Is It The Hope That Kills You?

 This week's course readings covered the first half of Expectancy-Value theory, and specifically, the expectancy aspects of an individual's motivation. As we learned, expectancy can be further divided into efficacy expectations (or perceptions that one has the personal resources to execute an action) and outcome expectations (or perceptions that one's action or attempt will lead to the desired outcome). Efficacy expectations can also be understood as an individual's sense of self-efficacy, or their perception that they are able to successfully navigate a task, regardless of the challenges they must mitigate. To be clear, as I understand it, self-efficacy is distinct from similar words like competence, in that self-efficacy is not simply believe that oneself is good at a specific task. Rather, self-efficacy includes a belief in oneself and a personal, task-specific resilience that allows one to bounce back quickly from setbacks.

If you have ever watched the TV series Ted Lasso, you may initially think that relating the concept of self-efficacy to Ted's behavior and mindset is quite easy. Ted is full of self-efficacy! Everything he does seems to emerge from a sustained belief in himself and a complete lack of doubt in himself or his friends and team. However, Ted's self-efficacy and, in turn, motivation to coach, never seem to wane, which makes the concepts and their connection quite the difficult phenomena to understand in his context. In fact, the only period in which it seems that Ted is questioning his purpose or motivation to continue coaching professional English soccer is not after crushing failure, repeated insults about his performance, or even literal panic attacks (all of which could be considered antecedents leading to low self-efficacy). Rather, it is after successfully leading his team out of relegation, and to the top of the Premier League standings (when one's perceptions and displays of self-efficacy would presumably be at their highest) that Ted's motivation to stay seems to decrease.

In some ways, I believe that Ted has developed something along the lines of an alternative dimension of learned helplessness, which refers to a perception of a lack of control and subsequently doing nothing to end one's suffering due to this perceived lack of control. Rather than being compelled towards helplessness and inactivity due to feeling out of control, though, Ted almost appears as though he is compelled towards positive belief and action in order to regain control. It may be my background in psychology and tendency to pathologize behavior, but considering the heavy subject of Ted's father's suicide while Ted was a young teenager and his wife divorcing him from another continent, it is possible that Ted has internalized and reinforced a lack of control from a young age. Thus, rather than agency (i.e., capacity to achieve/accomplish one's goals) and pathways (i.e., multiple controllable options to achieving goals) providing Ted with a sense of hope, I wonder if Ted has developed a compulsion towards hope and positive thinking to cope with his sense of lacking agency/control and to motivate himself to develop multiple pathways to accomplish his goals. However, this hypothesis does not necessarily explain why Ted's self-efficacy appears less related to his motivation than outlined in our readings, and I believe next week's readings about values may help to explain this disconnect.

Letting Yesterday Get In The Way Of Today

If any of the characters in the show Ted Lasso were to take this class and learn about appraisal theories of emotion, I would not blame them for initially doubting the existence of Ted’s appraisal process and concluding that, regardless of the situation, Ted is biologically inclined to react with positivity. As I mentioned in my previous post, Ted’s ex-wife even cites this compulsive optimism and positive energy among the primary reasons for needing space and eventually asking for a divorce.

Though, as the show progresses, it becomes clear that Ted’s seemingly automatic emotional reactions of joy, interest, and hope are calculated, and that Ted is, in fact, quite capable of experiencing and reacting to negative emotions. Assumedly due to the stress of being separated from his son and after begrudgingly finalizing the divorce with his ex-wife, Ted begins to experience panic attacks when reminded of his family. This reaction is, of course, understandable; however, Ted’s onset of panic attacks points to the relevance and significance of subjective appraisals in the experience of emotions. Ted’s primary and secondary appraisals of the situation moved from non-threatening and controllable (e.g., working out his relationship with Michelle, remaining close with Henry) to highly threatening and uncontrollable (e.g., Michelle divorcing him, potential new father figure for Henry). In turn, thoughts about his family began to induce experiences of severe anxiety and fear rather than comfort and hope.

Michelle and Henry later travel to visit Ted in England, and Michelle brings her then-long-term boyfriend, who also happened to be Ted and Michelle’s marriage counselor prior to their divorce. Although Ted automatically displays his typical positive affect and demeanor, when Michelle lets Ted know that her boyfriend is taking her on a trip to Paris, Ted’s thoughts and resulting emotions begin to spiral. He becomes convinced that Michelle’s boyfriend is going to propose to her in Paris, and that he will lose Michelle and, most importantly, Henry for good. Despite the assurances from his friends that the Paris trip most likely means nothing and that he should enjoy the time he now has with his son, Ted’s subjective appraisal of the situation as a significant threat cannot be dissuaded. His panic, anger, and paranoia led him to desperately ask his boss to hire a private investigator and follow Michelle to Paris. Luckily, Michelle returned without a new ring on her finger and Henry pointedly ignored Michelle’s boyfriend’s greetings. Upon a re-reappraisal of the situation as non-threatening and a visit with the team sport psychologist, Ted’s panic attacks subsided and he merely had to deal with the embarrassment of letting his appraisals get the best of him.

Although I touched on it briefly, I could not figure out how to discuss Ted’s proclivity to engage in what some might consider “toxic positivity” in this post, but I hope to address this phenomenon more comprehensively in coming blog posts. Until then, thank you for reading!

We Value Relationships!

Although I typically do not spend a lot of time watching many TV series, after much prompting from my sport psych classmates and having sufficient free time while in a recent COVID quarantine, I decided to binge watch all three seasons of Ted Lasso. The series centers around an American college football coach (Ted) who is hired to lead the Richmond Greyhounds, a soccer team on the verge of being kicked out of the English Premier League. Ted and his trusted assistant coach, Coach Beard, value relationships and team-culture building as much as, if not more than tactics, talent, and winning. With this coaching roadmap, they are highly successful in the US and had just led their underdog American football team to a Division III championship. However, both were comically lacking in knowledge about soccer or its terminology in general, much less its dynamics and strategy at the highest of international levels. Despite this, neither of them were deterred from leaving their home and were happy to take on the unfamiliar challenge with their usual antics. Also influencing Ted’s motivation to leave was Ted’s wife, Michelle, who had become increasingly exhausted by Ted’s near-compulsive optimism and had asked for space.

Coach Beard (left) and Ted Lasso (right)

Ted is a whimsical man who is seemingly always ready with a one-liner, witty reference, or quick quip to lighten the mood of a situation. One of Ted's primary, non-coaching goals throughout the series could arguably be to make others happy, even if it leads to his own suffering (as exemplified by his leaving of his beloved son and his unhappy wife). This goal and compulsion to put others before himself is interesting to me, and I am excited to explore the emotions and sources of motivation that may contribute to his mindset.

Ted and Ted's son, Henry (right)

Much like any other human being, though, is that Ted's goals are dynamic and may not always be perfectly clear or understandable. In fact, Ted can behave quite enigmatically as a head coach in a major professional sport, considering he often explains that he is not concerned about winning. Instead, Ted's unstated objective is to facilitate a sense of family, trust, and vulnerability among the entire organization (from owner, to players, to kit manager), and to support his athletes and fellow coaches in realizing their full potential, on and off the field. Considering my background in sport psychology, my interest in coach/instructor-created motivational climate, and the warm feeling I got from watching this show, I am very excited to analyze it in a motivational/emotional light over this semester.

A tweet by Marquette University's men's basketball coach 

after winning the Big East conference in his first season