Motivational interference in study–leisure conflicts: how opportunity costs affect the self-regulation of university students

Abstract

We examined the effects of motivational interference resulting from tempting action alternatives among a sample of university students with respect to a new measure of different motivational qualities. Participants imagined themselves in a typical study–leisure conflict and provided information about their internal conflict experience in two scenarios: reading a course paper instead of meeting friends and vice versa. Participants then evaluated intrinsic, mastery, approach, avoidance, and external incentives for both activities. Confirmatory factor analyses yielded good model fits for the proposed five-factor incentive structure. In accordance with the idea of motivational interference, the incentives for meeting friends were positively related to experienced internal conflict while imagining studying, representing opportunity costs of learning. The same pattern was found for the opportunity costs that the participants had experienced while imagining meeting friends. In particular, intrinsic and approach incentives represented incremental opportunity costs of activity engagement, regardless of whether the dismissed activity was related to achievement or leisure. The findings highlight the need to apply a dynamic and context-sensitive perspective on achievement motivation to the context of higher education.

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