The purpose of the present study was to examine the relations of situational motivation with achievement goals and self-perception in male and female athletes. Participants were 396 athletes (166 women, 230 men) who represented different sports and had a mean age of 21.4 yrs. (SD = 2.5). Men’s External Regulation scores were higher than women’s. Intrinsic Motivation and Identified Regulation were related to Task Orientation in female and male athletes. Among the women, scores on Task Orientation were positively associated with more self-determined types of situational motivation, while Ego Orientation was negatively related to self-determined motivation. In addition, Physical Self-Worth was negatively related to Amotivation of the women. Among the men, scores on Task Orientation were positively associated with more self-determined types of situational motivation; Amotivation was weakly related to Task Orientation.
According to the foot-in-the-door technique of social influence, everyone who wants to increase the likelihood of having their request fulfilled by another person should first present that person with an easier request. Granting the easier request will make that person more inclined to fulfill the subsequent escalated request. The results of numerous studies confirm this rule. In the psychological literature it is usually assumed that this is possible thanks to the self-perception mechanism. People who comply with an easy request cannot find any external explanation for doing so and therefore draw the auxiliary conclusion that they are 'people for whom it is normal to grant such requests'. The author of this article, however, points out that the self-perception thesis implicitly assumes no impact of any other types of requests on the individual between the times they hear the two requests posed by the psychologists-researchers. Two simple studies presented here demonstrate that people are normally faced with several requests every day, of which some they fulfill and some reject. This constitutes a serious challenge for the self-perception interpretation of the foot-in-the-door technique.
Six samples (total N = 660) varying in age, occupation, and nationality were asked to rate their own traits related to competence (C) and morality (M) and their self-esteem was assessed using various methods. In line with the hypothesis of competence/agency dominance in self-perception it was predicted and found that self-esteem was more strongly correlated with the C than M self-ascription. Although in absolute terms the participants ascribed to themselves significantly more M than C, the former was completely unrelated to their self-esteem. This was found in all samples (student vs non-student, younger vs older, men vs women, Polish vs Dutch) which allowed to eliminate several alternative explanations of the effect. Also in free self-descriptions elicited from one of the samples, C related self-descriptors appeared much more frequent than M-related ones. It was concluded that competence/agentic categories dominate self-perceptions (and self-esteem) over equally favourable categories related to morality and communion.
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