Agency, communion, and achievement motivation.
This study examined the relationship among (1) two aspects of college students' self-concept--the degree to which they reported an agentic or communion orientation, (2) two views of intelligence they might hold--entity and incremental, and (3) students' tendencies to report adopting attitudes and behaviors consistent with a mastery or learned-helpless orientation. Results from a survey of a sample of 306 Introductory Psychology students indicate that: (1) an incremental view of intelligence was associated with the adoption of mastery-oriented achievement attitudes and behaviors, while an entity view of intelligence was associated with the adoption of learned-helpless attitudes and behaviors; (2) both agentic and communion orientations were associated with a mastery orientation; (3) an agentic orientation was also associated with lower levels of learned-helpless attitudes and behaviors while a communion orientation was associated with higher levels of learned-helpless attitudes and behaviors; and (4) patterns in the correlation between agency and communion, on the one hand, and several indices of students' self-confidence in academic arenas, on the other, further supported this asymmetry in the role agency and communion orientations appear to play in determining college students' adjustment to academic challenges.
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College of Education, San Jose State University, CA 95192-0075, USA.
D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001240:Aspirations, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006380:Helplessness, Learned; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012649:Self Concept; D012933:Social Identification; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*