ATTRIBUTION AND MOTIVATION

Every now and then life brings us into situations, going through which we gain good or bad experience, which has a great impact on our motivation. 

The Module 4 of the Social Psychology Course, devoted to the self-perception, offers us an opportunity to learn more about our behavior, with the help of a lecture on 

Attribution theory and Motivation.

The main idea of the theory is that our motivation is affected greatly by the way people explain or attribute various causes to events. People look for explanations or causes, and, as the lecturer highlights, not the results are important, but their attitude and explanations, which can be attributed to their own success or failure.  An assumption of the attribution theory is that people interpret their environment in such a way as to maintain their self-perception.

The lecturer defines outer and inner motivation. The outer motivation lasts only short period of time and means being motivated by something or by somebody - from outside. And if you are motivated from outside, it inspires you to do something only for a short time. The Inner motivation is a Self-motivation that keeps passion burning inside us without the influence of someone or something. This kind of motivation usually lasts for a long time.

Another thing the lecturer talked about was a locus of control, which displays people’s belief in having control over the situations they face that can one or another way affect their lives. The lecturer defines internal and external locus control. 

The internal locus of control makes people explain their results being achieved only with the help of their own efforts, talents or skills. They are proud of themselves when they gain success. Having experienced failure, they will explain it by thinking that they should’ve tried harder or lay more efforts to do the task perfectly. Such people strive for self-development, becoming a better version of themselves. 

People with external locus of control, would always find fault with the circumstantial conditions (like bad luck, wrong place, wrong time) when experienced failure. When they achieve success, they would treat it as good luck and something that can happen to them only once. People with external locus of control are poorly motivated for further development. 

The lecturer states, referring to Martin E.P. Seligman, that there are three main categories of attributes for explaining success or failure:

• Personalization (Internal or external)

• Stability (Stable or temporary) – explaining the achievement by considering themselves successful or just doing a good job once; 

• Breadth (universal or particular) – believing that you are a successful person or you are good in one particular field;

• Level of control (Controllable or uncontrollable) – my own effort or just a happy coincidence.

Having studied the Attribution Theory, I will try to analyze how it works with my own self, referring to the three speeches presented by me at our Public Speaking lessons at the university.

I’ll start with saying that motivation means a lot to me. It is hard for me to go for activity I do not understand the point or sense of. This is why most of the times the success depends on my motivation.

I believe I have an internal locus of control. I realize that I worked hard to gain some achievement. If I fail, I judge myself for not laying more effort to have the work done perfectly. This also describes me as a perfectionist.  Moreover, I must confess, I am rather pessimistic, than optimistic. When I fail, I get into some kind of depression. I am not motivated to execute that again. Such thing happened to me, when I had to perform at a linguistic conference at the university, which was one of the most significant events for me. Having taken the first prizes at 4 conferences before, I was highly motivated to develop my skills, to go deeper and deeper into studying the problem (which was in fact also connected with the Public Speaking :). I was excited to share the topic with the audience, as I found it important for those who study English and are interested in developing their speaking ad influential skills through the linguistic discourse. But I failed. It was a complete failure. And that was the conference I was waiting, I was looking forward to. After that I have completely disappointed in myself. I realized: I am not able to fulfill my expectations. The work I’ve done was useless. And I’m not going to present it ever again, I’ve giving up continuing my research. Since that time I’m lacked of motivation. Speaking in Public, I predict having failure. I’m sure I am not able to make it go well. If I classify my motivation after that conference, I can say that it is internal (only I am who is to blame); stable (I believe it’s not surprise for me to fail now); controllable (that was my lack of effort, I should have done it better); and particular (Public Speaking is what I meet failure with).

I do my best to detach myself from the feeling. But It still hard for me to look at the bright sight, even if I sound optimistic from time to time.

Now it’s time to give a short view at 3 of my speeches at our Course of Public Speaking.  

So the First Speech I presented was semi-spontaneous. If you remember, I spoke about events that happened to me during the last year. It didn't seem to be a tough task, since I was going to talk about something personal. However, still, I didn't feel confident, standing in front of the audience. My voice was trembling as I was moving on with the presentation. The thing is, I didn’t have much time to think of “the further” speech, which means no time for worrying about it J. I honestly don’t think it was a failure, but it wasn’t very well-performed as well, mostly due to the nervousness, I guess. Having accomplished the task, I attributed it to my own condition. It was a good idea of our Professor to suggest us making videos of our speech. It didn’t lead me to disappointment, but to the understanding what exactly I need to work at. That gave me a slight hope that I can, in fact, make it better. So my motivation raised a little. And in this case the attribution was internal, temporary (as it was a bit better, than the above experience), controllable and particular.

The second speech was a “non-prepared version” of presenting an activity at imaginary Conference of Teachers.   In my opinion, it was way better than the 1st one, probably due to the higher motivation. I didn't feel that nervous in comparison with the first time. I didn't learn the speech by heart, but I had a structure in my head and I tried to keep to it. But it wasn’t well-performed, not at all. I wasn’t happy about the idea to speak to the same topic again next day because I was worried it wouldn’t meet my expectations about its improvement.

I was mistaken. The Third speech seemed to me to be done better than the previous two. To be honest, I didn’t spend too much time preparing it. Frankly speaking, I wrote it the day I had to perform it, just to structure my thoughts. The night before I was thinking of how to make it better or more effective, thinking about likings or ice-breakers, or pauses and varying tempo and intonation in certain moments of addressing the audience. I pretty liked the speech I produced. And it might not be true, but deep down I think that the way of increasing my motivation was attributed to not being evaluated. Maybe it boosts confidence..? 

The evaluation may influence our motivation from both negative and positive ways: make us disappointed and not willing face the difficulties again, or gives motivation to go further. But, anyway, I believe that evaluation is important. And I will try to look positively at it and believe in myself.