THE EFFECT OF ADVERSE LEARNING-CONDITIONS ON ACTION-ORIENTED AND STATE-ORIENTED COLLEGE-STUDENTS

Over the course of their academic careers, college students have to de al with a variety of challenges, such as academic failure and ineffect ive teaching. Julius Kuhl's (1985) theory of action control would pred ict that students characterized by an action orientation will be buffe red against the negative consequences of such experiences, whereas sta te-oriented individuals may have considerable difficulties under these adverse learning conditions. This hypothesis was tested in the presen t study by having action-oriented and state-oriented college students first take a ORE-type test. Based on their perceived performance on th e test, they were classified into perceived-success and perceived-fail ure groups. One week later, all students viewed a videotaped lecture p resented by a low- or high-expressive instructor. Action-oriented stud ents performed better than state-oriented students on a lecture-based achievement test, despite low-expressive instruction and prior perceiv ed academic failure. Moreover, state-oriented students, particularly t hose in the perceived-failure group, experienced more negative emotion s than did action-oriented individuals. The implications of the findin gs for assisting state-oriented students are discussed.