Thriving through adversity: The role of passion and emotions in the resilience process.

OBJECTIVES: Two cross-sectional (Studies 1, N = 283 and 2, N = 275) and one prospective (Study 3, N = 238) studies investigated the role of passion (for academia) and emotions in the process of resilience in the education domain and in life in general. METHOD: Participants were examined when facing a stressful situation related to their passion for academia (end-of-term exam period and a timed education task). RESULTS: All three studies showed that harmonious passion, through its positive relationship with positive emotions, was positively associated with high positive outcomes in the education domain (satisfaction with one's studies, subjective and objective performance in one's studies) and in life in general via the subjective evaluation of one's life and general health indicators (subjective vitality and fewer negative physical symptoms). On the other hand, obsessive passion was related to mixed effects on resilience. Specifically, obsessive passion related to low levels of functioning (Studies 1 and 3) and also hindered the positive outcomes (Studies 1-3) through its positive relationships with positive and negative emotions, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In sum, under stress, harmonious passion facilitates high resilience across life domains, whereas obsessive passion yields low resilience across the life or no resilience at all.

Measuring health workers' motivation composition: validation of a scale based on Self-Determination Theory in Burkina Faso.

BACKGROUND: Although motivation of health workers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has become a topic of increasing interest by policy makers and researchers in recent years, many aspects are not well understood to date. This is partly due to a lack of appropriate measurement instruments. This article presents evidence on the construct validity of a psychometric scale developed to measure motivation composition, i.e., the extent to which motivation of different origin within and outside of a person contributes to their overall work motivation. It is theoretically grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT). METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 1142 nurses in 522 government health facilities in 24 districts of Burkina Faso. We assessed the scale's validity in a confirmatory factor analysis framework, investigating whether the scale measures what it was intended to measure (content, structural, and convergent/discriminant validity) and whether it does so equally well across health worker subgroups (measurement invariance). RESULTS: Our results show that the scale measures a slightly modified version of the SDT continuum of motivation well. Measurements were overall comparable between subgroups, but results indicate that caution is warranted if a comparison of motivation scores between groups is the focus of analysis. CONCLUSIONS: The scale is a valuable addition to the repository of measurement tools for health worker motivation in LMICs. We expect it to prove useful in the quest for a more comprehensive understanding of motivation as well as of the effects and potential side effects of interventions intended to enhance motivation.

Distinguishing source of autonomy support in relation to workers' motivation and self-efficacy.

The purpose was to investigate the relationship between autonomy support by managers and co-workers and employees' work motivation and self-efficacy in two studies. In Study 1, a sample of 343 Swedish workers completed surveys, and in Study 2, we followed up with a subsample of 98 workers one year later. As in previous studies, managers support of autonomy was significantly positively related to workers' outcomes. However, the results of Study 1 also showed that co-worker autonomy support was related to these outcomes over and above the effects of manager support. Study 2 showed that changes in autonomy support from co-workers during one year significantly predicted motivation and self-efficacy one year later, while change in support from managers was unrelated to outcomes later. These findings provide evidence for the importance of both vertical and horizontal sources of support.

How Work-Family Guilt, Involvement with Children and Spouse's Support Influence Parents' Life Satisfaction in a Context of Work-Family Conflict.

Work-family guilt (WFG) is sometimes perceived as an adaptive characteristic, since it has been found to encourage working parents to engage in more activities with their children in off-work time (Cho & Allen, 2012). However, while it may be an adaptive characteristic for the parent-child relationship, the same may not be true for parents' psychological health. Using insights from the work-home resources model (W-HR), this study aims to determine WFG's influence on parents' life satisfaction. This study also investigates if parents' belief regarding the investment of their spouse in recreational activities with their children is a resource that could foster their life satisfaction. A cross-sectional design was used with a sample of 289 working parents with at least one child aged between 5 and 10. A path analysis shows a significant moderated mediation model. Parent-child activities were found to partially mediate the relationship between strain-based work interference with family and parents' life satisfaction. Furthermore, WFG moderated this mediation. Specifically, it worsened the detrimental effect of doing fewer parent-child activities on parents' life satisfaction. Results also show that a spouse's investment in activity with their child is a resource that motivates parents to invest more in their children and directly contributes to parents' life satisfaction.

How does performance-based financing affect health workers' intrinsic motivation? A Self-Determination Theory-based mixed-methods study in Malawi.

"Intrinsic motivation crowding out", the erosion of high-quality, sustainable motivation through the introduction of financial incentives, is one of the most frequently discussed but yet little researched potential unfavorable consequence of Performance-based Financing (PBF). We used the opportunity of the introduction of PBF in Malawi to investigate whether and how PBF affected intrinsic motivation, using a mixed-methods research design theoretically grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT). The quantitative component served to estimate the impact of PBF on intrinsic motivation, relying on a controlled pre- and post-test design, with data collected from health workers in 23 intervention and 10 comparison facilities before (March/April 2013; n = 70) and approximately two years after (June/July 2015; n = 71) the start of the intervention. The qualitative component, relying on in-depth interviews with health workers in selected intervention facilities one (April 2014; n = 21) and two (September 2015; n = 20) years after the start of PBF, served to understand how PBF did or did not bring about change in intrinsic motivation. Specifically, it allowed us to examine how the various motivation-relevant elements and consequences of PBF impacted health workers' basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which SDT postulates as central to intrinsic motivation. Our results suggest that PBF did not affect health workers' overall intrinsic motivation levels, with the intervention having had both positive and negative effects on psychological needs satisfaction. To maximize positive PBF effects on intrinsic motivation, our results underline the potential value of explicit strategies to mitigate unintended negative impact of unavoidable design, implementation, and contextual challenges, for instance by building autonomy support activities into PBF designs.

Crowding out or no crowding out? A Self-Determination Theory approach to health worker motivation in performance-based financing.

Performance-based financing (PBF) is a common health system reform approach in low and middle income countries at present. Although increasing evidence on the effectiveness of PBF and knowledge of principles of good design are available, research is still lacking in regards to other aspects. Among these are a yet limited understanding of the complex role of health worker motivation in PBF and of potential side effects, for instance on intrinsic motivation. Our article aims to support meaningful future research by advancing the theoretical discussion around health worker motivation and PBF. We argue that an in-depth understanding of the motivational mechanisms and consequences of PBF at health worker level are of high practical relevance and should be at the heart of the PBF research agenda, and that predominant unidimensional conceptualizations of health worker motivation and descriptive rather than explanatory research approaches are insufficient to fully understand whether, how, and why PBF schemes alter health workers' motivational structures, mindsets, affect, and behavior. We introduce and apply Self-Determination Theory to the context of PBF as a valuable theoretical framework for future empirical exploration. From this, we conclude that PBF interventions are unlikely to have a generally adverse effect on intrinsic motivation as feared by parts of the PBF community. Rather, we posit that PBF can have positive and negative effects on both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, to varying degrees depending on the specific design, implementation, and results of a particular intervention and on health workers' perceptions and evaluations of it.

Passion for an activity and quality of interpersonal relationships: the mediating role of emotions.

Our purpose in this research was to investigate the role of passion (Vallerand et al., 2003) for a given activity in the quality of interpersonal relationships experienced within the context of that activity in 4 studies. Study 1 demonstrated that a harmonious passion was positively associated with the quality of interpersonal relationships within the context of the passionate activity, whereas an obsessive passion was unrelated to it. Furthermore, in line with the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001), results also showed that positive emotions experienced at work fully mediated the relation between harmonious passion and quality of interpersonal relationships. Obsessive passion was not associated with positive emotions. Study 2 replicated the results from Study 1 while controlling for trait extraversion. Also, in Study 2, we examined the negative mediating role of negative emotions between obsessive passion and quality of interpersonal relationships. Finally, Studies 3 and 4 replicated the results of Study 2 with prospective designs and with objective ratings of interpersonal relationships quality. Implications for the dualistic model of passion and the broaden-and-build theory are discussed.

Introducing uninteresting tasks to children: a comparison of the effects of rewards and autonomy support.

Two experiments compared rewards and autonomy support as methods to promote children's self-regulation for an uninteresting vigilance task. Dependent measures were ratings of positive affect, perception of the task's value, and free-choice engagement. ANOVA results revealed some positive effects associated with autonomy support, whereas no effect for rewards was found in either study. The outcomes of most interest were correlations between free-choice behavior and self-reported measures of affect and value, reflecting the level of integration in self-regulation. As predicted by self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 1991, 2000), rewards were associated with behaviors incongruent from affect and value, whereas autonomy support led to integrated self-regulation. This finding was first detected in Study 1 and later replicated in Study 2. Together, these results point to autonomy support as a beneficial alternative to the common use of rewards.