A2 Psychology at Spalding Grammar School

For many years, the study of motivation was dominated by Behaviourism. This viewpoint looks at motivation in a carrot-and-stick way: we are motivated to seek rewards and avoid punishments. This approach was researched by B.F. Skinner who came up with the theory of OPERANT CONDITIONING. Skinner was able to motivate lab rates to press levers either by rewarding them with food (positive reinforcement) or by cancelling electric shocks (removing punishment, or negative reinforcement). This Behaviourist approach is reductionist, since it tries to explain motivation entirely on the basis of stimuli in the environment and observed actions and ignores cognitions.

In recent years, this Behaviourist view has fallen out of fashion and psychologists are more interested in the personal (DISPOSITIONAL) motives that people have. For example, even when rewards are offered, some people seem to be very motivated to win them, whereas others don't seem to be bothered! This led David McClelland (1961) at Harvard University to begin a lifetime of research into motivation as a personality trait. For example, McClelland asked his students to throw rings over pegs. He noticed that most people threw rings rather at random, at any peg that caught their fancy. Some students, however, chose their pegs carefully: not too close to make the task too easy, not too far away to make it impossible. These people have a high NEED FOR ACHIEVEMENT (n-Ach).

McClelland measured n-Ach using the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). This is a projective test (a bit similar to the inkblot test). Respondents look at 30 images and have to create a story to explain what's going on in the picture. The story must include what has led up to the scene in the picture, what is happening right now, what the characters are thinking or feeling and how the story is going to end. The test is supposed to take two 1-hour sessions, each a day apart. The test is scored based on the sort of ideas and emotions the respondent projects into the picture. McClelland counted the amount of achievement imagery in the respondents' stories. When this was repeated with Navaho children, achievement imagery still turned up in the stories, suggesting that achievement motivation may be universal.

Achievement Motivation leads people to set realistic but challenging goals. In weight-lifting, for example, you won't increase your strength with weights that can be lifted easily or weights that cause damage to your muscles - only difficult but manageable weights will stretch and strengthen muscles. Achievement-motivated people are not gamblers and don't like leaving things to chance. "Gamblers" prefer big risks because they can rationalise away failure as being outside their control; "conservatives" prefer small risks with guaranteed gains and no blame; only "achievement motivated" people take the middle ground of challenge and moderate risk where their skills will affect the outcome.

This approach was further refined by John William Atkinson (1964) - which is why the theory is called the McCLELLAND-ATKINSON MODEL OF MOTIVATION. Atkinson suggests that Achievement Motivation could be calculated mathematically by measuring a person's desire to succeed and suibstracting their fear of failure. High-achievers have a great desire to succeed and are not put off by the fear of failure. Atkinson recognises that Achievement Motivation can be affected by situational variables:

• Task difficulty (the percentage probability of failure)
• The incentive value of success (how much do you stand to gain by succeeding?)

Achievement Motivation is very relevant for sport psychology. High-achievers tend to enjoy challenges (opponents who are equal to them or slightly superior to them); they need feedback and respond well to constructive criticism; and they do not fear failure, which means they persist at sports. However, studies show that Achievement Motivation does not reliably predict performance in sport (Diane Gill, 1986). Projective tests like the TAT have been heavily criticised for being both unreliable and invalid, since different interpreters can come to different conclusions about what the stories mean. Others argue that Achievement Motivation is too general and complicated to be treated as a single personality trait - basically, it is reductionist to simplify motivation like this.

Try this online motivation test to find out what type of things motivate you.

Achievement Motivation was developed for use in business and education. Some sports psychologists argue that sporting situations are particularly intense and involve extremes of stress, dependency, fatigue and persistence. This is the argument for a sport-specific model of motivation. Diane Gill (1993) has suggested that the main difference between athletes and non-athletes is a particular type of motivation: this is COMPETITIVENESS.

Diane Gill & Thomas Deeter (1988) designed the SPORTS ORIENTATION QUESTIONNAIRE (SOQ) to measure sport-specific motivation. This is a psychometric test that uses 25 questions to score respondents on three traits:

• Competitiveness: how much do you enjoy competition and strive to succeed? A competitive person loves to compete and seeks out competitions to take part in.
• Win Orientation: how important is winning to you? Win-orientated people compare their performance with other people, rather than setting personal standards.
• Goal Orientation: how important is your own personal performance? Goal-orientated people are "competing against themselves" rather than trying to beat other people.

The items on the SOQ were developed from reviewing sports psychology publications, consulting other psychologists and open-ended interviews with sports players. This produced 32 items which were phrased as a Likert scale. A Likert scale lets respondents rate their reaction to a statement with "Strongly Agree", "Agree", "Neutral", "Disagree" or "Strongly Disagree". The items on the questionnaire include:

• "I look forward to competing" (Competitiveness)
• "I hate to lose" (Win-orientation)
• "Performing to the best of my ability is very important to me" (Goal-orientation)

Gill & Deeter tested out the SOQ on 237 American college students enrolled in physical activity classes, some competitive (33 males, 64 females), some non-competitive (40 males, 100 females). They took a second sample of 218 students a year later (this group was tested twice, a month apart, to check the reliability of the questionnaire) and a final sample of 266 high school students a year after that.  As a result of this pilot study, the final 25-item SOQ was created.

The pilot study also suggested the SOQ was valid and reliable. When scores were compared with re-test scores, the Correlational Coefficients were found to be 0.89 for Competitiveness, 0.82 for Win-orientation and 0.73 for Goal-orientation. These numbers indicate very strong correlations. The SOQ consistently produces different scores for competitive athletes compared to athletes involved in non-competitive activities. This is a sign of CONSTRUCT VALIDITY and it's something that the more general measures of motivation often fail to do.

Gill & Deeter found that males score high for Competitiveness and Win-orientation but females score higher for Goal-orientation. Athletes generally score higher than non-athletes on all three scales, but especially Competitiveness. Athletes vary a lot among themselves, of course, but in general Goal-orientation is higher for them than Win-orientation. This might strike you as strange, but in fact Win-orientated players often experience lack of control (since whether you in fact win is often beyond your control, especially in team sports) and can easily get disheartened. These players often seek out situations where they are either bound to win or bound to fail (a bit like the conservatives and the gamblers in McClelland's research). Goal-orientated players prefer to choose realistic opponents and do not view losing as a setback.

The traditional psychology of motivation comes from Behaviourism and in particular B F Skinner's idea of Operant Conditioning. This means that athletes can be motivated by rewards: formal ones, like being given positions and selected for top teams or informal ones like a pat on the back and "Well done!" from the coach. They can also be motivated through negative reinforcement - this happens when the coach stops shouting at you when you start pulling your weight.

However, research suggests that this sort of motivation is in fact quite unsuccessful for many people. Mark Lepper & David Greene (1975) studied a group of young children (age 3-5) in a pre-school playgroup. The children had a choice of activities but the most popular was the "colouring table" where they could play with paper and coloured felt-tip pens. The researchers made a third of the children into an experimental group and told them they would be rewarded with "Good Player" certificates if they spent more time at the colouring table. After a week, the children being rewarded spent less time colouring than the control group who had not been promised a reward.

Edward Deci (1975, right) suggested a reason for this. Rewards that come from other people are all EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION but people are also motivated by internal things like enjoyment and personal satisfaction; this is INTRINSIC MOTIVATION. Deci argues that both types of motivation can influence us, but intrinsic motivation is the most effective. When extrinsic motivation is provided, we make a cognitive evaluation of what it means to us. In other words, what matters is our interpretation of the reward, not the reward itself. If the reward is seen as something that controls us and takes away our free choice, then motivation actually goes down ("I'm only doing this to impress the coach!"). The best rewards increase our feelings of competence and self-esteem ("Coach says my footwork is good, so I must be doing something right!").

In 2000, Edward Deci & Richard Ryan [left] wrote a paper drawing together various research in intrinsic motivation and cognitions about motivation and called it SELF DETERMINATION THEORY (SDT). They come from the Humanist Perspective in Psychology. Humanism is a psychological school that developed in the 1950s opposed to the reductionism of both Behaviourism and Psychoanalysis. The Humanist perspective concentrates on the importance of human beings having self-knowledge and controlling their own lives. Deci & Ryan argue that human beings have three innate psychological needs:

1. The Need for Competence: people need to feel they can succeed at the things they have to do; the alternative is to feel powerless and become depressed;
2. The Need for Autonomy: people need to feel they can make choices and be in control of their own lives; feeling dependent on others and having no control over your life is also unhealthy;
3. The Need for Relatedness: people need to care for others and be cared for in return; we are social animals and need positive relationships.

Competence is similar to McClelland's n-Ach and is raised by setting people challenging tasks that they can succeed at and giving them lots of positive feedback. Autonomy is improved by giving people freedom, not controlling their every action and acknowledging their feelings. Relatedness is of course improved by placing people in a caring and supportive group. When a person's needs are being met, this creates Vitality which is the word Deci & Ryan use for motivational energy.

This coaching website explains the three needs in more detail.

Next, Deci & Ryan consider how Vitality is "regulated" or directed in someone's life. When you are regulated by others (external) this has a draining effect on Vitality, but when you regulate yourself (internal) this actually increases Vitality. Deci & Ryan picture regulation as a spectrum ranging from one extreme to the other:

• Amotivation: This is when someone has no intention of acting, maybe because they don't value the activity, don't feel competent at the activity or don't expect a positive outcome. You can force people like this to take action, but it's better to try to raise their Competence or change their beliefs about the outcome.
• External Regulation: The person is being extrinsically motivated with rewards or punishments. Once the bribes or the threats stop, so does the behaviour. This is like an athlete who only trains out of fear of the coach.
• Introjected Regulation: The extrinsic motivation is more to do with other people's opinions and esteem. The person wants to "fit in" (Relatedness). This is like an athlete going to training sessions because his friends do.
• Identified Regulation: There is still extrinsic motivation (like winning a trophy or being applauded) but it is becoming a lot more personally important. Motivation can drop off if the rewards seem impossible to achieve, so it's important to highlight the athlete's successes, break tasks down into small units and mentor the person closely.
• Integrated Regulation: By this point, the extrinsic motivation has become completely personal, part of the person's own values and needs. This is like the athlete training towards winning a title, not for the prize money or the fame but because of the pride and self-esteem it would bring.
• Intrinsic Motivation: This is the point where you do the activity purely for its own sake, for the pleasure and satisfaction it brings but with no thought of reward.

Any successful motivation technique must move a person further along this spectrum, away from Amotivation and towards Intrinsic Motivation. It also follows that motivational techniques that will work with someone at one stage (eg making training a social affair for people with Introjected Regulation) will not work so well for people at another stage (eg people with Integrated Regulation are more focused on their goals and less interested in approval from others).

This coaching website explains the regulation spectrum in more detail.

A technique that uses many of the insights from SDT is COACH EFFECTIVENESS TRAINING, designed by Ronald Smith & Frank Smoll (1979). Smith & Smoll noticed that too many children's sports coaches in America took a bullying approach to motivating young athletes, had a "winning is everything" philosophy and had too little time for the young players who lacked skill and confidence. Their programme involved training coaches to see themselves as role models for young players, handing out rewards effectively and thoughtfully, fostering team spirit and recognising effort. They initially tried out CET on Little League baseball coaches, who work with children aged 5-18. The children with CET-trained coaches self-reported much more enjoyment and enthusiasm for the game than the control group. The conclusion is that this style of coaching gave the young players more internal regulation.

Or read this website, attacking Self Determination Theory and the whole idea of intrinsic motivation.

You will come across Self Determination Theory again later in the course, when you study Burnout & Withdrawal from sport.

1. The main point has to be the validity of various theories of motivation. Most theories were designd by academics who don't go near a football pitch too often and most measures of motivation were designed for schools or businesses and are completed in cosy offices with a pencil and paper. The situation in a real sports competition is very different - sweat, pain, exhaustion, emotion - so the psychology of motivation just might not match very closely with what athletes actually go through.
2. Then there is the problem of measuring motivation. Even if the theories are valid, the measures might be unreliable or invalid or both. For example, projective tests (like the TAT) might produce different responses every time they are carried out or else two researchers might might score the same response in completely different ways. This is less likely with psychometric tests (like the SOQ) but even then these test are transparent and it's likely the respondent will be affected by demand characteristics or give socially desirable answers, since there's some stigma attached to seeming either completely apathetic or too keen and enthusiastic.
3. However, motivational psychology can be very useful in a sporting setting. Psychology could help identify demotivated players who need more encouragement. It could also suggest techniques to improve motivation and get the best out of players (like Coach Effectiveness Training). Lots of teenagers drop out of sports and go on to drift into delinquency or suffer obesity: this psychology could help more of them stay fit and active.
4. Finally, the meaning of motivation changes depending on the psychological approach you use. Behaviourists view motivation as a learned response, a set of behaviours produced by powerful associations or reward. From Freud's psychodynamic perspective, motivation is a sexual impulse that gets displaced onto new targets or twisted into new forms. Humanists view motivation as a natural human desire to grow, develop and reach their full potential. Any study of motivation while be affected by the reserachers' approach.