How Proponents and Opponents Influence Achievement Motivation: The Role of the Anticipated Emotions of Other People

Abstract

There are countless studies about the influence of other people’s emotions on individuals' behavior. However, the influence of proponents' and opponents' future emotions on achievement motivation remains unclear. This study aims to fill this gap. Therefore, departing from the emotional intelligence theory, the author materializes the anticipated emotions of other people concept and tests it using a static group experimental design with success and failure scenarios, involving 203 participants chosen judgmentally. When reminded of the proponents' joyfulness caused by their success, the Mann-Whitney U test with normal approximation, supported by the Monte Carlo estimation, shows that the mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals of the experimental group are enhanced. Whereas, when reminded that they would be envied and make the opponents feel distressed, the performance-approach goals are improved. In the failure scenario, when the participants were directed to the proponents' distress, as a response to their failure, the four components of the achievement goals are increased: mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance. However, the opponents' joyfulness, anticipated as a malicious schadenfreude to the participants' failure, is only successful in stimulating the performance-avoidance goals. A Bayesian estimate with 5,000 times bootstrapping reveals that self-efficacy mediates the influence of the proponents' anticipated joyfulness on the mastery-approach fully, and on the performance-approach goals in a complementary way. Complementary mediation is also apparent in the impact of the proponents' distress on the mastery-approach and mastery-avoidance goals. Above all, love for the proponents is more potent than hatred from social environments for increasing the achievement motivation. Further research is encouraged to replicate this study with different social behavior.

Silent Competition among Students: How Schadenfreude and Social Envy Influence Rating-based Achievement Motivation

“…Anticipation contains lesser bias because it is based on prior experiences and knowledge (Bozinovski & Bozinovska, 2003). Also, people have the capability to detect others' emotions (Baumeister et al, 2007;Simamora, 2021) and can give more accurate enviers' emotional response to their success or failure. Fourth, most of the previous studies investigated social envy and schadenfreude separately as they are viewed as two separated concepts.…”

“…Humans are inseparable from one another. In social life, others consist of significant others (Icek Ajzen, 2020) and 'rivals' (Celse, 2010) or opponents (Simamora, 2021). Significant others are people that are important in one's life (Icek Ajzen, 2020).…”

“…The demonstration aspect places achievement motivation as one of the envy objects (Lange et al, 2018;van de Ven & Zeelenberg, 2015). Precisely, in a social competition where the sirik trait works, people are capable of figuring out and anticipate rivals' joyfulness when they fail to reach the achievement they deserve or fall below the rivals' grade (Simamora, 2021).…”

“…Simamora (2021) extendedMayer and Salovey's (1997) emotional intelligence theory that people can anticipate opponents' emotions in responding to their success or failure to establish tasks or achieve goals. Opponents are those with whom individuals involving in a social competition that functions as a natural spectacle for social envy and schadenfreude.This study sees that the notion is more apparent when the competition occurs among peers ina scramble for comparative achievement as described above.…”

Significant Other’s Anticipated Emotions Increase Student’s Intention to Avoid Smoking

“…Significant others are prominent persons in individuals' life, such as family or friends (Ajzen, 1991(Ajzen, , 2020, teachers, parents, managers, nuclear family, and extended family. Individuals can regulate their behavior to make significant others feel good or avoid feeling bad (Simamora, 2021). As Mayer and Salovey's emotional intelligence has stated that individuals have the emotional intelligence to predict significant others' emotions (Mayer, Carosu, & Salovey, 2016), then manage their behavior to generate or avoid particular SOAE.…”