I entered graduate school in the late 1960s, but not as a social psychologist. I’m not sure exactly when I became one or when I came to be considered one. As you will see, I had identity issues (and conformity issues), which made me a different kind of social psychologist and which I sincerely hope in the end added to any contributions I have made to the field.

In this chapter, we argue that to understand intelligence one must understand motivation. In the past, intelligence was often cast as an entity unto itself, relatively unaffected by motivation. In our chapter, we spell out how motivational factors determine (1) whether individuals initiate goals relating to the acquisition and display of intellectual skills, (2) how persistently they pursue those goals, and (3) how effectively they pursue those goals, that is, how effectively they learn and perform in the intellectual arena. As will be seen, motivational factors can have systematic and meaningful effects on intellectual ability, performance, and accomplishment over time. Our discussion emphasizes that heritability is not incompatible with the malleability of intelligence and that motivation is the vehicle through which intellectual skills are successfully acquired, expressed, and built upon.

When I was in college, I fell in love – with the scientific method. Could I imagine a better career than using the scientific method to uncover the workings of the human psyche? No, and I still can't. It's been a long and fruitful relationship, and I'd like to share with you some of the fruits.

My most important scientific contribution so far has been my research on mindsets. (From now on I will say “our” and “we,” because all of the research is collaborative, which makes the enterprise all the more stimulating and enjoyable. We are not lone scientists toiling in isolation.) It all started with the following question: What makes some people seek challenges and thrive in the face of obstacles, while others, no less able, avoid difficulty and crumble when they encounter setbacks? I came to realize that I was interested in this question for personal reasons. Many of us psychologists do not just do research, but what we call “me-search” – research on a topic that is really about us, such as our bad memory or our inability to exert willpower or our concern with others’ opinions. As for me, I had always done well at everything I tried, but I didn't try everything. I was reluctant to step out of my comfort zone and was alarmed by the prospect of ever failing at anything I valued. As I began my me-search, I encountered something that would change me for good.

While working with ten-year-old students, at some point in the experiment I gave them problems that were too hard to solve. As I expected, some students were a bit distraught. But, counter to my expectation, some were pleased. They didn't just cope with what I thought of as the “failure” problems, they welcomed them as an exciting opportunity to learn. It was as though the whole experience was now worth their while. After I got over my shock, I vowed to understand these children's secret, not just for myself, but so I could share it with others.

Some years later, we came to understand that these students were in a “growth mindset.

What Is the Approach Presented in This Volume?

In the past decade or two there has emerged an approach to the study of motivation that focuses on specific cognitive and affective mediators of behavior rather than more general traits or motives. This “social-cognitive” approach attempts to identify very specific psychological processes that, in interaction with situational cues, shape people's actions. This approach grants motivation its own role in shaping cognition, emotion, and behavior, rather than reducing goal-directed behavior to cold-blooded information processing or to mere enactment of a personality type. As we will see, viewing motivation in these terms allows for an understanding of how motivational processes guide and organize patterns of cognition, emotion, and behavior. Thus, this social-cognitive approach leads us to investigate the dynamic interplay of psychological processes as people pursue their goals.

Historical Roots and Emergence of Process-Oriented Approaches to Motivation

Psychologists, as well as laypeople, have always been intrigued by dynamic theories of motivation. A telling example is the sustained fascination with Freud's psychodynamic theory, although many would argue there is little empirical support for it. The process-oriented approach to motivation and self-regulation presented in this volume captures much of the richness of a dynamic approach and avoids many of the pitfalls of previous approaches.

This book is based on a conference entitled “Life-Span Perspectives on Motivation and Control,” organized by Jutta Heckhausen and Carol Dweck and held in July 1995 at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

We are grateful to a number of people and institutions for their contributions to the conference and to this volume. First, we thank Paul Baltes, director of the Center for Lifespan Psychology, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin for hosting and providing financial support for the conference. We also thank Ulrich Knappek for his excellent work on the administrative tasks involved in organizing the conference, and Kim Saccio-Kent for her most professional copyediting of the book manuscript. Moreover, we thank all the authors for submitting superb chapters, and for patiently and expertly responding to our editorial comments. Finally, the work on this edited volume profited much from a most conducive environment at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, where Jutta Heckhausen spent the year 1995–6 as a fellow (MacArthur Foundation Grant #8900078).

Abstract

This chapter focuses on self-conceptions and motivational processes in young children, a topic of interest for several reasons. First, greater understanding of motivational processes in young children can provide insight into the origins of adaptive and maladaptive functioning. Second, from a theoretical and empirical standpoint, it is a topic that has been somewhat shrouded in mystery. That is, although maladaptive motivational patterns had been identified and studied in older children for quite some time, these patterns had not been found in younger children (below the age of about 8 or 9), and, in fact, were widely believed not to exist. In this chapter, I first describe the adaptive and maladaptive motivational patterns that characterize older children, contrasting the mastery-oriented pattern of challenge-seeking and effective persistence with the helpless pattern of risk avoidance and impairment in the face of difficulty. I show how these patterns are related to the conceptions about their intelligence that children hold. I then discuss why younger children were believed to be exclusively mastery-oriented, and present a series of studies from our laboratory demonstrating that they are not. Indeed, a sizable proportion of young children (as young as preschool and kindergarten age) exhibit every aspect of the helpless pattern. Moreover, this pattern is linked to children's self-conceptions: not to their conceptions about their intelligence, but to their conceptions about their goodness and badness – the domain of greatest relevance to children in this age group.

It is clear that the array of goals facing students is a daunting one. Students are typically concerned not only with academic work, but also with the liking and esteem of their teachers and peers – and with their parents' reactions to their academic and social life. Even in the best of all possible worlds, juggling this variety of concerns would be difficult. When one considers that this is often not the best of all possible worlds – for example, that what peers value is often not what parents and teachers value – then coordinating the various social and academic goals becomes even more demanding. Each of these chapters deals in an extremely thoughtful way with the psychological factors that predict how and how well students will confront these challenges.

Drawing on the wealth of research provided in the six chapters, I will use a “goal analysis” to tie together the many findings and to integrate the different perspectives represented in the chapters. I will begin by discussing the kinds of goals students may pursue in academic settings. I will then move to an examination of the factors shown by research to affect successful goal pursuit and school adjustment, and I will end by proposing a dynamic model of goals that organizes these factors into a system of coherent processes. As the work reviewed in these chapters attests, such a goal analysis can be a fruitful way to understand academic and social functioning (see Erdley; Ford; Harter; Juvonen; Kupersmidt, Buchele, Voegler, and Sedikides; and Schunk and Zimmerman chapters; see also Dodge, Asher, & Parkhurst, 1989; Pervin, 1982; 1989; Wentzel, 1991a; this volume.).