2018 Volume 64 Issue 2 Pages 98-100
Objective: Following the Tohoku Earthquake, residents of the disaster area were encouraged more to “Ganbappe”, which means “Hang in there” in their local dialect, than to “Ganbatte”, which has the same meaning in standard Japanese. This led us to examine what comprises effective words of encouragement.
Design: We first examined what types of words are related to motivation. The words found in previous studies were too simply and obviously differentiated from among those words. Therefore, in this study, we selected words that might have different effects depending on a person’s character and examined how motivations changed as a result.
Method: To verify our research, we sent questionnaires to 142 university students via the Internet and examined how their motivations changed when presented with various motivational phrases. The questionnaire comprised 11 short phrases purporting to contain words uttered by school teachers or athletics coaches. Students evaluated the motivational effects of each phrase by allotting it points from -50 to 50.
Results: We established a hypothesis that the influence of encouraging words would differ by sex and educational background. However, the data demonstrated that a similar tendency occurs regardless of sex and major. Although different words and phrases are used, the data suggest that participants’ experiences and how they have been brought up affect the results.
Conclusion: For this reason, in order to encourage and raise motivation, many factors need to be considered when using motivational words.
