Using Experiments to Explore a Novel Motivational Construct: The Case of Effort Source Beliefs

• In Event: Exploring Processes That Underlie College Students' Motivational Challenges

Abstract

Objective and Significance
Much of the research on motivation within educational psychology is correlational in nature. This reliance on correlations is not problematic when the mechanisms associated with the motivational constructs in question have been established. However, when exploring a novel construct, experiments play an important role in mapping out the pathways by which this construct is likely to influence important outcomes. Thus, the open question addressed in the present talk is: how can the knowledge generated by experiments inform motivation research conducted in authentic academic contexts? In answering this question, we discuss research examining students’ effort source beliefs. We show that these beliefs are predictive of ability judgments and, thus, are likely to have important implications for students’ achievement motivation.

Theoretical Framework
One particularly salient cue when forming ability judgments is the amount of effort people expend when working on academic tasks. While students sometimes view effort and ability as inversely related (such that working hard implies a low level of ability), at other times they view them as positively associated. When trying to account for this difference, researchers (e.g., Dweck) have tended to focus on how students conceptualize ability (see Muenks & Miele, 2017). In contrast, we posit that the difference may also depend on students’ beliefs about effort (Muenks, Miele, & Wigfield, 2016). Specifically, we distinguish between two types of beliefs that people hold about the source of an individual’s effort: (a) the belief that this effort was an automatic response to basic task demands (i.e., task-elicited effort) and (b) the belief that it originated from the intention to go beyond these demands (i.e., self-initiated effort).

Method
We will discuss two studies in which undergraduates were presented with vignettes that described a student as working hard or not working hard on an academic task in a particular domain. For each vignette, participants rated how much ability they believed the student possessed in that domain. Later, they completed a novel scenario-based measure that assessed their tendency to interpret effort in the domain as being task-elicited or self-initiated. While both studies examined judgments of other students’ abilities, Study 1 also examined judgments of participants’ own ability. Although these studies have been reported in an advance online publication (Miele, Browman, & Vasilyeva, 2019), they will be discussed for the first time in relation to the symposium focus on students’ motivational struggles, and use of experimental studies to address these. In addition, we will present exploratory analyses not reported in our paper.

Results and Significance
Generally participants’ effort source beliefs interacted with the manipulation of perceived effort level. For the most part, participants who viewed effort as task-elicited rated the ability of the students who expended little effort more highly than did participants who viewed effort as self-initiated. This was not the case for ratings of the harder-working students. In addition, we will discuss an exploratory component of Study 1 (not described in our paper): the significant/insignificant associations between effort source beliefs and various motivation- and strategy-related constructs.

Authors

• David B. Miele, Boston College

• Alexander S. Browman, Boston College

• Marina Vasilyeva, Boston College