The Right Stuff Part II

1. The Right Stuff Part II

2. What Does It Take to Succeed? • Sure, Willpower • But Also Believing in Yourself

3. Overview • Learning About Yourselves • I.e., The Role of Attributions and Experience in Coming to Believe in Ourselves • Role of Belief in Self on Academics • I.e., The Reason and Ways to Nurture Academic Self-Efficacy

4. Attributions: Explanations of the Causes of Events

5. Attribution: To What Does One Attribute the Cause of an Event or Situation • We Appear to Have a Strong Need to Understand and Explain What Is Going on in the World

6. Causes Are Nearly Automatically Sought • And Often Decide Cause Upon During First Few Occurrences of an Event • Or If Things Do Not Go as Expected • Or Very Bad or Important

7. We Perceive Events as Following Schemas • An Outline for How a Given Situation Should Proceed • Like a Road Sign • Or a List of What Should Happen When • E.g., An Evening at a Restaurant

8. When Schemas Proceed As Expected, the Situation Grabs Little or No Attention • But, When the Schema Does Not Go As Expected, • The Situation Grabs Attention • And the Person Tries to Figure Out What Happened • (This Can Often Create Emotions, Too) • In Addition, People Try to Explain the Cause of Situations That Are • Very Bad • Important

9. People Seek to Understand the Causes of Situations • To Understand Why (Predict) • To Gain Control of the Situation

10. Three Dimensions of Attributes 1. Internal-External: Whether the Cause Is Inside or Outside the Individual

11. 2. Stable-Unstable: Whether the Cause Is a Rather Permanent Thing or Is a Temporary Thing • E.g., • Internal-Stable: Gender • Internal-Unstable: Hunger

12. 3. Controllable-Uncontrollable: Whether the Cause Can Be Controlled by the Individual • E.g., • Internal-Stable-Controllable: Physical Health (Eating Right, Exercising, Good Attitude, Etc.) • Internal-Stable-Uncontrollable: Genetic Predisposition to a Disease

13. The Actual Thing That Is Attributed to Be the Cause of the Event Is Not As Important As the Type of Attribution. • In Other Words, It Doesn’t Matter What the Presumed Cause Is • What Matters Is Whether You Feel It Is, E.g., Controllable or Not • E.g., It Doesn’t So Much Matter if the Reason You Could or Couldn’t Do Something Is Because of Your Health. • What Does Matter Is Whether You Feel That You Are in Control of Your Health.

14. The Stable-Unstable Dimension • Least Studied • And Apparently the Least Important for How It Affects One’s Attitude or Position Towards the Situation

15. The Internal-External Dimension • Historically, the Most Studied of the Three Dimensions • Internalizing Causes Can Encourage People to Be More Proactive, E.g.: 1. Women and Mammograms (Rothman, Salovey, Turvey, and Fishkin, 1993) • Women Were Shown Video Tapes That Tried to Motivate Them to Have Mammograms

16. The Tapes Differed Only in That: • One Version Talked About “You,” the Viewer Would Learn From Them • (Internal Attribution Creation) • The Other Version Talked About What “Your Doctor” Would Learn • (External Attribution Creation) • Those in the Internal Attribution Condition Were Significantly More Likely to Get Mammograms in the Future

17. 2. Children and Math(Miller, Brickman, and Bolen, 1975) • Teachers Used One of Three Methods to Motivate 2nd Grade Students to Do Better in Math 1. Attribution Training • “You Really Work Hard.” • “You Seem to Know Your Arithmetic Assignments Very Well.” 2. Reinforcement Condition • “I’m Proud of Your Work.” • “Excellent Progress.” 3. Persuasion Training • “You Should Be Doing Well in Math.” • You Should Be Getting Higher Grades in Math.”

18. Results • Self-Esteem • The Children in All Conditions Ended With Higher Self-Reported Measures of Self-Esteem • But Those in the Attribution Condition Reported the Highest Levels of Self-Esteem

19. Results (Cont.) • Math Scores • Children in the Persuasion Condition Showed No Increase in Math Scores • Those in the Reinforcement Condition Showed Significant Gains • But Those in the Attribution Condition Showed the Highest Gains in Math Scores • (Standard Error Was Approximately 1.0)

20. When People Make Internal Attributions About Themselves, • They May Also Change Their Attitudes and Beliefs About Themselves

21. To Help Instill Internal Attributions: 1. Make Comments When the Person (Yourself or Someone Else) Is Reflecting Upon Why Things Happened 2. Provide Reasons That Denote (Hopefully Positive) Internal Attributions • If It’s for Someone Else, Not Much Need Be Done • It Is the Person That Must Come to the Conclusion, You Just May Be Helping Them Form the “Good” Conclusion

22. Internal-External Dimension Errors and Their Implications: • Fundamental Attribution Error • Defn.: People Tend to Assume That Events Have Internal Causes • I.e., That the Reason a Person Does Something Is Because Something Inside (Like Their Will) Them Made Them Do It • As Opposed to Something Outside, Like the Weather

23. Self-Serving Bias • Defn.: People Tend to Attribute • Their Successes to Internal Causes • And Their Failures to External Causes • Likely Borne From a Desire to Maintain a Positive Self-Esteem • While It’s a Skewed and Incorrect View of the World, People Who Adopt It to a Moderate Degree Are Better off on Several Ways • (E.g., Depressed People Tend to Have a More Accurate Self-Image) • The Self-Serving Bias Is Related to Optimism (Your Book Essentially Defines Optimism As the Self-Serving Bias, So I’ll Stick With That Too)

24. The Controllable-Uncontrollable Dimension • Personal Control Beliefs • Defn.: The Extent to Which a Person Believes That They Can Control Their Own Life • Two Aspects to It: 1. The Extent to Which the World Is Controllable in an Absolute Sense • I.e.., Whether or Not Anything Could Be Done to Influence It (by Anyone)

25. 2. The Extent to Which the Individual Feels They Can Change It • How Much They View Failure in a Task as Insurmountable • Interrelated with Optimism/Pessimism • In That Pessimists Tend to Be Fatalistic and Not Expect Success • And to Downplay Their Ability to Succeed

26. The Illusion of Control • People Tend to Think the World Is Orderly, Predictable, Sensible, Etc. • Importantly, People Tend to Exaggerate Their Control Over the World • (And Underestimate the Role of Chance) • E.g., Wortman (1975), Putting Two Marbles in a Bowl • Thus, People Tend to Blame Victims for Their Misfortunes • E.g., Janoff-Bulman (1979), Victims of Rape Tend to Blame Themselves • Finding Actions They Could Have Changed to Prevent the Situation

27. The Illusion of a Just World (Lerner, 1965) • Tend to Attribute Chance Events to The Victim’s Moral Disposition • So, Morally Good People Get Good Results, Morally Bad People Get Bad Results • E.g., Lerner (1970), Randomly Chose Subjects to Be Given Electrical Shocks • The Other, Non-Shocked Subjects Tended to Denigrate the Shocked Subjects

28. Adaptively of the Illusion of Control • When People Lose Their Sense of Control, They Tend to • Seek Information • Experience Pain and Stress More Intensely • Generally React With More Hostility and Anger • Feel Hopeless and Apathetic • Perform More Poorly • These Feelings and Behaviors Decrease When Someone Attempts to Regain Control • In Fact, Some Psychologists (E.g., Taylor, 1988) Believe That Trying to Regain Control Is Very Therapeutic

29. The Benefits of Feeling One Has Control Over Their Life Are Similar to the Benefits of Optimism • The Benefits of Feeling One Has Control Appears to Be in How They Regard Failure • Thus, Instilling a Sense of Control Includes Addressing How That Person Feels About Failure

30. To Help Avoid Feeling Helpless: 1. Change the Person’s Attitude About How Uncontrollable the Environment Is • E.g., By Showing Them (or Yourself) That the Environment Is Not Entirely Uncontrollable • Or by Changing the Environment--if Possible--to One That Is More Controllable 2. “Immunize” the Person to Failure • Like Disease Immunization, Involves Exposing the Person to a Small Amount of the Problem So They Can Learn How to Deal With Large Amounts of It

31. Steps to Immunize: 1. Expose Them to Mild Experiences With Adversity and Failure • (Or Note When These Happen So You Are Ready to Enact The Step) 2. Then Help Them Learn: • Control and Mastery of That Sort of Adversity • To Interpret the Adversity With an Optimistic Explanatory Style

32. I.e., Learn That • Failures Occur, but That They Are • Not Greatly Detrimental • Controllable • And That the Person Is Competent and Able to Maintain Control of Their Life • While the Application of Immunization Training to Parenting Practices Is Both Obvious and Important, It Can Be Used to Help Adults As Well.

33. To Help Reverse Feelings of Helplessness 1. Expand the Range of Possible Attributions to Include Stable-Controllable Explanations • E..g., to Show the Person That The Failure May Not Be From Lack of Ability, but Instead • Too Little Effort (Which Is Likely Among Pessimists) • Ineffectual Strategies • Lack of Experience • (All of Which Are Controllable)

34. 2. Here Too, Nurture an Optimistic Explanatory Style to Also Help Them to Be • More Confident They Have the Skills Needed • More Persevering • (And Often It Is True That the Only Critical Skill People Miss to Succeed Is Perseverance) 3. Also Part of Teaching Optimism (but Worth Separating Out to Emphasize), Is the Benefit of Maintaining a Pleasant Attitude Regardless of the Circumstances • I.e., Not Taking It Failure Too Badly or Too Personally • Yeah, I Know, Easier Said Than , but It Can Be Done, and Improves Over Time

35. Remember, Attributions Are Learned, and Can Be Unlearned or Relearned • Much Like Self-Efficacy...

36. Self-Efficacy • Domain-Specific Belief About One's Ability to Perform Well (Bandura, e.g., 1977) • Important for Determining Motivation • And Perseverance • Related to the Field of “Effort Optimism” • Protects Against Depression & Stress

37. (Academic) Motivation Comprised of: • Expectancy for Success • Value Placed on Performing Well • “Task Value,” (Eccles, 2005) Itself Derived From: • Value • How Personally Important It Is • How Interesting & Enjoyable • How Useful for Obtaining Future Goals • Minus How Costly It Is to Do

38. Self-Efficacy Is a Rather Robust Predictor of Grades and Retention • E.g., Kitsantas et al., 2008; Robbins, et al. 2004; Vick & Packard, 2008; Zajacova et al., 2005 • But Peterson (2009) and Weissberg & Owen (2005) Both Find It Varies and That Other Things Are Still Important

39. Developing Self-Efficacy • Governed by Many of the Same Mechanisms as Attributions, e.g., • Praise Effort, Not Innate Ability • Praise Honestly • Underserved Undermines Efficacy • “You did your best” • Platitudes Ring Hollow • “Everyone deserves an award”

40. Developing Self-Efficacy (cont.) • Early Success Leads to More Success • In Life in General • But Also Within a Given Domain • (Again, Like Attributions)

41. Ensure “Honest” Success • Help Students Set Goals That Are: • Personally-Relevant • Short-Term • Attainable • But Near Edge of “Zone of Development”

42. Ensuring Success (cont.) • Also Encourage (Enforce) Time Management, Planning, Study Skills, Etc. • Like Financial (or Information) Literacy, Not Things We’re Born With • Nor Always Have Opportunities to Learn in Time

43. Ensuring Success (cont.) • Give Feedback • Help Them Learn Their Strengths • And Strategies to Overcome Their Individual Weaknesses • Schunk (1983): May Help to Give Feedback on Both • Achieving Set Goals • Comparing with Peers’ Performance • But Little Direct Assistance • “I can do it” Are Beautiful Words to Hear From a Child • Help • Let Them Fail • And Learn to Reflect Upon It • And, of Course, Overcome It

44. Combining Classic and Modern Achievement Theory • Two Types of Performance: • 1. Performance-Approach • Engaging to Gain Success • Typically of Those High in Achievement Need (Ms)

45. 2. Performance-Avoidance • Engaging to Avoid Failure • From Fear of Failure and/or Insecurity About One’s Ability • Changing One’s Belief in Themselves Can Change This to Performance-Approach • Changing Can Come Through Change in Thoughts (Belief in Self) • Or, More Likely, Through Experience With Success • Tends to Decrease Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation • Perf-App and Perf-Avoid Both Result From Ms, Maf, and Ps • I.e., Learned Needs to Achieve and Past Successes • One Type of Mastery • Typically High in Competence

46. Hope and Optimism • Hope Helps Academic Achievement (Day et al., 2010) • May Be Independent of Other Aspects of Motivation. • Therefore, May Help Simply to Role Model an Optimistic Hope • Especially if There’s Nothing Else You Can Do