SBS 105 Module 6 Development, Motivation and Emotion Example

Back in Class at Thirty-Eight: Motivation, Emotion and Midlife Development in a Parent Returning to College

Student Name

Psychology and Addiction Studies Program, Aspen University

SBS 105: Introduction to Psychology

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Back in Class at Thirty-Eight: Motivation, Emotion and Midlife Development in a Parent Returning to College

Dana is thirty-eight, a pharmacy technician on a thirty-hour weekly schedule and the parent of two children, aged nine and twelve. After fifteen years away from school, Dana enrolled in an associate degree program to qualify for a supervisor role that the pharmacy's regional manager has encouraged Dana to pursue. Five weeks into the semester, Dana received a sixty-one on the first exam in an introductory statistics course. That night Dana stayed up until two in the morning rereading notes, felt sick with worry before the next class and told a friend, "I don't belong there. Those students are twenty years younger than me." This paper uses research on development, motivation and emotion to understand Dana's situation and to suggest what could help. Dana is invented; the research is real.

A Life Stage With Competing Demands

Dana is in middle adulthood, a period that developmental psychologists describe as busy with responsibilities: raising children, sustaining a career, often caring for aging parents and, for many, rethinking goals. Erik Erikson described the central challenge of this stage as generativity, contributing to the next generation and to work that matters, versus stagnation. Returning to school fits that challenge: Dana wants a role with more responsibility and to show the children that learning continues through life. But midlife also brings constraints younger students rarely face, including less free time and the weight of family obligations. Adults returning to school often bring valuable experience and clear goals while doubting whether they still know how to learn.

Motivation and Basic Needs

Ryan and Deci (2000) proposed self-determination theory, which distinguishes motivation that comes from within, doing something because it is interesting or personally important, from motivation controlled by outside pressures and rewards. In their account, three needs are basic to everyone. Autonomy is the experience of acting by one's own choice. Competence is the experience of handling challenges successfully. Relatedness is the experience of belonging and of caring and being cared for. Settings that feed these needs tend to produce people who persist and feel well, and settings that starve them tend to drain motivation, however good the original reasons.

Analyzing Dana's situation need by need shows where the trouble lies. Autonomy is strong: Dana chose to return to school for personal reasons and values the goal. Competence has taken a hit: the exam score felt like proof that Dana could no longer learn. Relatedness is weak: Dana takes classes online after the children's bedtime and knows no classmates. Self-determination theory predicts that low competence and low relatedness will erode motivation even when the reasons for studying are strong, which matches Dana's thoughts of quitting.

The Problem With Rewarding Oneself

Dana's first idea for staying motivated was to buy something special after every good grade. Deci et al. (1999) conducted a meta-analysis of experiments examining how rewards affect intrinsic motivation, the interest people take in an activity for its own sake. When people knew in advance that they would receive a concrete reward for doing or finishing an activity they already found interesting, they later chose to spend less free time on that activity once the reward was gone. Positive feedback, by contrast, tended to increase intrinsic motivation, particularly for college students. The authors explained the pattern in terms of self-determination theory: rewards that feel controlling reduce the sense of autonomy, while informative feedback supports the sense of competence.

For Dana, whose interest in the subject is real, a reward system could shift the focus from learning to earning the reward. Feedback that shows progress is more likely to help.

Emotion and How It Is Managed

Dana's anxiety before exams and classes is an emotional challenge as much as an academic one. Gross (2002) studied how people regulate emotions and compared two common strategies. Reappraisal changes how a situation is interpreted before the emotion is fully underway, for example by viewing a test as a chance to show what one has learned rather than as a threat. Suppression involves inhibiting the outward expression of an emotion once it has started. In his research, reappraisal decreased the experience and expression of negative emotion without notable costs, while suppression reduced visible expression but not the felt emotion, increased physiological arousal and impaired memory for information encountered during the emotional event. Habitual reappraisers also reported more positive emotion and better social functioning than habitual suppressors.

Dana's habit is suppression: in class discussions and online forums, Dana hides worry behind confident comments. The research suggests this keeps the anxiety in place and may even make it harder to remember material during exams.

Analysis of Dana's Situation

A Semester Plan

Dana's plan has four parts. First, Dana will meet the statistics instructor during online office hours to review the exam, turning a score into specific feedback about what to practice, which supports competence. Second, Dana will join a small online study group the instructor helps form, which addresses relatedness and offers the chance to see that other students also struggle. Third, before each exam, Dana will spend five minutes writing about what the exam is a chance to show, a reappraisal routine, and will sleep rather than reread late into the night. Fourth, the family will mark Dana's two study evenings on the kitchen calendar, so school becomes part of the household's shared life, which fits the generative goal of showing the children what learning looks like.

What the Research Cannot Promise

None of these steps guarantees a better grade. Statistics may remain difficult, and Dana's schedule will stay full. What the research suggests is that the conditions for sustained motivation and healthier responses to stress are within Dana's reach, and that they depend more on feedback, connection and how Dana interprets challenges than on willpower alone.

Conclusion

Dana's thoughts of quitting came not from a lack of reasons but from shaken competence, isolation and anxiety handled by suppression. Ryan and Deci's self-determination theory identifies which needs are unmet, Deci, Koestner and Ryan's meta-analysis cautions against tangible rewards and Gross's research points toward reappraisal. A plan built on feedback, a study group and a reappraisal routine applies psychology to a common midlife challenge.

References

Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627-668. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627

Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39(3), 281-291. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048577201393198

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68