Psychological needs: Competence Flashcards
What is the need for competence?
The psychological need to be effective in one’s interactions with the environment
It reflects the desire to exercise and extend one’s skills and abilities
What does competence need satisfaction look like?
feelings of effectance, mastery, making progress
Increased motivation and engagement, enhanced well-being and positive emotions, increased self-efficacy and confidence
What does competence need frustration look like?
decreased motivation and engagement
Reduced well-being, negative emotions, burnout
Behavioural maladjustment
What are the four key practices of competence support?
1) clear expectations
2) progress-enabling guidance
3) Optimal challenges
4) Informational feedback
Describe clear expectations
Picking a goal to strive for or a standard of excellence to pursue so the person know what competence looks like
Make it clear what “good” performance look like
Describe progress-enabling guidance
Offer how-to instruction, worked out examples, models to emulate, tips and strategies, resources, and reminders
What are optimal challenges?
- require you to stretch your capacities, but still feel achievable
- studies show that moderately difficult tasks are the most enjoyable because it builds competence
What is informational feedback?
Constructive feedback helps people adjust their strategies and performances into a clear path to future progress
How can we give constructive criticism?
Quality assessment – highlight strengths and progress to boost confidence and motivation
Identifying weakness- be specific, don’t overgeneralize
Actionable advice
Encouraging self-reflection
Bolster sense of control
Where does authentic sense of competence come from?
Authentic competence comes from person’s own performance & effort, not external praise & rewards
What is directive support vs autonomy support?
Directive: advice, reminders, and problem-solving
- can be useful, but may backfire and feel intrusive and undermine motivation and competence
Autonomy: listening, understanding, encouraging self-determination
- may lead to better outcomes in goal achievement, goal internalization, resilence, and well-being .
What does research suggest about directive versus autonomous goal support?
STUDY: Participants listed multipple personal goals and were followed over a period of 3 months
RESULT: autonomy support significantly positively related to both self-reported and other reported goal progress in both friendships and romantic relationships
–> mediated by autonomy Directive support not significantly related to better goal progress, relationship quality, or well-being
What is invisible support?
Support that goes unnoticed by the recipient but nevertheless exerts positive effects on recipient
Summarize the findings of the Bolger et al. (2000) invisible support study (where participants were writing the New York State Bar Exam)
Daily Diary study of couples where one partner was preparing for NY Bar exam.
- Partners reported daily provision of emotional support
Examinees: reported daily reciept of emotional support and distress
RESULT: reports of support provision associated with examinees’ decreases in depression while support reciept associated with increases
The most benefical condition was when support was provided but not noticed by participant.
Why might visible support undermine individuals’ well-being
Visual support seemed to increase feelings of stress
– there is a threat of efficacy, that your partner doesn’t think you can handle something.
Visual support can undermine our sense of COMPETENCE
Study: Ps assigned a stressful task, a confederate then supported the person either very visibly or invisibly.
RESULT: visible support inc stress
What does the effectiveness of visible and invisible support depend on?
Our relatedness needs! The extent to which we feel understood, validated, and cared for. Also competence durrr
What is cognitive evaluation theory?
A framework for predicting the effects that any extrinsic event will have on motivation taking competence and autonomy into account.
Believes that external events have 2 functions:
1) control behaviour- dec intrinsic motivation, interferes with learning quality, self-regulation undermined
2) inform competence- increases intrinsic motivation, enhances high quality learning, enhances self-regulation
Whichever function is MORE SALIENT determines how an external event will affect extrinsic motivation
What is praise?
A form of reward that doesn’t necessarily undermine intrinsic motivation
How does cognitive evaluation theory apply to praise?
Praise can be used to control behaviour by focusing on meeting external expectations rather than personal achievement, but this can feel pressuring and reduce intrinsic motivation
Praise can also be used to inform someone about their competence by focusing on specific skills and effort, reinforcing a sense of mastery and competence and enhancing intrinsic motivation
What is flow state?
Flow us a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing seems to matter
What does it feel like to be in flow state?
- merging of action and awareness
- complete concentration on task at hand
- loss of self-conciousness
-distortion of temporal perception - heightened sense of control
-autotelic experience
What is an autotelic experience?
an experience that is rewarding in itself (intrinsically rewarding)
What is mind wandering?
When you mind is wandering from the activity you are doing,
approx. 50% of our lives we are mind wandering and we tend to be less happy
In flow, we feel oneness with the activity
What are the conditions of flow state?
The perceived balance between challenges and skills
The desire to experience optimal challenge largely explains why flow improves performance over time
Clear, proximal, and achievable
Immediate and unambiguous feedback
What is the experience fluctuation model of flow?
The idea that the level of challenge and level of perceived skill of different activities indicate what state one will be in.
For instance low skill and low challenge will make someone feel apathetic
Low skill and High challenge will make someone feel anxious.
Flow is high skill, high challenge
What type of activities are best for flow?
Optimal challenge is the key to experiencing flow
Some activities are more conducive to learning flow such that they require learning of skills, goals, provide feedback and make control possible.
Many activities can be turned into flow!
Explain how cognitive evaluation theory can be used to understand the effects of competition on motivation.
Competition can be a rich source of challenge and competence feedback but also involves high levels of pressure, incompetence feedback, stress, and negative social evaluation.
According to CET, depending on how an event is percieved our intrinsic motivation can be enhanced or undermined
How does “win-focused” instruction affect motivation?
Tends to be experienced as moderately controlling, thereby decreasing intrinsic motivation
- the orientation is toward the reward, not enjoyment and engagement
Competition is more motivating when success is based on personal achievement
- Losers who met a performance standard and received positive feedback felt just as competent, interested, and engaged as winners
-BUT those who received external rewards were less likely to continue engaging freely
How does high pressure competition affect motivation?
Emphasis of winning at ALL COSTS lowers intrinsic motivation more than comparative competition condition without emphasis on winning (even for participants who WON)
So competively contingent rewards CAN undermine intrinsic motivation even for winners
How does feedback affect competitive motivation?
The more informational an event or piece of feedback can be the more it will satisfy competence and inc. intrinsic motivation
How do expectations affect competition?
If you expect to play well, you will play better than expecting to play poorly (this is mediated through percieved competence)
What is the role of challenge vs. threat appraisals in competition?
Viewing a competitive situation as a challenge (rather than a threat) leads to better focus, improved performance, and more adaptive emotional & physiological response
ex) Golf contest with novice golfers where one group had challenge condition and other had threat condition.
RESULT: challenge condition had more attention on task, better performance, and more adaptive emotional and physiological states
What is ego-involvement? Why does it happen?
When one’s self-esteem becomes tied to competitive success. Occurs as external pressures are internalized
This often leads to psychological need frustration, lower intrinsic motivation and well-being
How dies self-talk affect us?
Positive self-talk is associated with positive affect
Controlling self-talk is associated with more anxiety and stress, esp. when paired with more negative experience in the class
Supportive self talk will help, pressure-based or negative self-talk will hurt.
