Winning Isn’t Everything: Competition, Achievement Orientation, and Intrinsic Motivation

To test Harackiewicz and Sansone’s (1991) process model of intrinsic motivation in a competitive context, we examined the effects of competition and achievement orientation on intrinsic motivation. In Study 1, participants received positive or negative feedback regarding their performance in competitive and noncompetitive conditions, and we found that achievement orientation moderated the effects of competition. Individuals high in achievement orientation enjoyed a word game more in competition than those low in achievement orientation across conditions of positive and negative feedback. We also examined the effects of performance feedback and found positive effects of interpersonal (outcome) and intrapersonal feedback that were independent of competitive context. In Study 2, we found that achievement orientation moderated the effects of competition, even in the absence of outcome feedback. Mediational analyses identified competence valua-tion, perceived challenge, eagerness, and positive affect as mediators of competition and feedback effects on intrinsic motivation. r 1999 Academic Press We strive to be Number One... But win or lose, it is the competition which gives us pleasure. Joe Paterno, Coach of Pennsylvania State University’s football team (Tutko & Bruns, 1976, p. 205) Defined as the desire to take part in an activity for its own sake (Deci & Ryan, 1985), intrinsic motivation represents a unique type of motivation. Early research This study is based in part on a master’s thesis completed by the first author under the direction o

COMMENTARIES Life Is a Roller Coaster When You View the World Through Entity Glasses

Hong articulate an ambitious conceptual framework with far-ranging implications for personality, motivation, and social behavior. The authors identify two fundamentally different world views that influence how individuals process and respond to social information, and they detail the motivational and social consequences of these world views in two important domains of human behavior (achievement and moral judgment). Dweck et al. have marshalled an extensive array of empirical evidence demonstrating that an individual's beliefs about the malleability of intelligence and morality have a major impact on the way impressions are formed, information is processed, goals are adopted, setbacks are handled, and social reward and punishment is administered. The elegance, simplicity, an

How situational is situational interest? Investigating the longitudinal structure of situational interest

Interest theory adopts a person-in-context perspective. In this view, a momentary experience of interest is shaped by environmental circumstances and stable personal preferences. According to the Four-Phase Model of Interest Development, environmental factors are important in defining the concept of situational interest (SI). This study investigates this assumption. Repeated measurements of SI collected from a sample of 327 high school students during problem-based learning activities were analyzed using Latent-State Trait (LST) theory. LST models allow identification of situation-specific and consistent components in repeated measurements. Results show that situation-specific effects had a strong influence on self-reported SI. Further analysis revealed that substantial variance components in SI were unconfounded with preexisting individual interest. Based on these two criteria, the findings support defining the psychological state of interest as "situational interest"

Short-term and long-term consequences of achievement goals: Predicting interest and performance over time

Why do some students excel in their college classes and develop interest in an academic discipline? The authors examined both the short-term and long-term consequences of students ' achievement goals in an introductory psychology course. Mastery goals positively predicted subsequent interest in the course, but not course grades. Performance goals positively predicted grades, but not interest. Three semesters later, the authors obtained measures of continued interest in the discipline and long-term performance. Mastery goals predicted subsequent enrollment in psychology courses, whereas performance goals predicted long-term academic performance. These positive and complementary effects of mastery and performance goals on different measures of academic success are consistent with a multiple-goals perspective in which both goals can have beneficial consequences in college education. College students often pursue multiple goals in their classes. Some goals may be fairly general and concern students ' reasons for taking a class, whereas other goals are more specific to what students hope to accomplish in the course--to learn as much as they can about the subject or to obtain a high grade. These latter types of goals have been labeled achievement goals (Ames, 1992