By Althea Need Kaminske

Cover Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

If you’ve ever struggled with study motivation you’ve likely received an array of advice on how to get motivated. From motivating self-talk to making a game out of the task, these motivation regulation strategies include any “any activities through which individuals purposefully act to initiate, maintain, or supplement their willingness to start, to provide work toward, or to complete a particular activity or goal” (Wolters, 2003, p. 3) (1). In general, motivation regulation strategies can be categorized into six broad categories (2): mastery self-talk, performance self-talk, self-consequenting, value regulation, efficacy enhancement, and environment regulation.

In a recent meta-analysis, Fong et al., (2024) sought to better understand how these different motivational strategies related to students’ academic achievement, motivation, and self-regulation (2). We’ve talked a bit about self-regulated learning here and here. Self-regulated learning involves engaging in purposefully, strategic, and cyclical processes to achieve learning goals (3). Learners must monitor and regulate their cognition, behavior, motivation, and context (4). Thus, while we often focus on cognitive and behavioral aspects of learning (i.e. metacognition and effective learning strategies), motivation also plays a big role in self-regulated learning. 

In the meta-analysis Fong and colleagues looked at 55 motivational regulation studies and determined the relationship between motivational regulation strategies and academic achievement, motivation, and self-regulation. This was not an experiment, so we cannot determine the causal relationship between these different strategies and the academic outcomes. However, the meta-analysis allows us to get a better idea of the relative strength of the relationships. We can ask whether some strategies are more strongly associated with certain outcomes (or with each other). 

To help summarize the results I’ll describe and give an example of each category of motivational regulation. Then I’ll review some of the highlights and trends from the meta-analysis. 

Mastery Self-Talk

When students use mastery self-talk they focus on encouraging themselves to adopt or promote a mastery goal or focus while working on a task. This may include reminding yourself about your goals to develop competence in a specific task or emphasizing how much you can learn by continuing to engage with a task. E.g., “I should keep going to learn as much as I can.”

Performance Self-Talk

When students use performance self-talk they focus on extrinsic goals for achieving a task, like getting good grades or performing better than peers. E.g., “If I keep going then I can get a good grade.”

This type of self-talk has two different sub-types: performance-approach self-talk and performance-avoidance self-talk. Performance-approach focuses on attaining extrinsic goals (“I can be the top of my class”), whereas performance-avoidance focuses on avoiding bad outcomes (“I don’t want to embarrass myself”)

Self-Consequenting

When students use self-consequenting, they identify and provide either extrinsic rewards for talk completion (“After I finish this paper I’ll go get ice cream”) or negative consequences that might occur after poor performance (“If I don’t finish this paper I can’t get ice cream”). These consequences can be long-term - students may remind themselves of what a failure or missed assignment means in terms of career opportunities. 

Value Regulation

When students use value regulation they attempt to enhance either the personal significance of the task or the situational interest. Students might connect the task to their personal values, identities, and preferences to enhance personal significance. E.g. “I want to become a doctor, and part of being a good doctor is turning in paperwork on time.” On the other hand, students might try to increase the situational interest of a boring or repetitive task by turning it into a game so that it is more enjoyable. E.g. “I’m trying to beat my last time for getting through this flashcard deck.”

Efficacy Enhancement

When students use efficacy enhancement strategies they use cognitive-behavioral strategies to or self-talk to enhance their self-efficacy and confidence. Perhaps not surprisingly, the first kind is the one I most often use and encourage students to use as well: breaking a large task into smaller, more attainable goals (“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” is what I told myself last week when I felt I had perhaps bitten off more than I could chew at work, to extend the eating metaphor.). Efficacy enhancement can also involve positive self talk, e.g., “you can do this!”.

Environment Regulation

Students can monitor and control various aspects of their environment to help regulate their motivation. Again, this is one of the strategies that I most often recommend to students because it’s an opportunity to highlight classical and operant conditioning principles. These strategies can involve removing distractions, finding a quiet place, and forming a learning community. I recommend that students set up a dedicated study space where only studying happens. This space should be clean and pleasant so that studying is rewarded. As opposed to studying in spaces that are used for other things. This is my “don’t study at the kitchen table” rule, and often advice I give to older, non-traditional students who need to balance obligations at home with studying. 

So, What’s the Best Motivational Regulation Strategy? 

While some strategies were more strongly associated with student outcomes, no one strategy emerged as the best. Overall, the strategies had only small positive correlations with academic achievement. As any student struggling with study motivation knows, the relationship between motivation and academic achievement is not always straightforward. You can want and desire to do well academically, but still struggle with motivation. Even with motivation it’s not guaranteed that you have the strategies and resources to do well. Motivation is just one piece of a complicated puzzle. Among these small correlations, performance-approach self-talk and efficacy enhancement were significantly stronger compared to performance-avoidance self-talk and situational interest.

When looking at effort, mastery-self talk had a significantly stronger, positive moderate correlation compared to the other strategies. In terms of competence beliefs there wasn’t much difference between the motivational regulation strategies, with all of the strategies having a significant low to moderate relationship with competence beliefs. However, among those efficacy enhancement had a significantly stronger relationship than self-consequenting. Similarly, all of the motivational regulation strategies had significant moderate positive relationships with value perceptions.

Within self-regulation, all of the motivational strategies had a significant moderate and positive relationship with cognitive regulation with efficacy enhancement and mastery self-talk performing the highest. In behavioral regulation, most of the strategies had a significant positive low to moderate relationship (except performance-avoidance which was not significant). Here efficacy enhancement performed the highest.

Overall, mastery self-talk, efficacy enhancement, and performance-approach self-talk tended to have the strongest relationships with student outcomes. Self-consequenting and performance-avoidance tended to have the weakest, or non-existent, relationship with student outcomes. While neither of these had negative relationships with outcomes, they are both potentially maladaptive strategies. Punishing yourself for not meeting your goals and working to avoid shame and humiliation may bring up unpleasant emotions and lead to procrastinating on a task. I would recommend not relying too heavily on these strategies for self-motivation.

Takeaways

I took away a few interesting points about academic motivation from this study. First, instead of finding the “best” motivational regulation strategy, the authors stressed the importance of meta-motivational awareness and developing a set of motivational regulation strategies. There’s no one right way to get motivated!

Second, the paper stressed the importance of motivational regulation strategies being conscious and effortful. If you find yourself struggling with motivation, know that it is not always automatic! Many students struggle with motivation. You can develop a set of motivational strategies to help manage your motivation.

References

1. Wolters, C. A. (2003). Regulation of motivation: Evaluating an underemphasized aspect of self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(4). 189-205. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP3804_1 

2. Fong, C. J., Altan, S., Gonzales, C., Kirmizi, M., Adelugba, S. F., & Kim, Y.-E. (2024). Stay motivated and carry on: A meta-analytic investigation of motivational regulation strategies and academic achievement, motivation, and self-regulation correlates. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu000886 

3. Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Attaining self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds). Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 13-39). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012109890-2/50031-7 

4. Pintrich, P. R. (2004). A conceptual framework for assessing student motivation and self-regulated learning in college students. Educational Psychology Review, 16(4), 385-407. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-004-0006-x