new relationships (Pfeiffer, 2001). Common academic stressors include increased

workload in a course and lower than expected grades received in a course (Ross, Niebling

and Heckert, 1999). Although stress in the form of anxiety was found to be detrimental to

academic achievement, an optimistic attitude may allow students to positively react to

stress (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1992). Evidence was also found that young women

undergraduate students tend to experience more stress than other undergraduate students

(Gadzella & Fullwood, 1992).

 The measurement of stress can be categorized by instruments measuring a count

of stressors or a perceived experience which accounts for the reaction to a situation. Both

types of measurement have strengths and limitations (Cohen et al.). This study utilized

the SSI (Gadzella & Baloglu, 2001), a perceived measure of stress which is limited in

ability to determine source of stress but provides a measured level of stress in the form of

a behavioral construct (Gadzella & Baloglu). The measurement of stress as an experience

rather than a specific stressor was found to be more compatible with Kirton's A-I theory.

 Learning and Motivation

 Concerning Kirton's (2003) theoretical framework applied to the undergraduate

classroom, motivation is identified as part of cognitive affect. Motivation and its

influence on learning is a well-researched phenomena with many more questions still

unanswered. Research has found that learning is dependent on motivation, but

interestingly the achievement of learning goals increases motivation to learn more

(Schunk, 1991). Pace (1980) found that knowledge gained from a course was positively

correlated with the amount of effort students provided for learning. Theories of

motivation in education that are considered prominent at the time of this writing can be

grouped by expectancy-value theories, attribution theories, social cognitive theories, goal