A Framework for Understanding How Individuals Monitor Their Motivational States: The Role of Metamotivational Feelings

• In Event: Exploring the Role of Metamotivational Feelings in Students’ Regulation of Their Motivation

Abstract

Aims/Background
According to Miele and Scholer’s (2018) metamotivational framework, there are multiple pathways by which students monitor changes in their task motivation and then decide whether to implement a strategy aimed at bolstering their motivation. One pathway involves responding to experiential cues that capture one’s attention in a bottom-up manner. These cues (referred to as ‘metamotivational feelings’) are thought to emerge automatically when the individual encounters a motivational obstacle (e.g., dull content) that alters their motivational state. Some cues reflect a change in the overall amount or direction of one’s motivation, whereas others provide information about the nature of the obstacle. For example, a student studying for an exam may realize that they are in danger of quitting the activity prematurely after noticing an urge to do something else. They may also notice that this urge is accompanied by a feeling of boredom. Depending on their metamotivational beliefs (i.e., what they believe about how and why motivation changes), the student may attribute the boredom to a lack of interest in the topic or to the way that the information has been presented. In either case, by identifying the obstacle and attributing it to a source, the student is well-positioned to implement a motivation regulation strategy that is tailored to the situation.
In a recent article (Authors, 2024), we extended Miele and Scholer’s (2018) framework by elaborating on the ways that individuals may use metamotivational beliefs to interpret their metamotivational feelings. In the proposed talk, we will discuss the theoretical advancements from the article that are relevant for understanding the phenomena examined in the subsequent talks and point to new directions for research on metamotivational feelings.

Method
This theoretical talk will synthesize concepts and findings from several areas, including research on (a) core affect, emotional differentiation, and boredom from the emotion literature (Russell, 2003; Seah & Coifman, 2022; Westgate, 2020), (b) feelings-as-information from the social psychology literature (Schwarz & Clore, 2007), (c) interoceptive awareness from the cognitive science literature (Nord & Garfinkel, 2022), and metamotivational beliefs from the motivation literature (Miele et al., 2020).

Findings/Discussion
One of the novel ideas that will be discussed is that metamotivational beliefs are rooted in the concepts that people use to label and process their motivational experiences. This suggests that people who think in terms of a broad (vs. narrow) range of motivation concepts may form more nuanced interpretations of their metamotivational feelings and, thus, may be better at deploying situation-specific regulation strategies (Authors, 2024). For instance, a student who distinguishes between two types of boredom (Westgate, 2020) may be disposed to selectively implement an interest enhancement strategy when they perceive boredom as stemming from a lack of engagement, but instead implement a utility-value strategy when boredom seems to stem from a lack of meaning/purpose. Thus, an important direction for research on motivation regulation is to leverage recent research on emotional differentiation (Seah & Coifman, 2022) and construct measures assessing students’ knowledge of and attention to nuanced aspects of their motivational experiences.

Authors

• David B. Miele, Boston College

• Abigail A. Scholer, University of Virginia

• Kentaro Fujita, The Ohio State University