Natural Rewards Self-Management, Personality, and Achievement Outcomes

The purpose of this paper is to test and examine a model of personality and self-regulation that specifies a possible self-regulatory route to increased performance in achievement contexts—the use of natural rewards self-management strategies, which allow people to create motivating situations by modifying tasks through perceptual or physical means. This model is hierarchically organized with global personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness) predicting use of natural rewards, and natural rewards influencing attention and effort, which are positively related to performance. Participants were undergraduate students at 3 large state universities, and data were collected at 4 points during the semester. Results from structural equation modeling provided support for the model. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.