Mastery-Approach Goals Eliminate Retrieval-Induced Forgetting
- 9 March 2015
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Vol. 41 (5), 687-695
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215575730
Abstract
The present study examined how achievement goals affect retrieval-induced forgetting. Researchers have suggested that mastery-approach goals (i.e., developing one’s own competence) promote a relational encoding, whereas performance-approach goals (i.e., demonstrating one’s ability in comparison with others) promote item-specific encoding. These different encoding processes may affect the degree to which participants integrate the exemplars within a category and, as a result, we expected that retrieval-induced forgetting may be reduced or eliminated under mastery-approach goals. Three experiments were conducted using a retrieval-practice paradigm with different stimuli, where participants’ achievement goals were manipulated through brief written instructions. A meta-analysis that synthesized the results of the three experiments showed that retrieval-induced forgetting was not statistically significant in the mastery-approach goal condition, whereas it was statistically significant in the performance-approach goal condition. These results suggest that mastery-approach goals eliminate retrieval-induced forgetting, but performance-approach goals do not, demonstrating that motivation factors can influence inhibition and forgetting.This publication has 45 references indexed in Scilit:
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