Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1986

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Major Professor

Michael C. Rush

Committee Members

Dudley Dewhirst, Tom Ladd, Ralph O'Brien

Abstract

Theoretical developments in the field of achievement motivation have recently followed two parallel but largely independent paths. Atkinson and Birch (1970, 1974) have developed a dynamic theory of achievement motivation which provides a functional description of achievement-related behavior, but does not adequately address the cognitive components of this behavior. Weiner (1974a, 1974b) has developed an attribution theory of achievement motivation, but his work has not adequately addressed the dynamic aspects of achievement settings. A dynamic model of achievement task choices which integrates these two theoretical areas is proposed in this paper.

The empirical test of this model consisted of 162 undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee who engaged in an instrument vigilance task which allowed periodic choice of the level of task difficulty by the subject. As predicted, the results indicated a shift in preferred level of task difficulty toward successively more difficult tasks, but this shift occurred only during the first part of the free choice period. Later in the free choice period, the mean level of task difficulty plateaued and then decreased. These findings suggested that the deliberate task choice process detailed in the proposed model may be limited to the first part of a free choice period, after which habitiual task choices may become more important.

The pattern of task difficulty choices was highly similarly for positively and negatively motivated subjects through the early part of the free choice period, suggesting similar deliberate task decision processes for the two motive groups. At the end of the free choice period, however, differences in the task difficulty choices of the two motive groups were evident, suggesting the possibility of differences in the habitual task choice processes for positively and negatively motivated subjects.

Cognitive correlates of the hypothesized consummatory effect were also investigated. The pattern of data for incentive value of success closely resembled what would be expected if the consummatory effect was affecting incentive value of success, while task satisfaction did not appear to be as closely related to the consummatory effect.

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