SELF-WORTH

THEORY
 Martin V. Covington

Research Psychologist in the Institute of Personality and Social

Research (IPSR)

Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate School in UC

Berkeley

Educational Psychology Ph.D.

B.A. Psychology Magna Cum Laude

 Martin V. Covington
Awards:
University Distinguished Teaching Award (1976)

Phi Beta Kappa Award for Outstanding University Instructor of the Year (1998)

Berkeley Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of GSiS (2002)

First holder of the Berkeley Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education (2001-2006)

 SELF-WORTH THEORY
• Proposed by Martin Covington
• Humans naturally strive to maintain a sense of self-worth, or
an appraisal of one’s own value as a person.
• Humans are motivated to protect their self-worth by
maintaining a belief that they are competent.
 BASIC PREMISE
"Individuals struggle to give their lives meaning
by seeking the approval of others which involves
being competent and able, and avoiding the
implications of failure - that one is incompetent,
hence unworthy." (Covington, 2009 p. 145)
 Main Elements
1. Ability
2. Effort
3. Performance
4. Self-worth
 ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION

Achievement processes can be viewed as a

conflict of two opposing forces (Atkinson, 1957)
 tendency to approach success
 tendency to avoid failure
 can be high or low on both forces
Quadripolar Model of Need Achievement (Covington, 2009)

Approach

Avoidance
 Failure-accepting students
• low on success approach – low on failure avoidance
• They are convinced that their problems are due to low
ability.
• Risk nothing, so lose nothing.
 Failure-avoiding students
• low on success approach – high on failure avoidance
• To feel competent, they must protect themselves (and
their self-worth) from failure.
• Taking few risk and “sticking with what they know”.
 Overstriver students
• high on success approach – high on failure avoidance
• Try to ensure that they will succeed by putting forth a
lot of effort into studying
• May become closet achievers
 Mastery/Success- oriented
students
• high on success approach – low on failure avoidance
• Tend to value achievement and see ability as
improvable (an incremental view) so they focus on
mastery goals to increase their skills and abilities
 SELF-HANDICAPPING STRATEGIES

• Non-performance – not trying

• Procrastination – blame failure on poor time
management
• Setting unreachable goals – setting goals so
high that success is virtually impossible
 ANXIETY
It is caused by the fear that we may not be
competent, and thus, not worthy.
Performance = Ability = Worth
If we fear we might not be worthy, we will be
anxious
 GUIDELINES
• Guide students in setting challenging but
realistic goals.
• Help students strengthen the link between their
effort and self-worth. Tell them to take pride in
their effort and warn them to minimize social
comparison.
 GUIDELINES
• Encourage students to have positive beliefs
about their abilities.
PROBLEM-BASED APPROACH
1. Transparency of goals
2. Redressing the mismatch of roles and
responsibilities
3. The use of criterion-referenced grading
 TRANSPARENCY OF GOALS
• Be clear about the purpose/goals of the course.

• Be clear about what is expected of students for

them to succeed.
 REDRESSING THE MISMATCH OF
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Problem-solving tasks should provide a

challenge that balances the odds of success and
failure.
• Encourage collaboration among students (and
the instructor).
 CRITERION-REFERENCED GRADING

• Grades should be viewed as information needed

to become a productive learner, instead of being
viewed as a threat to one's competence.
• Use "Grade-Choice Arrangement"
 Making the Grade: A Self-Worth
Perspective on Motivation and School
Reform

By: Martin V. Covington

 POINTS ABOUT SELF-WORTH
1. Ability estimates, either high or low, depend on the circumstances of failure. For example, a
combination of high effort/failure implies low ability.
2. Self-perceptions of incompetency trigger feelings of shame and humiliation
3. By not trying, individuals are able to minimize information about their ability should they fail
4. The presence of excuses – for either why one did not try or why one did try but to no avail – can
also deflect suspicions of inability following failure
5. Student preoccupation with ability status and the teacher’s understandable tendency to reward
effort set the stage for a conflict of classroom values.
 EXPERIMENT

Covington and Omelich (1979) asked college

undergraduates to imagine how much shame they
would experience if they failed a test that most of
their classmates passed.
 EXPERIMENT
Four Ways of Failing
1. little study without an excuse
2. little study with an excuse
3. intense study without an excuse
4. intense study with an excuse
 EXPERIMENT
little effort – excuse was illness

high effort – excuse was that by chance the student

studied different parts of the assignment than those
emphasized on the test
 EXPERIMENT

Besides introspecting their feelings of shame, these

subjects also indicated how much they would
attribute failure to incompetency.
 EXPERIMENT

Besides introspecting their feelings of shame, these

subjects also indicated how much they would
attribute failure to incompetency.
 EXPERIMENT

Finally, the subjects were asked to assume the role of

teachers and administer reprimands (low grades) to
hypothetical students under the same four failure
conditions.
STUDENT PERSPECTIVE
The students judged themselves to be
most incompetent when they studied
hard and failed anyway and far less
stupid when they did not try at all.
STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

The greater one’s perceived

incompetency, the greater the shame.
 TEACHER PERSPECTIVE

Individuals who studied hard and failed

anyway were less severely punished
than those who simply did not try.
CONCEPTIONS OF ABILITY

Developmental schema proposed by

Nicholls (1978, 1984)
 CONCEPTIONS OF ABILITY
Stage one: Pre-school and Kindergarten years

Children have not yet differentiated between ability

and effort (Blumenfeld, Pintrinch, & Hamilton, 1986)
 CONCEPTIONS OF ABILITY
Stage two: Early and middle elementary years

Ability and effort are still largely undifferentiated ,

but it is now effort that begins to prevail as the most
salient cause of success.
 CONCEPTIONS OF ABILITY
Stage three: Late elementary years

Youngsters begin to view ability as an independent

factor, separate from effort in its impact on
achievement.
 CONCEPTIONS OF ABILITY
Stage four: Beginning at about 13 years of age

Ability alone is a necessary condition for success and

that lack of ability is a sufficient explanation for
failure.
 REFLECTION
Motivating our students just by telling them to “try harder”
is not enough and not really effective. We need to help
students reduce preoccupation with ability status. We need
to provide authentic mastery experiences wherein the
students can set challenging yet realistic goals. We need to
make the students believe that they have control over some
aspect of their learning and they can succeed if they put
forth the effort.
 REFERENCES
Covington, M.V. (2012) Making the Grade: A Self-worth Perspective on Motivation and School Reform.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 72-103
Covington, M. (2009). Self-worth theory. Retrospection and prospects. In K. Wentzel and A. Wigfield
(Eds.), Handbook of motivation at school (pp.141-169). New York, NY: Routledge
Santrock, J. W. (2011). Educational Psychology 5th Edition. New York, NY. McGraw-Hill
Woolfolk, A (2016). Educational Psychology Global Edition 13th Edition. Pearson Education Limited.
Edindburg Gate Harlow, England