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UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION 75who demonstrate effort and are more critical of those who do not.
Understanding the perspectives of both the instructor and the stu-
dent helps reveal how effort can become a “double-edged sword”
for many students. They must walk the tightrope between the
threatening extremes of high effort and no effort at all. They must
demonstrate some effort to avoid negative sanctions from their
instructors, but not enough to risk shame should they try hard and
fail. Some students use excuses to maintain a balance between these
extremes. A popular tactic is to try hard but to use excuses to
explain why trying did not help. Such behavior avoids any infer-
ence to low ability.
Hopeless Henry believes that his failures are because of a lack of
ability. As a result, he does not believe that hard work will pay off.
The problem with this belief is that he is likely to exert little effort
even in situations in which effort would lead to success.
What is interesting about self-worth theory is that it offers a dif-
ferent explanation of failure. Many students are motivated, but for
the wrong reasons—they are more motivated to avoid failure than
motivated to succeed. They are driven by circumstances to protect
their self-esteem.
A college friend of mine was a bright but anxious student. He
always told everyone that he never had enough time to study before
an exam. Everyone was impressed by the success he achieved with lit-
tle apparent effort. However, in situations where his achievement was
unsatisfactory, he would also remind us that he did not spend much
time studying. It was not until years later that I learned he had always
found time to study regularly during the term. His strategy was to
protect his self-worth. The moral of this story is not to gauge the
amount of time and effort you need to prepare by listening to the
comments of others.
What strategies have you used to protect yourself from the possi-
bilities of failure? Have you ever raised your hand early in a class
period to answer a question, knowing that the instructor might not
call on you later? Have you remained silent when asked a question
by an instructor, hoping that if you paused long enough, the instruc-
tor would rephrase the question once or twice until either the answer
was given to you or someone else was called on?
I can identify with the following situation, and it may be uncom-
fortably familiar to you, too: A common practice in language classes
is to require students to take turns translating sentences into English.
As the instructor moves down the row asking one student after
another to translate, anxious students are not paying attention to each
translation. Instead, they are counting down the row to locate the sen-
tence they will have to translate and begin practicing the sentence.
During this time, they have missed the translations of all the previous