Third Motivation test

Discrepancy reduction corresponds to _____-based motivation; discrepancy creation corresponds to _____-based motivation.

plan; goal

The textbook argues that the self, faces four core fundamental motivational struggles. Name and briefly discuss each of these struggles.

-Self-concept-Defining and creating the self. A collection of self-schemas. These are divided into the current self and possible self. -Agency-Discovering and developing personal potential. The actions taken to grow and expand the self into increasing complexity. Agency energizes the developmental process. -Self-Regulation-Managing or regulating the self. Monitoring how well one's goal setting progress is going. It starts by setting a long term goal and proceeds through planning, checking, self-control, and monitoring. More effective self-regulation leads to greater ability to carry out the goal setting process. -Identity-Relating the self to society. Captures the essence of self within a cultural context. They assume social roles (mother, wife,teacher). They act according to their role-identity. (Example:doctors are kind because they think it is a quality good doctors have)

What is a difference between a personal striving and a goal?

A personal striving constitute the superordinate foals people try to accomplish. Personal strivings believe that striving for something is actually more important than obtaining it. A goal has the intention of obtaining something whether it is a physical object or a skill.

Distinguish between optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles. Describe attributions associated with each. Explain why a pessimistic explanatory style negatively affects physical health and academic performance

A pessimistic explanatory style involves giving up in times of failure and setbacks. When a student encounters times of educational frustrations she responds with a coping style that leads to decreased effort and deteriorating grades. It is associated with academic failure, distress, physical illness, and depression. An optimistic explanatory style is when a person takes substantial credit for their success and little to no blame for their failures. Depressed individuals rarely have an optimistic style and showno illusion of control. They interpret positive and negative outcomes in self-protecting ways. Basically it is delusional full of denials, deceptions, and excuses .

Learned helplessness theory relies on the components of contingency, cognition, and behavior to explain the motivational dynamics underlying helplessness. Explain what these three components mean and provide an illustrative example of each.

Contingency- when something depends on something else. If it doesn't contribute to an affect them it can create learned helplessness. Learned helplessness- people didn't try to turn off the noise. Cognition is the thought process on whether or not you believe you have power to create an effect. Self- efficacy would tie into this. "No matter what I do, nothing will help." Behavior is whether or not they act and try to do something.

Identify the differences between efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Explain the role that self-efficacy beliefs play in the choices we make and the persistence we show on difficult tasks.

Efficacy expectations are forecasts of one's capacity to competently enact a particular course of action. Outcome expectations are forecasts that a particular outcome will be achieved or prevented once a given action is adequately executed.Before people are willing to to exert coping efforts to exert personal control both efficacy and outcome expectations must be high. We are more likely to engage in a activity and persist in an activity where our self-efficacy is relatively high.

Discuss the difference between the two types of goal-performance discrepancies: discrepancy reduction and discrepancy creation.

Discrepancy reduction- based on discrepancy-detecting feedback. Some aspect of the environment (boss) provides feedback on how well or how poorly you are performing. Discrepancy creation- "feed-forward" system. The person looks forward to the future and creates a higher goal. Does not require feedback to create it.

Explain the important role that feedback plays in explaining how and why goals enhance performance.

Goal setting translates into increases performance only in the context of timely feedback that documents the person's progress in reaction to the goal. It allows the person to keep track of progress in relation to their goal. Without it, performance can be emotionally unimportant and uninvolving.

What are some criticisms of goal setting, according to both your textbook and the article "Why Goal Setting Doesn't Work"?

Goal setting works best when the task is uninteresting and require only a straightforward procedure like adding numbers, sit-ups or typing. For goals that are interesting it doesn't have any affect on performance. They can also undermine intrinsic motivation because a lot of the times they are controlling and add pressure. Writing down or visualizing your goal has no affect on performance. Goal conflict is also an issue.

Explain the role of self-efficacy and mastery motivation in the psychological experience of hope.

High-hope individuals, who possess resilient self-efficacy and strong mastery motivation outperform and out-cope low hope individuals in domains such as academics, athletics, and physical illness. In order to have hope, self-efficacy also needs to be high. High self-efficacy supports confidence, while mastery beliefs support optimism. They need to believe in themselves and want to make themselves better.

Suppose your child considers herself as not being "good at school". The more you argue with her, the more convinced of her negative self-view she becomes. What would be a more effective approach?

I would ask her why she feels that way, and I would tell her she is not good at school yet, but she has the potential to just like everyone else. I would also tell her that he mindset is more important than actual ability and that if she just accepts that she "isn't good at school" she will never be able to improve. She needs to set a goal, tell herself that the more practice she puts in the better she will become, and she needs to think of school as something she can excel at. Or, I could tell her to use implementation intention and to set smaller goals and out a plan in place to improve. Giving up will certainly not make her any better.

Suppose your friend tells you her New Year's resolutions for 2018 are to finish her Ph. D., lose weight and quit smoking. What advice would you give her after having read about the research on self-control?

I would tell my friends that she is being completely unrealistic to complete all three of these huge goals. She needs to pick one and focus on that. She is significantly more likely to achieve one specific goal. The more goals you have the least likely you are to achieve it because you only have so much energy.

If you wanted to promote mastery goals in another person, what would you do in terms of defining success, placing value, giving reasons for effort, and evaluating work?

I would tell them that success is not about being them best but making themselves better. Their value would be placed in the progress of their own performance and self-improvement. Therefore, the more progress they make, the more successful they are considered. There reasons for giving effort would be the same reasons are listed before, improved self.

Outline a full goal-setting program—that is, outline how goal setting and goal striving work together to help people accomplish the goals they wish to accomplish.

If I have a long-term goal to become a neuropsychologist I need to have a series of short term goals such as graduate with a bachelor's degree with honors, getting a good score on the GRE, getting into a grad program, graduating with a masters, etc. I need to set the goal and then make the initiative and steps in order to make progress. One without the other will not allow you to achieve your goals. Implementation intention and feedback is also important to goal striving.

In experiments testing the effectiveness of implementation intentions, people who set implementation intentions actually carry out and attain their goals more than people who do not set implementation intentions. Explain why the setting of implementation intentions is such an important part of a successful goal-setting program.

Implementation intentions-it is an "if-then" plan that specifics in advance the goal-striving process. "When, where, and how" are you going to achieve the goal. Making accomplishing the goal is more likely, It forces the person to plan out and actively take steps towards accomplishing them. They help people stay on track, overcome volitional problems of getting started, and promoting resumption of goal-striving after a distraction.

What causes learned helplessness? Identify the three deficits that typically accompany the experience of helplessness.

Learned helplessness is a psychological state that results when an individual expects the events in his or her life are uncontrollable. It is made up of -Contingency-refers the the objective relationship between a person's behavior and the environments positive or negative outcomes -Cognition-includes all of the mental processes (biases, attributes, expectations) the individual relies on to translate environmental contingencies into subjective control beliefs. -Behavior- refers tp the person's voluntary coping behavior, and it varies along a continuum that extends from active and energetic to passive and withdrawn.

What are possible selves? Explain how they energize and direct behavior.

Possible selves represent an individual's idea's for what they would like to become in addition to what they are afraid of becoming. Possible selves represent the future self and it operates just like a goal does. It increases persistence, focuses attention, and undertaking strategic planning. It can energize and direct action so that attributes, characteristics, and abilities of the self actually begin to materialize. People chasing after a possible self asks questions such as "If I am going to become my possible self, how should I behave?" and they actions begin reflecting their goal strivings.

Define self-schema, explaining how it is different from self-concept. Explain how self-schemas energize and direct behavior.

Self schemas are beliefs about the self based on learned from past experiences. The self-concept is a collection of these self schemas. If a person holds a self-schema that they are good at math, they will be more energized and focused on the last than someone who has a self-schema that they are bad at math. We are more likely to engage in activity that we believe we excel at.

Differentiate the motivational and performance-based advantages versus disadvantages for performers who adopt a short-term goal (e.g., eat less than 2000 calories today) versus performers who adopt a long-term goal (e.g.,. lose 20 pounds this year) and offer a recommendation as to whether performers should adopt a short-term or a long-term goal. Explain/justify your recommendation.

Short term goals-generate frequently opportunities for performance feedback. Long term goals-involve higher levels of intrinsic motivation. In order to achieve a long term goal, they must achieve series of short term goals. They don't provide as frequent of feedback like short-term goals do.. I think they should use both since both long-term and short-term have benefits. You get the daily feed-back from short-term, but the intrinsic motivation from long-terms.

Describe the TOTE model and give an example from your daily life.

Test-Operate-Test-Exit. Looking at hair in the mirror, if it looks okay we exit, if not we will brush it and repeat T-OT-O-T-O until we are satisfied and then we exit.

Explain the differences between growth and fixed mindsets and their implications for goal-setting and effort.

The growth-fixed mindset concerns the question of how people think about their personal qualities, such as their intelligence, The growth mindset is the belief that one's personal qualities are malleable, changeable, and can be developed through effort. A fixed-mindset is the belief that one's personal qualities are fixed, set, and not open to change. They lead different achievement goals because people with a fixed mindset tend to adopt performance goals while people with a growth mindset tend to adopt mastery goals.

Explain the differences between deliberative and implemental mindsets, as well as promotional and preventive mindsets. Discuss the importance of regulatory fit.

The key distinction was in the initial selection of goals. In a deliberative mindset, a person is open-minded and attention is cast wide to take in any desirability and feasibility of considered goals. Once a goal has been set and committed , the person benefits from making a transition from deliberative to an implemental mindset. In an implemental mindset the person is closed-minded and attention is narrowly focused to concentrate only on information that is related to the goal attainment. When they are in an implemental vs. a deliberative mindset, people persist longer and perform better.

Explain cognitive dissonance, and describe the different ways that people try to reduce it.

When beliefs about who the self is, and what the self does are inconsistent (believing one thing but doing the opposite like believing in preserving the environment, but not making an effort to recycle) people experience an uncomfortable mental state known as cognitive dissonance. When intense and uncomfortable enough, dissonance takes on a motivational properties and the person seeks ways to reduce it such as remove the dissonance belief, reduce the importance of the dissonance belief, add a new constant belief, increase the importance of the constant belief.

Implementation intentions:

are part of an "if-then" plan that specifies in advance the goal-striving process

1/1 Implementation intentions are effective in goal-setting pursuits because they

buffer performers against falling prey to volitional problems.

Corrective motivation is an improvement over the concept of a plan because it:

emphasizes that plans, like behaviors, are modifiable and can change in response to circumstances.