Everything You Need To Know

This section is designed to give you some extra background or answer questions you may have about how everything going into my research works. Feel free to comment with suggestions about anything more you're interested in or anything that you're still unclear about. 

The Psychology Of Motivation

"The term motivation refers to factors that activate, direct, and sustain goal-directed behavior... Motives are the 'whys' of behavior - the needs or wants that drive behavior and explain what we do."  

Understanding motivation is key to understanding priming. And anyways, why not learn about why (on a psychological level) we do the things we do?

Quote source: Nevid, J. S. (2013). Psychology: Concepts and Applications. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

A Brief History of Motivational Theories

There are many psychological theories of motivation, and if you want to read more about them, here are a couple of links:

6 Key Ideas Behind Theories of Motivation: Some important and interesting ones

Wikipedia on Motivation: Probably the best summary

Theories and Principles of Motivation: If you want a long and detailed read. Note that this was written in 1996, so it doesn't include all of the recent theories, but I still think it's a good read if you're into history. 

What you should know is that when cognitive theories for motivation first formed (theories that involve our thoughts and perspectives as part of the reason for motivation), most psychologists didn't think that motivation could be unconsciously brought into a person's mind. However, this was soon to change. In the early 1990s, prominent social psychologist John Bargh designed an experiment to test if motivation could be subconsciously implanted into someone's mind (or in other words, "primed!"). Considering the motivational theory appropriately named "goal-setting theory," Bargh's plan was to introduce a "high-performance" goal that the subjects were not even aware of themselves and then test their performance on a following task. Turns out, Bargh's unconscious high-performance goals did their job, and subjects who were primed for high performance did comparatively better on the subsequent tests. If you're interested in how Bargh did this (and a couple of other experiments he carried out), click here.

After Bargh's experiment and many similar ones giving similar results, psychology accepted that unconscious goals can be just as influential as conscious goals in determining what our motivation is and what our level of motivation is (Chartrand and Bargh 1996). Given the revelation that our brains can hold goals we are unconscious of, new priming research was sparked and psychologists began to think of the nearly unlimited unconscious factors that could influence our behavior.

Types of Motivation

In psychology, motivation can be classified, and there are two terms you should know: 

Intrinsic Motivation is motivation driven by an internal desire to do something for enjoyment or fulfillment. You are intrinsically motivated to do something if you are doing it because you enjoy doing it. 

Extrinsic Motivation is motivation driven by a desire to reap the reward of doing something. You are extrinsically motivated to do something if you are doing it for what it will get you rather than just because you enjoy it. 

Both types of motivation can be strong and resilient, and we all experience both at some points in our lives. Think about the words "passion" and "wealth." Can you tell which one is more closely related to intrinsic motivation and which is associated with extrinsic motivation? 

In relation to priming, intrinsic motivation has proven to be contagious. Take this study for example. Radel and colleagues showed that even just listening to a passionate conversation (meant to prime for intrinsic motivation) without paying attention to the conversation increased subject performance on a "demanding task." 

Anyways, let's move on to music. Have you ever heard of the Mozart effect? 

Priming With Music

People have long known, even if only by experience, that music can be unbelievably effective at eliciting emotion. Music is also widely used as a motivational tool in sports or an aid in relaxation. However, it wasn't until 1993 that certain types of music were first claimed to heighten listeners' intelligence. 

The Mozart Effect

In 1993, psychologist Frances Rauscher and colleagues conducted a well-known study on what is now known as the Mozart effect. Basically, Rauscher subjected some participants in his experiment to ten minutes of Mozart's D Major Sonata for four hands. Other participants were exposed to ten minutes of relaxation instructions, and the rest were subjected to silence. Next, a spatial reasoning task was given to the subjects and the researchers found that the subjects who listened to Mozart before the task performed significantly better on it. And if you'd like, here's the study. 

Anyways, Rauscher et al 1993 became controversial in the years following its publication, and eventually it was indeed validated (Schellenberg and Weiss). Schellenberg and Weiss's review of the topic cites several meta-analyses that gave evidence that Mozart (or any similarly upbeat classical music) does offer a positive effect on cognitive performance after listening to it. 

After the meta-analyses mentioned above, psychologists generally agreed that the Mozart effect did exist, but the causes for it were still confounding. Could classical music really increase the IQ of listeners? Or was there another explanation for the phenomenon? Turns out, there's most likely a different explanation. Because music is known for its emotional influence and emotional state has been widely accepted as a factor in cognitive performance, researchers began to hypothesize that the Mozart effect was actually just music improving the mood and intellectual "arousal" of listeners, which in turn improved cognitive performance. Two separate studies in 1999 and 2001 tested this hypothesis: Nantais and Schellenberg and Thompson. Now, this hypothesis is generally accepted. 

So yes, classical music has been shown to prime for better cognitive performance as a result of it inducing a good mood and intellectual arousal. 

Applying Psychology In The Classroom

Here's where things get less clear-cut. For example, in retail and advertising, psychological research has been applied to appeal to customers, establish emotional connections to products, and much more. However, in an educational setting, there's been less application of psychology and less research done in general. The only study similar to what I plan on doing (that I could find) was Radel's 2009 study found here. Radel used unconscious visual stimuli (words flashed on a slideshow too fast to perceive consciously) to prime for either autonomous or controlled motivation. Autonomous and controlled motivation are similar to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation with just a few differences. Autonomous motivation is motivation involving putting self-determined value on a goal. Controlled motivation is motivation derived from external, often authoritative, sources. Back to Radel's study, the subliminal primes for autonomous motivation included the words "interested," "desire," "willing," and "free," while the subliminal primes for controlled motivation included "obligation," "controlled," "forced," and "ought." For this experiment, a classroom setting was used. Students were split into groups and given identical lessons (scripted and everything), and the aims of the study were to test if the primes affected performance and if the primes' effects were influenced by each individual student's state of awareness (mindfulness). I'd suggest reading the study from the link above if you're interested in the results, but as a quick summary of what Radel found, his primes didn't affect academic performance, but they were thought to have a positive effect on the attention and engagement of the less mindful students. 

As referenced in the Radel study, any experiments involving "natural settings" (such as a classroom) are difficult due to the vast amount of uncontrollable factors that could influence results. However, this does not mean that results attained from experiments in a lab can't be effective in the classroom as well. My hope is that my study, whether conducted inside or outside of the classroom, will be able to contribute to applying psychology in a natural educational setting.