Expectancy Value Part 2

    Achievement goals are purposes people have when they are faced with standards of excellence when they are trying to achieve something in school, work, or other activities. There are two main types of achievement goals according to Atkinson: mastery goals and performance goals. An individual with mastery goals is focused on improving themselves and their competence while making progress and overcoming challenges. Performance goals are when someone’s focus is to show competence, prove their ability, and outperform others. There are then performance-approach goals and performance-avoidance goals. Performance-approach goals are to do better than others and be recognized for it, whereas performance-avoidance goals are to avoid failing or looking incompetent. 

    Meredith Grey experiences both mastery and achievement goals in the first five seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. At the beginning, she has a mastery goals orientation regarding her surgical training as an intern. Although she is trying to be the best out of her peers, she also shows motivation from a desire to learn and develop her own skills. This can be seen when she asks questions about her mistakes and volunteers to be involved in complex procedures. Meredith also has performance goals, mostly driven by her mother’s legacy and wanting to live up to her expectations, but also by how her superiors view her work.

    Developing interest is the process by which a person’s engagement with something evolves over time. It includes four phases: triggered situational interest, maintained situational interest, emerging individual interest, and well-developed individual interest. Triggered situational interest is short-term, maintained situational interest is engagement that continues and is supported by the environment, emerging individual interest is when the individual begins seeking out ways to continue engaging with the content, and well-developed individual interest is consistent motivation allowing the individual to engage with the content on their own without external support. 

    All four of these interests can be seen in Meredith during the first five seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. Her initial interest and engagement with medicine and surgery is influenced by her environment, her mother, who was an extraordinary surgeon. Meredith becomes an intern at the hospital her mother worked at and left a lasting impact on. This interest, although made partly by personal choice, was also based on the circumstances she was in. Once Meredith becomes more involved in her surgical training, the mentorship, experiences, and stress/thrill of it all keep her engaged with medicine. She has a strong sense of curiosity and motivation as she begins to see patient outcomes from the cases she is a part of. During seasons two and three, Meredith begins the emerging individual interest stage. Her connection to surgery is more personal; she keeps looking for cases that will challenge her, and she researches beyond what is expected of her. Lastly, during seasons four and five, surgery can be seen as a strong component of Meredith’s overall identity. She now mentors interns while persevering through her own professional and emotional challenges. Meredith no longer seeks approval from her superiors to keep her motivation.

    Instrumentality is how much someone believes an activity is useful for reaching their goals. Perceived instrumentality is the belief that what you are currently doing is going to directly contribute to the future outcomes desired, which increases motivation because it leads to persistence in the task. The types of instrumentality are endogenous instrumentality, when someone’s current and future goals go together (furthering intrinsic motivation), and exogenous instrumentality, which is when the current tasks are needed for the long-term goals, but are not directly related (supporting extrinsic motivation). 

    Meredith Grey’s motivation from the beginning of Grey’s Anatomy is largely tied to how she sees her work to become a surgeon as instrumental to herself and her future goals; she has perceived instrumentality. In season one, where she starts as an intern, she sees everything she is going through as a step towards her future as a surgeon. The case studies, impressing the attendings, her mistakes, and the long nights in the hospital all go toward her living up to being an accomplished surgeon like her mother, and she sees that. She recognizes that what she is currently doing is directly related to her desired future outcomes and goals.