title: Mastering one's destiny: mastery goals promote challenge and success despite social identity threat.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309, USA. jane.stout@colorado.edu
authors.forename: Jane G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Stout
authors.forename: Nilanjana
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dasgupta
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D009042:Motivation; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012649:Self Concept; D012933:Social Identification; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis
keywords: achievement goals; challenge; performance; social identity threat; stress appraisals