Chapter 16 Cognitive Factors in Motivation
Interest – finding an activity or topic intriguing and enticing. Intrinsic motivation.
 Personal interest – personal preferences in topics and activities, they’re relatively stable
and consistent
 Situational interest – evoked by something in the environment, perhaps new, unusual or
surprising.
Effects of Interest – effects information processing. The more interest in a topic people devote
more attention and become cognitively engaged
They can relate it to things they already know, interrelating ideas, drawing inferences, forming
visual images, generating their own examples, ad identifying potential applications.
Long term learning and building on future learning
Factors Promoting Interest – (pg493)
Children and adolescents interest – people and culture, nature and current events. Fiction and
fantasy, nonfiction about topics concrete and easy to understand.
Expectancies and Values (494)- expectations for success, related to people’s efforts and
achievement
Value – Person’s belief that there are direct and indirect benefits in performing a task, effect the
choices people make
Effects preschool and early elementary – pursue activities they find interesting and enjoyable
 children and adults – intrinsically motivated behavior occurs only when both high
expectancies and high value are present
Factors –
 Prior successes and failures
 Perceived difficulty of a task, the quality of instruction
 Availability of resources and support
 General work habits
 Amount of effort that will probably be necessary
4 main factors why value might be high or low
 Importance- desirable personal qualities
 Utility – means to a desired goal
 Interest – bring pleasure and enjoyment
 Cost
 Culture – the people in one’s life, everyday communications and activities
Expectancies and values influence each other.
Goals – (pg 496)
Setting goals is an important factor of self-regulated behavior and learning
Check page 496 bottom for examples of goals.
Humans strive to achieve their goals
Core goals – general goals of considerable priority (being a productive member of society)
Achievement Goals – general characteristics exhibited consistently across a variety of tasks

Mastery goals – a desire to achieve competence by acquiring additional knowledge or
mastering a new skill
 Performance goals – a desire to present oneself as competent in the eyes of others
 Performance-approach goals – want to look good and receive favorable judgment from
others
 Performance-avoidance goal – want not to look bad and receive unfavorable judgment
Effects of Achievement Goals – Students with mastery goals tend to engage in the very activities
that will help them learn: See pg 499 People w/mastery goals vs. People w/Performance Goals
Students w/performance goals – may stay away from some of the challenging tasks, they
experience debilitating anxiety about tests and other classroom tasks
Motivation to learn – a tendency to find learning activities meaningful and worthwhile and
attempt to get the maximum benefit
Origins of Achievement Goals – (pg 501)
An instruction environment that encourages mastery goals:
 Teachers describes the intrinsic benefits of learning the skill
 Communicate goals
 Focus student’s attention on the progress being made
Students adopt certain performance goals as a means of avoiding failure, protecting self worth,
or especially if their need for relatedness is high
Practices that lead to Performance based Goals:
 Posting “best” papers on the wall
 Scoring tests on a curve
 Reminding students that good grades are important for college admission
Work avoidance goals- students want to avoid looking bad as they perform classroom tasks,
avoiding those tasks or putting in little effort as possible
Social Goals: social relationships are high priority for students (pg 503)
They affect classroom behavior and academic performance
Career Goals: Young children change these all the time. (Firefighter, pro baseball player)
One recent study found that girl’s career goals were higher than boys.
In Traditional cultures, young people tend to limit themselves to gender-stereotype careers
Coordinating Multiple Goals: (pg 504) people are apt to work on several goals at one time.
Strategies: joining a student study group as a way to satisfy both achievement goals and social
goals
Multiple goals are most successful when they lead a person in the same direction
Attributions: (pg 505)- people various explanations for why they did well or poorly on an exam
for example
School children may attribute their successes and failures to effort, ability, luck, task difficulty,
health, mood, or teacher behavior
Internal Attributes – a good grade is the result of your hard work or low grade is the result of
your lack of ability
Controllable factors- things we can influence or change (not studying for an exam)
 Particular behavior can cause certain events
 Have a sense of competence that you can perform the task
Effects of Attributes:
 Emotional - proud, happy, grateful
 Impacts of reinforcement and punishment – an event is the result of something they
have done or results from something that has been done to them
 Self-efficacy and expectancies – people attribute their successes and failures to stable
factors – put them in the same situation and they would expect similar results
 Effort and Persistence – failure are due to their own lack of effort, when students fail
they believe they have low ability and sometimes stop trying as a result
 Learning Strategies- expectations for future performance clearly affect cognitive
strategies they apply to learning tasks
 Future choices and goals – if students have success in an area they are luckily to pursue
a career in that area
Factors Influencing the Nature of Attributes:
 Age – younger you are the simpler your understanding of attributes
 Situational Cues –characteristics specific to a specific situation
 Patterns of Successes and Failures – those who try and succeed are more likely to
believe that success is the result of internal factors such as effort or high ability
 Those who try and fail are likely to believe that success is due to something beyond their
control
Verbal and Nonverbal Messages from others – attributes from other peoples performance.
Parents, teachers, and peers communicate their attributes for learners’ successes and failures
verbally and explicitly.
 People also communicate their attributes and indirectly their beliefs about a learners
ability level, through the emotions they convey and the extent to which they praise or
criticize performance
 Reactions such as criticizing and anger, convey a message that the learner can do the
task but simply isn’t trying.
 Through the amount of kind help, you provide. Unsolicited help from their teacher
when struggling may communicate the massage that they have low ability and little
control over their own successes and failures
Culture – people background contribute to their attributes
Gender – sometimes they appear in research
Self-protective bias – tend to form attributes that maintain or enhance their sense of selfworth. We tend to attribute successes to internal causes and failure to external causes.
Image movement – attributes that individuals communicate don’t always reflect their true
belief. Face-saving. Saying that they don’t understand or can’t complete an assignment when
they just didn’t put in any effort
Over-time learners gradually develop predictable patterns of attributes and expectations for
their future performance
Explanatory Style: Mastery Orientation versus Learned Helplessness (Pg
517)
The general way in which the person interprets daily events and consequences.
Mastery Orientation – the I-can-do-it attitude, attribute their accomplishments to their own
abilities.
Learned helplessness- I-can’t-do-it Believe their failures reflect their lack of ability.
(example on pg 517)
o Slow to exhibit responses that will yield desirable outcomes
o Difficulty learning new behaviors that would improve environmental
circumstances.
o Tends to be passive, withdrawn, anxious, and depressed
Motivation, Affect, and Self-Regulation (pg 519)
Intrinsically motivated – initiate and persist in activities, more likely to be cognitively engaged
and more likely to use effective strategies
How Self-regulation influences Motivation and Affect (pg 520)
o Aligning assigned tasks w/areas of interest (choose things that interest them when given
the opportunity)
o Setting goals – short and long term goals
o Focus on productive attributes – like good strategies
o Minimize enticing distractions – find a place to concentrate
o Remind themselves of the importance of doing well
o Enhancing the appeal of the task
o Self-imposing consequences
Internalized Motivation – Over time, people gradually adopt behaviors that other individual’s
value. Evolve from 4 factors (Pg 522). Foster work ethic.
Three Conditions that promote the development of internalized motivation:
o Learner operates within a warm, responsive, and supportive environment
o Learner has some autonomy
o Learner operates within a certain degree of structure
Encouraging Cognition that Motivates: (pg 523)
Students:
 learn more when they find the classroom interesting as well as informative
 tend to be more optimistic about their chances of success when they have
environmental support for their efforts
 are more motivated to learn classroom subject matter when they believe it has value for
them personally
 learn more effectively when they set goals for themselves
 mastery goals lead to better performance goals
 classroom activities are more effective when they enable students to meet several goals
at once

optimistic teacher attributes and expectations regarding students’ achievement boost
students’ actual achievement (teachers interact w/students more frequently, create a
warmer classroom environment, provide more opportunity for students to respond,
and give more positive and more specific feedback
Strategies for teachers to maintain optimistic expectations:
o
o
o
Look for strength in every student (even MJ)
Learn about your students backgrounds and home environment
Assume that ability can and often does improve with time, practice, and high
quality instructional practices
o Assess student progress objectively and frequently
o Remember that teachers are can definitely make a difference
 Systematic attribute retraining can positively impact student’s attributes – attributes
can be altered over time. Engage in tasks with occasional failures but mostly successes.
It’s an ongoing process
 Most of the time, and for most students, noncompetitive activities are more motivating
than competitive ones ??? Undesirable consequences of competition:
o Promotes performance goals rather than mastery goals
o Promotes attributes to ability rather than to effort
o For the loser, competition promotes a low sense of competence and diminishes
self-worth
Overall, competitive classrooms lead to lower achievement for most students.

Challenges heighten motivation and minimize boredom (check pg 531 for optimal
conditions )
A Target Mnemonic for Motivational Strategies (pg 531)
Six target principals for motivation:
Task, autonomy, recognition, grouping, evaluation, and time (see chart on PG 532)