Search

This study mainly verified the influences of personality traits on students’ academic achievements and assessed the mediating effects of major identity and self-efficacy, under the classical model of chain mediating effects, with the data of business major students. The results show that both extraversion and conscientiousness have positive total effect on students’ academic achievements, and they are mainly realized through the chain mediating effects of self-efficacy and major identity to self-efficacy, and are mainly based on self-efficacy mediating effect, which is more obvious in the dimension of behavioral efficacy. Openness also affects academic achievement through a self-efficacy mediating effect and major identity to self-efficacy chain mediating effect, but the degree of influence is weak, and the total effect is not significant; the overall effect of agreeableness personality on academic achievement is negative, and it is mainly reflected through direct effect. This finding suggests that academic achievement does not reflect students’ team ability and performance.

Researchers have conducted many studies on the relationship between external rewards and intrinsic motivation. A recent study showed that, compared with delayed rewards, rewards delivered immediately after the experiment enhanced the participants’ intrinsic motivation. However, this study did not rule out the possibility of a misattribution effect of extrinsic motivation. The present research conducted three studies to explore whether immediate rewards actually enhance intrinsic motivation. To rule out the interference of the misattribution effect of extrinsic motivation, according to the different characteristics of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation, Study 1 and Study 2 improved the prior experimental paradigm, and the results indicated that the intrinsic motivation of participants who received extra rewards immediately after completing experimental tasks was stronger than that of participants who received the delayed extra reward. Furthermore, to rule out the potential interference of temporal discounting, Study 3 introduced a new variable—reward magnitude. The results showed that the delivery time of the extra reward had an independent effect on intrinsic motivation and that the immediacy of the extra reward could enhance intrinsic motivation. In all, the three studies strongly demonstrated that immediate external extra rewards could truly enhance intrinsic motivation.