Goal Frustration in Academic Achievement Settings: Theories and Applications

144 Pages·2022·2.745 MB·English

by  Mingming Zhou

Mingming Zhou
Goal Frustration
in Academic
Achievement
Settings
Theories and Applications
Goal Frustration in Academic Achievement Settings
Mingming Zhou
Goal Frustration in Academic
Achievement Settings
Theories and Applications
Mingming Zhou
University of Macau
Macau, China
ISBN 978-981-19-7476-2 ISBN 978-981-19-7477-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7477-9
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Preface
Pursuit and achievement of goals are important in life as they give meaning and
direction to people (Carver & Scheier, 1998). Since we were very young, we have
learned somehow how to set goals, formal or informal. We get excited about the goals
even by just thinking about it. We write them down on sticky notes on the wall and see
them everyday we wake up. We announce them to our families, friends, colleagues
and bosses and feel that it is something we have no excuse not to achieve. We make
a silent vow to ourselves to accomplish a goal and repeat it in our mind thousands
of times. Until someday later, we look at what we have achieved and what we left
on the table. We get excited, self-affirmed when goals are realized as we expected;
we get frustrated, self-doubted and wonder if this goal was even realistic when we
do not achieve the goal. This can happen to us during any goal pursuit.
Among the variety of goals in life, goals in academic studies are important. They
can take the form of different academic activities such as homework, exam prepara-
tion, course assignment and so forth. Setting goals has been found to be an important
factor in predicting and explaining students’ learning processes and outcomes (Burns
et al., 2018). According to Locke and Latham (2006), goals direct attention and action,
which can mobilize energy and increase persistent effort, and motivate students to
develop strategies that will enable them to perform at the required levels. Goal setting
is considered an active student-centered process that encourages students’ consistent
efforts to address where they would like to improve and grow (Burns et al., 2018)
and positive behaviors conducive to their personal growth and excellence (Martin &
Liem, 2010).
However, goals are not always achieved smoothly as planned. Students encounter
a range of learning failures throughout their goal pursuit journey: missing the dead-
line of term paper submission, failing to recall the lines during the presentation
or the computer crashes after working for hours. Anything could drive you nuts,
with all stress comes and stays with you. In effect, a research study by Di Leo
et al. (2019) reported that the most frequently occurring emotions during academic
problem solving were frustration (24.34%) and confusion (22.63%). Yet what exactly
v
vi Preface
is goal frustration? How does it differ from related constructs, such as goal distur-
bance or goal hindrance? Why do people feel frustrated? About under what circum-
stances do they feel frustrated? Why do some people feel frustrated only rarely,
whereas others might be labeled “constant” discouragers? What implications does
goal frustration have for the individual and his or her life? How does an individual
typically react to his or her frustration, and what factors determine that response?
Although a large body of literature has described both theoretical and practical
issues concerned with goal setting and goal attainment, severely less attention has
been paid to goal failure in student populations. There are three plausible reasons
for this. First, social sciences have been dominated by “positive” perspectives in
the past decades and educational researchers and psychologists have focused almost
all of their attention on well-being rather than ill-being and happiness rather than
unhappiness. It seems that negative thoughts and emotions will tend to disappear once
we decide to pick up positive thinking. This sounds sarcastic in that human organisms
are complex in a way we can and need to handle both good and bad aspects of life
simultaneously. And as a matter of fact, we experience good and bad things at the
same time most of our life. The attempt to shut out negative or bad thoughts or avoid
them in the “pursuit of happiness” will only bring out an imbalanced life.
Second, underneath the personal growth umbrella, it seems not so necessary to
examine how and why people fail, compared to the growing knowledge on how we
set, pursue and achieve the goals. This implies that if we know how to succeed, we
will not be likely to fail. I cannot contend with this argument as in many achievement
situations, success is good but failure is even better, as learning from past mistakes is
of prominent importance for successful future behavior (van der Helden et al., 2010),
knowing that most times things do not go as planned. Failure does not necessarily
question your capabilities or ideas; rather, it simply means there is something to be
learned or another direction to be taken. Being confronted with failure experiences
shows you where you should not be, provides an opportunity to re-evaluate and
pushes you to be stronger with better reasoning.
Third, as an emotion that occurs in situations where a person is blocked from
reaching a desired outcome, frustration does not hold as much attention as other
types of negative emotions such as anxiety, anger or depression. As compared to
anxiety or depression which has been considered as mental disorder that needs to have
treatments and medication (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), frustration is
commonly identified as an emotional response to situations wherein goal attainment
is blocked (De Botton, 2000). Further, frustration does not predict individuals’ mental
health and academic performance as strong as other negative emotions did (Kostyuk
et al., 2018).
In a nutshell, this book is dedicated to elucidating important concepts and issues
about goal frustration. The intention is to provide deep insights about how, why and
in what situations frustration is to be experienced in academic contexts and what are
possible mechanisms to cope with it. Both theoretical accounts and empirical data
are provided to build the argument that (1) goal frustration needs to be continuously
empirically verified; (2) both the dark side and not-too-dark side of goal frustration
exist as shown in both theory and practice; (3) theoretically and practically based
Preface vii
suggestions and advices on how to better control goal frustration; and (4) in what
circumstances goal frustration can be transformed into fulfillment. It is my hope that
after reading this book, you will not have worries, concerns or fears about frustration,
but more readier than any other time to face, accept, even welcome frustration, just
as if it is part of our life.
Macau, China Mingming Zhou
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
(5th ed.). Author.
Burns, E. C., Martin, A. J., & Collie, R. J. (2018). Adaptability, personal best (PB) goals setting,
and gains in students’ academic outcomes: A longitudinal examination from a social cognitive
perspective. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 53, 57–72.
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1998). On the self-regulation of behavior. Cambridge University
Press.
De Botton, A. (2000). The consolations of philosophy. Vintage Books.
Di Leo, I., Muis, K. R., Singh, C. A., & Psaradellis, C. (2019). Curiosity… Confusion? Frustra-
tion! The role and sequencing of emotions during mathematics problem solving. Contemporary
Educational Psychology, 58, 121–137.
Kostyuk, V., Almeda, M. V., & Baker, R. S. (2018). Correlating affect and behavior in reasoning
mind with state test achievement. In Proceedings of the international conference on learning
analytics and knowledge (pp. 26–30).
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2006). New directions in goal-setting theory. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 15(5), 265–268.
Martin, A. J., & Liem, G. A. D. (2010). Academic personal bests (PBs), engagement, and
achievement: A cross-lagged panel analysis. Learning and Individual Differences, 20, 265–
270.
van der Helden, J., Boksem, M. A. S., & Blom, J. H. G. (2010). The importance of failure: Feedback-
related negativity predicts motor learning efficiency. Cerebral Cortex, 20(7), 1596–1603.
Contents
1 Nature of Goal Frustration ...................................... 1
1 Emotions in Academic Contexts .............................. 1
2 Defining Frustration: Validity Issues ........................... 2
3 A Multidimensional Framework of Goal Frustration ............. 5
4 Similar Constructs to Goal Frustration ......................... 9
5 Causes and Consequences of Goal Frustration ................... 11
6 Summary .................................................. 14
References ..................................................... 15
2 Operationalization of Goal Frustration ........................... 23
1 Existing Measures of Goal Frustration ......................... 28
1.1 Self-reports ........................................... 28
1.2 Physiological Measures ................................. 31
1.3 Behavioral Measures ................................... 33
1.4 Computer Modelling/Logs ............................... 35
1.5 Qualitative Measures ................................... 36
2 Issues with Extant Measures .................................. 37
3 Potential Solutions to Identified Issues ......................... 40
References ..................................................... 41
3 Correlates to Goal Frustration ................................... 49
1 Self-efficacy ................................................ 50
2 Goal Orientation ............................................ 51
3 Attribution ................................................. 53
4 Striving .................................................... 54
5 Mental Toughness ........................................... 55
6 Cognitive Level ............................................. 56
7 Past and Future Experiences .................................. 56
8 Interpersonal Relationships ................................... 57
9 Task Characteristics ......................................... 59
10 Sociocultural Values ......................................... 59
11 Aggression ................................................. 60
ix
x Contents
12 Information Processing ...................................... 61
13 Summary .................................................. 62
References ..................................................... 62
4 Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Goal Frustration .................. 69
References ..................................................... 77
5 Empirical Evidence of Goal Frustration in Academic Settings ...... 83
1 Study 1 .................................................... 86
1.1 Data Collection ........................................ 86
1.2 Findings .............................................. 90
2 Study 2 .................................................... 94
2.1 Data Collection ........................................ 94
2.2 Findings .............................................. 95
3 Summary .................................................. 98
References ..................................................... 99
6 Ways to Monitor and Control Goal Frustration ................... 105
1 Cognitive Strategies ......................................... 106
2 Affective Strategies ......................................... 108
3 Behavioral Strategies ........................................ 109
4 Technology-Based Strategies ................................. 112
5 Alternative External Sources .................................. 114
6 What do We do Next? ....................................... 115
References ..................................................... 116
7 Frustration or Fulfilment? Transform Frustration
into Empowerment ............................................. 123
1 Reframing Frustration ....................................... 125
2 Tolerate or Combat Frustration? ............................... 127
3 Link Frustration to Practices, Not Outcomes .................... 128
4 Use Frustration as a Learning Tool/Catalyst ..................... 129
5 From Frustration to Passion .................................. 130
References ..................................................... 132
8 Concluding Remarks ........................................... 135
References ..................................................... 138
Chapter 1
Nature of Goal Frustration
1 Emotions in Academic Contexts
Academic success is a key aspect of one’s life and development (Donolato et al.,
2019). Students are required to achieve various goals that are of fundamental impor-
tance to their academic and future development. Along with the large body of liter-
ature focusing on individual factors related to academic success, such as motiva-
tion (Usán et al., 2019), effort-making (Baars et al., 2020), self-concept (Delgado
et al., 2019), and working memory (Fitzgerald et al., 2020), researchers have been
effectively advancing our understanding of the association between emotion-related
constructs and academic learning (Valiente et al., 2012). Baumeister and Bushman
(2007) conceptualized the experience of an emotion as “a subjective state, often
accompanied by a bodily reaction (e.g., increased heart rate) and an evaluative
response, to some event” (p. 61). Emotion has a complex influence on learning
commitment and achievement (Xing et al., 2019). Positive emotion experienced
during learning is not necessarily related to longer commitment in learning, and
negative emotion could have a beneficial effect on learning outcomes (Barak et al.,
2016).
Despite this increased interest in and wide recognition of emotions in academic
settings, which indicates how current learning and performance situations are expe-
rienced (Pekrun, 2018), research has focused primarily on dealing with positive
emotions, such as joy, hope, and pride (Pekrun et al., 2004), and negative emotions,
such as anxiety or stress (Pizzie & Kraemer, 2019; Trigueros et al., 2020). Although
frustration and other negative emotions that have been extensively researched (e.g.,
anger, anxiety, boredom) are similar to each other, insofar as they are all considered
negative emotional responses and feelings (White, 2013), great distinctions can be
easily detected among them.
Specifically, in Russell’s core-affect framework (2003) on learning-centered
cognitive–affective states, frustration, anger, and anxiety have a high negative valence
and high level of arousal; boredom has a negative valence and low level of arousal,
and confusion has a negative valence and moderate level of arousal. Furthermore,
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 1
M. Zhou, Goal Frustration in Academic Achievement Settings,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7477-9_1