Psychological Perspectives Chapter 4 Notes

Chapter 4 Motivation: The direction and intensity of one’s efforts. Direction of Effort: Refers to whether an individual seeks out, approaches, or is attracted to certain situations. Intensity of Effort: Refers to how much effort a person puts forth in a particular situation.  Direction and intensity of effort are closely related. Most people fit fit motivation into one of three general orientations that parallel the approaches to personality: 1. Trait-Centered orientation or view. 2. Situation-Centered orientation or view. 3. Interactional orientation or view. Trait-centered view / Participant-centered View: Contends that motivated behavior is primarily a function of individual characteristics. Situation-centered View: Contends that motivation level is determined primarily by situation. Interactional View: Contend that motivation results neither solely from participant factors nor solely from situational factors. Guideline 1: Consider Both Situations and Traits in Motivating People. When attempting to enhance motivation, consider both situational and personal factors. Key Point: To enhance motivation, you must analyze and respond not only to a player’s personality but also to the interaction of personal and situational characteristics. Because motivations may change over time, you should continue to monitor people's motives for participation even months after they’ve begun. Guideline 2: Understand People’s Multiple Motives for Involvement. Self-Determination Theory: Contends that all people are motivated to satisfy three general needs: 4. Competence - A sense of effectiveness in what one does. 5. Autonomy - A sense of control over and value in one’s behaviors and goals. 6. Social Connectedness - A sense of belonging or attachment to other people.     Motives:  People participate for more than one reason.  People have competing motives for involvement.  People have both shared and unique motives.  Gender differences in motivation.  Cultural emphasis affects motives. Joining Exercise:  Health factors.  Weight loss.  Fitness.  Self-change.  Feeling better. Continuing Exercise:  Enjoyment.  Liking instructor.  Liking type of activity.  Social factors. Sport Participation:  Improving skills.  Having fun.  Being with friends.  Experiencing thrills and excitement.  Achieving success.  Developing fitness. Because people have such a diverse range of motives for sport and exercise participation, you need to be aware of your students’, athletes’, or exercisers’ motives for involvement. Following these guidelines should improve your awareness: 7. Observe the participants and see what they like and do not like about the activity. 8. Informally talk to others who know the student, athlete, or exerciser and solicit information about the person’s motives for participation. 9. Periodically ask the participants to write out or tell you their reasons for participation. Key Point: To enhance motivation, structure teaching and coaching environments to meet the needs of all participants. Guideline 3: Change the Environment to Enhance Motivation. Knowing why people become involved in sport and exercise is important, but this information alone is insufficient to enhance motivation.     Provide both competitive and recreational opportunities. Provide multiple motives and opportunities. Adjust your approach to individuals in groups. Give athletes some choices or control in the environment.  To enhance motivation, structure teaching and coaching environments to meet the needs of all participants. Structuring a situation to enhance motivation may mean constructing an environment to meet multiple needs. An important but difficult component of structuring sport and exercise environments is individualizing coaching and teaching.   Guideline 4: Influence Motivation. Your actions can influence the motivational environment. Sometimes you may need to act more upbeat than you feel. If thats not possible, inform your students that you’re not quite yourself so that they don’t misinterpret your behavior.    Leader actions and interactions influence participant motivation. Infuse variety in programming. Model the behavior you want to see.  Another effective way to influence motivation in physical activity settings is by infusing variety into exercise programming and creating optimal competitive conditions. Guideline 5: Use Behavior Modification to Change Participants’ Undesirable Motives. We have emphasized the need for structuring the environment to facilitate participant motivation because the exercise leader, trainer, coach, or teacher usually has more direct control over the environment than over the motives of individuals. Key Point: Use behavior modification techniques to change undesirable motives and strengthen weak motivation. Achievement Motivation: Refers to a person’s efforts to master a task, achieve excellence, overcome obstacles, perform better than others, and take pride in exercising talent.  A persons orientation to strive for task success, persists in the face of failure, and experience pride in accomplishments. Competitiveness: A disposition to strive for satisfaction when making comparisons with some standard of excellence in the presence of evaluating others. Need Achievement Theory: Is an interactional view that considers both personal and situational factors as important predictors of behaviors.     You should recognize two primary considerations in need achievement theory:  The probability of success in the situation or task.  The incentive value of success. Basically the probability of success depends on whom you compete against and the difficulty of the task.  The third component in need achievement theory is the resultant tendency or behavioral tendency, derived by considering an individuals achievement motive levels in relation to situational factors. Key Points: Achievement motivation is the tendency to strive for success, persist in the face of failure, and experience pride in accomplishments. Achievement motivation in sport and exercise settings focuses on self-competition, whereas competitiveness influences behavior in socially evaluative situations. High achievers select challenging tasks, prefer intermediate risks, and perform better when they are being evaluated. Low achievers avoid challenging tasks, avoid intermediate risks, and perform worse when they are being evaluated. Attribution Theory: Focuses on how people explain their successes and failures. Stability: A factor to which one attributes success or failure is either fairly permanent or unstable. Locus of Causality: A factor is either external or internal to the individual. Locus of Control: A factor either is or is not under the individual’s control. Key Point: How performers explain or attribute their performance affects their expectations and emotional reactions, which in turn influence future achievement motivation. Attribution theory focuses on how individuals explain their successes and failures. Achievement Goal Theory: One is motivated by one’s “interpretation” of what it takes to achieve success. Task Goal Orientation: In which the focus is on improving relative to her own past performances. Ego Orientation: Characterized by an athlete whose actions are primarily motivated to demonstrate normative competence such as beating an opponent, demonstrating superior ability, and/or showing off. Key Point: An ego goal orientation focuses on comparing performance with and defeating others, whereas a task goal orientation focuses on comparing performance with personal standards and personal improvement. It is best to adopt a task orientation, which emphasizes comparisons with your own performance standards rather than with the performances of others, especially if one is learning a set of important physical activity skills. Entity View: Adopt an ego goal focus. Where they see their ability as fixed and unable to be changed through effort. Incremental Focus: Where they adopt a task goal perspective and believe they can change their ability through hard work and effort. Competence Motivation Theory: Also contends that athletes’ perceptions of control work along with self-worth and competence evaluations to influence their motivations. Achievement motivation and competitiveness are believed to develop in three stages. These stages are sequential- that is, you must move through one stage before progressing to the next. Not everyone makes it to the final stage, and the age at which people reach each stage varies considerable. The three stages are as follows:    Autonomous Competence Stage.  Thought to occur before the age of 4 years, children focus on mastering their environment and on self-testing. Social Comparison Stage.  Begins at about the age of 5 years, a child focuses on directly comparing his performance with that of others. Integrated Stage:  Involves both social comparison and Autonomous achievement strategies.  The person who fully masters this integration known when it is appropriate to compete and compare herself with others when it is appropriate to adopt selfreferenced standards. Learned Helplessness: An acquired condition in which a person perceives that his or her actions have no effect on the desired outcome of a task or skill.           Need Supportive Behaviors Providing choice within specific limits. Providing rationales for rules & instruction. Distinguishing & acknowledging athletes’ feelings. Allowing for independent work. Providing information & noncontrolling feedback. Avoiding overt control through criticisms & tangible rewards. Preventing ego-involvement.       Need Thwarting Behaviors Emphasis on tangible rewards. Controlling competency feedback. Excessive personal control. Intimidation behaviors: verbal abuse & physical punishment. Use of conditional regard to shape desired athlete behavior. Promotion of ego-involvement. Motivation is a key variable in both learning and performance contexts. Physical and psychological factors beyond motivation influence behavior and must be considered. Some motivational factors are more easily influenced than others.