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.