Self motivation

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Learning an instrument at an early stage is one of the activities that are seen as conducive to developing strong self-motivation.

As self-motivation ( self-motivation is) - mostly in the folk psychology  that allows a one man on his own - drive to start and without direct encouragement or coercion by others an effort and carefully and consistently carried out until the set goal achieved.

Problems of the term

In German-speaking countries, the term is widespread in ( work ) psychological advice literature - especially in popular psychological self-help books and in guides on personnel management  - although it is seldom apparent to the reader which psychological concepts are actually based on this usage.

In academic psychology of "self-motivation" is closest to the concept of intrinsic motivation , a construct of the motivational psychology and cognitivist learning theory , which is already at the core of Aristotle back, under the name "intrinsic motivation" but only in 1918 by Robert S. Woodworth was introduced. In the broadest sense, “intrinsic” relates to the execution of the activity (e.g. interest in the thing, enjoyment of the activity, “creativity”), while “extrinsic ” relates to what follows the activity as an intended effect (e.g. desire for Reward , “lust for satisfaction”). Although the term “intrinsic” is widely used in the psychological literature today, the authors use it with very different implications, which, as Jutta Heckhausen has complained, causes some “conceptual confusion” in the discipline.

Since extrinsic incentives do not necessarily come from outside the person (e.g. “lust for satisfaction”, self-reward), the terms “intrinsic / extrinsic” and “self / external motivation” are not exactly the same.

Self-motivation as an educational goal

As a function of self-control , which in turn is assigned to emotional intelligence (from a neurological point of view: executive functions ), the development of self-motivation begins in early childhood. Self-motivation is a fundamental goal of character education . The consciously controlled self-motivation education is currently given much more attention in English-language parenting guides than in corresponding works by German-speaking authors. The following factors have been described as beneficial for the development of self-motivation:

  • Early testing of self-determined activities. As Wendy Grolnick demonstrated in a sample of one-year-olds, self-motivation is greatest in children who can find help from their mothers when needed, but who have a great deal of control over their play themselves. It is also beneficial for the self-motivation of school-age children if the teacher gives the students some options for self-determined learning ; this is true even when the choices made by the students are actually trivial. Another determinant is the degree of self-determination that the parents give to the child. B. concede when doing homework.
  • Limitation of the decision-making options through a clearly recognizable frame for the child. Autonomy does not mean educational laissez-faire and complete freedom of movement, which are just as obstructive to the development of self-motivation as excessive teasing of the child.
  • Proper praise. Human resource managers at US companies have recently been grappling with a problem that young cohorts have been carrying into the professional world since the 2000s. These college graduates belong to a generation which for the first time was largely raised according to the principle of positive reinforcement , and as a result are characterized by a high level of motivation, but demand constant praise; The fact that this cannot be given out of consideration for older employees leads to significant business motivation crises for young professionals. Faced with such problems, many American educationalists have differentiated their concept of positive reinforcement. So now z. B. criticizes the manipulative use of positive reinforcement, which is geared more towards the needs of the parents than to what the child should or should not do in the interests of his own personal development. Occasionally it has also been suggested that inflationary praise should be abandoned altogether and replaced by curiosity and interest in what the child is doing.
  • Proper reward. Most educationalists today are of the opinion that parents who reward their child for effort do not block his or her self-motivation but, on the contrary, encourage it. A child who is repeatedly rewarded for an effort inevitably learns not only to want the reward, but also to desire the effort. However, to the same extent that they make the effort of their own accord, parents should also reduce the reward.
  • Self-motivation and ability are not in a simple cause-and-effect relationship, but are mutually dependent. Children who learn to play an instrument almost always take many years to learn to love music deeply and to make music a real need for them. When this "turning point", up to which children usually practice reluctantly, is reached, the young musician, if the lessons started early, already has a high level of musical and technical competence: a breeding ground that is now fundamentally important for his self-motivation . Without this resource - pride in skill - even highly motivated beginners often give up their studies quickly.

literature

counselor

Individual evidence

  1. Jutta Heckhausen: Motivation undenken , p. 333 ( restricted online version in the Google Book Search USA ).
  2. Con Stough, Donald H. Saklofske, James DA Parker: Assessing emotional intelligence: Theory, research, and application , Springer, 2009, ISBN 978-0-387-88369-4 ( restricted online version in the Google Book Search USA ).
  3. Parent guidebooks like the following, which focus on promoting self-motivation in children, have only occasionally had a counterpart in the German-language book market: Deborah Stipek, Kathy Seal: Motivated Minds: Raising Children to Love Learning , Holt, 2001, ISBN 0-8050-6395-1 ; Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer: Raising a Self-starter: Over 100 Tips for Parents and Teachers , Da Capo, 2003, ISBN 0-306-81315-7 .
  4. Wendy Grolnick, Ann Frodi, Lisa Bridges: Maternal control style and the mastery motivation of one-year-olds , Infant Mental Health Journal, Volume 5, Issue 2, Summer 1984, pp. 72-82.
  5. ^ Edward L. Deci, John Nezlek, L. Sheinman: Characteristics of the rewarder and the intrinsic motivation of the rewardee , Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 40, Issue 1, January 1981, pp. 1-10; Richard DeCharms: Personal causation: The internal affective determinants of behavior , New York, Academic Press, 1968.
  6. Miron Zuckerman, Joseph Porac, Drew Lathin, R. Smith, Edward Deci: On the importance of self-determination for intrinsically motivated behavior , Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Volume 4, 1978, pp. 443-446.
  7. ^ Wendy Grolnick, Richard Ryan: Parent style associated with children's self-regulation and competence in school , Journal of Educational Psychology, Volume 81, 1989, pp. 143-154.
  8. Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lippitt, Ralph White: Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates , Journal of Social Psychology, Volume 10, 1939, pp. 271-301.
  9. Norman Jones: Performance Management in the 21st Century: Solutions for Business, Education, and Family , p. 67f ( restricted online version in the Google Book Search USA ).
  10. Alfie Kohn: Five Reasons to Stop Saying “Good Job!” ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , the full text of an abridged article published in May 2000 in Parents , a US parenting magazine. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.alfiekohn.org
  11. Rex Lloyd Forehand, Nicholas James Long: Parenting the strong-willed child: The clinically proven five-week program for parents of two- to six-year-olds , S. 95f ( limited online version in Google Buchsuche- USA ); Sal Severe: How to behave so your children will, too! , P. 37 ( limited online version in Google Book Search - USA )
  12. Cynthia Richards: How to get your child to practice ... without resorting to violence !! , Orem, Utah: Advance Arts & Music, 1985, ISBN 0-9729396-1-X , pp. 6f.