7 Types of Motivation Part 3

The last type of motivation is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief in one's competence and is capable of performing tasks in order to reach a goal. Four main factors affect self-efficacy, the are: experience, modeling, social persuasions, and physiological factors.

Experience affects self-efficacy because when children succeed on their own, their self-efficacy increases.

Modeling affects self-efficacy because when children see someone else succeed their self-efficacy increases because they believe they can succeed too. If a friend or sibling fails it causes a child's self-efficacy to decrease because they see the task as hard.

Social persuasion is a factor of self-efficacy because encouragement will help to increase self-efficacy while discouragement decreases it.

Physiological factors affect self-efficacy because stress affects children's physically. Sometimes a child can feel nauseous or have stomach pains or other types of pains and this causes self-efficacy to decrease. For example, if a child has a big test coming us such as the ACT or SAT a child can feel nauseous or have other pains that they're feeling because of the stress of taking the test brings.

Parents can nurture self-efficacy by setting up easy to attain situations so children learn how to complete a large task by first completing smaller tasks of the task first. Parents can model motivation to their children by participating in activities and succeeding in them or showing them how they react to failure. Parents can encourage children. The more encouragement a child receives the more self-efficacy they'll have and this will help them grow to be successful, happy adults.

All seven of these motivations (mastery motivation, achievement motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, locus of control, learned helplessness and self-efficacy) help children develop attitudes and values because they help a child have a positive attitude about achieving goals. These motivations help children see that being motivated to accomplish a goal helps them realize what they're good at and that having a positive attitude to accomplish a goal helps achieve the goal.

7 Types of Motivation Part 2

In the last post I covered the first four types of motivation. Today I will cover the last three types of motivation which are locus of control, learned helplessness and self-efficacy.

Locus of control is one's quality of performance or perception of responsibility for success or failure. For example, if a child's soccer team wins a game and it's the child's perception that they won because they were the one who hit the last goal in the child's perception is they won because of them. Locus of control can be internal or external. When a child associates their performance or behavior to an internal locus the responsibility for the behavior is given to themselves. For example, when a child learns to go potty in the child the child associates their behavior to themselves and the responsibility of going potty in the toilet to themselves and doesn't give any credit to the parent helping or teaching them. A child who associates their behavior to an external locus of control attributes responsibility of behavior to something or someone outside themselves. For example, the child gives all the credit to them going potty in the toilet to the parent who helps them.

 When a child feels powerless over events they may no longer feel responsible for their behavior and lose motivation to achieve. If this happens, it's called learned helplessness. Leaned helplessness is the belief that one is incapable of accomplishing tasks and they have little or no control over their environment or situation. It's characterized by a decreased motivation and failure to learn and often accompanied by negative emotions  such as sadness, anxiety, and frustration. Preschoolers who show signs of learned helplessness interpret their poor performance as a sign of being bad. School age children interpret poor performance to a lack of knowledge. Parents, siblings, teachers, coaches etc., can prevent and help children overcome learned helplessness by teaching children to attempt tasks and activities they're capable of doing themselves. The more children encouraged and feel supported, the more willing they'll be to try new things and try them on their own.

Self-efficacy is the last type of motivation and is the belief in one's competence and is capable of performing tasks in order to reach a goal. There are four main factors that affect self-efficacy: experience, modeling, social persuasions, and physiological factors. In order to go into these in more detail I will discuss this last type of motivation and its factors in the next post.

7 Types of Motivation Part 1

I'm back from a long break. I apologize it was so long and it was longer than I meant for it to be. Injury and illness get the way of life sometimes. Over the next two posts we'll discuss seven types of  motivation. Where there are so many of them I'm breaking it into two different posts in order to cover each type of motivation adequately.

Motives are needs or emotions that cause a person to act. Mastery motivation is when a child is crawling all over the house exploring their environment. Achievement motivation is used to explain the motivation of children to achieve the mastery of challenging tasks. For example, if a child wants to learn how to rock climb and are motivated to put the effort into learning how, this is a child showing achievement motivation. These are the first of seven types of motivation. The seven types of  motivation are: Mastery motivation, achievement motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, locus of control, learned helplessness and self-efficacy. In this post we'll discuss the first four.

Mastery motivation is the natural drive that leads children to explore and master their environment. It has a relationship between age and the ability to do a task. For example, when a child is ready to walk the motivation to master the task of walking will kick in. It will start with the above example of a child learning to crawl and move to explore the their environment. Until a child's motivation to learn to walk kicks in they'll crawl. Mastery motivation is seen mainly in infants and toddlers as they explore their environment and learn to master the skills they need to move around in their environment. It has a relationship between age and the ability to do a task because the age range can be broad when a child masters a task. For example, a child can learn to crawl anywhere between six and nine months and learn to do a shape sorter anywhere between fifteen and eighteen months.

Achievement motivation is the need for success or attainment of excellence. Some think achivement motivation is learned. People are driven to succeed for various reasons and the reasons can be external or internal. Some people are driven to only learn how to juggle, others are driven to learn and then become part of a circus act. The reasons why one person only wants to learn the task and another person wants to be a professional are different and only those people can tell you what drives them to succeed at the level they do.

Intrinsic motivation is participating in an activity for inherent satisfaction or enjoyment. For example, a child plays a board game with their parents because they enjoy playing games with their parents and the time that is spent with them. It's behavior that is driven by internal rewards and the motivation to participate comes from the person and the satisfaction they receive from doing the activity. For example, many people volunteer  because of the internal satisfaction they receive from volunteering.
Home and school environments can promote or block intrinsic motivation by supporting or crushing a child's physiological need for competence and autonomy. Parents how respond to their child's needs by modifying rules and incentives according to their child's behavior will enhance their child's intrinsic motivation. Children are rewarded with material items ( food, money, toys) or punished with threats, and competition tend to diminish intrinsic motivation because parents are seen as controllers of behavior. For example, when a parent goes and buys a child something the parent knows the child wants because the child made a choice they wanted them to make, like eating their vegetables, a parent has used a reward to enhance a child's intrinsic motivation. An example, of a parent punishing  with threat is telling a child if they don't play baseball instead of basketball they'll throw their basketball away. When a parent rewards with completion is when a parent purposefully shows a child that they're better than they are at a task. Choice and opportunity for self-direction appear to enhance intrinsic motivation because it enables a sense of autonomy in children.

Extrinsic motivation is participating in an activity to attain an outcome such as to receive a reward or avoid punishment. This motivation arises outside a person and is performed to receive a reward. For example, when a person participates in a study because they'll be compensated time and travel or a child does well on a test because if they get a good grade they get an ice cream cone.

These are the first three types  of motivation. The other four will be discussed next week. Have a good weekend!

Update

Hey All,
Sorry I haven't posted the past couple of weeks. I woke up Christmas Eve with a bad cold that didn't end til around New Year's Eve. I'm still waiting for my voice to come back. My foot is still slowly healing and am hoping it will only take a few weeks to heal. I will be back next week with a "normal post." Thanks for your patience.