We examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment. Participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task, first under a non-competitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme. Although there are no gender differences in performance, men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance. While seventy-three percent of the men select the tournament only thirty-five percent of the women make this choice. This gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only play a negligible role. Instead the tournament-entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition. The result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it. * We thank Scott Kinross, who conducted all the experiments reported in this paper, for his excellent research assistance. We thank the editors and the referees who helped us improve the paper. We also

Predicting when a person might be frustrated can provide an intelligent system with important information about when to initiate interaction. For example, an automated Learning Companion or Intelligent Tutoring System might use this information to intervene, providing support to the learner who is likely to otherwise quit, while leaving engaged learners free to discover things without interruption. This paper presents the first automated method that assesses, using multiple channels of affect-related information, whether a learner is about to click on a button saying ‘‘I’m frustrated.’’ The new method was tested on data gathered from 24 participants using an automated Learning Companion. Their indication of frustration was automatically predicted from the collected data with 79% accuracy (chance 58%). The new assessment method is based on Gaussian process classification and Bayesian inference. Its performance suggests that non-verbal channels carrying affective cues can help provide important information to a system for formulating a more intelligent response.

The theory outlined in the present chapter adopts a cognitive approach to motivation. In the pages that follow we describe a research program premised on the notion that the cognitive treatment affords conceptual and methodological advantages enabling new insights into problems of motivated action, self-regulation and self-control. We begin by placing our work in the broader historical context of social psychological theorizing about motivation and cognition. We then present our theoretical notions and trace their implications for a variety of psychological issues including activity-experience, goal-commitment, choice, and substitution. The gist of the chapter that follows describes our empirical research concerning a broad range of phenomena informed by the goal-systemic analysis. Motivation Versus Cognition, or Motivation as Cognition Motivation versus cognition: the “separatist program. ” Social psychological theories have often treated motivation as separate from cognition, and have often approached it in a somewhat static manner. The separatism of the “motivation versus cognition ” approach was manifest in several major formulations and debates. Thus, for example, the dissonance versus self-perception debate (Bem, 1972) pitted against each other motivational (i.e., dissonance) versus cognitive (i.e., self-perception) explanations of attitude change phenomena. A similar subsequent controversy pertained to the question of whether a motivational explanation of biased causal attributions in terms of ego-defensive tendencies (cf. Kelley, 1972) is valid, given the alternative possibility of a purely cognitive explanation (Miller & Ross, 1975). The separatism of the “motivation versus cognition ” approach assigned distinct functions to motivational and cognitive variables. This is apparent in major social psychological notions of persuasion, judgment or impression formation. For instance, in the popular dual-mode theories of

Since failure, over and over and over again, is a prerequisite to becoming an expert, so to is the ability to persevere and remain motivated through failure. Many researchers creating ITSs have taken the approach of manipulating the task in terms of difficulty, focus, and other parameters in an effort to sustain users ’ motivation. There are numerous circumstances where this approach is impractical, undesirable, or simply impossible. This task-manipulation approach misses the important opportunity to help users develop skills to deal with failure and frustration. We propose instead an approach that uses affective agents 1 to help users develop metacognitive skills such as affective selfawareness for dealing with failure and frustration. An important element of our approach is the use of one or more affective agents as peer learning companions to facilitate development of empathetic relationships with learners. This paper describes work in progress exploring how characteristics of affective agents can influence perseverance in the face of failure. We choose to focus on motivation through failure because of its importance in the learning process. At Stanford’s Department of Mechanical Engineering there is a saying that, “Spectacular failure is better than moderate success. ” (Faste, 1996) This is not an overtly masochistic agenda,

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the phenomena of “gaming the system, ” where a learner attempts to succeed in an educational environment by exploiting properties of the system’s help and feedback rather than by attempting to learn the material. Developing environments that respond constructively and effectively to gaming depends upon understanding why students choose to game. In this article, we present three studies, conducted with two different learning environments, which present evidence on which student behaviors, motivations, and emotions are associated with the choice to game the system. We also present a fourth study to determine how teachers ’ perspectives on gaming behavior are similar to, and different from, researchers ’ perspectives and the data from our studies. We discuss what motivational and attitudinal patterns are associated with gaming behavior across studies, and what the implications are for the design of interactive learning environment. 186 Baker, Walonoski, Heffernan, Roll, Corbett, and Koedinger In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that students choose to use interactive learning environments in a surprising variety of ways (Wood &

is difficult. In this article we develop a cognitive framework to characterize sense-making in the implementation process that is especially relevant for recent education policy initiatives, such as standards-based reforms that press for tremendous changes in classroom instruction. From a cognitive perspective, a key dimension of the implementation process is whether, and in what ways, implementing agents come to understand their practice, potentially changing their beliefs and attitudes in the process. We draw on theoretical and empirical literature to develop a cognitive perspective on implementation. We review the contribution of cognitive science frames to implementation research and identify areas where cognitive science can make additional contributions.

The authors argue against a purely behavioral definition of praise as verbal reinforcement in favor of the view that praise may serve to undermine, enhance, or have no effect on children’s intrinsic motivation, depending on a set of conceptual variables. Provided that praise is perceived as sincere, it is particularly beneficial to motivation when it encourages performance attributions to controllable causes, promotes autonomy, enhances competence without an overreliance on social comparisons, and conveys attainable standards and expectations. The motivational consequences of praise also can be moderated by characteristics of the recipient, such as age, gender, and culture. Methodological considerations, such as including appropriate control groups and measuring postfailure outcomes, are stressed, and directions for future research are highlighted. Praise, like penicillin, must not be administered haphazardly. There are rules and cautions that govern the handling of potent medicines— rules about timing and dosage, cautions about possible allergic reactions. There are similar regulations about the administration of emotional medicine. (H. Ginott, 1965, p. 39) On the whole, we as a society seem to believe that praise has

Achievement-related beliefs were examined among a group of 238 college students in engineering (38 female, 104 male) and nonengineering majors (57 female, 39 male) to understand why women enter engineering majors at a low rate and are more likely than men to leave such majors. The results indicated that (a) among the engineering majors, women were more likely than men to identify engineering aptitude as a fixed ability, a belief that was associated with a tendency to drop classes when faced with difficulty; (b) female engineering majors were more likely to perceive male and female engineering students as receiving different treatment than their male counterparts; and (c) female engineering majors tended to place more emphasis on extrinsic factors and less emphasis on intrinsic factors than female nonengineering majors, a pattern not seen among men. Implications for intervention programs are discussed.

If design research involving technology-based tools is going to impact educational settings, the design process must be extended beyond the tool itself to encompass a broader range of factors such as the classroom social structures (e.g., beliefs about learning and knowledge, learning activities and participant structures, configurations of both physical space and cyberspace). Although prior research has underscored the importance of classroom social structures in technology integration, it has failed to specify the critical design variables that must be taken into account. Only by understanding the critical variables involved is it possible to develop a deep understanding of how and why things work. The Social Infrastructure Framework systematically frames the critical design elements in terms of 4 dimensions: (a) cultural beliefs, (b) practices, (c) socio-techno-spatial relations, and (d) interaction with the “outside world. ” This article details the design issues associated with each dimension based on examples drawn from a range of educational technologies. This article also describes how the framework can serve to advance the methodology of design research by serving as a tool for both design and analysis. Since the 1990s, starting with papers by Brown (1992) and Collins (1992), there has been a growing movement to develop a new methodology for carrying out studies of educational interventions under the labels design research, design experiments, anddesign studies. Various researchers have contributed to the effort

We sought to examine the concept of authentic leadership and discuss the influences of authenticity and authentic leadership on leader and follower eudaemonic well-being, as well as examine the processes through which these influences are realized. This was accomplished in four ways. First, we provide an ontological definition of authentic leadership, rooted in two distinct yet related philosophical approaches to human well-being: hedonism and eudaemonia. Second, we develop a multi-component model of authentic leadership based on recent theoretical developments in the area of authenticity. The resulting model consists of self-awareness, unbiased processing, authentic behavior/acting and authentic relational orientation. Third, we discuss the personal antecedents (leader characteristics) of authentic leadership as well as the outcomes of authentic leadership for both leaders and followers and examine the processes linking authentic leadership to its antecedents and outcomes. Fourth, we discuss the implications of this work for authentic leadership theory and then provide some practical implications for developing authentic leaders.