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Achievement Goals

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Synonyms

Goal orientations; Goal standards

Definition

Achievement goals are self-regulatory commitments that provide direction to individuals as they interpret and respond to competence-relevant situations. Four types of achievement goals have been the primary focus of the literature: Mastery-approach goals (master a task; improve over time), performance-approach goals (outperform others), mastery-avoidance goals (not fall short of mastering a task; not decline over time), and performance-avoidance goals (not be outperformed by others).

Introduction

Achievement Goal Conceptualizations

The first generation of achievement goals research was based on a dichotomous framework (e.g., Dweck 1986). Two types of goals were distinguished: mastery goals and performance goals. Mastery goals were defined in terms of developing competence and task mastery and performance goals in terms of demonstrating competence relative to others. This distinction can be understood in terms of the definitionof...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

    Nicolas Sommet & Andrew J. Elliot

  2. Life Course and Inequality Research Centre, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Nicolas Sommet

Authors
  1. Nicolas Sommet
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  2. Andrew J. Elliot
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicolas Sommet .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland

    Monika Wróbel

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Sommet, N., Elliot, A.J. (2020). Achievement Goals. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_484

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