Mastery vs Performance

Chess as Sport

In the USSR and present Russia chess is considered to be a sport, a very competitive sport. Very often learning this game begins with mastery goals and turns into achievement. In this post, I would like to look at Beth Harmon's success from the perspective of the Expectancy-Value Theory, instrumentality, and interest.

Mastery Goals and Performance Goals, as described in Reeve (2009), differ from one another in terms of the person's understanding as to what constitutes competence. With mastery goals, "the person seeks to develop greater competence, make progress, improve the self, overcome challenges through intense and persistent effort" (p. 183). With performance goals, the person "seeks to demonstrate or prove competence, display high ability, outperform others, and succeed with little apparent effort. Achieving a performance goal means doing better than others" (p. 183).

Instrumentality as a value component is discussed in Husman & Lens (1999). In this article, the authors talk about intrinsic vs extrinsic goals and immediate vs future goals and define perceived instrumentality as "and individual's understanding of the instrumental value of a present behavior" (p. 116). They note that instrumentality is related to positive motivation and can facilitate interest (p. 123).

Hidi & Renninger (2006) propose a 4-phase model of interest, which includes triggered situational interest (a psychological state of interest that results from short-term changes in affective and cognitive processing), maintained situational interest (a psychological state of interest that is subsequent to a triggered state, involves focused attention and persistence over an extended episode in time, and/or reoccurs and again persists), emerging (less-developed) individual interest (a psychological state of interest as well as to the beginning phases of a relatively enduring predisposition to seek repeated reengagement with particular content over time), and well-developed individual interest (a psychological state of interest as well as a relatively enduring predisposition to reengage with particular content over time).

I think Beth's success in learning how to play chess started with pure mastery goals: she just wanted to learn how to play chess and she wanted to do it well. She wanted to master the chess game. Driven by intrinsic motivation and interest, she was very persistent: "Let's play a game," "Show me," "I want to finish. You've got to finish," - she would repeat to Mr. Shaibel. She didn't know yet that winning games and tournaments can actually be beneficial for her in different ways. Chess didn't have any instrumental value for her. She was not yet competitive, and she didn't have any achievement goals.

From the interest perspective, Beth's interest in this game started as triggered situational interest: she saw Mr. Shaibel playing it and couldn't get it out of her head. No doubt, it evolved into maintained situational interest pretty quickly. Beth persisted in her desire to master the game and focused on this goal very hard. 

Things started to change when Beth was invited to play her first simultaneous game at Duncan High School. She bit all the opponents (who were all men by the way) in 1 hour and 20 minutes. "It felt good. I've never won anything before," - she shared her thoughts with Mr. Shaibel after the game. Since then, Beth started to become competitive: she wanted to win by all means. While seeking to master her skills, she also started to set performance goals for herself (bit Beltik, bit Benny, and eventually bit Borgov).

Beth was very persistent in her desire to be the best. At her first tournament, Matt and Mike who were registering the participants, wanted to put her in the beginners, because she was an unrated player at that time. Being confident in her abilities, Beth refused. Matt and Mike kept telling her that it would be impossible to win, but Beth stubbornly repeated: "I will win them," "I want to play the best," "I want to play Beltik." And she did win. Beating Beltik was her first true success and her first big victory. She also learned that to get the rating and move up, she needed to play a lot more games and have a lot more victories. Since then, Beth's interest turned into an emerging and eventually a well-developed individual interest. She would seek out every possibility to play with best players and she would do everything she could to win. At the same time, she realized that to be able to win, she needed to constantly work on her skills and gain new knowledge. Thus, her mastery goals didn't go away. They became supported by performance goals. 

Once Beth realized that money which she was winning at tournaments and championships could help her to move forward, she became even more competitive. Thinking steps ahead (like a true chess player), she always knew instrumental value of her current actions. Each victory was a step forward for her. This connection of present with future and appreciation of both gave her additional motivation to move forward, towards her ultimate goal - beating Borgov, the best of the best.

References

Hidi, S., & Renninger, K.A. (2006). The Four-Phase Model of Interest Development. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 111-127.

Husman, J., & Lens, W. (1999). The Role of the Future in Student Motivation. Educational Psychologist, 34(2), 113-125.

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.