508 Chapter 14 The Major Motives of Life: Food, Love, Sex, and work
McGregor, 2001; Grant & Dweck, 2003). As
usual, though, we should avoid oversimplifying:
World-class athletes, musicians, and others who
strive to excel in their fields blend performance
and mastery goals.Expectations and Self-Efficacy. How hard you
work for something also depends on your expecta-
tions. If you are fairly certain of success, you will
work harder to reach your goal than if you are fairly
certain of failure.
A classic experiment showed how quickly ex-
perience affects these expectations. Young women
were asked to solve 15 anagram puzzles. Before
working on each one, they had to estimate their
chances of solving it. Half of the women startedof children who were praised for their efforts.
When children realize that all effort is subject
to improvement, however, they realize that they
can always try again. That is the key to mastery.
As one learning- oriented child said to the experi-
menters, “Mistakes are our friends” (Dweck &
Sorich, 1999).
Mastery goals are powerful intrinsic motiva-
tors at all levels of education and throughout life.
Students who are in college primarily to master
new areas of knowledge choose more challeng-
ing projects, persist in the face of difficulty, use
deeper and more elaborate study strategies, are
less likely than other students to cheat, and enjoy
learning more than do students who are there
only to get a degree and a meal ticket (Elliot &The Many MoTives of accoMPLishMenT
IMMortaLIty
William Faulkner
(1897–1962)
Novelist
“really the writer doesn’t
want success... he wants
to leave a scratch on that
wall [of oblivion]—Kilroy was
here—that somebody a hun-
dred or a thousand years later
will see.”FreedoM
Nelson Mandela (b. 1918)
Former president of South
africa
“For to be free is not merely to
cast off one’s chains, but to live
in a way that respects and en-
hances the freedom of others.”
KNoWLedge
helen Keller
(1880–1968)
Blind/deaf author and
lecturer
“Knowledge is happiness,
because to have knowledge—
broad, deep knowledge—is to
know true ends from false, and
lofty things from low.”aUtoNoMy
georgia o’Keeffe
(1887–1986)
artist
“[I] found myself saying to
myself—I can’t live where I
want to, go where I want to, do
what I want to... I decided I
was a very stupid fool not to at
least paint as I wanted to.”