Motivation: Theory and Research

Harold F. O'Neil, Michael Drillings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136478260
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Designed for professionals and graduate students in the personality/social, military, and educational psychology, and assessment/evaluation communities, this volume explores the state of the art in motivational research for individuals and teams from multiple theoretical viewpoints as well as their effects in both schools and training environments. The great majority of education and training R&D is focused on the cognitive dimensions of learning, for instance, the acquisition and retention of knowledge and skills. Less attention has been given in the literature and in the design of education and training itself to motivational variables and their influence on performance. As such, this book is unique in the following montage of factors: * a focus on motivation of teams or groups as well as individuals;
* an examination of the impact of motivation on performance (and, thus, also on cognition) rather than only on motivation itself;
* research in training as well as educational settings. The data reported were collected in various venues including schools, laboratories and field settings. The chapter authors are the researchers that, in many cases, have defined the state of the art in motivation.

1	Introduction to Motivation: Theory and Research

Michael Drillings
Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

Harold F. O’Neil, Jr.
University of Southern California/CRESST

There are several well-documented trends that will affect education and training now and in the future: introduction of large numbers of immigrants into the United States; a reduction in the 17–20 year-old group between 1980 and 1996; an increased participation rate by women and minorities in the labor force; increasing use of English as a second language; increased requirements for second language learning; and a possible increased use of robotics to accomplish unskilled jobs (Johnston & Packer, 1987; O’Neil, Allred, & Baker, 1992). Further, several issues specific to the Armed Forces also magnify these general trends for Department of Defense education and training. These issues include reduction in force structure, reduction in manpower and personnel, decreasing budgets for training, increasing equipment complexity, and increased use of the Reserves (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, 1992; National Research Council, 1992).

Thus, students will have to master an increased variety of complicated subject material, to master an increased set of sophisticated skills, and to perform these skills at higher standards in ever-changing contexts. We expect that these trends will continue well into the 21st century for both the military and civilian sectors.

A FRAMEWORK FOR MOTIVATION

The great majority of education and training research and development is focused on the cognitive dimensions of learning, for instance, the acquisition and retention of declarative and procedural knowledge. Less attention has been given in the literature and in the design of education and training itself to motivational variables and their influence on performance. Motivational variables, such as effort, anxiety, and curiosity, play a significant role in performance at all stages. They influence the rate and ease with which individuals acquire new competencies, the quality of inference that can be made from testing trainee achievement, the likelihood that the individual will actually use trained skills in the target context, and the resistance of knowledge and skills to degradation under conditions of stress and other unanticipated changes in situation.

In this volume, we view motivational variables in a fairly traditional framework of individual differences (addressing the predisposition of individuals to have particular feelings and reactions) and environmental factors (addressing the likelihood that given conditions will engender particular feelings).

Individual Differences

Individual differences have been conceived to vary along two dimensions: (a) the trait of the individual, that is, the predisposition to manifest a state across a wide range of contexts and conditions; and (b) the state of the individual, that is, affective reactions that vary in intensity, fluctuate over time, and result from specific environmental conditions and level of the trait that an individual possesses. A common example of this distinction is in the area of anxiety (O’Neil, Baker, & Matsuura, 1992; Sieber, O’Neil, & Tobias, 1977; Spielberger, 1975, 1980), where first an individual’s propensity to be anxious is determined (trait anxiety); then, his or her general disposition to be anxious in a specific setting of taking achievement tests (trait test anxiety); and finally, the individual’s actual anxiety levels in the situation when taking tests of different sorts (state test anxiety).

Although the formulation of descriptive typologies for analyzing individual differences has occupied many psychologists (Snow, 1989a, 1989b; Snow & Jackson, this volume), others have concentrated their attention on documenting the influence of such variables, such as anxiety, on performance (e.g., Franken & O’Neil, this volume; Morris, Davis, & Hutchings, 1981; O’Neil & Fukumura, 1992), on assessing the interactions between such individual differences, such as visualization, and training conditions (Duesbury, 1992; Kyllonen, Lohman, & Snow, 1984), and on enhancing positive effects of such motivational variables as curiosity (Spielberger & Starr, this volume) or ameliorating through interventions the negative effects of such affective variables (e.g., anxiety) on performance (Hembree, 1988; Meichenbaum & Butler, 1980).

Environmental Factors

A number of environmental factors can influence motivational states. Perhaps most obvious for training environments are task characteristics such as content, difficulty, pacing, ambiguity, and so on. For many researchers, however, the most powerful agents in the environment are other people. The social mediation of motivational variables, self-confidence, persistence, risk-taking, and anxiety has been well acknowledged in the literature of social psychology for the last half-century. But the specific functions of teamwork and strategies for team-building are less well known (Swezey, Meltzer, & Salas, this volume), although analysts have proposed largely unvalidated frameworks for investigation (Fleishman & Zaccaro, 1992).

Boundary Conditions

Although it is common to conceptualize motivation as feelings connoting emotional or visceral reactions versus cognitive dimensions such as thinking, the boundaries between these two classes are in fact rather blurry and may be explained from a number of perspectives. First, the fragility of the distinctions is due in part to the documented relationships between certain affective and cognitive variables. For example, the relationship between need achievement and performance (Atkinson, 1974; Spangler, 1992) is well known as is the relationship between will (volition) and cognition (Snow & Jackson, this volume). A second reason for the blurring of categories is the view that many affective states are driven by cognitive control by the individual (Locke & Latham, this volume). Researchers and clinicians have also documented the impact of various strategies to develop the individual’s control of affective states. These strategies include anxiety training programs (O’Neil & Richardson, 1977; Spielberger & Vagg, 1987), creativity training programs (e.g., Glynn, Britton, Semrud-Clikeman, & Muth, 1989), cognitive restructuring (Wise & Haynes, 1983), and attribution training programs (Graham, this volume). The fact that cognitive processes are conceived to operate to enhance or inhibit affective states raises questions about the inherent separation of the dimensions.

A third element in the erosion of boundaries inheres in the conceptualization of particular variables themselves. For example, is curiosity a cognitively enabled construct? How much do you need to know (prior knowledge) to be curious? How do puzzling or other logically dissonant task characteristics stimulate will? How much of curiosity is under direct cognitive control? Consider the variable of creativity. How much of creativity is knowledge-driven? How much do risk-taking and self-confidence contribute to creative behavior? The area of self-regulation also illustrates the merging of affective and cognitive dimensions (O’Neil, Sugrue, Abedi, Baker, & Golan, 1992). For example, is the propensity to plan and check principally an affective characteristic (finickiness) or a cognitive one (application of procedural knowledge)? Another set of questions deserving of more serious research concerns the impact of cultural factors on motivational states including differential effects of child-rearing and role expectation on motivational variables (e.g., Hawkins, this volume; Rueda & Moll, this volume).

Needs

If our goal is to develop individuals and groups that are capable, willing, and able to perform complex tasks under a wide range of conditions, attention must be devoted to determining training and maintenance conditions that will promote such abilities. While there are well known competing frameworks and strategies for the design of education and training to achieve cognitive outcomes, no comparable framework exists for training on the motivational dimension.

Alternative “training” strategies that emphasize extremely short interventions are much admired and applied by the business community. One common strategy is the use of motivational speakers to inspire and inculcate aspirations and values. These events are epitomized by Dodger coach Tommy Lasorda, who routinely provides the message “Ya’ really gotta wanna” and other pithy comments to communicate the importance of motivation, caring, quality control, and other virtues. Motivation by quick, charismatic fix is the general idea. A related and similarly brief intervention involves the workshop focused on the transmission of a few basic precepts for application, such as the six steps to improve customer satisfaction, creativity and pride, etc. Rare, of course, is the availability of evidence, other than testimonial, about the impact of such strategies.

Yet, questions about training goals and strategies in the area of motivation and related motivational variables remain to be addressed in a coherent way, with a view to applications. This is one reason this volume on motivation was created.

ABOUT THIS VOLUME

This volume is divided into three major sections: Theoretical Approaches, Motivation of Groups, and Motivation of Individuals. What follows is a brief description of each chapter within the three major sections. The descriptions are meant to provide a “roadmap” for readers of different interests.

Theoretical Approaches

In their chapter, Locke and Latham provide a historical backdrop for the entire section. They identify goals as a powerful motivator. They present convincing evidence that the simplest reason for why some people perform better than others, controlling for ability and knowledge, is that they have different performance goals. Their exposition of this topic suggests ways to use goals effectively in applied settings. In general, the best performance is generated by assignment or adoption of challenging but achievable goals.

In the second chapter of this section, Sandra Graham presents some of her recent motivational research in the context of attribution theory (Weiner, 1992). The basic premise of this theory is that people attribute reasons to their performance, and such reasons determine the subsequent performance. This social cognitive approach to motivation is concerned with an individual’s representation of his or her environment as a determinant of how he or she strives for achievement. In the context of this theory, Graham has investigated the implications of different feedback (e.g., praise vs. blame) that teachers give minority students and how this feedback influences self-perceived ability and effort. She also addresses various discipline problems, showing here, too, that attribution theory makes meaningful predictions. She describes her school-based cognitive instructional program to reduce peer-directed aggression.

In Chapter 4, McCombs explores the role of reflective self-awareness and understanding of self as an agent, which, she states, underlies performance and motivation. She focuses on beliefs as a basic set of filters (schemata) through which all information is acted on. She also discusses how various theoretical approaches can be used to design measures of motivation, and she suggests interventions to enhance such motivation. Research findings with military populations are also presented.

Snow and Jackson (Chapter 5) expand on the often neglected role of volition (e.g., will) in motivation. They review the constructs and measures that seem promising for research and evaluation. Such constructs include achievement orientation, anxiety, interests and styles, action controls, and effort. For example, in the area of achievement motivation, persistence and value are key constructs in the general area of conative constructs in this chapter. Persistence relates to the energy with which an individual pursues a goal. Value relates to the significance of the goal that the individual is seeking. An individual will pursue a highly valued goal with greater diligence. The authors present several taxonomies that both help to structure the literature in the area and suggest various R&D activities.

Both Hawkins (Chapter 6) and Rueda and Moll (Chapter 7) address how characteristics of individuals are based on social and cultural contexts, and, further, how such experiences help to determine people’s ability to profit from learning. In both cases, the authors address the role of the greater society in which the individual lives and its subsequent effect on learning. Hawkins discusses how motivational factors in Asia differ from those in Western society and the subsequent effect on learning. He provides a cultural rationale of why Westerners may stereotype Asians, especially Japanese, as harder working, more disciplined, quiet, overachievers. He suggests that a main cultural influence is Confucianism in both its traditional and modem expressions. Rueda and Moll offer a sociocultural approach to motivation, suggesting that it is socially negotiated, socially distributed, and context specific. The influence of Vygotsky on their ideas is acknowledged. What a person finds motivating may depend on the culture in which the individual develops and the situation in which he or she acts. The authors provide examples from their work with Latino children. This work is an interesting blend of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Motivation of Groups

In Chapter 8, Swezey, Meltzer, and Salas provide an intellectual framework for the entire Section II. One of the notable characteristics of the military and industry is the degree to which tasks are performed in teams. The area of collaborative learning in the civilian sector is a similar context. Although the role of individual motivation is certainly important to team performance, the interaction with other individuals completes the concept of motivation. Swezey, Meltzer, and Salas are among the first to study team motivation. They describe three issues of team motivation and goals: First, the goals of an individual team member may not be the goals of the team itself; second, individuals may not share the same goals; and third, there are varying interdependencies among team and individual goals. The authors provide both theoretical and empirical research on the factors that affect team motivation (e.g., team structure, cohesion).

The Army has generally assumed that both good leadership and highly motivated troops are necessary for effective combat operations. However, there was little understanding of the underlying relationship between motivation and leadership. Siebold (Chapter 9) describes research conducted with small groups of combat soldiers performing combat tasks in simulated battles. Siebold found that highly motivated troops were effective only when well-led. In fact, surprisingly, motivated troops actually performed less well than less motivated troops when they were poorly led. A further understanding of these relationships will be of immense importance to organizations in general.

In Chapter 10, Banks describes his research designed to better understand why motivational interventions sometimes fail to be reflected in performance gains. He identifies resistance as being a significant factor in defining the effectiveness of performance. This construct addresses the issue of why some individuals with sufficient ability and strong motivation do not perform well under certain supervisory conditions. Banks also describes a series of effects that he has observed when the similarity between individuals and their supervisors is systematically varied across gender and across race.

Franken and O’Neil (Chapter 11) examine to what degree trait and state anxiety influenced the performance of individuals and teams during high and low stress scenarios in a Navy team simulator. The environment of their research involved simulation in which performance of teams was assessed in lieu of the actual system. The simulator used in their research is the U.S. Navy’s means of qualifying its antisubmarine warfare teams as combat-ready. The authors discuss their findings in terms of both cognitive (e.g., metacognition) and affective (e.g., anxiety) processes for both individuals and teams.

Motivation of Individuals

Spielberger and Starr (Chapter 12) provide a review of theory and research in curiosity. They view curiosity as reflecting an intense desire to seek out, explore, and understand new things in the environment. They review procedures for measuring curiosity as both a trait and state. Further, they offer a new theoretical position, an optimal stimulation/dual process theory of exploratory behavior. Finally, they report the findings of several empirical studies investigating the interactive effects of curiosity and anxiety.

In their chapter on measuring creativity, O’Neil, Abedi, and Spielberger review the literature on the nature, measurement...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction to Motivation: Theory and Research
• I Theoretical Approaches
• II Motivation of Groups
• III Motivation of Individualst
• Author Index
• Subject Index