Performance-Approach and Performance-Avoidance Goals: When Uncertainty Makes a Difference
Open Access
- 4 May 2007
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Vol. 33 (6), 813-827
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167207301022
Abstract
Performance-avoidance goals (the desire to avoid performing more poorly than others do) have been shown to have consistently deleterious effects on performance but the effects of performance-approach goals (trying to outperform others) are more complex. Two studies examine uncertainty as a moderator of the effect of performance-approach goals on performance. Experiment 1 shows that manipulated performance-approach goals lead to better performance than do performance-avoidance goals in the absence of uncertainty about performance but when participants learn that a coactor disagreed with them about problem solutions, creating uncertainty, performance-approach goals do not differ from performance-avoidance goals in their effect on performance. Experiment 2 shows that uncertainty also moderates the effects of self-set performance-approach goals. Moreover, the same dynamic occurs with another kind of uncertainty: negative competence feedback.Keywords
This publication has 46 references indexed in Scilit:
- Classroom Goal Structure, Student Motivation, and Academic AchievementAnnual Review of Psychology, 2006
- Achievement Goals, Task Performance, and Interest: Why Perceived Goal Difficulty MattersPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2005
- Epistemic and relational conflicts in sharing identical vs. complementary information during cooperative learningSwiss Journal of Psychology, 2002
- Motivating the Academically Unmotivated: A Critical Issue for the 21st CenturyReview of Educational Research, 2000
- Approach and avoidance motivation and achievement goalsEducational Psychologist, 1999
- Rethinking achievement goals: When are they adaptive for college students and why?Educational Psychologist, 1998
- Reasons for Studying: Motivational Orientations and Study StrategiesCognition and Instruction, 1988
- A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality.Psychological Review, 1988
- Task-oriented versus competitive learning structures: Motivational and performance consequences.Journal of Educational Psychology, 1984
- Motivational determinants of risk-taking behavior.Psychological Review, 1957