Cognition as a Motivational Force Flashcards
Plans, goals and mindsets as well as personal control
How can cognition work as a motivational force?
Cognition is a variety of mental construct
- Beliefs
- Judgements
- Plans
Use of cognition to spring to action, thus a motivational force
- change the way you think = change your motivation
What function does a plan have?
- To create congruency with present state and ideal state
- Mismatch between those states
- Plans used for discrepancy reduction (negative feedback loop, discrepancy gets smaller) and creation(feed forward, set higher goals)
-Discrepancy = wanting to change
The TOTE Unit
A model that shows the cognitive mechanism on how plans energize and direct behavior
- Test, Operate, Test, Exit
- Common in every-day-life
The TOTE Unit - Test
Compare the present state with ideal state, if incongruent then to operate
The TOTE Unit - Operate
Act on environment to realize ideal state
The TOTE Unit - Exit
Ideal state and present state is in congruety with ech other
Are plans static and whats the humans part in plans?
- Plans are a dynamic process
- Humans are active decision makers
Do I want to work towards ideal state?
Do I want to change and revision my plan? - Adjustments, revise a plan, overcome new obstacles
The states discrepancy - Progress
Satisfactory progress and more progress than anticipated
- Enlicit positive emotions; Hope, excitment, joy
Unsatisfactory progress
- Enlicit negative emotion; furstration, sadness, depression
What are goals?
Something an individual want to accomplish
- A desire
- Future-oriented cognitive representation
- Energized behavior
Goals - Components
- Difficulty(energy)
- Specificity(direct)
To decrease ambiguity - Congruence(sustain)
All goals are not equal, what is important for me?
To improve performance
What can go wrong with goal setting?
- Does not increase performance on tasks that are inherently interesting
- Goal conflict
One plan = One goal (works best) - External goals can be seen as controlling, pressure-inducing and intrusive
- Can lead to self-regulation problems such as getting started, staying on track and resuming after interruption due to being too controlling
What is a mindset?
- A cognitive framework
- Guiding one’s attention, information processing, decision making, perception of effort, success and personal qualities
- Fully adopted, can be seen as a cognitive motivational system
Deliberative - Implemental
Two ways of thinking that we use in goal-setting goal-striving
Deliberative
- Open-minded way of thinking
- Considering the desirability and feasibility of a rang of goals one might or might not pursue
Implemental
- Close-minded way of thinking
- What information is relevant to my goal
- Sheilding against non-goal-related consideration
Promotion - Prevention
Different type of regulatory orientation one might acquire during goal striving
- Focusing on improvement or security
- What is success and failure?
- Need both for optimal goal striving in groups
Promotion
Focus on advancing the self towards ideals by adopting and eager locomotion behavioral strategy
- Open-mindedness
- Exploration
- Success energize motivation
Prevention
Preveting the self from not maintaining one’s duties and responsibilities by adopting a vigilant behavioral strategy
- Cautious
- Protecting one’s commitments
- Whats the right thing?
- Avoiding failure energizes behavior
Growth-Fixed
Two contrasting ways of thinking about the nature of one’s personal qualities
- Differences in effort, strategy and attributions
- These mindsets can be learned, product of ones social experiences, or trained
- Influence the type of goal you pursue
Growth
Personal qualities are malleable, changeable and can be develop through effort
- More motivational
- Mastery goals
Fixed
Personal qualities are fixed and innate, cannot be changed
- Performance goals
What assumption does Cognitive Dissonance have?
A person is competent, moral and reasonable
- A consistency in information and behavior that confirms ones belief of themselves
Cognitive Dissonance
Where ones belief about themselves is being questioned
Cognitive Dissonance - Process
- Arousing situational events
- Insufficient justification or effort - Produces inconsistenncy between cognition
- Dissonance motivation
- Implement strategy to reduce inconsistency
- Dissonance is reduced or eliminated
What is personal control?
- A form of expectancy
How likely will an event occur; efficacy and outcome - Coping with failure
Appraisal
Social process - Future-oriented often
- Links with motivation
What is self-efficacy?
- Judgement on how well or poorly one will cope with a situation
- Orchestrating skills and coping resources
To test our skills
Self-Efficacy - Shaped by
- Personal behavior History
Have I done it before? - Vicarious experiences
Observing others, how do they react - Verbal persuasion
Support or bribing - Physiological state
Pain, sleep deprivation
Self-Efficacy - Behavior
- Choice
Approach vs avoidance
What to go for and which setting - Effort and persistence
How much and for how long
Quick recovery - Thinking and decision making
- Emotionality
Strong or weak, doubts?
How can one cope with failure?
- View it as a challenge or as a threat
Failure - Challenge
Leads to mastery coping
- Problem solving
Remains task-oriented
- Guidance seeking
- Help seeking
- Is adaptive functioning
Failure - Threat
Leads to defensive coping, giving up
- Blame others
- Self-denigration
- Rumination
- Maladaptive functioning
Mastery Motivational Orientation
A hard, resitant portayal of the self during encounters of failure
- Failure feedback can be helpful and constructive
- I influence my outcome
Helpless Motivational Orientation
A fragile view of oneself during failures
- Feedback is a sign of personal inadequacy
- Other influence my outcome
- Learned helplessness
- Leads to deficits in;
Motivational - willingness to try
Learning - pessimistic mindset
Emotional - affective disruptions
What is Implementation Intentions?
- If-Then
When, where and how to achieve the goal - Simple actions plans
- Need to be able to anticipate situations that can cause a problem
- To make goal striving a habit
What is a mastery modeling program?
Expert leads a group of novices to cope with a fearsome situation
- Effective coping, enhance weak points of novices
- Small steps and gradually introduced to real life scenario
- Cooperative learning groups
- Expert is confident, regulate the others behavior
Attributional Styles
What you use as the causal explanation to why something happened
- Explanatory
- Pessimistic style
Giving up, academic failure
- Optimistic
Takes credit for their success, but no to little blame for mistakes
