Reduced Effort Cost as a Mechanism Underlying the Effect of Interest on Academic Engagement

• In Event: Extending the Expectancy-Value Model: Definitions and Functions of Cost in Students' Choice, Engagement, and Performance

Abstract

Theoretical Framework

Expectancy-value theory has contributed to our understanding of task value in students’ choice and persistence (Wigfield & Cambria, 2010). However, researchers have typically paid undifferentiated attention to the “overall” task value, rather than separate attention to each of the task value components. We examined the unique psychological mechanism associated with interest in predicting academic engagement via effort cost by assessing interest, utility, and effort cost separately as correlated yet independent components of task value.
We propose that the presence of positive emotion differentiates interest from other more cognitively based task value components (Hidi, Renninger, & Krapp, 2004) and this feature allows interest to promote resource replenishment and thus to reduce the negative perception of effort cost for engaging in the task (O’Keefe & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014; Thoman, Smith, & Silvia, 2011). Because of this unique function, we argue, individuals remain engaged in the task they are interested in even if it requires a significant amount of effort.

Objectives

The first purpose was to examine whether interest and utility would differ in their contribution to academic engagement. The second purpose was to investigate the role effort cost plays in mediating the relationship between both interest and utility and academic engagement.

Study 1

Methods
Participants (546 eighth and ninth graders) reported their interest, perceived utility, perceived effort cost, effortful engagement (deep cognitive engagement and persistence), surface engagement, and disengagement in mathematics.

Results
As Figure 1 shows, interest was a stronger predictor of effortful engagement and disengagement than utility was. Only interest was a significant negative predictor of effort cost. As perceived effort cost increased, surface engagement and disengagement also increased. Effort cost thus partially mediated the association between interest and cognitive engagement.

Study 2

Methods
An experiment was conducted to test the causal influence of interest on the perception of effort cost and engagement. Four classes of 4th graders were randomly assigned to the interest condition (n = 49) or the control condition (n = 50). Division problems constituted the experimental task. Interest was manipulated by presenting game-based division problems (see Figure 2). Figure 3 summarizes the experimental procedures.

Results
Students perceived significantly higher effort cost in the control condition than in the interest condition. By contrast, persistence and intentions to reengage in the division task were significantly higher in the interest than the control condition. Subsequent analysis demonstrated that effort cost partially mediated the effect of interest on students’ intentions to reengage, extending the results of Study 1.

Significance

The present study demonstrated how interest, perceived utility, and perceived effort cost worked together in determining the type and degree of academic engagement. Compared to perceived utility of a task, interest in the task was a stronger predictor of not only students’ cognitive engagement and persistence but also students’ perceptions of effort cost. Only interest, but not utility, led to the reduced perception of effort cost, which in turn promoted deep cognitive engagement, persistence, and intentions of re-engagement, while lowering surface engagement and disengagement in the task.

Authors

• Juyeon Song, Korea University

• Sung-Il Kim, Korea University

• Mimi Bong, Korea University