Date of Graduation

8-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Psychological Science

Advisor/Mentor

Beike, Denise

Committee Member

Veilleux, Jennifer C.

Second Committee Member

Makhanova, Anastasia

Keywords

Academic habits; Academic performance; College students; Emotion; Motivation; Regret

Abstract

The extant literature on regret as motivation for behavior presents inconclusive results, collectively. While it has often been agreed that regret motivates reparative action, most studies from the past 14 years indicate that regret may motivate either detrimental actions or, more commonly, no action at all. There also appears to be no published research about college students’ academic regrets or how these regrets affect their classroom behaviors and performance. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to understand if college students regret their academic habits, what those habits are, and how their regrets and habits contribute to their academic performance over the course of a semester-long class. This study measured students’ academic habits, academic performance in terms of exam grades, and academic regret intensity at three time points over the course of the semester, as well as an initial personality survey. These data were put into a cross-lagged panel analysis to determine the relationship between these factors both in the short term and longitudinally, but this analysis was hampered by small sample size. Instead, the data were analyzed primarily via linear regression and correlations. It was found that increased regret predicted worse academic habits at each measurement time across the semester and worse exam grades both within measurement times and across some measurement times. However, student habits and responses were inconsistent across measurement times, especially the final measurement time, and students showed an unexpected level of avoidance toward answering survey items regarding negative emotions specifically, which are phenomena that ought to be explored further in the future, along with conducting the study again with a larger sample size.

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