Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions

The control-value theory of achievement emotions is a theory developed by the psychologist Reinhard Pekrun to explain how emotions arise in academic settings and how they in turn affect learning and performance. It holds that a student's emotions in an achievement context, such as enjoyment, hope, pride, anxiety, shame, hopelessness and boredom, are shaped jointly by two kinds of subjective appraisal: control appraisals, the degree to which the student feels able to influence an activity and its outcomes, and value appraisals, the degree to which the student regards the activity or its outcomes as personally important. The theory distinguishes emotions by whether they are activating or deactivating, and by whether they relate to an ongoing activity itself, such as enjoyment or boredom while studying, or to its anticipated or actual outcome, such as hope, anxiety, pride or shame about a grade. Combinations of high or low control with positive or negative value appraisals are proposed to produce characteristic emotional profiles, so that a student who feels high control and sees high value in a task is more likely to feel enjoyment or pride, while a student who feels low control over a valued task is more likely to feel anxiety or hopelessness. Because it links the emotions students feel to the appraisals that produce them, the theory has been used in education research to explain how features of a classroom, such as the level of challenge a task presents or the autonomy a student is given, can be adjusted to shift the balance of achievement emotions students experience and, through that, their motivation and academic performance.