Achievement Goals



     As a young woman, Vivienne was imbued with a strong growth mindset.  She approached life with an "I can do anything that I really want to if I work for it" attitude.  She was often described by her friends, family, and even herself as a carefree spirit who always tried to pursue what she desired out of life.  In her younger years, her actions were driven by the pursuit to achieve an ideal self that she had envisioned based on hopes and aspirations (the marks of someone with a promotion approach attitude).   Her ideal self was to become "a big successful journalist," and wife of the first love of her life.  Unfortunately, she was never able to make many of these bigger aspirations come to light do to external circumstances (i.e. the death of her first love in WWII). 

     However, in her later years her achievement goals seemed to change, as did her ideal self and attitude towards reaching this self.  She became for more performance approach as her motivations became more prevention oriented.  She wanted to prevent herself from ever harming her children again.  She wanted to prevent herself from losing the life she had managed salvage by keeping dark secrets locked away and going to great lengths to keep them that way.  Everything became about keeping up appearances.  A small, but nonetheless illustrative example is one night when Vivi is taking off her make up before bed, hears the doorbell ring (her son-in-law-to-be there to help her and her daughter make amends), and she quickly reapplies all of her make up. 

     Her outlook on life changed around the death of her first love.  She was initially very much promotion approach in achieving an ideal self based on aspirations and hopes.  Over the course of a series of hardships in her life, her ideal self became based on fears, her orientation changing to prevention.  In keeping up with appearances, she strongly demonstrated a performance approach.

Comments

  1. Jeannine TurnerOctober 7, 2018 at 11:34 AM

    Be careful to stick to the topic of the week. I don't mind you aligning the topic of the week, to the motivational theories you know best, but be sure you are providing examples of the current theory. Here, you have blended notions of ideal self (you could have talked about values) and promotion/prevention motivations. I could not tell how your specific example of taking make-up off and putting it back on was an example of achievement goals or of expectancy-value. Are you trying to say she did it to make a positive appearance? This is an awkward example of achievement goals. I she comparing herself to others, as in performance approach goals? Is she comparing her make-up skills to some standard?

    In the future, you really need to stick to the specific theory we are targeting. Your vague descriptions do not demonstrate that you understand the theories we are covering.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CET and Self-Efficacy

     Vivienne shows a large degree of relatedness, particularly as a youth.  She and her best friends have always been close.  They would often sneak out of the house at night and meet deep in the woods where they would build fires and have mock ceremonies, bringing them all closer together (giving themselves the titular name: the Ya-Ya Sisterhood).  Their bond is one that persists well into old age.  Their friendship drives many of their actions as they seek support, approval, and companionship throughout their lives, such as supporting one another as they go through divorces, AA, and marital issues.       One particularly comical instance of intrinsic motivation that (potentially) arises from relatedness comes from a hot summer night when Vivi and her friends were young women in their 20s.  As they sat and pooled in sweat from the excruciating heat, they decided to go for a car ride late at night (a convertible with the to...
Read more

Basic Emotions

Basic Emotions. Looking at the categories of basic emotions, describe a time when your character felt one of the basic emotions. Why did your character experience this emotion and what purpose could be served by feeling this emotion?               The basic emotion I want to explore in relation to my character is shame.  Shame is one of the most prominent emotions that Vivi experiences as an older woman.  After Vivi's nervous collapse during which she brutally attacks her own children and is thus involuntary Baker acted, she has little memory of the experience itself.  While she is institutionalized, her life long friends come to visit her nearly every day.  Vivi does not talk about the incident except once, during which she asks her dear friend, Caro, to describe every mark that Vivi put on her children.  Years later, Caro explains to Vivi's daughter, Sidda, that Vivi was so wrought with s...
Read more

Self-Conscious Emotions

11.  Self-Conscious Emotions. When did your character display a self-conscious emotion (pride, embarrassment, guilt, or shame/humiliation)? What concomitants (i.e., co-occurrences) of cognitions, motivations, and /or behaviors (choose at least aspects) did your character have——that is, why did he/she experience the self-conscious emotion; how did if affect his/her motivations or behaviors?       Shep was the best friend of Vivi's first love, who died in the war; Shep and Vivi began dating longer down the road, eventually marrying and having children.  As an older woman, Vivi has a revelation about her marriage.  She realizes that she has put her husband, Shep, through hell time and time again; yet, he is always there to pick up the pieces (her alcoholism; her nervous breakdown; her post-traumatic stress, etc.).  There is one night when she sits down with him at the table and asks, "Have I ruined your life?"  Her thoughts (r...
Read more