Personal Control (CH 6)

• What is personal agency?


  intellectual curiosity, the desire to take on master activities or working towards a goal and implementing plans
• what is self-regulation?

  resistance to temptation, impulse control, and acting to accordance to right or wrong.
• what are the two components to the self-perception of control?

  1. a person must feel that he or she has the ability to take on activities and challenges 2. the extent to which a person feels his or her actions reflect his or her personal decisions or desires or instead are dictated by external forces or other people.
• What happens if a person doesn't feel they have the ability to take on the specific activity?

  The persons sense of desire and motivation is weaken.
• What is the self-determination theory?

  A theory that suggests that people have an innate need for autonomy, with their actions motivated by personal desires and choices rather than dictated by external forces.
• Internal locus

  People with an internal locus of control believe that their own actions determine the rewards that they obtain.
• External locus


  People with an external locus of control believe that their own behavior doesn't matter much and that rewards in life are generally outside of their control.
• what is the learned helplessness concept.


  its when any of your actions would end up affecting your outcome. this can promote an external locus of control and helplessness if the person feels these events have no connection to what they have done.
• what is the over-justification effect?


  it is the idea that when people feel that their behavior is in response to the promise of a reward (ex: money) or to some other external factor, they downplay the extent to which the reflects personal behaviors.
• What are the three assumptions that the over justification effect is based off?

  1)Motivation to do something comes in two forms (intrinsic and extrinsic). 2) there is a zero-sum relation between intrinsic and extrinsic motives, 3)extrinsic motives are more concrete and vivid and thus more powerful than intrinsic motives
• intrinsic motivation


  when a person engages in an activity because it is enjoyable, interesting, challenging or personally fulfilling.
• extrinsically motivation


  when a person engages in an activity because it means they are going to get an award or avoid an undesirable outcome