Carol Sansone

Self-regulating interest: the moderating role of hardiness and conscientiousness.

Sansone, Weir, Harpster, and Morgan (1992) found that individuals intentionally regulated their interest in an activity when they had both the need (the task was boring) and a reason to exert the effort (an ostensible health benefit). The present study examined Hardiness and Conscientiousness as moderators of this self-regulatory process when individuals had the option of quitting in addition to the options of persisting and of engaging in interest-enhancing strategies. Undergraduates performed a boring copying activity under instructions to stop when they felt they could evaluate the task. Half were told that their evaluations would help researchers develop good jobs for others (Benefit). Results indicated high hardy individuals copied more letters when they were provided the additional Benefit information, and this effect was mediated through their attempt to make the task more interesting. High conscientious individuals persisted longer than individuals lower in conscientiousness independently of the benefit manipulation or strategy use. Implications of individual differences in self-regulation of motivation are discussed.

Improving the Dependability of Research in Personality and Social Psychology Recommendations for Research and Educational Practice

In this article, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Task Force on Publication and Research Practices offers a brief statistical primer and recommendations for improving the dependability of research. Recommendations for research practice include (a) describing and addressing the choice of N (sample size) and consequent issues of statistical power, (b) reporting effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals (CIs), (c) avoiding “questionable research practices” that can inflate the probability of Type I error, (d) making available research materials necessary to replicate reported results, (e) adhering to SPSP’s data sharing policy, (f) encouraging publication of high-quality replication studies, and (g) maintaining flexibility and openness to alternative standards and methods. Recommendations for educational practice include (a) encouraging a culture of “getting it right,” (b) teaching and encouraging transparency of data reporting, (c) improving methodological instruction, and (d) modeling sound science and supporting junior researchers who seek to “get it right.”

Effects of Instruction on Intrinsic Interest: The Importance of Context

Two studies examined how contextual cues influence the impact of receiving instructions for improving performance on intrinsic motivation. The authors proposed that whether instruction enhances or decreases motivation depends on the salience of performance goals. Goal salience was proposed to be a function of how an individual defines the activity, which, in turn, may be influenced by contextual features. To test this hypothesis, the authors used a computer game that emphasized fantasy in addition to skill, and they varied the presence of contextual cues highlighting performance. In Study 1, the authors varied the presence of prior performance feedback, and found that instruction decreased interest only when no prior performance feedback (positive or negative) was received. In Study 2, the authors explicitly manipulated contextual salience by describing the activitys goals as either skill- or fantasy-related. Instruction decreased interest in the fantasy-emphasis context, but increased interest in the skill-emphasis context. Furthermore, when instruction matched perceived goals Ss experienced greater positive affect while performing the task. The implications for models of intrinsic motivation are discussed.

The Stereotyped Task Engagement Process: The Role of Interest and Achievement Motivation

Competence-based stereotypes can negatively affect womens performance in math and science (referred to as stereotype threat), presumably leading to lower motivation. The authors examined the effects of stereotype threat on interest, a motivational path not necessarily mediated by performance. They predicted that working on a computer science task in the context of math-gender stereotypes would negatively affect undergraduate womens task interest, particularly for those higher in achievement motivation who were hypothesized to hold performance-avoidance goals in response to the threat. Compared with when the stereotype was nullified, while under stereotype threat an assigned performance-avoidance (vs. -approach) goal was associated with lower interest for women higher in achievement motivation (Study 1), and women higher (vs. lower) in achievement motivation were more likely to spontaneously adopt performance-avoidance goals (Study 2). The motivational influence of performance-avoidance goals under stereotype threat was primarily mediated by task absorption (Study 3). Implications for the stereotyped task engagement process (Smith, 2004) are discussed.

Intrinsic motivation and education: Competence in context

Our research program involving both laboratory and everyday activities suggests that there may be multiple goals relevant to interest in a task, and these goals include but are not limited to achieving a particular level of competence. The same information and feedback can thus either aid or obstruct intrinsic motivation, depending on its match with how students define the goals of their involvement. Furthermore, this potential flexibility in activity definitions allows individuals to purposely explore different routes to interest to maintain their motivation to perform relatively uninteresting, but perhaps important, activities. Intrinsic motivation thus appears to be created and maintained through an ongoing temporal process, with individuals potentially having an active as well as passive role in the process. This suggests that the potential to foster interest in education may not depend solely on the ability and efforts of educators or educational materials, but also on the ability and efforts of the individual student.

Rewarding competence: The importance of goals in the study of intrinsic motivation.

Publisher Summary People rarely receive external rewards simply for participating in enjoyable activities. Rather, rewards in real life usually depend on the quality of a persons task performance. When a reward depends on attaining a certain level of performance (for example, outperforming 80% of peers); the reward is considered performance-contingent. This chapter considers the different processes through which performance-contingent rewards can both enhance and undermine intrinsic motivation. Because performance-contingent rewards constrain behavior, influence a persons approach to a task, and provide competence feedback, they invoke several motivational processes that may have contradictory implications for intrinsic motivation. The chapter demonstrates that the symbolic properties of rewards can increase intrinsic motivation, and documents the motivational processes that mediate these effects. The theoretical analysis and results highlight the potential of external interventions to make competence salient and lead individuals to become more involved in the pursuit of competence. It is important to note, however, that the success of these interventions depends on the ultimate attainment of competence.

Competence feedback, task feedback, and intrinsic interest: An examination of process and context.

Abstract The process by which competence feedback affects intrinsic motivation has not typically been examined in conjunction with effects of other information that may be conveyed in feedback. As such, it is difficult to determine the degree to which the proposed mechanisms are tied to the competence information in feedback. When Sansone (1986, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 51 , 918–931) separated feedback into components satisfying curiosity (task feedback) or signifying competence (positive normative feedback), each enhanced subsequent interest in the task. The present study investigated two possible explanations: whether an insufficiently autonomy-supportive context prevented a stronger relationship between perceived competence and interest and, secondly, whether competence feedback more strongly affected previously identified processes (perceived competence, competence valuation, performance pressure, and perceived autonomy) which have both positive and negative implications for interest. Although positive normative feedback enhanced perceived competence, perceived competence was not related to interest, and this relationship did not change as the degree of autonomy support varied. Furthermore, the results suggest that competence information can affect interest through several processes simultaneously, such that when perceived competence is not relevant, other processes (i.e., competence valuation and perceived autonomy) are. In addition, there may be unique contributions of other kinds of information present in feedback (e.g., task feedback). The implications for process models of intrinsic motivation are discussed.

Adapting to the Environment across the Life Span: Different Process or Different Inputs?.

A model of the process through which individuals adapt to their environment across the life span is presented. The model illustrates how contextual and individual characteristics affect an individuals performance on an activity through their effects on how the individual defines the activity. Empirical support for the model is presented based on results from a life span study of everyday experiences and problems, and from a number of laboratory-based studies. The model and research emanating from the model suggests that what may appear to be developmental and individual differences in components of the problem-solving process may be explained by individual differences in activity definitions.

Loneliness and Interpersonal Judgments

This study examines ratings of self and partners by high and low tested lonely college students following brief interactions with opposite sex strangers. Results replicate and extend previous findings, indicating more negative evaluations for high as compared to low lonely subjects in self ratings, ratings expected from partners; and for men only, ratings of partners. High lonely men were rated more negatively than low lonely men but the corresponding effect for women was not observed. The data also indicate that high lonely participants were perceived by their partners as more likely to rate themselves negatively. The findings are discussed in relation to the probable consequences of perceived social skill inadequacies for the experience of loneliness.

Remembering less and inferring more : effects of time of judgment on inferences about unknown attributes

Perceivers often infer the values of unknown attributes from evaluative expectancies. In 2 experiments, inferences about unknown attributes of a target made shortly after initial processing tended to be moderate, as perceivers presumably adjusted for the lack of directly relevant evidence. However, stronger inferences were drawn with the passage of time as memory of the absence of information faded. Expertise moderated this effect, as subjects highly knowledgeable of the target domain were much less likely than low or moderate knowledge subjects to draw extreme inferences over time. Memory-based inferences about unknown attributes were also found to be held with greater confidence than inferences made shortly after stimulus presentation.