Positive emotions and its impact on academic motivation and engagement

The broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 1998) postulates that positive emotions can facilitate the building up of important psychological resources. However, this theory has seldom been tested in an educational context and on learning outcomes. According to this theory, it is assumed that the experiencing of positive emotions leads to higher levels of engagement and motivation. A sample of secondary students from Singapore (N=134) answered surveys assessing their emotions, academic motivation, and engagement. Hierarchical regression analyses results revealed that positive and negative emotions were associated with engagement and motivation. More specifically, positive emotions were found to positively predict all forms of engagement (i.e. cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement), controlled motivation (i.e. identified regulation and intrinsic motivation) as well as autonomous motivation motivation (i.e. external regulation and introjected regulation). The findings were particularly interesting from a cross-cultural perspective because external and introjected regulation have been found to be maladaptive among Western students. However, these types of motivation may not necessarily be harmful in collectivist contexts. These findings do not only show how useful the broaden-and-build theory is in the Asian educational context but they can potentially be used to encourage future studies that are aimed to promoting students' positive emotions to foster beneficial effects on students' learning outcomes.