The influence of mastery-avoidance goals on performance improvement

Two experiments focused on examining the influence of mastery-avoidance goals on performance improvement, and more specifically, on mastery-avoidance goals grounded in an intrapersonal standard. That is, herein, mastery-avoidance goals entail striving to avoid doing worse than one has done before. Both experiments demonstrated that in a multiple-trial context, mastery-avoidance goals are deleterious for performance improvement relative to mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals, and a no goal baseline. The findings were shown to be independent of participants’ perceptions of goal difficulty, and were consistent not only across methodology but also across type of participant (undergraduates versus individuals in the workforce), and type and length of achievement task (a verbal skills task versus an ecologically valid managerial competencies exercise). Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The achievement goal approach to achievement motivation has emerged as a highly influential framework for understanding how people define, experience, and respond to competence-relevant situations, including theworkplace, the classroom, and the ballfield. Initially, achievement goals were conceptualized in terms of a mastery-performance distinction: mastery goals focus on task-based and intrapersonal standards of competence, and performance goals focus on interpersonal standards of competence (Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984). More recently, this dichotomous model has been extended to include the approach-avoidance distinction that has long been a hallmark of achievement motivation research (Atkinson, 1957; Lewin, Dembo, Festinger, & Sears, 1944): Approach goals focus on acquiring positive possibilities, whereas avoidance goals focus on avoiding negative possibilities. First, a trichotomous achievement goal model was proposed (Elliot & Church, 1997; Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; VandeWalle, 1997) in which the performance goal construct is partitioned into separate approach and avoidance goals, and the mastery goal is treated as an approach goal. Then, a more elaborate 2 2 achievement goal model was posited (Elliot, 1999; Elliot & McGregor, 2001) in which the mastery goal construct, as well as the performance goal construct, is bifurcated in terms of approach and avoidance. A great deal of research has been conducted on the trichotomous achievement goal model (for reviews, see Elliot, 2005; Payne, Youngcourt, & Beaubien, 2007); empirical work on the 2 2 model has been far less prevalent leading some to question the need to attend to the mastery-avoidance goal construct (Deshon & Gillespie, 2005). Recent studies, however, have demonstrated that the percentage of individuals who indicate that mastery-avoidance goals are the most important to them, ranges from 15% in a sport setting (Van Yperen & Renkema, 2008), to 33% in an academic setting (Van Yperen, 2006), and to 49% in a work setting (Anseel, Van Yperen, & Janssen, 2008). Thus, mastery-avoidance goals appear to be quite prevalent in achievement contexts, more so than initially anticipated (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). The present experimental research is comprised of two experiments designed to examine the influence of the goals of the 2 2 model on performance improvement on two sequential tasks. The goal that is unique to the 2 2 model—the mastery-avoidance goal, and more specifically, the goal to avoid doing worse than one has done before—is the central focus of this research. tment of Social and Organizational Psychology, University of Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/I, 9712 TS [email protected] s, Ltd. Received 4 January 2008 Accepted 20 October 2008 Mastery-avoidance goals 933 Conceptualization of Achievement Goals There is surprisingly little consensus in the achievement goal literature on whether ‘‘goal’’ in ‘‘achievement goal’’ is best represented as aim (Elliot, 2005; Van Yperen, 2006), a combination of reason and aim (Pintrich, 2000; VandeWalle, 1997), or overarching orientation (Ames &Archer, 1988). Our perspective is that the term ‘‘goal’’ is best conceptualized as aim or standard, because this use is consistent with its prototypical use in the psychological literature (e.g., Locke & Latham, 2002). In any given achievement context, aim is typically undergirded by a more general reason (e.g. to demonstrate competence to others, to avoid the shame of failure, to get the reward my boss promised me), and clearly both aim and reason are important in accounting for achievement behavior. However, to promote conceptual and interpretational clarity, we think it is optimal to keep aims conceptually separate from the many different reasons, dispositions, tendencies, processes, and outcomes to which aims are associated, and to empirically examine the links between the antecedents of aims and their affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences (rather than define goals as an overarching orientation that includes several of these concepts). Another conceptual unclarity in the achievement goal literature is that mastery-based goals have typically been portrayed as based on both absolute standards (focused on task mastery) and intrapersonal standards (focused on improvement). In the present research, we focus on mastery-based goals that contain an intrapersonal standard. Their match to a context in which similar achievement tasks are presented sequentially may afford an ideal opportunity to examine the predictive utility of mastery-based goals for performance improvement (see next paragraph). Furthermore, we focus on mastery goals grounded in an intrapersonal standard to ensure a balance in the conceptualization of achievement goals (i.e. performance goals are grounded in an interpersonal standard). That is, herein, in the present research, masteryapproach goals entail striving to do better than one has done before, whereas mastery-avoidance goals entail striving to avoid doing worse than one has done before (Van Yperen, 2003, 2006). These forms of regulation represent mastery goals, because they focus on intrapersonal development; they represent approach and avoidance goals, respectively, because they focus on a potential positive versus negative outcome. Performance-approach goals and performance-avoidance goals also focus on a potential positive versus negative outcome, respectively. These goals represent performance goals because they focus on interpersonal standards of competence. These conceptualizations of the achievement goals have been shown to be linked to clear, distinct profiles that were largely in line with the extant achievement goal literature (Van Yperen, 2006). The Context of Evaluation Most research in the achievement goal literature employing either the trichotomous achievement goal model or the 2 2 achievement goal model, has examined the links between goals and outcome variables in contexts that most closely match the focus of performance-based goals. That is, in most of these studies, competence evaluation is a onetime event or a interpersonal standard of evaluation is either explicitly emphasized or implicitly assumed. Perhaps it should not be surprising, therefore, that performance-approach goals have repeatedly been found to be positively related to performance, whereas performance-avoidance goals have displayed a robust negative link with performance (Elliot & Moller, 2003; Harackiewicz, Barron, Pintrich, Elliot, & Thrash, 2002; Porath & Bateman, 2006; Van Yperen, 2006). In contexts that seem best suited for performance-based goals, some have found positive relationships between mastery-approach goals and performance (e.g. Bell & Kozlowski, 2002; Fisher & Ford, 1998; Janssen & Van Yperen, 2004; Schmidt & Ford, 2003; Seijts, Latham, Tasa, & Latham, 2004; VandeWalle, Brown, Cron, & Slocum, 1999), but others have found null effects (e.g. Davis, Mero, & Goodman, 2007; Lee, Sheldon, & Turban, 2003; Phillips & Gully, 1997; for reviews, see Elliot, 2005; Harackiewicz et al., 2002), and there are even studies that suggest that too much of an emphasis on mastery can compromise performance attainment (e.g. Brown, 2001; Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2003). The little correlational research on the link between mastery-avoidance goals and performance that has been conducted to date, has yielded null results (Cury, Elliot, Da Fonseca, & Moller, 2006; Elliot & McGregor, 2001; Finney, Pieper, & Barron, 2004; Malka & Covington, 2005; Van Yperen, 2006). Only one study has been conducted that included an experimental manipulation of mastery-avoidance goals. In this study, Van Yperen (2003) observed that the positive correlation typically found between intrinsic interest and performance vanished for individuals who encountered a mastery-avoidance goal manipulation. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 39, 932–943 (2009)