Goals,Values, and Beliefs as Predictors of Achievement and Effort in High School Mathematics Classes

Gender and motivation in high school mathematicsclass were examined by using an expectancy-valueframework. There were 366 students (146 males, 212females)from a school with an enrollmentof approximately 1900 students (81% Caucasian, 8% NativeAmerican, 5% Hispanic, 4% African American, and 2%Asian). These students completed a questionnaireconsisting of 92 items which measured students'situation-specific goals (4 subscales), task-specific values (3subscales), task-specific beliefs (3 subscales), andgender self-schemata (2 subscales). Students' percentagegrade in math and selfreported effort in math class were the dependent variables. The three sets oftask-specific variables each accounted for between 11%and 14% of variance in achievement, while the genderself-schemata variables contributed another 2%. Task-specific goals were much strongerpredictors of effort than any other set of variables. Anunexpected finding was that, for both males and females,endorsing the stereotype that mathematics is a male domain was negatively related to reportedeffort. There were also differences in the prediction ofachievement and effort based on gender and math classtype (required or elective). Several path models supported these results.     

The role of authoritarianism, perceived threat, and need for closure or structure in predicting post-9/11 attitudes and beliefs

The authors examined relationships among authoritarianism, personal need for closure or structure, perceived threat, and post-9/11 attitudes and beliefs. Participants were 159 undergraduate students in the Southeastern United States. The authors collected data 1 week before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Correlation and regression analyses revealed that right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation were significant predictors of support for restricting human rights during the U.S.-led War on Terror, support for U.S. President George W. Bush, and support for U.S. military involvement in Iraq. Right-wing authoritarianism and perceived threat emerged as the strongest predictors of the belief that Saddam Hussein supported terrorism.     

Test difficulty and judgment bias

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that overconfidence in performance judgments is due to test- and person-driven errors. In Experiment 1, test difficulty accounted for the vast majority of variation in overconfidence when individuals judged items of varying difficulty within a homogeneous test. In Experiment 2, the severity of overconfidence did not differ between three unrelated tests once test difficulty was controlled. Both experiments supported the view that over-confidence is due largely to test difficulty. Some degree of overconfidence also occurred because individuals adopted a normatively high success criterion for judging their own test performance.