Achievement emotions play important role in motivation
Research on motivation has focused largely on students'
achievement goals and their goal orientations, but a recent study in the
Journal of Educational Psychology says achievement emotions play just
as important a role.
With the exception of test anxiety, achievement emotions have been neglected
in the research on motivation and academic performance, say the authors of this
study. Students experience achievement emotions during task preparation and task
engagement and those emotions can be predicted by students' achievement goal
orientations (e.g., a mastery orientation, a performance orientation or an
avoidance orientation toward tasks), say researchers of this study of 218
undergraduates (147 females and 71 males). Together, achievement goals and
orientations and achievement emotions influence students' academic performance,
they say.
"Although the two perspectives emphasize different variables as focal
constructs (goals vs. emotions), they are best viewed as complementary rather
than mutually exclusive," the authors write. "When integrated, they provide a
more complete portrait of psychological functioning in achievement contexts than
either perspective provides alone."
Researchers assessed students' achievement goals one week prior to a midterm
exam and achievement emotions one day before the exam. Researchers controlled
for gender, social desirability, positive and negative trait affectivity, and
scholastic ability with the results of other assessments. Above and beyond
cognitive ability or motivation, researchers found that emotions (boredom,
anger, enjoyment, hope, pride, anxiety, hopelessness and shame) affect
performance in positive or negative ways.
Some of the effects are not the predictable ones--e.g. enjoyment of learning
did not predict performance, the researchers say. It may be that the enjoyment
associated with a mastery goal orientation led students to de-emphasize the
rote-level learning necessary for performance. Also, while negative emotions of
anger and shame can depress performance, they need not always do so. For some
tasks and some individuals and under some circumstances, these emotions may have
a positive effect on performance.
"Achievement Goals and Achievement Emotions: Testing a Model of Their
Joint Relations With Academic Performance," by Reinhard Pekrun et al., Journal
of Educational Psychology, Volume 1001, Number 1, 2009, pp. 115-135.
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