Before getting to them, however, we encourage you to consider the advantages of a behaviorist perspective on motivation. Certainly teachers see plenty of student behaviors—signs of motivation of some sort.
But the multiple demands of teaching can limit the time needed to determine what the behaviors mean. If a student asks a lot of questions during discussions, for example, is he or she curious about the material itself, or just wanting to look intelligent in front of classmates and the teacher? In a class with many students and a busy agenda, there may not be a lot of time for a teacher to decide between these possibilities.
In other cases, the problem may not be limited time as much as communication difficulties with a student. That is where behaviorist approaches to motivation can help.
The most common version of the behavioral perspective on motivation is the theory of operant conditioning associated with B. Skinner , The description in that chapter focused on behavioral learning, but the same operant model can be transformed into an account of motivation.
To understand this model in terms of motivation, think of the likelihood of response as the motivation and the reinforcement as the motivator.
Imagine, for example, that a student learns by operant conditioning to answer questions during class discussions: each time the student answers a question the operant , the teacher praises reinforces this behavior. Many concepts from operant conditioning, in fact, can be understood in motivational terms. The decrease in performance frequency can be thought of as a loss of motivation, and removal of the reinforcement can be thought of as removal of the motivator.
Table 1 summarizes this way of reframing operant conditioning in terms of motivation. But there are nonetheless cautions about adopting this view. If a student looks at the teacher intently while she is speaking, does it mean the student is motivated to learn, or only that the student is daydreaming? If a student invariably looks away while the teacher is speaking, does it mean that the student is disrespectful of the teacher, or that student comes from a family or cultural group where avoiding eye contact actually shows more respect for a speaker than direct eye contact?
Students usually do know what they want or desire, and their wants or desires may not always correspond to what a teacher chooses to reinforce or ignore. This, in a new guise, is once again the issue of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.
There is truth to this allegation if a teacher actually does rely on rewarding behaviors that she alone has chosen, or even if she persists in reinforcing behaviors that students already find motivating without external reinforcement. A classic research study of intrinsic motivation illustrated the problem nicely. In the study, researchers rewarded university students for two activities—solving puzzles and writing newspaper headlines —that they already found interesting.
Some of the students, however, were paid to do these activities, whereas others were not. At the end of 4 minutes, they were stopped and the research assistant scored their answers. On average, the children attempted to answer 7. When you do something to manipulate an independent variable, that something you do administer a pill, tell the participant something that might affect performance, etc. This treatment involved a bit of deception, because children received randomly assigned feedback.
In other words, regardless of real performance, the children heard one of three statements depending on random assignment to a treatment condition.
After receiving feedback and, for children in two of the conditions, additional praise, the children were asked a series of questions. The experimenters wanted to know if the success the children experienced in the first set of problems, along with the type of praise, influenced their choice of additional problems. They were told that they might get some more problems to solve and they were asked to choose the difficulty of those problems.
There were several options, but the choice came down to this:. The children were then told that there might be some time at the end of the session to work on these problems they had chosen, but that the next problems they would work on had been determined before the experiment started. The results showed that the children were genuinely influenced by the praise they had received.
The figure below shows the percentage of children choosing EASY problems, broken down by treatment condition. The children who were praised for how smart they were ability were far more likely to choose easy problems than were the children praise for working hard effort. The control condition, children who were told they did well, but received no additional praise, were in the middle. The type of praise given influenced the types of problems students wanted to tackle. This graph shows the number of students choosing easy problems after given praise.
Next, the children tried to solve a new set of 10 matrix problems and again they had 4 minutes. On the surface, these problems looked about the same as the first set, but they were considerably more difficult. In fact, this feedback was accurate. The results showed that the children found the problems difficult.
On average, they attempted 5. There was no significant difference in number of problems solved for the three groups ability feedback, effort feedback, and no-feedback control. Statistical note: the Ability group was significantly lower than the other two. There was no significant difference between the Control and Effort groups. Tye type of praise given had a small, but noticeable, impact on how much students enjoyed the problems. Statistical note: all three groups were significantly different from each other.
When asked how much of their failure was due to low effort, those who were praised for ability did not blame their effort, rather their ability. For the last stage of the experiment, the children were given a new set of problems that was similar in difficulty to the first set. The problems were moderately difficult, and the children had 4 minutes to solve as many as possible. The figure below shows the change in the average number of problems between the pretest Stage 1 and the posttest Stage 3.
Instructions: Click and drag the circles on the right Posttest to where you think they should be to reflect the results of the experiment. The difference between the number of problems solved on the pre-test as compared with the post-test. The Mueller and Dweck experiment shows how a single comment to a child can have at least a temporary effect. But at least for a short time in a controlled setting, the children were apparently affected by what the adult researcher said to them.
Why would this matter? If a child repeatedly and consistently hears one sort of encouragement or the other, the child can internalize that way of thinking. This may sound like a strange thing to do, because theories are often presented to you in textbooks as being the final summary of some research.
Using the figure below, which shows a sequence of influences beginning with either praise for effort or praise for ability, build a psychological theory. This is the psychological theory based on Dr. What this theory says is that different kinds of praise encourage the child to focus on different goals.
Praise for effort tells the child that the process of learning is important and reward comes from trying hard. According to the theory and supported by the results , children who had been praised for effort could focus on the process of learning, so failure at hard problems could be seen as a challenge—even something fun—and failure could motivate them. At stage 3 in the experiment, children who were energized by the difficult problems tackled the final set of problems, which were fairly easy, with enthusiasm that led to success.
The children who were discouraged by failure handicapped themselves on the last set of problems, doing worse than they had at the beginning of the study. Study 2 is not an experiment because there are no manipulated variables. It is a longitudinal study, which means that the same participants in this case, children are tested repeatedly across a long period of time.
In this study [3] , Dweck and her colleagues administered a questionnaire about beliefs and attitudes to some 7th graders in public schools, and then they tracked of the students from the beginning of the 7th grade to the end of 8th grade. Students with a growth mindset demonstrated behaviors that led to better math performance. At the beginning of their 7th grade school year, the children were tested on their mindset various levels of commitment to fixed or growth mindset , learning goals preference for easy or challenging work , beliefs about effort whether it tends to lead to improvement or not , and attitudes about failure whether it is motivating or discouraging.
Although the study focused on math, the researchers were interested in any area of study or skill, not just math. The figure below shows the average grades [4] of the students with strong fixed and strong growth mindsets based on the initial test. Students with mixed mindsets are not included in this graph. At the end of the first semester, there was a very modest difference of less than two points in math grades. The trends for the two lines are obviously different. The students with the fixed mindset red line showed a slight decline in average grades across the two years of the study.
Students with the growth mindset green line show steady improvement across the two years, with their average grade increasing by nearly 3-points. Differences in math grades between those with growth and fixed mindsets. At the beginning of the study, the students—then just starting the first term of the 7th grade—filled out a questionnaire about their attitudes and beliefs about learning. The table below summarizes these differences.
Mindset itself fixed vs. Mindset leads to behaviors types of studying, reactions to setbacks that in turn affects the quality of learning. The table below summarizes their findings. The table indicates that children with different mindsets sought out different kinds of experience, with growth mindset children preferring challenging experiences, while those with a fixed mindset preferred easier learning experiences that led to easy success.
Finally, the growth mindset children found difficult work and even failure to be a source of inspiration. They wanted to prove to themselves and others that they could do what was needed to succeed. The fixed mindset children tended to respond to difficulty and failure with discouragement, believing that it simply reaffirmed their own limitations. The two studies we have discussed are just two of dozens of research projects by Dweck and others that show how mindset is related to differences in achievement.
In another study, Grant and Dweck followed several hundred college students taking a pre-med organic chemistry course, as this is one of the most important and challenging courses for pre-med students at most universities. Students with a growth mindset outperformed students with a fixed mindset, and the two groups reported differences in attitudes and beliefs similar to those shown in the table above.
Mindset is just one factor that influences how we learn and how we respond to challenges. Whether you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset, you can study hard and do well in school and in other areas. However, when they encounter challenges or obstacles they may then be at a disadvantage.
One last thing to remember is this: you can change your mindset. That change in mindset can be the difference between an effective response to challenges or an avoidance of those challenges. You may have to work at it. In particular, when you encounter difficulty—a poor grade on a test, a paper that has some negative comments from your professor, or a reading assignment that leaves you confused—that is the time that your mindset can have a huge impact on what you do next.
Privacy Policy. There are many different uses for motivation. It serves as a guiding force for all human behavior, but understanding how it works and the factors that may impact it can be important in a number of ways. Understanding motivation can:. Anyone who has ever had a goal like wanting to lose 20 pounds or run a marathon probably immediately realizes that simply having the desire to accomplish something is not enough.
Achieving such a goal requires the ability to persist through obstacles and endurance to keep going in spite of difficulties. There are three major components of motivation: activation, persistence, and intensity. The degree of each of these components of motivation can impact whether or not you achieve your goal. Strong activation, for example, means that you are more likely to start pursuing a goal.
Persistence and intensity will determine if you keep working toward that goal and how much effort you devote to reaching it. All people experience fluctuations in their motivation and willpower. Sometimes you might feel fired up and highly driven to reach your goals, while at other times you might feel listless or unsure of what you want or how to achieve it.
Even if you're feeling low on motivation, there are steps you can take that will keep you moving forward. Some things you can do include:. There are a few things you should watch for that might hurt your motivation. These include:.
Talk to your doctor if you are feeling symptoms of apathy and low mood that last longer than two weeks. Sometimes a persistent lack of motivation might be tied to a mental health condition such as depression. What are the things that actually motivate us to act? Throughout history, psychologists have proposed different theories to explain what motivates human behavior.
The following are some of the major theories of motivation. The instinct theory of motivation suggests that behaviors are motivated by instincts, which are fixed and inborn patterns of behavior.
Such instincts might include biological instincts that are important for an organism's survival such as fear, cleanliness, and love. Many of your behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sleeping are motivated by biology. You have a biological need for food, water, and sleep. Therefore, you are motivated to eat, drink, and sleep. Drive theory suggests that people have basic biological drives and that behaviors are motivated by the need to fulfill these drives.
The arousal theory of motivation suggests that people are motivated to engage in behaviors that help them maintain their optimal level of arousal. Understanding motivation is important in many areas of life, from parenting to the workplace.
You may want to set the best goals and establish the right reward systems to motivate others as well as to increase your own motivation. Knowledge of motivating factors and manipulating them is used in marketing and other aspects of industrial psychology.
It's an area where there are many myths and everyone can benefit from knowing what works and what doesn't.
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