UC Santa Barbara

Research on academic achievement has focused on a variety of different moderators of academic motivation, and the role of culture is a relatively new topic of study in this area. Combining previous research on culture, education, and motivation, and following previous studies on culture and social support, the current research addresses how interactions between providers and recipients of assistance may enhance or detract from motivation in academic and learning domains, and how these outcomes may be influenced by cultural values and cultural norms. In two studies, this research directly examined evaluations of unsolicited and solicited assistance and individual assistance use, as well as the motivational implications of cultural differences in responses to solicited and unsolicited assistance situations in an educational setting. Tapping into how cultural norms may influence evaluations of assistance and assistance use, in Study 1, participants read about an interaction between a teaching assistant and a student during which the student receives solicited or unsolicited assistance and then answered questions about their evaluations of the assistance recipient and provider in the interaction, as well as answering questions on their own academic assistance use, in order to examine how solicited and unsolicited assistance are evaluated in different cultures and how these types of assistance are utilized. Study 1 found that Asian Americans had more positive evaluations of unsolicited assistance compared to solicited assistance, whereas European Americans showed the opposite evaluation pattern. In Study 2, participants worked on a set of tasks, where the first task either involved the opportunity to solicit assistance or participants received unsolicited assistance. Later, participants worked on a second related task, as a way of measuring the impact of solicited and unsolicited assistance situations on post-assistance motivation and later task performance. Study 2 found that post-assistance task performance, in terms of creativity and complexity, was best following solicited assistance situations compared to unsolicited or no assistance situations, with no cultural differences by assistance type and no differences on self-reported motivation. Implications for future research are discussed.