chess tournaments. Most have had to hold other jobs, and teach or write
about chess to supplement tournament winnings.
Self-Regulation and Goal Setting
Our review thus far focuses on internal and external reward effects on moti-
vation. Given the long preparation period necessary to reach high levels of
performance, it is clear that people must set goals and monitor progress to-
ward those goals. Personal initiative, diligence, self-efficacy, and self-regula-
tion are some key characteristics of individuals who succeed in planning and
meeting goals (Bandura, 1997; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994; Zimmerman &
Schunk, chap. 12). These characteristics are highly correlated with participat-
ing in and sustaining deliberate practice over extended periods of time, a
known predictor of expert performance (Ericsson et al., 1993). The question
of interest then becomes: why are some individuals so strongly driven to excel
in a given domain, while others lose interest and fall by the wayside?
Schunk and Zimmerman (1997) argued that specific task competencies are
learned and developed in a series of four stages (observation, emulation, self-
control, and self-regulation). These competencies lay the groundwork for in-
trinsic motivation to develop and promote a desire to advance to higher levels
within a domain. In the earliest stages of skill development, learners rely on
advanced students and experts to teach and show them pertinent concepts re-
lated to the skill and to emulate and hone their own abilities through feed-
back and guidance from those mentors. Learners hear the motivational ori-
entation, self-expressed beliefs, and performance standards of role models
and ultimately adopt some or all of them as their own (Zimmerman & Ringle,
1981). Research has shown that the higher the perseverance of a model, the
higher the perseverance of the observer; and the greater the observer’s per-
ceived similarity to the model, the greater the motivation to continue practice
(Zimmerman & Rosenthal, 1974).
Later stages of development shift the locus of learning from social to inter-
nal sources (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997). The competent learner focuses on
the process rather than the outcome to master components of the skill, and
chooses to deliberately practice weak (and often unpleasant) areas in order to
achieve mastery. The learner possesses the ability to self-direct practice ses-
sions and monitors the distance between the current state and goal without
relying on guidance from social support. With increased perception of self-
efficacy, the learner has the ability to sustain motivation and adaptively
implement skills in dynamic situations. In sum, this model theorizes that in-
trinsic motivation and self-regulation emerge from initially extensive social
guidance that diminish over time as motivational qualities and monitoring
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