On July 15th, Mahalia Prater Fahey successfully defended her dissertation titled, “Considering the Context: How Context Provides Insight into how the Components of Motivation are Shaped.” She completed her research under the supervision of Dr. Amitai Shenhav. 

More specifically, Prater Fahey’s research explores how our motivation to reach goals isn't just about ability but also about how much we expect our efforts to matter. Prater Fahey’s research shows that the context in which we face challenges plays a crucial role in determining how hard we try. For example, the type of effort we put in can differ based on whether we’re trying to avoid something unpleasant or aiming to reduce its impact. Also, our past experiences shape how we approach new situations. The findings provide insight into how motivation works and how it changes in different situations, especially during early development.

To learn more about his dissertation, check out the abstract of his dissertation, which is included below, get in touch with him at mahalia_prater_fahey@brown.edu, or check out her Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LSrqI1oAAAAJ&hl=en

Abstract: 

It is now well understood that whether we reach our goals is not just dependent on our ability to do so but also our motivation. In turn, our motivation to exert cognitive control, the process which facilitates biasing our behavior to be in line with our goals is determined by the outcomes we expect for engaging cognitive control, as well as whether our efforts determine obtaining these outcomes. However, to understand how these components of motivation influence our efforts we must also consider the context in which we encounter them. Using novel task paradigms and computational models we investigate how context can further differentiate the influence of these components of motivation. In the first study, we show that depending on whether we encounter aversive outcomes as they are used to reinforce versus reduce behavior differentially determines the types of effort we engage. In the second study we show that prior experience with different outcomes can establish a context for how we initially establish the types of control we engage when in novel environments. Finally, we show the types of effort we engage in response to our estimates of whether our efforts matter in determining the outcomes change across the context of early development. Collectively this work helps to further differentiate how our motivation to engage effort is determined and lays a foundation for connecting these experimental manipulations and contexts with real world environments.