http://www.labspaces.net/101549/Those_l … een_as_fun
"Those who value excellence and hard work generally do better than others on specific tasks when they are reminded of those values. But when a task is presented as fun, researchers report in a new study, the same individuals often do worse than those who are less motivated to achieve."
wccrawford
Member
From: FL US
Registered: 2008-03-28
Posts: 1551
That study is horribly flawed. -sigh-
For the instance where the motivated student does worse on the 'fun' project, they didn't tell him that the results matter, and they just declared it to be 'fun'... And what if he didn't find it to be fun? Tell him it's fun -and- important and he'll do better than the other student, I'm sure.
The motivated student doesn't fail because he's wired wrong, he fails because he wasn't told there was anything to fail at and he doesn't waste his energy on it.
Now, should the exercise actually have been -fun- to him, he probably would have done better, even if he wasn't told that it was graded.
Here's a link to the study: http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~dalbarra/pub … vation.pdf
The effects of chronic achievement motivation and achievement primes on the activation of achievement and fun goals via: http://albarracin.socialpsychology.org/
Abstract: This research examined the hypothesis that situational achievement cues can elicit achievement or fun goals depending on chronic differences in achievement motivation. In four studies, chronic differences in achievement motivation were measured and achievement-denoting words were used to influence behavior. The effects of these variables were assessed on self-report inventories, task performance, task resumption following an interruption, and the pursuit of means relevant to achieving or having fun. Findings indicated that achievement priming (vs. control priming) activated a goal to achieve and inhibited a goal to have fun in individuals with chronically high-achievement motivation, but activated a goal to have fun and inhibited a goal to achieve in individuals with chronically low-achievement motivation.
Last edited by nest0r (2010 January 21, 1:12 pm)
bodhisamaya wrote:
The definition of what having fun is on an individual level could be a tricky variable.
Indeed, though going through the paper, the operative definition of fun takes this into account, not merely through defining the term relative to goal-oriented/free-flowing exercises and self-reporting parameters, but in terms of the focus on perception, priming variables and 'framing' (i.e. "others found this fun"). The conclusions of the paper itself are more of a call for further expansion of definitions to incorporate variable individual concerns, rather than focusing on rigid archetypes.
Last edited by nest0r (2010 January 21, 4:42 pm)
