Mere belonging: the power of social connections.
Four experiments examined the effect on achievement motivation of mere belonging, a minimal social connection to another person or group in a performance domain. Mere belonging was expected to increase motivation by creating socially shared goals around a performance task. Participants were led to believe that an endeavor provided opportunities for positive social interactions (Experiment 1), that they shared a birthday with a student majoring in an academic field (Experiment 2), that they belonged to a minimal group arbitrarily identified with a performance domain (Experiment 3), or that they had task-irrelevant preferences similar to a peer who pursued a series of goals (Experiment 4). Relative to control conditions that held constant other sources of motivation, each social-link manipulation raised motivation, including persistence on domain-relevant tasks (Experiments 1-3) and the accessibility of relevant goals (Experiment 4). The results suggest that even minimal cues of social connectedness affect important aspects of self.
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. gwalton@stanford.edu
Gregory M
GM
Walton
Geoffrey L
GL
Cohen
David
D
Cwir
Steven J
SJ
Spencer
D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D009042:Motivation; D011340:Problem Solving; D012917:Social Adjustment; D012933:Social Identification; D012944:Social Support