A Key to Motivation Is Thinking and Acting Like You Can Change Things

People occasionally have days when they feel like a pawn, responding to the pushes and pulls of the environment or their own biological urges. Years of psychological research suggests this is partly accurate. People do engage in behaviors outside of their awareness and personal control because of habit or to conform, and sometimes they simply do not know why they are doing things. However, this is not the entire story. When it comes to controlling personal motivation, a critical step is believing in one’s own agency—to think and act like things can change. People who believe that they can shape the environment and their own behavior to meet their needs and goals tend to change things for the better.

When It Comes to Motivating Others, What’s Easy Is Not Always What Works

“If you finish your dinner, you can have dessert” is a phrase uttered nightly by millions of parents. At the core of this phrase is the belief that the best way to get people do something is to offer a reward or impose a consequence. Rewards and consequences do control behavior, which makes it seem like motivating others is pretty easy. You just need to find something the person likes (or dislikes). But it’s not nearly that simple. If you want to encourage motivation that creates long-lasting, high-quality behavior rather than makes people feel like vulnerable pawns, you need to tap into a person’s inner resources, including their interests, values, and identities. At the heart of optimally motivating others is taking their perspective and using it to create an environment that supports their inner resources.

Feeling proud today may lead people to coast tomorrow: Daily intraindividual associations between emotion and effort in academic goal striving

Research examining the associations between emotions and goal-directed behaviors has mainly relied on between-subjects designs even though much of the advice based on these findings focus on within-individual changes. The purpose of this study was to better understand intraindividual daily associations between emotions and effort in the context of college students' academic goal striving. In Study 1 (2,531 daily reports from 194 college students at a competitive university), daily positive emotions related to goal pursuit were associated with reduced time spent on the goal the next day (i.e., coasting). In contrast, daily negative emotions were associated with increased time spent on the goal the next day (i.e., pushing), particularly for students with high self-control. In Study 2 (338 daily reports from 80 college students in diverse universities), feeling pride was linked to coasting on the next day. Feeling shame was unrelated to changes in next-day effort among students with high self-control, but predicted decreased next-day effort among students with low self-control. Taken together, the findings suggest that goal pursuers may be less likely to expend effort after the day they feel certain positive emotions (e.g., pride) about their goal progress. Furthermore, the association between negative emotions and pushing may be heterogeneous depending on individual characteristics such as self-control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Prosocial modeling: A meta-analytic review and synthesis

Exposure to prosocial models is commonly used to foster prosocial behavior in various domains of society. The aim of the current article is to apply meta-analytic techniques to synthesize several decades of research on prosocial modeling, and to examine the extent to which prosocial modeling elicits helping behavior. We also identify the theoretical and methodological variables that moderate the prosocial modeling effect. Eighty-eight studies with 25,354 participants found a moderate effect (g = 0.45) of prosocial modeling in eliciting subsequent helping behavior. The prosocial modeling effect generalized across different types of helping behaviors, different targets in need of help, and was robust to experimenter bias. Nevertheless, there was cross-societal variation in the magnitude of the modeling effect, and the magnitude of the prosocial modeling effect was larger when participants were presented with an opportunity to help the model (vs. a third-party) after witnessing the model's generosity. The prosocial modeling effect was also larger for studies with higher percentage of female in the sample, when other people (vs. participants) benefitted from the model's prosocial behavior, and when the model was rewarded for helping (vs. was not). We discuss the publication bias in the prosocial modeling literature, limitations of our analyses and identify avenues for future research. We end with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Adaptive Motivation and Emotion in Education

Students frequently experience various types of motivation and emotion that contribute to their engagement and learning. However, translating research on motivation and emotion into educational practice and policy has so far been limited. To facilitate greater synergy among research, practice, and policy, this overview addresses educationally relevant motivation and emotion. This summary discusses different forms of motivation or emotion, their relevant theoretical basis, evidence on how they relate to academic engagement and learning, and potential classroom supports for adaptive motivation and emotion. The article concludes with five instructional design principles that can guide educators and policymakers in promoting adaptive student motivation and emotion: (a) support students’ feelings of competence, (b) enhance autonomy, (c) use personally relevant and active tasks, (d) emphasize learning and de-emphasize social comparison, and (e) encourage feelings of belonging.

Maximizing and Counterfactual Thinking in Academic Major Decision Making

This study explored the role of decision-making orientation and post-decision thinking in one’s satisfaction with their choice of college major, as well as their motivation for tasks related to their major, perceptions of competence in major coursework, and their academic performance. Three hundred and seventy-eight college students in their junior or senior year completed a survey assessing the above variables. Results suggested that a maximizing decision-making orientation positively related to students’ tendency to engage in upward counterfactual thinking or evaluative thoughts toward the favorable outcomes of an alternative decision. Upward counterfactual thinking, in turn, negatively related to students’ satisfaction, value for coursework, perceived competence, and autonomous regulation within their major, as well as their overall grade point average, controlling for major college. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Antecedents and consequences of situational interest

BACKGROUND

There is a growing body of research on situational interest (SI). Yet, we still know relatively little about how SI is supported in the classroom and the academic benefits of SI.

AIM

The current study investigated (1) contextual antecedents of SI; (2) potential benefits of SI for academic outcomes; and (3) SI as a mediator of classroom practices to academic outcomes.

SAMPLE

Participants were 126 male and female adolescents (mean age = 14.6 years) who took part in a science course during a 3-week residential summer programme for talented adolescents.

METHOD

Participants completed self-report measures prior to the start of the summer programme and at the end of the programme. Summer programme instructors completed ratings of students' engagement during the programme.

RESULT

Multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate the three study aims. After controlling for initial individual interest, perceived choice, instructor approachability, and course connections to real life were statistically significant predictors of SI during the summer programme, with varying associations observed based on the form of SI (triggered, maintained-feeling, and maintained-value). SI was positively related to individual interest and perceived competence in science at the end of the programme as well as teacher-rated engagement; SI also mediated the associations of classroom practices with these outcomes.

CONCLUSION

Results suggest that classroom practices shape SI. In turn, SI supports motivation and engagement. Moreover, differentiated antecedents and outcomes of the three sub-components of SI were identified, highlighting the utility of this three-component approach for studying SI.

A method for evaluating research syntheses: The quality, conclusions, and consensus of 12 syntheses of the effects of after-school programs

Like all forms of empirical inquiry, research syntheses can be carried out in ways that lead to more or less valid inferences about the phenomenon under study. This synthesis of syntheses (a) examined the methods employed in the syntheses of the effects of after-school programs (ASPs) and determined how closely they conformed to what is defined as best practice for research synthesis, (b) compared the inferences drawn from the ASP research literature by each synthesis with the inferences that plausibly could be made from the data they covered, and (c) determined the points of consistency across the syntheses with regard to both potentially valid and potentially invalid conclusions. It was found that the 12 syntheses used highly divergent methods, varying in problem definitions, search strategies, inclusion criteria for individual studies, and techniques for drawing conclusions about the cumulative evidence. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The relative benefits of meta-analysis conducted with individual participant data versus aggregated data

The authors describe the relative benefits of conducting meta-analyses with (a) individual participant data (IPD) gathered from the constituent studies and (b) aggregated data (AD), or the group-level statistics (in particular, effect sizes) that appear in reports of a study's results. Given that both IPD and AD are equally available, meta-analysis of IPD is superior to meta-analysis of AD. IPD meta-analysis permits synthesists to perform subgroup analyses not conducted by the original collectors of the data, to check the data and analyses in the original studies, to add new information to the data sets, and to use different statistical methods. However, the cost of IPD meta-analysis and the lack of available IPD data sets suggest that the best strategy currently available is to use both approaches in a complementary fashion such that the first step in conducting an IPD meta-analysis would be to conduct an AD meta-analysis. Regardless of whether a meta-analysis is conducted with IPD or AD, synthesists must remain vigilant in how they interpret their results. They must avoid ecological fallacies, Simpson's paradox, and interpretation of synthesis-generated evidence as supporting causal inferences.

The effects of choice on intrinsic motivation and related outcomes: a meta-analysis of research findings

A meta-analysis of 41 studies examined the effect of choice on intrinsic motivation and related outcomes in a variety of settings with both child and adult samples. Results indicated that providing choice enhanced intrinsic motivation, effort, task performance, and perceived competence, among other outcomes. Moderator tests revealed the effect of choice on intrinsic motivation was stronger (a) for instructionally irrelevant choices compared to choices made between activities, versions of a task, rewards, and instructionally relevant options, (b) when 2 to 4 successive choices were given, (c) when rewards were not given after the choice manipulation, (d) when participants given choice were compared to the most controlling forms of control groups, (e) for children compared to adults, (f) for designs that yoked choice and control conditions compared to matched designs in which choice was reduced or designs in which nonyoked, nonmatched controls were used, and (g) when the experiment was conducted in a laboratory embedded in a natural setting. Implications for future research and applications to real-world settings are discussed.