• APPLYING EXPECTANCY-VALUE THEORY TO IMPROVING ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

As it became evident in the 1960s that human motives were related to important human endeavors like entrepreneurship and management, investigators turned their attention to methods of changing motives to improve Performance. Since the emphasis was on Performance Output rather than on motive change in itself, these efforts to produce change can best be understood in terms of the formula for predicting response Output presented in previous chapters. According to that formula, response Output, given environmental opportunity, is a function of motive strength (M) times probability of success (Ps) times incentive value (V). Technically, response probability can be increased by changing environmental opportunity or any one of the three person variables in the equation. Early efforts to introduce change focused on affecting the probability of success variable. School learning or skill acquisition affects this variable. If people learn how to do something better, it by definition increases the probability of their succeeding at that activity and makes it more likely that they will carry out the activity if they are also motivated to do it and they value it. But motive development courses approached probability of success in a different way. They manipulated the perceived probability of success without teaching skills directly.