Lately I have noticed that some students have a greater appreciation for im-
provement in academic performance...R.wasperforming below standards...
He has learned to appreciate the improvement from his grades of 52, 46, and 49
to his grades of 67 and 71...Hevalued his growth in learning Mathematics.
L., who never puts in any extra effort and often doesn’t turn in homework on
time, actually stayed up late working for hours to finish an assignment early so
I could review it and give him a chance to revise it. He earned a B+ on the as-
signment (he had been getting C’s and lower).
M. was [performing] far below grade level. During the past several weeks, she
has voluntarily asked for extra help from me during her lunch period in order to
improve her test-taking performance. Her grades drastically improved from
failing to an 84 on the most-recent exam.Students’ final grades in math, however, were the major dependent vari-
able. Math was chosen because it would provide the most rigorous test of the
hypothesis. For example, the grading is less subjective than in other subjects
and deficits in math are difficult to rectify. Nonetheless, although students in
the experimental and control groups had earned identical grades the previous
semester, in the semester of the intervention, the incremental group earned
significantly higher grades than their peers in the control group.
In summary, these studies dramatically demonstrate that a motivational
analysis has exciting implications for education and indeed for any endeavor
involving skilled performance. Moreover, the studies suggest that cognitive
interventions alone may often not be appropriate or sufficient. For instance,
the Stanford students in the Aronson et al. (2002) study were not lacking in
cognitive expertise. In addition, in the Aronson and Good (2002) study and
the Blackwell et al. (2003) study, the students in the control group were
taught study skills and memory strategies, to little avail. Instead, in all three
cases, it appeared that a motivational intervention was needed to spur the ef-
fective use of the existing cognitive skills.
MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS ON VULNERABILITY
TO STEREOTYPE THREAT
The underperformance of stereotyped individuals on an intellectual task has
often been attributed to a lack of motivation. For example, often times fe-
males’ poorer performance in math compared to males’ has been blamed on
their lower interest in and motivation to excel in math. However, recent re-
search on stereotype threat has argued that the burden of having to perform
under the specter of a negative stereotype can undermine performance on a
challenging task. Ironically, it is often those who care most and are most mo-
- MOTIVATION AND COGNITION 51