Can Motive-Related Imagery Make School Tasks More Appealing?

Abstract

According to recent research (Eccles, 1999; GEOlino-UNICEF-Kinderwertemonitor, 2014), young people are particularly interested in issues related to affiliation, achievement, or power. We suggest that tasks that raise these issues should be more motivating than tasks that do not raise these topics. To test this hypothesis, we enriched the tasks of common mathematics and German textbooks with affiliation, achievement, or power issues. In four experiments, fifth-graders rated how much they would like to work on the tasks (n = 31 for essay tasks, n = 76 for math tasks) and how confident they were about solving them (n = 56 for essay tasks, n = 60 for math tasks). Motive-related issues were within-subject variables. Participants were more attracted to tasks that included motive imagery than to neutral tasks, and they were more confident that they could solve the former than the latter. These effects were true particularly for tasks containing affiliation motive imagery.