The delicate link between mastery-approach goals and performance: Why goal difficulty and performance expectancy matter

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Blaga ◽  
Nico Van Yperen
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine S. Corker ◽  
Brent Donnellan

Boundary goals specify the minimum performance level that an individual must attain to subjectively experience success. The current research integrates boundary goals into the hierarchical model of achievement motivation (A. Elliot, 2006) by positing that boundary goals are a sub-goal in the goal hierarchy. We predicted that performance approach goals would be associated with higher boundary goals, whereas performance avoidance goals would be associated with lower boundary goals. We further predicted that boundary goals would mediate the association between achievement goals and performance, independent of other target goals (i.e., levels of aspiration). We also evaluated whether boundary goals served a similar role in explaining associations between mastery goals and performance. We tested these predictions by tracking the performance of 347 college students across the semester. As predicted, performance approach goals were positively associated with boundary goals (beta = .32) whereas performance avoidance goals were negatively associated with boundary goals (beta = -.11). Further, we found that mastery approach goals had positive associations with boundary goals (beta = .29) whereas the opposite pattern occurred for mastery avoidance goals (beta = -.25). Boundary goals were positively linked to exam scores (beta = .32) and mediated the associations between performance approach, mastery approach, and mastery avoidance goals and grades. These statistical effects were independent of the effects of level of aspiration. In short, boundary goals seem to play an important role in the achievement motivation process and may therefore serve as a potentially useful focus for interventions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Chen

This study examined the role that achievement goals may play in predicting subjective well-being, particularly the extra contribution of achievement goals beyond that of personality traits. There were 371 university students from Nanjing, China (mean age = 20.67, SD = 1.30) who participated in the study and reported their achievement goals, the Big Five personality traits, and subjective well-being (including life satisfaction, positive, and negative affect). Results revealed that mastery-approach goals positively and significantly predicted life satisfaction; mastery-approach and performance-approach goals positively, whereas performance-avoidance goals negatively significantly predicted positive affect. When working with the Big Five personality traits, mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals showed their added contributions to life satisfaction and positive affect, respectively. These results highlight the importance of considering achievement goals when explaining individual differences of subjective well-being as well as the importance of taking subjective well-being into account when understanding the nature of achievement goals.


Author(s):  
Bilson Simamora ◽  
Elisabeth Vita Mutiarawati

<span>Achievement motivation evolved fast in the educational field. In this development, the trichotomous and the 2X2 models received myriad attention from the educational specialist. However, there is a debate about which is better between the two models. This study aimed to intercede this debate and argue that the study's duration should be accounted for in the validation. Approach goals should dominate new students' achievement goals, and old students' achievement goals will show the balance of approach and avoidance goals. For these reasons, this study gathers the data from 350 new students and 203 old students. Confirmatory factor analysis reveals that the trichotomous is the best model for new student segments. While for the old student segment, the 2X2 model shows its efficacy. Therefore, for the new students' segment, achievement goals consist of mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. For the old students, besides those three-goal orientations, mastery-avoidance goals are also included. As expected, the independent sample t-test shows that new students have higher mastery-approach and performance-approach goals than old students have. Self-efficacy is more influential in the new than old student segments, as shown by simple linear regression. This study is still stuck to a single cross-sectional design. Further research can utilize longitudinal research with segmental-based analysis and pay attention to gender, major, social class, or other potential moderation variables.</span>


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian Grabowski ◽  
◽  
Agata Chudzicka-Czupała ◽  
Żaneta Rachwaniec-Szczecińska ◽  

The article presents the mutual relations between the components of work ethic and achievement goals: mastery- approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. Work ethic was presented as a syndrome of the following attitudes: 1) perceiving work as a moral value, 2) treating work as a central value in life, and 3) the belief in the importance of hard work that leads to success. This ethic also consists of the following components: 4) unwillingness to waste time, 5) disapproval of spare time (anti-leisure), 6) willingness to delay gratification, 7) willingness to act honestly at work (morality/ethic), and 8) being independent (self-reliance). The research conducted on the sample of 206 employees showed that the dimensions of work ethic are related the most strongly, average and positively to mastery-approach goals but weakly to mastery-avoidance. Performance- approach and performance-avoidance goals correlate positively with only two dimensions: self-reliance and the belief in the importance of hard work. Morality is negatively related to performance goals (approach and avoidance). Being independent (self-reliance) correlates positively but weakly with mastery goals (approach and avoidance). The results show clearly that work ethic is associated with mastery-approach goals. A person who assesses work high, aspires to reach the standard of mastery and it is the motivation that relies mainly on aspiration. Key words: work ethic, achievement motivation, achievement mastery goals, goals


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Daumiller ◽  
Raven Rinas ◽  
Jennifer Breithecker

Elite athletes undergo intensive training and competitive pressure to succeed, making them susceptible to professional strain. However, they differ in their subjective reactions in the form of burnout levels and psychosomatic stress symptoms. Following a motivational perspective, these differences may be explained by the goals that athletes pursue. The current study therefore examined the effects of elite athletes’ achievement goals on their burnout levels and psychosomatic stress symptoms, and to what extent they can be explained by athletes’ use of adaptive coping strategies. Based on the answers of 125 German elite athletes, path modelling revealed that mastery approach goals were negatively associated with burnout levels and psychosomatic stress symptoms, while mastery avoidance and performance approach goals were positively associated with burnout levels. Coping strategies partially mediated the effects of mastery approach goals on burnout levels and psychosomatic stress symptoms. These findings suggest practical implications for supporting elite athletes through goal setting processes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica X. Yan ◽  
Lisi Wang

What goes into motivating students to take effective action? Ideally, students are not only motivated to invest time into their studying, but that they use their time in effective and productive ways. In the present study, we surveyed college undergraduates (N = 366) about how they engage in one of their college courses. Specifically, we explored how their motivation-related implicit beliefs (ease and difficulty mindsets, intelligence mindset;Dweck, 2000; Fisher and Oyserman, 2017) interact with perceived course interest and course importance to predict their achievement goal orientation for the course and the quality of their study strategies. We used a person-centered latent profiles analysis approach categorize meaningful profiles of implicit beliefs. Those who were likely to highly endorse motivation-increasing implicit beliefs and who found a course interesting were also more likely to hold mastery-approach goals; the relationship, however, was more complicated for performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals. Implicit beliefs profiles themselves did not directly relate to strategy use, but goal orientation did. In particular, mastery-approach goal orientation was uniquely related to all three of the effective study strategies subscales (e.g., elaborative, standard testing, generative testing). Mastery-avoidance was related to less use of elaborative strategies, and performance-goals were not related to any type strategy use. Perceived course importance was positively related to increased passive and elaborative strategies, but not the standard testing or generative testing strategies. We discuss implications for interventions.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zisan Kazak Cetinkalp

The relationship between achievement goals and physical self-perceptions of adolescent athletes was examined in this study. Participants were 208 adolescent athletes with a mean age of 16.35 + 0.48 years. Independent samples t tests, Pearson correlations, and regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The results showed that female athletes' mastery-avoidance scores were higher than male athletes'. Mastery-approach goals were related to sports competence and global physical self-concept. Performance-approach goals were associated with sports competence, global physical self-concept, and global self-esteem. Performance-avoidance goals were related only to sports competence. In addition, the mastery-approach goal was predicted by global physical self-concept, and performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals were positively predicted by sports competence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 581-615
Author(s):  
Heleen Van Mierlo ◽  
Edwin A. J. Van Hooft

This study focuses on team achievement goals and performance outcomes in interdependent sports teams. Team achievement goals reflect shared motivational states that exist exclusively at the team level. In a survey among 310 members of 29 premier-league field-hockey teams, team-level performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery-approach, and mastery-avoidance achievement goals explained 69% of the overall variance in team performance and 16% after controlling for previous performance. Teams performed better to the extent they were more approach- and less avoidance oriented in terms of both mastery and performance, although mastery-approach goals related to early-season team performance rather than predicting later changes in team performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Li Jiang ◽  
Lawrence Jun Zhang

As a relatively new dimension of student engagement, agentic engagement has received growing research interest in recent years, as it not only predicts academic achievement and other positive outcomes, but also benefits reciprocal teacher-student relations. In the educational context, teachers' teaching style exerts a crucial impact on students' engagement. However, research on how perceived teachers' teaching style influences students' agentic engagement is inconclusive. To address this lacuna, this study, taking an integrated perspective that draws on Self-determination Theory and Achievement Goal Theory, investigated the relationship of three types of teaching style (i.e., perceived autonomy support, social relatedness, and controlling) to university students' agentic engagement in EFL learning in China, especially through the mediation of mastery-approach goals and performance approach goals. Structural equation modeling showed that perceived autonomy support positively predicted agentic engagement through the mediation of mastery-approach goals, whereas perceived controlling negatively predicted agentic engagement through the mediation of performance-approach goals. Comparatively, the relationship of perceived social relatedness to agentic engagement was fully mediated by both mastery-approach and performance-approach goals. After discussing these results, practical implications as well as suggestions for future studies were given.


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