 Running Head: AMBITION On the Value of Aiming High: The Causes and

Consequences of Ambition Timothy A. Judge Mendoza College of Business

University of Notre Dame John D. Kammeyer-Mueller Warrington College of
Business University of Florida In press, Journal of Applied Psychology
 Vol. 2, No. 3 (2009)

http://www.timothy-judge.com/documents/Ambition-JAPINPRESS.pdf
Discussion
In discourse over the ages, disparaging comments regarding ambition are plentiful. In the first
century C. E. Seneca noted “Ambition is like a gulf, everything is swallowed up in it and buried;
beside the dangerous consequences of it” (pp. 143-144). Thomas Otway (1680) focused on the
ceaseless striving aspects of ambition when he wrote, “Ambition is a lust that’s never quenched,
grows more enflam’d and madder by enjoyment” (p. 66). The poet Walter Savage Landor’s (1829)
dialogue between Lord Brooke and Sir Phillip Sydney notes, “Ambition is but avarice on stilts, in
a mask.” T. S. Eliot (1935) wrote, “Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other
men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.”
More recently, John Dean (1976) titled his autobiography concerning criminal behavior during the
Watergate break-in Blind Ambition. Clearly, all of these examples characterize ambition as a
character flaw that leads to dishonesty and dissatisfaction. Our results suggest that despite these
negative connotations of ambition, there are positive life outcomes of ambition. Participants
who were more ambitious did not appear to be made miserable or insatiable by their
ambitions. Instead, we found that individuals who were more ambitious had higher levels of
attainment in both educational and work domains. This success, in turn, was associated with
higher levels of life satisfaction and longevity (though the links from ambition to life satisfaction
and longevity were quite weak). These results indicate that ambition—at least as operationalized
here—does not create a feeling of unquenchable desire for unattainable outcomes. There are
several potential reasons why a weakly positive relationship between ambition and intrinsic
success was found. First, it may be that concrete achievements in education and work domains
create satisfaction because they help to minimally satisfy ambitious individuals’ competence-
related desires (Sheldon, Ryan, & Reis, 1996). Second, goal setting research has suggested that
while the process of setting high expectations for oneself can produce initial dissatisfaction (Mento
et al., 1992), the subsequent success produced by goals leads to setting increasingly higher goals
(Locke, Cartledge, & Knerr, 1970) and, ultimately, to higher satisfaction (Locke & Latham, 2002).
Thus, ambition may have a mild net effect on life satisfaction as a result. Alternatively, perhaps
the educational and occupational stratifications produced by ambition cause individuals to
compare themselves predominately to others within their strata, thus nullifying much of the
satisfying effects these attainments might produce. These process explanations, as well as the
relationship between ambition and specific goal-setting behavior, are worthy of future research.
In addition to demonstrating the importance of ambition as a predictor of positive life
outcomes, our study also can serve to spur further consideration of middle-level traits,
especially generalized life tasks (Cantor, 1990, 2003) like ambition. As noted by Romero et al.
(2009), “Despite the interest focused on middle-level units in the last two decades, little is known
about their relationship with traits, a deficiency that substantially limits our knowledge about the
integrative functions of personality” (p. 536). Our results demonstrate that ambition has
stronger effects on career and life success than do distal personality traits, ability, and
socioeconomic status (though those characteristics mattered as well). The predictive strength
of ambition as a middle level trait suggests that the field of organizational behavior may fruitfully
examine the role of this and other middle-level traits. Several features of the present study help
answer questions raised in previous theoretical work related to middle-level traits and their
relationship to the broader personality literature. We found that ambition is predicted by
conscientiousness and extraversion (and, to a lesser degree, neuroticism), and predicted life
success criteria better than these traits. This is consistent with the idea that ambition is a more
contextually relevant personal characteristic for life success than the more abstract, general traits
identified in the Five Factor Model. Prior research has established that broad personality
dispositions are related to educational and career success (Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, & Barrick,
1999; Seibert & Kraimer, 2001), and that the Five Factor Model traits are predictive of life goals
over time (Roberts, O’Donnell, & Robins, 2004), but such studies have not examined how
ambition acts as a mediator between Five Factor Model traits and specific occupational and
educational achievements. By demonstrating that ambition is a more proximal correlate of success,
we hope to generate further research investigating other life tasks that might further explain the
relationship between Five Factor Model traits and success. Our hypotheses proposed that there
would be a significant relationship from neuroticism to ambition, based on the premise that those
who experienced high levels of anxiety and lacked self-confidence would be less prone toward
setting ambitious life goals for themselves. This result, albeit not strong in magnitude, is consistent
with prior research that has shown that neuroticism is negatively related to motivation over shorter
time periods (Judge & Ilies, 2002; Wang & Erdheim, 2007). This result implies that setting
ambitious goals may be related to worries about goal attainment, or that neurotic individuals
appraise more long-term ambition related goals as pessimistically as they appraise more proximal
goals. Our results also suggest that ambition acts as a mediator between general mental ability and
success. This result suggests that ambition can be predicted by factors other than personality, and
therefore is not simply an aggregate of already identified traits. Ours is the first investigation of
which we are aware that has positioned a middle-level motivational construct as a mediator
between general mental ability and success. Consistent with the cognitive, constructivist tradition
of middle-level traits (e.g., Cantor, 2003), ambition appears to be partially conditioned on a
realistic appraisal of one’s likelihood of obtaining success. This relationship between ambition and
ability is also consistent with James’ investment model of personality (Pelham, 1995), which
proposes that individuals will put greater emphasis on those areas or domains in which they have
the greatest degree of success. Individuals high in general mental ability will likely emphasize
success in academic and career-related domains specifically because they have reason to believe
they will experience success in these domains. We also hypothesized a relationship between
educational attainment and prestige on income, but this relationship was not supported for this
sample after taking occupational prestige into account. As can be seen in the correlation matrix,
there was a positive zero-order relationship between these educational markers and income, which
suggests that the effects of education on income are mediated through the prestige of the job which
one obtains after graduation. This makes sense if one considers the case of a person with a
prestigious law degree who gets a job as a lawyer making more than a person with a similar degree
who takes a less prestigious job as a low-level manager. Besides the evidence that personality and
individual differences are related to ambition, we also found a relationship between parental socio-
economic status and ambition. This relationship between background characteristics and ambition
is again consistent with the positioning of ambition as a contextualized middle-level trait. The
relationship between parental socio-economic status and ambition was positive, suggesting that
individuals whose parents have been more successful are also more ambitious. There are a variety
of ways this inter-generational transmission of ambition might take place. One possibility is that
children whose parents achieve success see their parents as role models for their own behavior
(Bandura, 1999). Conversely, it may be that ambitious parents have children who are genetically
predisposed to be ambitious. Given the voluminous literature demonstrating the genetic
transmission of other personality traits (Plomin & Caspi, 1999), this possibility should not be
discounted. However, because we already took the genetically determined characteristics most
likely to be related to ambition (i.e., Five Factor Model personality and general mental ability) into
account in our modeling strategy, it is likely that at least some of the remaining effect of parental
characteristics on ambition is due to the role modeling explanation. In sum, we found that ambition
was related to important human capital-related outcomes including educational attainment and
educational prestige, which in turn related to higher wages, more prestigious work, and greater
satisfaction with life. Although some prior research has suggested that specific aspirations predict
these criteria (e.g., Alexander, Eckland, & Griffin, 1975), we are aware of no previous research
that has established a relationship between a general tendency towards ambitious striving and these
major life attainments. Our results therefore demonstrate the practical utility of studying ambition
as a construct for careers research in particular and organizational behavior research in general.

(JPMNT) Journal of Process Management – New Technol

ogies, International
Vol. 5, No 3, 2017.
1
www.japmnt.com
 SELF-ASSESSM ENT OF S TUDENTS' AMBI TION
Oksana V. Barsukova
Faculty of Pedagogy and Practical Psychology,
Southern Federal University, Russian Federation

(PDF) Self-assessment of students’ ambition. Available from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318914196_Self-assessment_of_students'_ambition
[accessed Apr 30 2019].
Study results
. Thus, we received
the following results (bar chart 1):
−
51 students consider themselves
ambitious (72%).
Such students strive for social
recognition, high professional status and
career growth, it is important for them to
take the first places in scientific and sports
competitions.
−
20 students do not consider
themselves ambitious (28%).
For such students, social status and
recognition are not of great importance,
they are not focused on achieving
management
positionsin
professional
activity.

(PDF) Self-assessment of students’ ambition. Available from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318914196_Self-assessment_of_students'_ambition
[accessed Apr 30 2019]

 MEN AND WOMEN DIFFERENCES IN USING LANGUAGE: A CASE STUDY OF STUDENTS AT

STAIN KUDUS Sri Wahyuningsih STAIN Kudus, Indonesia

wahyuningsih@stainkudus.ac.id
file:///E:/Downloads/MEN_AND_WOMEN_DIFFERENCES_IN_USING_LANGUAGE_A_CASE.pdf
Based on the elaborations above, it could be inferred that there are possibly differences of
applying a language experienced by men and women viewed from the numerous perspectives
such as in health, biology, body, language, and so forth. In term of a speech or interaction, Holmes
in Wardhaugh (2006) offers some testable claims about gender differences in using language.
Those cover men and women develop different patterns of using language, women usually focus
on the affective functions of an interaction more often than men do, women tend to use linguistic
devices that stress solidarity more often than men do, women usually communicate in some ways
which will maintain and increase solidarity while mend tend to communicate in some ways which
will focus on the power and status and women are stylistically more flexible than men..
The findings showed that male and female students have shown differences in their
form, content, and use. Men tend to be more directive. Besides, they used more
simple words. On the other hand, women were more expressive and polite in using
language. In addition, they used more gestures and words signifying feeling,
emotional and psychological state.
 Reading, listening, and viewing comprehension in English as a foreign language: One
or more constructs?

 November 2010
 Intelligence 38(6):562-573

 DOI:
 10.1016/j.intell.2010.09.003
 Ulrich Schroeders
 Oliver Wilhelm
 Nina Bucholtz

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222008635_Reading_listening_and_viewing_c
omprehension_in_English_as_a_foreign_language_One_or_more_constructs

Abstract and figures

Receptive foreign language proficiency is usually measured with reading and listening
comprehension tasks. A novel approach to assess such proficiencies – viewing
comprehension – is based on the presentation of short instructional videos followed by
one or more comprehension questions concerning the preceding video stimulus. In order
to evaluate a newly developed viewing comprehension test 485 German high school
students completed reading, listening, and viewing comprehension tests, all measuring
the receptive proficiency in English as a foreign language. Fluid and crystallized
intelligence were measured as predictors of performance. Relative to traditional
comprehension tasks, the viewing comprehension task has similar psychometric
qualities. The three comprehension tests are very highly but not perfectly correlated with
each other. Relations with fluid and crystallized intelligence show systematic differences
between the three comprehension tasks. The high overlap between foreign language
comprehension measures and between crystallized intelligence and language
comprehension ability can be taken as support for a uni-dimensional
interpretation. Implications for the assessment of language proficiency are
discussed.
Intelligence 38 (2010) 562–573 ⁎Corresponding author. Institute of Psychology, University of
DuisburgEssen, Berliner Platz 6-8, 45127 Essen, Germany. E-mail address: ulrich.schroeders@uni-
due.de (U. Schroeders). 0160-2896/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.intell.2010.09.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
 Reading, listening, and viewing comprehension in English as a foreign language: One or
more constructs? Ulrich Schroeders ⁎ , Oliver Wilhelm, Nina Bucholtz Institute for
Educational Progress, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
file:///E:/Downloads/Schroedersetal.-2010-ReadinglisteningandviewingcomprehensioninE.pdf
 We want to introduce another type of comprehension task, labeled viewing
comprehension (VC).1 In a VC task the stimulus is a short video, for example, about how the
city of Boston developed economically in the 20th century. Subsequent to the video
presentation, multiple-choice questions are prompted asking for detailed information or
conclusions that can be drawn out of the previously presented video. In order to respond
correctly, first, auditory and visual information has to be extracted from the video. After
gathering pieces of information the next process in the chain is relating the pieces to each other
and connecting them with already stored knowledge in a mental model of the video sequence.
In principle, this sequence of intertwined processing steps is similar to the processing steps in
completing RC and LC tasks. Besides such similarities in information processing, there are
obvious differences between VC and the traditional comprehension tasks. For instance, VC is
not restricted to one modality (seeing or listening) but rather combines both modalities. The
primary objective of this paper is the structural relationship of the constructs RC, LC, and VC.
We begin this discussion by highlighting the research questions and the results we found.
The first research question dealt with the psychometric quality of the VC measure relative to
established measures of LC and RC. Compared to the traditional comprehension indicators, the
VC task yielded comparable psychometric features and was well accepted by participants.
Because it comes closer to language comprehension in real-life where understanding is
enhanced through visual material, it might even offer a higher authenticity. Authenticity might
be considered one of the six major components of test usefulness (Bachman & Palmer, 1996).
Items usually used in language assessment to assess LC map rare situations (e.g., listening to a
podcast) whereas a movie or a real-life conversation provide visual stimulus that allows for
compensating erroneous speech. Also VC relates to the pupils' environment. The most likely
way for German high school students to get in contact with the English language beyond
lessons is to watch films and videos. Although the VC measure is a psychometrically adequate,
well accepted, and supposedly more authentic instrument, it has only been used sporadically
in the context of measuring individual differences in language proficiency. Several reasons may
account for this circumstance, for instance, the anticipated higher costs for acquiring test
devices or constructing measurement instruments (for cost–benefit considerations, see Farcot
& Latour, 2009). However, with the proceeding transition to computer-based assessment
(Scheuermann & Björnsson, 2009) it is more likely that established constructs such as language
comprehension will be assessed in new ways.
The Partnership for Accessible Reading Assessment (PARA) has stimulated considerable
research to make large-scale assessment of reading proficiency more accessible for students with
reading disabilities. In addition to the treatment of the actual disorder, the use of assistive
technology has been suggested in order to tackle that issue. For example, Thurlow, Moen, Lekwa,
and Scullin (2010) studied the use of a so-called reading pen that recognizes written text and
produces synthesized speech out of it in the assessment of RC. However, they found no beneficial
effects through the implementation of the tool. In this context, the result that RC and VC are
essential perfectly correlated gains new significance. Moreover, we replicated this finding in
another study using a similar VC measure in the field of sciences that was administered in the
first language (Schroeders, Bucholtz, Formazin, & Wilhelm, submitted for publication). Taken
together, the findings of the two studies are encouraging that VC can be used as a substitute
for RC when comprehension ability of students with reading disabilities should be measured.
Moreover, it seems possible that a great gap between the performances in a RC vs. VC task
indicates a specific learning disability. Compared to the high correlation between RC and VC,
the significant lower correlations with LC may be caused by several reasons. One
explanationmight be that the differences between the comprehension skills could be
attributed to differences in test compilation rather than differences in construct. Or, the more
formal language used in documentaries and school books

Gabinete, Teachers’ beliefs and practices in assessing the viewing skill of ESL learners
19
TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND PRACTICES IN ASSESSING THE VIEWING
SKILL OF ESL LEARNERS
Mari Karen Lebumfacil Gabinete
National University, Philippines
mklgabinete@national-u.edu.ph
First received: 25 May 2016 Final proof received: 29 May 2017

http://ejournal.upi.edu/index.php/IJAL/article/download/6854/4671
The K to 12 Education and the proliferation of multimedia
Curriculum of the Philippines is anchored technology, the
ideally on challenge to guide our students to select,
the notion that students in the “knowledge validate
age” and interpret these visual images are the
must be “prepared to compete in a global many
economy, arduous tasks teachers have to face and
understand and operate complex succesfully
communication and accomplish.
information systems, and apply higher level
Visual literacy
thinking
Literacy once meant an ability to read and
skills to make decisions and solve problems”
write.
(2013,
Now, it is not sufficient just to be able to
K to 12 Curriculum Guide-English).
read and
With the recent integration of viewing in
write. Literacy is a fluid concept,
the
determined by
language macro skills simultaneous with the
cultural context (Williams, 2004). Its
implementation of K to 12 in school year
theoretical
2013-2014
conception has been evolving owing to the
demands and/or significance) and criticism
of society, such as, more sophisticated (evaluation) are
ability to rarely practiced.
assess and interpret traditional print texts
Beliefs and Practices in the Use of
and
Technology
visuals. The change in focus of the
In the context of literacy instruction, the
traditional
study of
reading and writing in language arts
McIntyre (2011) revealed that literacy
classroom
instruction
demands efforts from teachers to develop
can be delivered more effectively with the
various
aid of
instructional approaches but the reality
technology.
faced by
teachers confront them as they plan their Because technology has redefined
daily visual
Language Arts lesson. For example, literacy, teacher Brenda Dyck (2016)
according to believes that
Considine (1999), teachers who teach educators should seek resources from
subjects that hollywood
involve film viewing show the entire film. movies. Dyck pointed out the message of
This Martin
results to an eventual neglect in analysis Scorsese, director and filmmaker, saying
and essentially,
evaluation of the text. that movies are instrumental in shaping
Moreover, Begoray’s study (2001) revealed young
a learners’ minds in a critical way. However,
number of challenges that impede effective teachers
implementation of visual literacy. These need to have knowledge of how to express
are: (1) ideas and
coping with student attitudes, (2) lack of emotions visually.
time and
In Australia, a call to develop the
(3) their own attitude about the
next level of
complexities of
implementation pertaining to curriculum
integrating an expanded notion of literacy.
and
Further,
assessment aspects exists in different
the study revealed that viewing activities in
learning
classrooms mostly involve featured analysis
institutions. Part of this was the issue of
(looking at details). Although specified in
students’
Language
ability to interpret and create a variety of
Arts curriculum, appreciation (recognizing
texts that
quality
 combines writing, speech, visual images,
electronic
and interactive media— referred to as
multimodal
text (Anstey & Bull, 2006). One crucial area
of the
implementation is making available to
students the
concepts and language to describe and/or
discuss
what they see and view.
When Seeing Is Better than Doing:
Preschoolers’ Transfer of STEM Skills
Using Touchscreen Games
Elizabeth L. Schroeder* and
Heather L. Kirkorian
 Human Development and Family
Studies, University of Wisconsin –
Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Front. Psychol., 13 September
2016
| https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.20
16.01377Individual Characteristics:
The Case of Familiarity
Fisch (2013) theorized that certain
viewer characteristics, including prior
knowledge and high working-memory
capacity, help children learn from
educational media. One characteristic,
character familiarity, is of interest for
the current study. Being familiar with a
character includes identifying a
character by name (Calvert,
2002; Lauricella et al., 2011). According
to Fisch’s (2013)model, if a viewer is
familiar with a character, they do not
have to use working-memory resources
to learn about the character and instead
can focus on the content to be
learned. Lauricella et al. (2011) tested
this with 21-month-old toddlers using a
seriation task. Toddlers watched either a
familiar or unfamiliar puppet place cups
in order from smallest to biggest and
then nest smaller cups inside larger
ones. Children were then given an
opportunity to play with the real cups,
and researchers scored their imitation
based on nesting smaller cups inside of
larger ones. Only those who watched the
familiar puppet outperformed those in a
baseline condition who did not see
either video. Others have reported
similar findings (e.g., Howard Gola et
al., 2013).
Viewing Comprehension Strategies: Watching
Videos Like You Read A Book
by Terry Heick
January 3, 2019
The K to 12 Education Curriculum of the
Philippines is anchored ideally on the notion
that students in the “knowledge age” must
be “prepared to compete in a global
economy understand and operate complex
communication and information systems,
and apply higher level thinking skills to
make decisions and solve problems
Gabinete, (2016).
in Learning Models, Literacy 9
BARRETT TAXONOMY - educational
taxonomy
educationaltaxonomy.weebly.com/home/barre
tt-taxonomy
Apr 30, 2014
The Barrett Taxonomy (Clymer, 1968),
designed originally to assist classroom teachers
in developing comprehension questions and /
or test questions for reading, is especially useful
for classroom questioning in other content
areas as well.
 Barrett’s Taxonomy of Comprehension
Barrett (1980)

Viewing Comprehension Performcance

Levels of Viewing Comprehension

 LITERAL
 REORGANIZATIONAL
 INFERENTIAL
 APPLICATION
 ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION

Structures of Viewing Comprehension with Video Genre

indicated Strategies
 BEFORE VIEWING - CONNECT
 DISASTER
 DURING VIEWING - INFER
 JUSTICE
 AFTER VIEWING - ANALYZE
 LOVE
 EXTENDED VIEWING - CREATE &
 AMBITION
REFLECT
 LOOKING BACK

Self-Developed Module