Journal of Educational Psychology 1997, Vol. 89, No. 3,433-440 Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-0663/97/$3.00 Differences in the Motivational Beliefs of Asian American and Non-Asian Students Martin J. Eaton and Myron H. Dembo University of Southern California This investigation explored differences in motivational beliefs of 154 AsianAmerican and 372 non-Asian 9th graders. Students completed surveys indicating their academic beliefs and later responded to a novel task to assess their achievement behavior. The difference in type of beliefs between the two groups explained, in part, their achievement behavior. Asian American students' fear of the consequence of academic failure best explained their performance. However, this variable least explained the results for non-Asian students. Asian American students reported lower levels of self-efficacy beliefs, yet significantly outperformed their non-Asian counterparts on the task. The fear of academic failure better explained achievement motivation for Asian Americans than did self-efficacy beliefs. A major implication of this investigation is that motivational beliefs elicit different responses in different cultural-ethnic groups. Asian American students have outperformed their non- Asian counterparts on many commonly accepted indices of educational achievement (Hess, McDevitt, & Chang, 1987 Hirschman & Wong, 1986 Hsia, 1988 Park, 1990 Tsang & Wing, 1985). Although considerable evidence exists regard- ing ethnic differences in school performance, even after removing such factors as socioeconomic status (Ogbu, 1983, 1990) and ability (Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992), researchers do not necessarily agree on the specific causes for the differential academic performance (Pang, 1990). Major factors identified as contributing to differential aca- demic performance include quantity of classroom instruc- tion (Stevenson, Lee, & Stigler, 1986 Stigler & Stevenson, 1991), causal attributions (Hess et al., 1987 Holloway, 1988 Reglin & Adams, 1990 Stevenson et al., 1991 Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984 Yao, 1985), family structure (Park, 1990 Shon & Ja, 1982), perceived and actual institutional discrimination (Mickelson, 1990), socialization practices (Mordkowitz & Ginsburg, 1987), and ethnic differences regarding educational success (Sue & Okazaki, 1990). Social-cognitive models of achievement motivation (e.g., Eccles, 1983 Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992) have explored a broad range of social and personal factors to explain achievement differences. Wigfield and Eccles (1992) incor- porate three major components in their model: social world (social-cultural milieu), cognitive processes (perceptions An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the meeting of the American Educational ResearchAssociation, New York, April 1996. Special thanks to Debra Fong and Phil Eaton for their contribu- tions. We thank the Orange County Department of Education for their cooperation in conducting the research. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Martin J. Eaton or Myron H. Dembo, Department of Educational Psychology, 600 Philips Hall, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0031. Electronic mail may be sent via Internet to Martin J. Eaton at meaton@mizar.usc.edu. and attributions), and motivational beliefs (task value and expectancy). Greater emphasis is placed on motivational beliefs by Wigfield and Eccles's statement "children's expectancies and values are assumed to have the most direct effect on their performance, persistence, and choice of achievement tasks" (p. 279). These relatively situational, domain-specific beliefs are located in the later stages of then- model. Accordingly, higher degrees of value and expectan- cies for success positively relate to all types of achievement behavior including task choice (Bandura, 1986 Eccles, 1983), effort expended (Dweck & Leggett, 1988), and use of cognitive strategies (Corno, 1989 Pintrich, 1987 Pressley, 1986). Pintrich and colleagues (Pintrich, 1986, 1988, 1989 Pintrich & De Groot, 1990 Pintrich & Garcia, 1991 Pintrich, Roeser, & De Groot, 1992 Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1991) conducted a series of correlational studies examining the relationship among motivational beliefs, self-regulation, cognitive engagement, and class- room academic performance for both junior high school and college students. The correlation between self-efficacy be- liefs and cognitive engagement ranged from .44 to .50. A meta-analytic investigation of the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and academic performance (Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991) found an overall correlation of .38 or approximately 14% of the variance in students' academic performance. Students who have positive motivational be- liefs (high self-efficacy) reported higher use of cognitive strategies, demonstrated more self-regulation, persisted more often in difficult or uninteresting academic tasks, engaged in deeper processing of material, and achieved higher levels of comprehension (Miller, Behrens, & Greene, 1993 Pintrich, 1987, 1989 Pintrich & De Groot, 1990 Pintrich & Garcia, 1991 Pintrich et al., 1992 Schunk, 1990 Zimmerman, 1989). Research on self-perceptions of competence among differ- ent ethnic groups has found such perceptions often are not linked to academic performance. Stigler, Smith, and Mao 433

434 EATON AND DEMBO (1985) found Chinese children rated themselves signifi- cantly lower on the cognitive subscale of Harter's (1982) Perceived Competence Scale for Children, yet academically these children significantly outperformed the American students. Similarly, Whang and Hancock (1994) discovered Asian American students reported significantly lower self- concepts for mathematics ability compared with non-Asian students, even though their scores were higher on standard- ized mathematics achievement tests. Data from surveys comparing Asians, Asian Americans and non-Asians' attribution of academic success (Holloway, 1988 Reglin & Adams, 1990 Stevenson et al., 1991 Weisz et al., 1984 Yao, 1985) show Asians and Asian Americans attribute their academic success and failure primarily to effort over ability, whereas non-Asians view ability as their reason for success. The higher achievement of Asian and Asian American students may occur in part because they believe all performance is linked to an internal and control- lable source���effort (Skinner, Wellborn, & Cornell, 1990). This belief influences Asian and Asian American parents' expectations of their children's academic achievement. Stevenson et al. (1991) found non-Asian and Asian Ameri- can mothers placed lower academic expectations on then- children and overrated their children's performance, whereas Asian mothers reported higher academic expectations for their children but rated their children lower than American children in academic ability. The pressure to please parents corresponds with a greater fear of low academic performance among Asian American students than among non-Asian students. Asian American parents1 emphasis on the importance of academic achieve- ment, combined with their belief in each child's potential to excel, appears to foster academic success in Asian American students. Consistent with this possibility, Steinberg et al. (1992) discovered parenting practices, mediated by cultur- ally held beliefs about learning, differ among ethnic groups. Asian American students offered an interesting contrast by achieving the highest levels academically while reporting the highest levels of fear of academic failure. Higher levels of fear of failure correlated with increasing levels of cumulative grade point average. This relationship proved to be the best predictor variable for academic performance in this study. Asian American students' fear of failure, com- bined with their belief in the importance of effort, translated into longer engagement in school they spent twice as much time each week on their homework as did their non-Asian counterparts. Reglin and Adams (1990) suggested Asian American students are more influenced by their parents' desire for success than are their non-Asian counterparts. They con- cluded Asian American students' desire to meet their par- ents' academic expectations creates the need to spend more time on homework and to minimize traditional high school activities including dating, watching television, participating in athletics, and working. This research indicates Asian Americans focus less on their situational perception of capability to complete a task (self-efficacy) and more on the importance of excelling at the task (value). The burden to meet parents' expectations creates tremendous pressure on Asian American students to achieve, fostering academic excel- lence but negatively implicating underachievers (Siu, 1992). When Asian American students reflect lower levels of self-efficacy, the fear of academic failure combined with sustained effort propels them to succeed even under difficult academic challenges (Covington, 1992). Thus, the motiva- tional beliefs ("I must do this task or else I will fail" or "If I work hard enough, I can do this task") may better predict academic success than self-efficacy beliefs ("Can I do this task?"). Asian American students' expectancy to achieve may correlate less with success than their ingrained value to achieve. Cross-cultural research challenges Bandura's (1986) as- sumption that inaccurate appraisal of self-efficacy, in either direction, has deleterious consequences such research pro- vides evidence for the relative importance of the larger cultural and social context (Rueda & Moll, 1994 Weisz et al., 1984). The contrasting inverse relationship of self- perceptions of ability and actual achievement for Asian American students suggests more research is needed to determine whether different models of motivation are neces- sary for explaining the relationship between motivational beliefs and academic achievement in different ethnic groups. The present investigation poses the following questions: (a) Do motivational beliefs have different relative impor- tance for predicting the achievement motivation of Asian American and non-Asian students? (b) Do culturally influ- enced beliefs or self-efficacy beliefs better explain achieve- ment motivation for Asian American and non-Asian stu- dents? Method Participants Two groups of ninth graders participated in the investigation: 154 Asian Americans and 372 non-Asians (primarily Caucasians), enrolled in 21 English classes, from four high schools located in middle-class areas in two suburban Southern California school districts. The Asian American students in this study identified themselves as Chinese (n = 62), Vietnamese (n = 41), Korean (n = 33), and Japanese (n = 18). Of this sample, 97 were bom outside the United States but had lived in the United States for more than 7 years and 57 were bom in the United States. According to the Orange County (California) Department of Education's 1992 Racial and Ethnic Survey, these schools contained ninth-grade classes whose ethnic composition included over 20% Asian American students. The non-Asian students identified themselves as Anglo (n = 301), Mexican American (n = 59), and African American (n ~ 13), The sample consisted of 366 students from regular English composition classes (272 non-Asian and 94 Asian American) and 160 students from honors English composition classes (99 non- Asian and 61 Asian American). The higher proportion of Asian Americans (38%) compared with non-Asians (27%) in honors English composition classes reflects the higher proportion of Asian Americans in all honors classes reported by the four high schools. Instrumentation Belief assessment. An important contribution of this study involved developing an instrument to assess different aspects of student beliefs about academic performance. Items were adapted