Abilities, motivation, and methodology The Minnesota Symposium on Learning and Individual Differences

A classic problem in the study of behavior is the relationship between what we know and what we do (see Woodworth & Schlosberg, 1954). Perhaps the most important aspect of the study of motivation is this distinction between competence (knowing) and performance (doing). This is particularly the case when studying individual differences in learning and motivation. Indeed, folk wisdom attributes poor performance on the part of some students not to an inability to learn, but rather to a lack of effort or motivation. Many are the poor students told by a teacher that if only they would try harder they would do better. However, as is true of much of contradictory folk wisdom, we are also told that people can get too motivated or too excited to do well. Many students, after a particularly bad performance on an exam will explain to their professor that they knew the material but while taking the test their mind just went blank because of test anxiety.