Covington & Omelich (1979)

Covington, M.V. & Omelich, C.L. (1979). It’s best to be able and virtuous too: Student and teacher evaluative response to successful effort. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71(5), 688-700.

Choice of Study
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the majority of motivational research as well as the development of theoretical models of motivation focused on student failures and subsequent student explanations and attributions given for the failures. Much of our current understanding of effort expenditure as it relates to student motivation has roots in both Rutter’s Theory of Locus of Control (1966) and Weiner’s Attribution Theory (1972) both of which focused primarily on failure outcomes in achievement settings. In this study Covington and Omelich (1979) looked at student perceptions of ability and effort in the context of successful outcomes. This was one of the first empirical based attempts to understand effort expenditure in this context. Interestingly, in Weiner’s chapter contribution to the Handbook of Competence and Motivation (Dweck, 2005) he further nuanced his discussion of attribution theory to include effort expenditure as it relates to successful outcomes. Thus the reading of this article, dating back almost three decades, serves to contribute to our understanding of the evolution of attribution theory over time.

Problem
Covington and Beery’s (1976) self-worth theory of achievement motivation provided the basis for much of our current understanding of the reciprocal relationship between effort and ability as it pertains to student motivation. Self-worth theory holds that students demonstrate negative reactions of shame and distress following failures in achievement settings. With society’s tendency to equate personal worth with competency, failure equated with low ability is theorized to cause the greatest shame for students and is to be avoided at all possible costs. When failure does occur, students prefer to deflect low ability inferences by attributing failures to unstable factors such as minimal effort or bad luck or to stable but external factors such as task difficulty. Interestingly, the preferred low-effort explanation for failure by students results in a student-teacher conflict in the classroom setting. While students much prefer to explain poor outcomes as a lack of effort, this explanation results in greater teacher punishment. In this study, Covington and Omelich sought to expand our understanding of this student-teacher conflict by looking at it within the context of successful outcomes.

Methods
Several hypotheses regarding effort expenditure in the context of successful outcomes were explored: (1) a reciprocal relationship (as found in the case of failure) was predicted between perceived ability and effort in cases of success (i.e. greater effort infers lower ability and lower effort implies higher ability); (2) affect in success (pride and satisfaction) will increase as a positive function of effort; (3) in cases of success, teachers and students will share a common value of effort, unlike failure, in which results in the aforementioned student-teacher conflict ; and (4) males and females will ascribe success to different attributes (ability verses luck respectively). A final objective was to investigate the extent to which ability ascriptions and affective reactions were influenced by individual differences in the academic self-concept among men and women. Given the constraints of this assignment, this review is focused solely on the hypothesis relating to student-teacher conflict.

The subjects in this study included 180 males and 180 females enrolled in an introductory psychology course at the University of California, Berkeley. A questionnaire describing hypothetical achievement situations on a college exam was administered. Subjects were asked to imagine their own success on the test under four different conditions: high effort (E+); high effort with study misplaced because, by chance, test stressed different aspects of the material (E+/Q); low effort (E-); and low effort by reason of illness (E-/Q). The Q refers to the qualified nature of the effort expenditure.

Subjects were also asked to role-play the part of the teacher and reward hypothetical students for successful outcomes. Hypothetical students varied according to ability level (high/low), effort expended (high/low), and with or without qualifying circumstances. This procedure replicated previous research of Weiner and colleagues (1972, 1974) with the difference being the addition of qualifiers. Subjects responded to the question, “How much reward or positive feedback would you give to each of these successful students?” Ratings were made on a 7-point scale from 1 (very little) to 7 (very much). Students were also asked to rank their preferences for the four possible explanations that others might give for their success: high ability/low effort (A+E-); high ability/high effort (A+E+); low ability/low effort (A-E-); and low ability/high effort (A-E+).

Results
When asked to role-play teachers (rewarding students under the four conditions) student responses revealed that overall females were more likely to give rewards. Circumstances of success (qualifiers for effort expenditure and student ability-high/low) had substantial bearing on the degree of the reward given by male and female subjects. Female subjects rewarded low-ability students more often than high-ability students and both males and females rewarded students who succeeded by effort more often than those who succeeded without trying.

Subjects preferred the high ability/high effort explanation with respect to both their personal success and the success of others. This outcome, confirmed the hypothesis stating that in the case of success, students and teachers share a common value of the importance of effort expenditure.

Discussion and Conclusion
In cases of success, effort expenditure becomes a shared value between teachers and students. In these instances, both teachers and students prefer a high ability/high effort explanation. Thereby if teachers create a success-oriented environment, one that reinforces individual student goal setting, continual feedback, absolute performance standards, such that any student can achieve a given grade as long as their performance reaches a predetermined criterion, students will increase efforts toward achievement. The implementation of such learning environment is well described within the literature of autonomy supportive learning and instruction.

Critique
This was a complex study seeking to confirm several hypotheses and objectives. Results were reported in narrative and included only one table and one figure. As a result analyzing and interpreting the results was more challenging than it needed to be. The study was important because in addition to broadening our understanding of the role of effort expenditure in the context of success conditions it further sought to understand the affects of the perceptions of others (teachers) in relation to effort expenditure. Weiner (1992) further elaborated on this notion of interpersonal versus intrapersonal perceptions of ability on future success. He stated that the manner in which others perceive us affects our motivation. This early study perhaps provided some of the necessary background for Weiner’s further nuanced model of attribution theory.

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