Poster #50 - The Intergenerational Transmission of Intrinsic Motivation: The Mediating Role of Negative and Controlling Parenting Behaviors

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

Parental engagement and support are beneficial for children’s motivation and engagement in their schooling (Bempechat & Shernoff, 2012). Children are more likely to be motivated to do well in school and obtain higher grades if their parent is more involved in their learning (Cheung and Pomerantz, 2012). Parents who are more autonomously motivated to engage in their child’s learning, such as by helping complete homework, are more likely to have supportive and positive interactions with their children during the completion of the homework and support their child’s motivation to complete homework (Grolnick, 2015; Katz et al., 2011). However, it is unclear how parents’ own motivation for work and preference for challenge when facing difficult tasks are linked to children’s challenge preference. We hypothesize that the intergenerational transmission of intrinsic motivation, including challenge preference, will be mediated by parenting behaviors during a challenging task.

This multi-method study uses self-report and direct assessment of both second graders’ motivation and their parents’ motivation (N = 172). During a laboratory assessment, parents self-reported intrinsic motivation using the Work Preference Inventory (Amabile et al., 1994), and parental challenge preference was directly-assessed on a logic problems task. Children self-reported challenge preference using Harter’s Academic Motivation Scale (Harter, 1981) and child challenge preference was directly assessed as they selected levels of difficulty when completing a series of puzzles (Gilmore et al., 2015). Parents and children then completed tangram puzzles together, and a novel, global coding scheme was used to score the parent-child interaction as they completed the tangrams. A global score of negative/controlling parenting was measured using the average of their leading behaviors, frequency and intensity of negative affect, interruptions, frequent and low-quality guiding behaviors, and poor teamwork (α = .75).

Results demonstrated that the correlation between parent self-report and direct assessment of motivation was significant and larger than correlation for children’s self-report and direct assessment, suggesting self-report may be more accurate for adults. Path analyses showed that parent self-report of intrinsic motivation was directly linked to children’s challenge preference on a puzzle task, such that children chose more challenging puzzles. Further, parent direct assessment of challenge preference was negatively linked to negative/controlling parenting. In turn, observed negative/controlling parenting was linked to lower challenge preference for children on puzzle choice task.

Overall, this study highlights that the intergenerational transmission of motivation is through direct links between parents’ intrinsic motivation and children’s directly-assessed challenge preference, and via reductions in negative and controlling parenting behaviors. This suggests that parents model behaviors around engagement and persistence during challenges both when they encounter challenging situations and via their parenting behaviors when they collaborate with their children on a challenge. This work has important implications for supporting the types of parent-child interactions which encourage children to take risks and persevere when they encounter challenges. Further, our research suggests that parents may be relatively reliable reporters of their own intrinsic motivation, whereas children in second grade may not have the metacognitive skills necessary to assess their motivation and preference for challenge.

Authors

• Riley Bittner, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Kimia Akhavein, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Jenna Elizabeth Finch, University of Nebraska - Lincoln