Judith Harackiewicz
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Psychology, Faculty Member
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The long-standing debate over whether extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic motivation and the more recent debate regarding the costs and benefits of performance goals are central issues addressed in Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation:... more
The long-standing debate over whether extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic motivation and the more recent debate regarding the costs and benefits of performance goals are central issues addressed in Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: The Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance, edited by Carol Sansone and Judith Harackiewicz. The book contains chap ters from a number of the most prominent scholars in the field and is an excellent volume despite the absence of a chapter representing the behav iorist tradition. This book review contains a summary of the debates and a description of three tensions that recur throughout the book: The empirical tension, the macrovs. micro-analysis tension, and the idealism vs. realism tension.
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SignificanceScience is rapidly changing with the current movement to improve science focused largely on reproducibility/replicability and open science practices. Through network modeling and semantic analysis, this article provides an... more
SignificanceScience is rapidly changing with the current movement to improve science focused largely on reproducibility/replicability and open science practices. Through network modeling and semantic analysis, this article provides an initial exploration of the structure, cultural frames of collaboration and prosociality, and representation of women in the open science and reproducibility literatures. Network analyses reveal that the open science and reproducibility literatures are emerging relatively independently with few common papers or authors. Open science has a more collaborative structure and includes more explicit language reflecting communality and prosociality than does reproducibility. Finally, women publish more frequently in high-status author positions within open science compared with reproducibility. Implications for cultivating a diverse, collaborative culture of science are discussed.
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Subjects were assigned to competition or no-competition groups. Competition subjects received information about their rival (establishing an expectancy for success or failure) or did not. Competition enhanced intrinsic interest for... more
Subjects were assigned to competition or no-competition groups. Competition subjects received information about their rival (establishing an expectancy for success or failure) or did not. Competition enhanced intrinsic interest for achievement-oriented individuals but undermined it for low achiever. The effects of competition also depended on the availability and valence of opponent information. An expectancy increased interest for high achievers but lowered it for low achier. Path models clarified the motivational processes mediating these effects. Both the personality characteristics of competing individuals and information about their opponents seem critical in determining intrinsic interest in this interpersonal competitive context.
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Research Interests: Marketing, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Personality Psychology, Social Psychology, and 9 morePersonality, Achievement Motivation, Social Comparison, Intrinsic motivation, Performance Evaluation, Feedback Control, Regulatory Focus Theory, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Generic model
Participants performed a cognitive task under evaluative, self‐awareness, and neutral conditions, Task performance was determined jointly by trait test anxiety and situational factors. Test anxiety led to poorer performance in both... more
Participants performed a cognitive task under evaluative, self‐awareness, and neutral conditions, Task performance was determined jointly by trait test anxiety and situational factors. Test anxiety led to poorer performance in both evaluative and self‐awareness situations, relative to the neutral situation. We examined the cognitive activity variables that might mediate the effects of test anxiety and situational variables on performance, and identified a significant cognitive mediator of the main effect of test anxiety, but not for the Test Anxiety x Situation interaction effect. Therefore, the current experiment offered some support for Sarason's (1980) cognitive interference theory, as well as integrating test anxiety and self‐awareness research.
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Sending you to a new session
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This study sought to clarify the empirical relationships between epistemic curiosity, incidental recognition, and degree of uncertainty. Sixty‐four college and high school students had to solve four problems differing in level of... more
This study sought to clarify the empirical relationships between epistemic curiosity, incidental recognition, and degree of uncertainty. Sixty‐four college and high school students had to solve four problems differing in level of uncertainty, measured in terms of the nearness in probability of being correct of four response alternatives, on each of eight trials. Additionally, subjects indicated how curious they were to learn the correct answer for each problem just prior to being shown that answer. Subsequently, an incidental recognition test for the correct answers was administered. It was revealed that both epistemic curiosity and recognition bore monotonically increasing relationships to degree of uncertainty, and that systematic intersubject differences in expressed curiosity but not recognition obtain. The results are discussed in terms of the prevailing theoretical orientation generally, and particularly in terms of certain conflicting predictions. Considerations for future re...
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Each summer, one of us runs a basketball camp for youths, and is always astounded at the spirit of young athletes. They possess endless optimism, and the majority of the campers play basketball simply for the love of the game. Within the... more
Each summer, one of us runs a basketball camp for youths, and is always astounded at the spirit of young athletes. They possess endless optimism, and the majority of the campers play basketball simply for the love of the game. Within the camp, different structured activities stress a variety of fundamentals. For example, some drills focus on skill improvement and developing competence at specific skills (e.g., dribbling, passing, shooting). Other drills are more competitive in nature (e.g., shooting contests), and focus on outperforming others. Both types of activities are focused on developing competence, and both involve some degree of evaluation in this instructional context. However, the competitive activities are particularly evaluative, and provide an opportunity for campers to demonstrate their competence compared to others. Campers know that a coach may be evaluating their performance, and typically the kids anticipate receiving performance feedback as a result of this evaluation. The coaches frequently comment on the markedly different reactions that campers have to these evaluative activities. Some kids thrive in competition, but do not appear to enjoy themselves as much in the absence of it, and even express boredom with skill-development activities. Other kids tend to withdraw when they are being evaluated, and seem to really enjoy the activities that are not as competitive.
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Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Science Education, Mathematics Education, Educational Psychology, and 8 moreAttribution Theory, Advanced Placement, Correlation, Intervention, Structural equation models, Guidance and Counseling Intervention Programs, Applied Statistics Regression Analysis, and Grade point average
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Plastering billboards, flashing across TV screens, and lettering sport cups and T-shirts, “Just Do It” has become a household phrase. Perhaps this slogan resonates with so many because it emphasizes the process of engaging in athletic... more
Plastering billboards, flashing across TV screens, and lettering sport cups and T-shirts, “Just Do It” has become a household phrase. Perhaps this slogan resonates with so many because it emphasizes the process of engaging in athletic activities, rather than any specific outcome or achievement. Excellence in sport is admirable, and many ads for sporting equipment and shoes try to link their products with athletic superstars who have achieved excellence. The “Just Do It” campaign is different, and seems to focus instead on the process of sport without concern for evaluative outcomes. Of course, performance evaluation is implicit in many of the activities we undertake, and it can be difficult to ignore the potential outcomes that are an integral part of these activities. For example, most athletes in competition are focused on success with the hopes of winning. However, we believe that something may be lost if the desired end state eclipses the steps taken to reach that end. Our discussion of performance evaluation will consider both the process of task engagement and the outcomes of task engagement, and we will discuss the implications of our model for performance and intrinsic motivation. In particular, we hope to consider how the quality of an individual’s experience is related to the quality of his or her performance under evaluation contingencies. By evaluation contingency, we refer to any social interaction that imposes or implies performance evaluation for an individual’s task performance (e.g., assigned goals, experimenter evaluation, competition).
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STEM retention efforts need to go beyond “pipeline leaks” to focus on those who remain in STEM but change career plans.
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Many first‐generation college students—whose parents have not obtained a 4‐year college degree—experience a “cultural mismatch” due to a lack of alignment between the independent values of their university (consistent with the culture of... more
Many first‐generation college students—whose parents have not obtained a 4‐year college degree—experience a “cultural mismatch” due to a lack of alignment between the independent values of their university (consistent with the culture of higher education) and their own interdependent values (consistent with working‐class culture). We documented this mismatch at a 4‐year university (n = 465), and then tested a values‐affirmation intervention in a laboratory study (n = 220) that encouraged students to affirm both independent values and interdependent values. We compared this intervention, which had not previously been tested in a 4‐year university, to a standard values‐affirmation intervention and control. This intervention increased first‐generation students’ perceptions of cultural match and improved achievement on a math test for all students, on average, by increasing confidence and reducing distraction on the test. Encouraging students to integrate independent and interdependent ...