Lisa Simpson, who are you?

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Appraisals... Lisa does not typically engage in distorted primary cognitive appraisals of events which would go against her character’s nature, and probably, against the very point of the show’s authors that a child can have more functional appraisals of social experiences than adults, and better emotional responses. In fact, this is also the storyline of one episode wherein Lisa experiences sadness with no apparent reasons. She has the blues. Before dropping her off at school, Lisa’s mother, Marge, advises her daughter to swallow her sadness and be all smiles if she wanted to be accepted by her peers at the elementary school. Coming from her mother, that is a poor first appraisal of Lisa’s sadness (not caused by her lack of popularity with peers), and simply, bad parenting. Acting on her mother’s insensitive advice, Lisa tries hard to smile while feeling really in low spirits. Fortunately, her mother turns around, opens the car’s door, and invites Lisa’s back in, rushing away from

The substitute teacher One episode wherein Lisa experienced an emotional devastation is when she had a real special substitute teacher, Mr. Bergstrom. His teaching method was spontaneous and authentic which tremendously excited Lisa. For instance, Mr. Bergstrom arrived to class wearing a 1800s cowboy costume displaying several anachronisms that the children had to notice. Lisa saw right away that the belt that read “The State of Texas” was an anachronism because Texas was not yet a state. When Mr. Bergstrom left, Lisa was devastated. According to the attribution theory, the cause of her devastation was uncontrollable because it was not the result of doing nor could she do anything about it. Lisa could not really take any action to reverse the course of events. Instead, she would do things like lashing out at her family who looked all the more unrefined as she compared her father, for instance, with the sophisticated Mr. Bergstrom. Therefore, the locus of control was external. The

"Lisa the Vegetarian" Lisa decides to become a vegetarian. Making the connection between her love of animals and eating meat triggers this life-changing decision. Except that Lisa is only eight years old and her home and family environment is, as usual, unsupportive of her metacognitive, cognitive, affective, motivational processes. In other words, becoming a vegetarian is a big family issue because everyone’s favorite meals are porkchops and steaks, and everyone’s favorite social events are organizing barbecues or eating out at restaurants such as” The Krusty Burger ” and “ The Frying Dutchman ”. Her brother and father mock her, singing "You don't win friends with salad!" Lisa strives to change her diet exerting primary control. Primary control refers to the human attempt to change their environment in order to fulfill internal needs or to attain desired outcomes. Exerting primary control stems from underlying self-efficacy beliefs. Lisa’s self-efficacy b

Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy A rather broad definition of self-efficacy is provided by Bandura (the psychologist who coined the term) as referring to individuals’ belief in their ability to execute behaviors needed to attain specific performances. As such, the self-efficacy term is already fuzzy. Although it includes an array of loose constructs (belief, ability, behavior, outcome expectations), self-efficacy is qualitatively different from each of those taken separately. There are two main components in Bandura’s self-efficacy theory: competence or efficacy beliefs (believing to have the skills needed to do something) and outcome expectations (believing that engaging in certain behaviors will yield the expected success). Lisa has self-beliefs of efficacy (of beliefs of self-efficacy) meaning that she engages in actions because she believes that she can manage to solve any arising issues leading to achieving her set goal. That is why she decides to challenge the company who manufactures

Lisa’s blues To illustrate how Lisa’s motivations align with the value component of the expectancy and value theories (EVT), I chose to focus on an episode called Lisa’s Blues . One key understanding of the value construct is that it is multidimensional. It can be both distal related to a more trait-like personality characteristic but also proximal fluctuating from situation to situation. That is Lisa’s case too. While she is a model child with previously unchanged intrinsic motivation for school, for instance, one day Lisa experiences a mood swing (or?) and she loses her motivation to do anything. “What’s the point? There is so much suffering in the world. Will it make a difference if I don’t wake up one morning?” Lisa’s questioning stems from trait-like distal values and beliefs she has such as an innate stable interest in the wellbeing of the world, in higher meanings of life, in her scope of agency and of her ability to make a positive difference. In other words, that day, Lisa

Lisa’s rivalry The Self-Determination Theory (SDT) aims to show how human basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are impacted by social contexts resulting in either support or erosion of people’s motivations and actions for personal growth, well-being, and constructive integration in the society. To grasp the multilayered phenomena of motivations and regulations at work in humans, the SDT creators, Deci and Ryan, came up with two other sub theories, Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) and Organismic Integration Theory (OIT). The CET posits that feelings of competence facilitate intrinsic motivation only in combination with autonomy or an internal perceived locus of causality. External contexts can also cause people to internalize and integrate values and regulations, that become part of their sense of self. In addition to amotivation (lack of motivation) and intrinsic motivation, OIT distinguished four types of extrinsic motivation according to the perceived locus of c