1. Motivation: Cultural Influences & Attribution Theory
EDU 330: Educational Psychology
Daniel Moos, PhD

2. Motivation: Cultural Differences (I)
Anglo-American children
More interested when allowed to make a personal choice in learning (Iyenggar & Lepp, 1999)
Asian children
More motivated when trusted others (authority figures/peers) make choice for them (Iyenggar & Lepp, 1999)
Chinese children
More motivated when do schoolwork in order to please parents and teachers (in contrast to Western students engage in self-handicapping & other maladaptive outcomes (Cheng & Lam, 2013)

3. Motivation: Cultural Differences (II)
Pursuit of avoidant goals
Negative predictor of well-being in US (individualistic culture)
Non (or even Positive) predictor for South Koreans and Russians (collectivist culture; Elliot et al. 2001)
Western theorists of motivation argue that higher the self concept, higher the academic achievement (Schunk & Pajares, 2009)
East Asian students tend to have lower ability beliefs, but higher academic performance than Western students (Stevenson et al. 1990)
Western students who have higher opinion of abilities typically do worse on international comparative achievement tests compared to Asian students (Kaiser at al. 2002)

4. Attribution Theory: Introduction (II)
How do individuals typically attribute their success and/or failure?
Interpret successes and failures in a manner that is most likely to maintain positive self-image
Success/Failure
Success
Failure
Controllable
Uncontrollable
Internal
Effort
Luck
Difficulty of Test
Choice of Study Environments
External

5. Attribution Theory: Strategies
“I am competent” AND “I worked hard”
NOT beneficial to completely attribute to ability
(2) Students most likely to persist after failing if they attribute failure to a lack of appropriate effort
(3) Scaffold student’s understanding of effort
Students often confuse spending time doing ineffective activities with effort
Students often have incorrect conceptions of their understanding (metacognition)
(4) Should assessment include evaluations of effort?