Mastering One’s Destiny: Mastery Goals Promote Challenge and Success Despite Social Identity Threat

• Published in: Personality & social psychology bulletin 2013-06, Vol.39 (6), p.748-762
• Main Authors: Stout, Jane G., Dasgupta, Nilanjana
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Achievement; Adult; Assertive; Construal; Employment interviews; Evaluation; Experiments; Female; Goals; Humans; Identity; Interviews; Interviews as Topic; Motivation; Objectives; Psychological Theory; Self Concept; Social Identification; Social identity; Social psychology; Task Performance and Analysis; Threats; Women
• ISSN: 0146-1672; 1552-7433
• DOI: 10.1177/0146167213481067

We used an achievement goal framework to enhance identity-threatened individuals’ motivation and performance by way of an understudied mechanism, namely, challenge appraisals. In three experiments, women were given a mastery goal (focus on building skills) or a performance goal (perform well, avoid errors) before a mock job interview. Women who focused on mastery rather than performance felt more challenged and less threatened when anticipating an identity-threatening interview; goals did not affect appraisals of a nonthreatening interview (Experiment 1). Mastery relative to performance goals enhanced women’s intention to be assertive (Experiment 2) and their actual face-to-face performance during the job interview (Experiment 3); challenge appraisals (but not threat appraisals) served as a mediator for these effects. Whereas a great deal of prior work has alleviated identity threat by altering construals of one’s identity, the current research uses an alternative strategy—modifying appraisals of the situation, leaving one’s self-concept intact.