Jeremy M. Hamm

Attributional Retraining: A Motivation Treatment With Differential Psychosocial and Performance Benefits for Failure Prone Individuals in Competitive Achievement Settings

Our quasi-experimental, longitudinal treatment study examined whether Attributional Retraining (AR) facilitated adjustment among young adults (n = 324) making the challenging school-to-university transition. An AR by performance orientation group 2 × 4 design showed AR primarily benefited high-risk students: Failure-ruminators (high failure preoccupation, low perceived control) receiving AR reported higher intrinsic motivation and more adaptive attribution-related emotions than their no-AR peers. Failure-acceptors (low failure preoccupation, low perceived control) receiving AR had higher intrinsic motivation, higher grade point averages, and fewer course withdrawals than their no-AR counterparts. Thus, AR had differential benefits (emotions, achievement) for vulnerable students who were psychologically distinct.

Sustaining Primary Control Striving for Achievement Goals During Challenging Developmental Transitions: The Role of Secondary Control Strategies

Developmental transitions are imbued with ubiquitous uncertainties that undermine goal striving in many otherwise committed individuals. Our seven-month study examined whether cognitive selective secondary control strategies (motivation-focused thinking) facilitate the enactment of achievement goals among young adults experiencing the landmark school to university transition. Sequential regression analyses demonstrated that (a) achievement goals predicted selective secondary control, (b) selective secondary control predicted behavioral selective primary control striving, and (c) selective primary control predicted final course grades. Findings support Heckhausen et al.s (2010) proposition that selective secondary control bolsters selective primary control striving and enables goal attainment during difficult transitions.

Attributing heart attack and stroke to “Old Age”: Implications for subsequent health outcomes among older adults

This study assessed the extent to which older adults attribute a recent heart attack/stroke to “old age,” and examined consequences for subsequent lifestyle behavior and health-care service utilization. Community-dwelling adults (N = 57, ages 73–98 years) were interviewed about their heart attack/stroke, and an objective health registry provided data on health-care utilization over a 3-year period. Endorsement of “old age” as a cause of heart attack/stroke negatively predicted lifestyle behavior change, and positively predicted frequency of physician visits and likelihood of hospitalization over the subsequent 3 years. Findings suggest the importance of considering “old age” attributions in the context of cardiovascular health events.

The Paradoxical Role of Perceived Control in Late Life Health Behavior

Research has established the health benefits of psychological factors, including the way individuals appraise outcomes. Although many studies confirm that appraising outcomes as controllable is adaptive for health, a paradoxical possibility is largely ignored: Perceived control may be detrimental under some conditions. Our premise was that appraising health as controllable but at the same time ascribing little value to it might signal a dysfunctional psychological mindset that fosters a mistaken sense of invincibility. During face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of older adults (age range = 72–99), we identified individuals with such a potentially maladaptive “invincible” mindset (high perceived control and low health value) and compared them to their counterparts on several outcomes. The findings were consistent with our hypotheses. The invincibles denied future risks, they lacked the activating emotion of fear, and they visited their physicians less often over a subsequent five-year period. Moreover, in contrast to their counterparts, the invincibles did not appear strategic in their approach to seeking care: Even poor health did not prompt them to seek the counsel of a physician. The recognition that psychological appraisals are modifiable highlights the promise of remedial methods to alter maladaptive mindsets, potentially improving quality of life.

Attribution-Based Treatment Interventions in Some Achievement Settings

Abstract Purpose This chapter presents empirical evidence on the effects of attributional retraining (AR), a motivation-enhancing treatment that can offset maladaptive explanatory mind-sets arising from adverse learning experiences. The evidence shows that AR is effective for assisting college students to adapt to competitive and challenging achievement settings. Design/methodology/approach This chapter describes the characteristics of AR protocols and details three primary advances in studying AR efficacy in terms of achievement performance, psychosocial outcomes, and processes that mediate AR-performance linkages. The psychological mechanisms that underpin AR effects on motivation and performance are outlined from the perspective of Weiner’s (1974, 1986, 2012) attribution theory. Findings Laboratory and field studies show that AR treatments are potent interventions that have short-term and long-lasting psychosocial, motivation, and performance benefits in achievement settings. Students who participate in AR programs are better off than their no-AR counterparts not just in their cognitive and affective prospects, but they also outperform their no-AR peers in class tests, course grades, and grade-point-averages, and are more persistent in terms of course credits and graduation rates. Originality/value This paper contributes to the emerging literature on treatment interventions in achievement settings by documenting key advances in the development of AR protocols and by identifying the next steps critical to moving the literature forward. Further progress in understanding AR efficacy will rest on examining the analysis of complex attributional thinking, the mediation of AR treatment effects, and the boundary conditions that moderate AR treatment efficacy.

Conflicted Goal Engagement: Undermining Physical Activity and Health in Late Life

OBJECTIVES Pursuing health goals in very old age is a challenging task that may be undermined by conflicted goal engagement involving mismatched primary (behavior-focused) and secondary (motivation-focused) control striving. Our study explored whether one potentially detrimental combination of control strategies (low primary control/high secondary control) compromised 3-year indicators of everyday physical activity and blood oxygen saturation. METHOD We analyzed data from a representative sample of very old adults (n = 107) using simple slope regression analyses that tested the conditional effects of control striving on everyday physical activity and blood oxygen saturation. RESULTS We found a conflicted engagement effect wherein primary control predicted our outcomes only when secondary control was high. The lowest levels of everyday physical activity and blood oxygen saturation were found for older adults high in secondary control but low in primary control. A supplemental mediation analysis suggested everyday physical activity was the mechanism through which conflicted engagement undermined blood oxygen saturation. DISCUSSION Employing health maintenance strategies that promote motivation-focused thinking but discourage goal-directed behaviors (conflicted engagement) may compromise physical activity and health among very old adults. Further research is needed to determine whether control-enhancing interventions promote harmonious goal engagement and better health among these high-risk individuals.

Motivation-focused thinking: Buffering against stress-related physical symptoms and depressive symptomology

Developmental transitions are experienced throughout the life course and necessitate adapting to consequential and unpredictable changes that can undermine health. Our six-month study (n = 239) explored whether selective secondary control striving (motivation-focused thinking) protects against the elevated levels of stress and depressive symptoms increasingly common to young adults navigating the challenging school-to-university transition. Path analyses supplemented with tests of moderated mediation revealed that, for young adults who face challenging obstacles to goal attainment, selective secondary control indirectly reduced long-term stress-related physical and depressive symptoms through selective primary control and previously unexamined measures of discrete emotions. Results advance the existing literature by demonstrating that (a) selective secondary control has health benefits for vulnerable young adults and (b) these benefits are largely a consequence of the process variables proposed in Heckhausen et al.’s (2010) theory.

Promoting Effective Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

University administrators and instructors typically expect their academic programs to educate students to become relatively mature scholars. The American philosopher, Mortimer Adler (Reforming education: the opening of the American mind. Collier Macmillan, New York, 1988), says that a mature scholar is “a person who has a good mind, well disciplined in its processes of inquiring and judging, knowing and understanding, and well furnished with knowledge, well cultivated by ideas” (pp. 109–110). In this chapter, we consider both institutional and student factors that facilitate the realization of this objective. First, universities should provide well-structured courses and programs that are specifically designed to help undergraduates, particularly first-year and other at-risk students, become scholars. Second, students need to develop adaptive ways of thinking—namely, believing that they are “in control” of their academic performances—to excel in their academic work. We review evidence demonstrating that Attributional Retraining treatments can enhance students’ perceived academic control, which increases their motivation, achievement, and persistence.

An attribution-based motivation treatment for low control students who are bored in online learning environments.

Perceived control (PC) and boredom are academic risk factors that undermine motivation and performance in competitive achievement settings (Pekrun, Goetz, Daniels, Stupnisky, & Perry, 2010; Perry, Hladkyj, Pekrun, & Pelletier, 2001). Attribution-based motivation treatments (attributional retraining: AR) can assist students who exhibit single-risk factors, but AR efficacy remains unexamined for students with multiple-occurring risk factors in online learning environments. In a prepost randomized treatment study, AR was administered to students who differed in PC (low, high) and boredom (low, high) in an online, 2-semester course. For students with co-occurring risk factors (low PC–high boredom), AR (vs. no-AR) recipients performed better on a posttreatment course test, had higher control-related beliefs, and were twice as likely to remain in the course. AR (vs. no-AR) treatment effects were absent for students not having co-occurring risk factors. These results advance research on attribution-based motivation treatments for students who exhibit co-occurring academic risk factors in online learning environments.

Paradoxical Effects of Perceived Control on Survival

Objectives Appraising health as controllable is typically thought to be adaptive, but recent evidence suggests the paradoxical possibility that perceived control (PC) can be detrimental. We considered the premise that high PC should have a survival benefit when it is part of an adaptive mindset involving high value (importance) for health, but it might be detrimental when it is part of a mindset comprised of low health value (HV). In addition, we examined whether the survival consequences of PC and HV vary with advancing age. Method Interviews were conducted with a heterogeneous sample of community-dwelling adults (n = 341; 72-99 years) to assess appraisals of control and value in the domain of health. Mortality data were obtained over 12 years from a provincial health registry. Results Both age and HV moderated the PC effect on mortality. The predicted beneficial and detrimental PC effects emerged at younger ages: higher PC predicted longer survival times when health was highly valued but shorter survival times when health was less highly valued. Discussion These findings deepen the knowledge regarding the conditions under which PC is or is not adaptive, suggesting the consequences depend on age and the extent to which health is valued.