior. The range of research approaches that are currently being developed and used to explore patterns of relations between interest and other emotions, and between interest and cognition have the potential to expand our understanding of the variable patterns of affective and cognitive processes that distinguish all forms and phases of interest. We now turn to consider how interest functions within a dynamic network of motivation and self-regulatory processes.
INTEREST WITHIN NETWORKS OF MOTIVATION AND SELF-REGULATORY PROCESSES One of the strong emphases within dynamic systems perspectives is the importance of the initial state (Izard, 2007; Lewis, 2000), and as has been described above, studies that have examined sequences of state variables across the course of an achievement task have shown strong contingencies between successive states. The initial state also implicates schema and personal organizations that share some affective or cognitive components with the immediate context. What students bring to their learning in the form of general traits, predispositions, and orientations have the potential to be activated and once activated will influence the direction of students’ behavior. Hidi and Renninger (2006) refer to relations between variables such as ‘‘effort, self-efficacy, goal setting and ability to self-regulate’’ (p. 114) and all phases of interest development, indicating simultaneous changes in these variables in line with increasing and decreasing patterns of interest. Two important themes are developing in this research. First, careful scrutiny is being given to examining how these variables interrelate in ongoing learning tasks. Simultaneously, new modeling techniques are being applied to identify more precisely the nature of these interrelations. Some examples from the research investigating relations between interest and self-efficacy, and, between interest and achievement goals will be described to illustrate these advances.
Interest and Self-Efficacy Acknowledgement that interest and self-efficacy are related when students engage in learning tasks can be seen in a variety of motivation contexts.
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Models of self-regulated learning have generally located the operation of both self-efficacy and interest in the forethought or planning stage (Pintrich, 2004; Zimmerman, 2000, 2002; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2004). Self-efficacy is also expected to be important in the reflection phase, and according to Bandura (1997) mastery experiences are one of the major sources of ongoing self-efficacy. More recent approaches to the study of interest and selfefficacy using on-line recording techniques have shown that interest and self-efficacy operate across all phases of learning. In a number of reports on investigations using the on-line task software (BTL) with young adolescent students, successive states of interest and self-efficacy contributed to task outcomes. The nature of the relation between interest and self-efficacy has been shown to operate as a mediation effect with interest mediating the effect of pretask efficacy beliefs on posttask efficacy beliefs. The relation has in other cases been additive; interest and efficacy together accounting for more variance in students’ evaluation of their efficacy on-task completion than either variable independently (see Ainley, Buckley, & Chan, 2009; Hidi & Ainley, 2007; Hidi, Ainley, Berndorff, & Del Favero, 2007). At the same time, these studies exploring the functional relations between interest and self-efficacy have demonstrated that the task matters. It is not sufficient to assume that the relation described in the context of a writing task will be the same as in a mathematics task. As reported by Ainley et al. (2009), for the mathematics task it was the interactive effects of interest and perceptions of task difficulty that were predictive of students’ posttask evaluations. Just as relations between interest and self-efficacy may vary according to task content, developmental considerations caution that it is unlikely that the functional relationship between interest and selfefficacy will be constant across developmental and educational levels. For example, just as young adolescents have a more differentiated self-concept in relation to their school life than elementary school children (Harter, 2006), self-perceptions of competence and efficacy will be more salient than in childhood, and will be more differentiated across specific academic domains. As an area for future research, this poses questions of self-efficacy in relation to phase of interest development, content domain, and students’ developmental level.
Interest and Achievement Goals Achievement goals have become the focus of a substantial body of motivation research, and prominent in this literature are the relations between
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achievement goals and interest. As with other motivation variables, achievement goals can be investigated at different levels of specificity in relation to task behavior. Achievement goal orientations are conceptualized as the general beliefs a student has about their own purposes when they approach an achievement task. At a level closer to specific task behavior some researchers have monitored the specific achievement goals activated as students engage with an achievement task. Having research techniques that allow consideration of both of these levels of analysis facilitates investigation into the patterns of relations between achievement goals and interest. As with research into interest and self-efficacy, the major questions for current and future investigations are to articulate how relations between achievement goals and interest function in different learning domains and for students from different developmental levels. A number of investigations are showing that relations between achievement goals and interest can be represented as mediation patterns. Mastery goals and outcome measures from different domains and with participants from different educational levels have been shown to be mediated by interest. Using college-age students Harackiewicz, Barron, Tauer, and Elliot (2002) have shown how interest in studying psychology mediates the relation between mastery goal orientation and further participation in psychology studies. Ainley and Patrick (2006) demonstrated with 7th and 8th grade participants that the influence of mastery goal orientation on actively adopting mastery goals in a problem-solving task, was mediated by interest. At the still younger age level of 5th and 6th graders, Tapola et al. (2009) using the science problem referred to earlier, demonstrated that both mastery and performance goal orientations were predictive of individual interest in mathematics that in turn predicted the level of situational interest triggered at the beginning of the task. Whether at the level of tracking relations between interest and achievement goal variables over time, as in the Harackiewicz et al. study (2002), or within the time-span of a specific task, as in the Ainley and Patrick (2006) and Tapola et al. (2009) studies, interest and achievement goals are interdependent across time. As referred to earlier, recent work by Hulleman et al. (2008) has examined how task value is also part of these relations. Harackiewicz, Durik, Barron, Linnenbrink-Garcia, and Tauer (2008) underscore the importance of treating achievement goals and interest as developing sequences in time. ‘‘Mastery goals can be viewed as both a product and predictor of interest, or as a mediating mechanism for the continued development of interest in a topic’’ (2008, p. 117).
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Modeling Relations with Interest Processes While there have been a number of studies that have considered patterns of relations between interest and self-efficacy (see Eccles & Wigfield, 2002), another important direction in future research will be the application of new modeling techniques to assist in identifying the way these variables are related. Methodologies that monitor changing relations between variables at the microprocess level increasingly are providing researchers with tools to identify the shape of the complex interrelations between motivation variables. One example of how latent growth modeling techniques have been applied to identify relations between interest and self-efficacy (Niemivirta & Tapola, 2007) will be described in some detail to demonstrate the level of complexity that can be modeled thereby adding to understanding of how interest and other motivational variables jointly influence achievement behavior. Niemivirta and Tapola (2007) investigated dynamic relations between interest and self-efficacy using the computer simulation task ‘‘The MEDLAB’’ previously used by Vollmeyer and Rheinberg (2006). Students were presented with a simulated medical laboratory, and their task was to investigate the effect of three drugs on certain chemicals in the human body. Efficacy beliefs and levels of task interest were recorded at a number of points throughout the task. Niemivirta and Tapola’s (2007) findings from their latent growth modeling of these responses identified a complex dynamic system representing the changing pattern of efficacy beliefs and interest as students worked on the problem. On the initial measures of both efficacy and interest, there were significant individual differences. Across the task, the overall level of interest remained the same while the level of efficacy increased. However, analysis of trajectories of change across the task indicated significant variability in the rate of change for both efficacy and interest. Within the overall levels, some students’ scores increased, others decreased, and others remained the same. Significantly, it was found that the changes in efficacy and interest were not independent. ‘‘This implies that the relationship between self-efficacy and interest is dynamic in that change in one construct results in parallel change in the other’’ (p. 247). The mechanism whereby these reciprocal changes occur cannot be specified from these results, but what is particularly important for the current argument is the demonstration that use of these complex designs and modeling techniques provides the opportunity to explore in more detail the workings of the dynamic system linking interest with other task-specific motivational states.
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Use of complex modeling procedures in concert with research designs that track students’ task reactions and behavior over time will increasingly provide the means of identifying more closely patterns of relations between personal variables in the form of dispositions, orientations and individual interests, and both the triggering and maintenance of situational interest as it contributes to the development of new individual interests and supports the consolidation of existing individual interests. Each student brings to their learning, their own personal organization of traits, goals, and interests. Just as the character of the task matters so what students bring to their learning influences interest in the task and the development of longer-term interest in particular learning domains.
BROADER PERSPECTIVES ON INTEREST IN DEVELOPMENT So far the analysis in this chapter has been confined to the research tradition connected to the conceptualization represented in Hidi’s (1990) review and in Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) four-phase model of interest development. Alongside this expanding area of research there are a number of other research traditions with interest as their central construct, for example, the vocational interest literature, and, research representing interest as a broad orientation to experience, akin to a personality dimension. While some writers ascribe a wide variety of meanings to the interest construct (see e.g., Todt & Schreiber, 1998), this has not been typical. In this final section some of the points of contact between the interest constructs that have been the focus of this chapter and these broader perspectives on interest will be sketched. This is done in the belief that the next decade will see more integration between approaches and so provide clearer direction for educational practice.
Vocational Interests In an earlier paper, Hidi and Ainley (2002) suggested that one of the reasons the individual interest and the vocational interest literatures have developed as relatively separate research lines concerns the level of generality of their central constructs. It was argued that ‘‘On the one hand, the study of individual interests has generally taken place within the educational research
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literature with a focus on elementary and secondary students y On the other hand, the study of vocational or occupational interests has been more likely to focus attention on senior secondary students, tertiary students, and young adults entering the workforce’’ (2002, p. 260). At that time there were moves within the vocational research literature to test for links between the broad interest constructs as represented in Holland’s RIASEC (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional) model (Holland, 1985), and more specific interest for schooling domains. In particular, patterns of subject choice in senior secondary school were shown to be congruent with the Holland occupational interest groupings (Elsworth, Harvey-Beavis, Ainley, & Fabris, 1999). Elsworth and colleagues referred to these patterns of interest in school subjects as generic interests: more general than individual interest as used in the research tradition by Hidi and Renninger (2006) and by Krapp (2003, 2005), but more specific than vocational interests as represented in the RIASEC model. Further, in the same way as the issue of relations between self-efficacy and situational interest has become a key focus for interest research, so within the vocational interest literature relations between selfefficacy and vocational interests have become a major research focus. Both research traditions draw on Bandura’s proposition of four major sources of self-efficacy and both research traditions are currently investigating the different ways that self-efficacy and interest might function to influence outcomes. Investigations within the vocational interest literature are exploring relations between self-efficacy and interests as they influence participation in an activity representing a particular vocational theme. According to Betz and Rottinghaus (2006), ‘‘neither interests nor confidence (self-efficacy) alone is sufficient to lead to a choice of a career in that domain, but rather both must be present. For example, choice of a career in science requires both interests in science and confidence in one’s abilities to learn and perform in science’’ (p. 57). An earlier meta-analysis (Rottinghaus, Larson, & Borgen, 2003) demonstrated that the relation between self-efficacy and interests was variable across the six Holland vocational interest themes. Realistic, Investigative, and Artistic interests showed the strongest relations with self-efficacy. More recently an investigation of the relations between vocational interests, self-efficacy, achievement, and students’ choices about further studies within the Victorian (Australia) secondary public school system (Patrick, Care, & Ainley, accepted), confirmed differential relations between these variables according to the Holland interest themes. While all three variables, interests, self-efficacy, and achievement, predicted students’
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subject choice and enrollment, for Realistic interests the best predictive model involved an interactive relation between self-efficacy and interest, while for Investigative interests the best model identified self-efficacy and achievement as separate predictors. For the other vocational interest themes, there was only one significant predictor, for Enterprising the significant predictor was self-efficacy, and for Artistic, Social, and Conventional the significant predictor was school achievement. Both the age of the students, 14–15 years, and the fact that different school systems allow student choice at different stages of schooling, caution against generalizing these findings beyond their local setting. However, they do support the general proposition that there may be important differences in the way self-efficacy and interest combine to influence the development of vocational interests and their relations with achievement. As further findings on the nature of these relations are identified, there will be closer coordination with the complimentary area considering relations between self-efficacy and interest, both situational and individual. This promises to be an area of research generating insights that can be used to support students’ educational and vocational development.
Interest and Personality One of the key differences between the conceptualization of individual interest as presented in the writings of Hidi and Renninger (2006; Renninger, 2000) and Krapp (2003), involves the status of the individual interest variable. Hidi and Renninger refer to individual interest as a predisposition: ‘‘a relatively enduring predisposition to reengage particular contents over time’’ (Hidi & Renninger, 2006, p. 111), emphasizing that this particular organization of affect, knowledge, and value is not as rigid or fixed as is normally assumed when referring to personality dispositions. On the other hand, Krapp (2003) leans more to the personality disposition approach: ‘‘an interest represents a more or less enduring specific relationship between a person and an object in his or her ‘life-space’’’ (Krapp, 2003, p. 60). Other writers have conceptualized and measured interest as a broad disposition expressed in the way the individual reacts to a wide variety of phenomena. Whereas both the Hidi and Renninger and Krapp positions emphasize the specificity of the interest content or object, these models put more emphasis on the way the individual is relating to a wide variety of objects and experiences, and the character of the relation is described as exploration, engagement, or connection. Some of the propositions of these
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perspectives as they relate to adolescent behavior will be described. It is precisely their attention to issues of adolescent engagement and disengagement that has the potential to offer insights for educational practice. Hunter and Csikszentmihalyi (2003) used experience sampling techniques (ESM) to identify patterns of experience on measures relating to an interest–boredom dimension: ‘‘a continuous state of varying levels of engagement with the world at the experiential level y at one end are youth who experience stimulation, enthusiasm, and pleasure, and on the other, adolescents in a disconnected state of apathy’’ (p. 30). ESM records were collected over a one-week period and related to activities from 7.30 am to 10.30 pm each day from 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students sampled across the U.S.A. The researchers’ aim was to identify how this dimension related to adolescents’ general state of health and well-being: to contrast the experience of youth who demonstrated a generalized state of chronic interest with youth reporting chronic boredom. At the beginning of this section, this broad perspective on interest was contrasted with those adopted in the rest of the chapter in terms of their way of defining interest. Rather than ignoring the object or content of interest, Hunter and Csikszentmihalyi’s (2003) focus is on the agency of the individual. It is acknowledged that ‘‘To experience interest, by definition, implies that one is interested in something. Interest does not occur without a referent’’ (Hunter & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003, p. 33). But it is the individual adolescent’s sense of agency, their sense of ‘‘personal causality’’ which is central in the differences between the chronically interested and the chronically bored. The approach taken by Hunter and Csikszentmihalyi resonates with some of the broader issues of this chapter. In particular, they adopt a dynamic systems framework citing Brandstadter’s (1998) description of interest ‘‘as the tool self-organizing creatures use to direct attention to select information from the environment’’ (Hunter & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003, p. 28). Another current direction of thinking about agency in adolescent behavior involves attempts to link exploration and identity trajectories in adolescence with early developmental issues such as attachment (Flum & Kaplan, 2006) and early interactive experiences with parents (Schmitt-Rodermund & Vondracek, 1999). What is particularly useful in these research perspectives on adolescence for those concerned with educational practice, is the potential to locate the understandings of situational and individual interest into broader understandings of the personal and the accrued individual experience that contributes to the chronic experience of interest, the chronic
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experience of boredom, and to the personal organizations of the large number of adolescents who are somewhere between these extremes.
CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have focused on Hidi & Renninger’s (2006) four-phase model of interest development and have used some of the propositions from dynamic systems theory, more particularly the emphasis on the development of self-organizing units, as a framework for exploring current achievements in interest research and have pointed to directions where future achievements are likely to be made. Specifically, it has been suggested that an important area for further development in interest research is to fill in more of the substantive detail of processes that identify the complex organizations of affect, knowledge, and value that define interest. We have described some of the new work in this area and anticipate that this is just the beginning. We have not dealt with the measurement issues associated with interest research and certainly these are currently receiving some attention (see e.g., Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2010). As the quantum of research findings expands our understanding of interest at all phases of development, this will need to be matched by investigations that demonstrate how these findings can be used to inform the variety of educational programs required first, to mesh with the variety of experience students bring to their learning, and second, to expand students’ educational horizons.
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