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Goal Complexities

 "It is so easy to commit embarrassing blunders"- Inventor

Blog Post #5



Achievement Motives

This week we will be talking about the achievement motives behind the goals that Edward Scissorhands set for himself throughout the film. Before analyzing Edward through this lens, I must first explain it. There are two types of motives that shape how people perceive the root cause for their goals, and they are success-oriented and fear of failure. The former signifies that the person has hope for the future, strong self-efficacy, and typically leans on goals that culminate in improving skills. The latter is the opposite, and it signifies that the person is pushed towards their goals because they are afraid of the consequences of not achieving it. Those who fall under this umbrella typically have goals based on performance in a comparative sense. How a person combines these two categories and then places them in one of four groups. The first are optimists with a strong hope for success and low fear. The second are over strivers who have both high hope and high fear. Third, are failure accepters who have low hope and low fear. Lastly, come the failure avoiders who have low hope but high fear.

Motives in our titular character

Throughout the film, our main character transforms from a failure-avoider to an optimist and, lastly, to a failure accepter.  At the start of the film, Edward is clearly a failure-avoider because he is very aware that he does not have the social skills to effectively integrate into society, causing low hope. Still, he is afraid that the townsfolk will think he is a strange outsider if he does not do his best to blend in. Then when he finds success, his self-belief grows. At the same time, his fear subsides, causing him to become an optimist the most significant example is when he goes to get interviewed on the television and displays no signs of stress or anxiety. Yet, after getting denied by the bank, arrested, and confronted by Jim, Edward loses hope and runs away. He does not gain any fear of repercussions because he goes on a semi-rampage destroying some of his sculptures and puncturing a tire. If he was a failure-avoider, he would not have lashed out in this way this only comes from a person who has totally accepted their circumstances.

Control


In the movie, Edward exhibits both halves of the dual-process model. This model states that there are two types of control primary, where you attempt to alter your environment to get closer to where you want it to be, and secondary, where you change your mindset to adjust to your environment. Edwards' primary control is using his hands to please the people around him, quite literally shaping things around him to get closer to his goal. However, more interesting is how he displays secondary control. One of the significant secondary control strategies is goal alternation, meaning changing what you want due to your new circumstances. At the end of the film, Edward does just this. No longer believing he can have a future with Kim, which was one of his two driving motives in the film, he opts to kill Jim, ensuring her safety and his permanent banishment in the castle and with this action fulfilling the new goal he set for himself





Comments

  1. Jeannine TurnerOctober 16, 2022 at 10:23 AM

    It's interesting how his goals change as his reasons-for-goals change

    ReplyDelete

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