Biomedical subjects
Judith M Harackiewicz
Publications and source records attributed to Judith M Harackiewicz.
Achievement goals, task performance, and interest: why perceived goal difficulty matters.
In field studies, mastery goals, which focus on developing skill, often predict task interest but not actual performance. Performance-approach goals, which focus on outperforming others, instead often predict strong performance but not interest. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that these distinct goal effects trace to goal difficulty perceptions. In each study, participants assigned to a performance-approach goal perceived their goal to be harder, and therefore felt more performance pressure, than those assigned to a mastery goal. Among participants low in dispositional achievement orientation, this experience translated into lower task interest when pursuing the performance-approach goal. However, participants in both studies also performed the activity better when pursuing this goal instead of a standard mastery goal, although this was not mediated by self-reported goal difficulty perceptions. Finally, further demonstrating the role of goal difficulty, a mastery goal manipulated to appear more difficult than a standard mastery goal produced effects matching the performance-approach goal.
The effects of cooperation and competition on intrinsic motivation and performance.
The authors examined the effects of competition and cooperation on intrinsic motivation and performance in 4 studies. Across 3 behavioral studies that involved shooting a basketball, no differences were observed between competition and cooperation on task enjoyment or performance. However, the combination of competition and cooperation (intergroup competition) consistently led to higher levels of intrinsic motivation, and in 2 of the 3 studies, performance. In a questionnaire study, the authors replicated the positive effects of intergroup competition on enjoyment and examined process measures that might account for these effects. These findings suggest that competition and cooperation both have positive aspects and that structuring recreational activities to include both can facilitate high levels of both intrinsic motivation and performance.