The motivational system of task values and anticipated emotions in daily academic behavior

This study integrates theories of achievement motivation and emotion to investigate daily academic behavior in an undergraduate online course. Using cluster analysis and hierarchical logistic regression, we analyze profiles of task values and anticipated emotions to understand expectations and completion of academic tasks over the duration of a week. Students’ task specific interest, opportunity cost, and anticipated satisfaction and regret varied across tasks and were predictive of both their expectations of task completion and actual task completion reported the following day. The results shed light on the important role of achievement motivation as situated and dynamic, highlighting the interplay between task priorities, task values, and anticipated emotions in academic task engagement.