Do parents’ collectivistic tendency and attitudes toward filial piety facilitate autonomous motivation among young Chinese adolescents?

The present study investigates the association of Chinese parents' collectivistic tendency, attitudes towards filial piety (i.e., children respecting and caring for parents (RCP) and children protecting and upholding honor for parents (PUHP)), parenting behaviors (i.e., autonomy granting (AG) and psychological control (PC)) with young adolescents' autonomous motivation. Participants were 321 Chinese parents and their eighth-grade children who independently completed a set of surveys. Results showed that parents' collectivistic tendency indirectly and positively contributes to children's autonomous motivation through the mediation of AG and PC, respectively. Parents' attitude toward RCP has an indirect and positive contribution to children's autonomy motivation through the mediation of AG while parents' attitude toward PUHP shows an indirect and negative contribution to children's autonomous motivation through the mediation of PC. The findings suggest that different cultural emphases in collectivist-based societies play different roles in adolescents' autonomy development. The implications of the findings are discussed. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York

The psychology of passion: A meta-analytical review of a decade of research on intrapersonal outcomes

It is just over a decade since Vallerand et al. (J Personal Soc Psychol 85:756–767, 2003) introduced the dualistic model of passion. In this study, we conduct a meta-analytical review of relationships between Vallerand et al’s two passions (viz. harmonious and obsessive), and intrapersonal outcomes, and test the moderating role of age, gender, domain, and culture. A systematic literature search yielded 94 studies, within which 27 criterion variables were reported. These criterion variables derived from four research areas within the intrapersonal sphere: (a) well-/ill-being, (b) motivation factors, (c) cognitive outcomes and, (d) behaviour and performance. From these areas we retrieved 1308 independent effect sizes and analysed them using random-effects models. Results showed harmonious passion positively corresponded with positive intrapersonal outcomes (e.g., positive affect, flow, performance). Obsessive passion, conversely, showed positive associations with positive and negative

Working passionately does not always pay off : the negative moderating role of passion on the relationship between deliberate practice and venture performance

Deliberate practice, an iterative process that leads to expertise, is found to be positively associated with superior performance in domains such as sports, education, and entrepreneurship. At the same time, deliberate practice is also seen as being less than enjoyable and difficult to pursue consistently. As such, passion is considered to be a vital motivator of engagement in and maintenance of deliberate practice. Despite the evident importance of passion, the relationship between passion and deliberate practice in entrepreneurship has not been subject to sufficient empirical evaluation. Therefore, in this study, we consider the way in which passion moderates the relationship between deliberate practice and venture performance. We hypothesize that deliberate practice is positively related to venture performance and that passion positively moderates this relationship. We find support for our first hypothesis, in line with previous studies. However, contrary to our second hypothesis, we find that entrepreneurial passion negatively moderates the deliberate practice-venture performance relationship. In response to this finding, we provide possible explanations as to why this negative moderation effect was observed by drawing on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle

Intrinsic, identified, and controlled types of motivation for school subjects in young elementary school children.

BACKGROUND: There are two approaches to the differential examination of school motivation. The first is to examine motivation towards specific school subjects (between school subject differentiation). The second is to examine school motivation as a multidimensional concept that varies in terms of not only intensity but also quality (within school subject differentiation). These two differential approaches have led to important discoveries and provided a better understanding of student motivational dynamics. However, little research has combined these two approaches. AIMS: This study examines young elementary students' motivations across school subjects (writing, reading, and maths) from the stance of self-determination theory. First, we tested whether children self-report different levels of intrinsic, identified, and controlled motivation towards specific school subjects. Second, we verified whether children self-report differentiated types of motivation across school subjects. SAMPLE: Participants were 425 French-Canadian children (225 girls, 200 boys) from three elementary schools. Children were in Grades 1 (N=121), 2 (N=126), and 3 (N=178). RESULTS: Results show that, for a given school subject, young elementary students self-report different levels of intrinsic, identified, and controlled motivation. Results also indicate that children self-report different levels of motivation types across school subjects. Our findings also show that most differentiation effects increase across grades. Some gender effects were also observed. CONCLUSION: These results highlight the importance of distinguishing among types of school motivation towards specific school subjects in the early elementary years