Self-Fulfillment in Higher Education: Contributions from Mastery Goal, Intrinsic Motivation, and Assertions

Abstract

Effective learners are cognizant of their own basic needs and abilities so as to maximize their capabilities, dispositions, as well as potentialities up to become self-actualized individuals. To delve into the process of university students' self-actualization, we strived to amalgamate this construct with two motivational-associated factors, i.e., mastery goal and intrinsic motivation. To do so, a three-phase mixed-methods study was designed. In the first phase, the reliability and validity of the ‘Measurement of Actualization of Potential (MAP)’ (measuring five sub-scales, namely, openness to self, openness to others, openness to life, adaptability, and autonomy) were determined in the present study via a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the second phase, our proposed model containing the three constructs was examined using a structural equation modeling (SEM). Eventually, to procure a deeper perception of self-fulfillment valence in actual behaviors, feelings, and assertions of the participants, a semi-structured interview was conducted on seven randomly selected participants from a general sample population of 253 Iranian university students in its first and second phases. The results demonstrated that the proposed model had a good fit with the empirical data. The contribution of mastery goal and intrinsic motivation was demonstrated in the model. It was also found that among the sub-scales of self-fulfillment, ‘openness to self’ had the highest association with intrinsic motivation followed by ‘openness to life.’ Mastery goal had the highest correlation with ‘openness to life’ followed by ‘autonomy.’ The analysis of interview protocol revealed that self-rating percentages of the delineated lists were all in congruence with the number of selected activities and traits the respondents preferred.