Pro-Social Goals in Achievement Situations: Amity Goal Orientation Enhances the Positive Effects of Mastery Goal Orientation

Abstract

Research has neglected the utility of pro-social goals within achievement situations. In this article, four studies demonstrate that amity goal orientation, promoting mutual success of oneself together with others, enhances the utility of mastery goal orientation. We demonstrate this in longitudinally predicting performance (Studies 1 and 2) and in maintaining motivation after a disappointing performance (Studies 3 and 4). The studies demonstrate the same interaction effect in academic and in work achievement contexts. Specifically, whereas amity goal orientation did not predict achievement on its own, it enhanced the positive effect of mastery goal orientation. Together, these studies establish the importance of amity goal orientation while also advancing our understanding of the effects of other achievement goal orientations. We suggest future directions in examining the utility of amity goals in other contexts.

Using Personal Values to Understand the Motivational Basis of Amity Goal Orientation

“…Three of the goal orientations were measured using the items of one of the most frequently used academically related goal orientations questionnaire (Elliot and McGregor, 2001). Amity goal orientation was measured using four items that measure the motivation for cooperation with others in an academic achievement situation, the willingness to help others to succeed, and the willingness to develop and improve non-competitive relations with others (Levontin and Bardi, 2018, see items in Appendix 1). Participants indicated on a scale from 1 ( not at all true of me ) to 7 ( very much true of me ) the extent to which they are motivated by performance-approach (three items, α = 0.83, e.g., “It is important for me to do better than other students”), mastery (three items, α = 0.80, e.g., “I desire to completely master the material presented in this class”), performance-avoidance (three items, α = 0.69, e.g., “My goal for this class is to avoid performing poorly”), and amity (four items, α = 0.78, e.g., “It is important to me that my friends will succeed as well as I do”) goal orientations in the current class (see Table 1).…”

“…Three achievement goal orientations were measured using Vandewalle’s (1997) work goal orientation questionnaire. Eight amity work goal-orientation items (Levontin and Bardi, 2018, see Appendix 1) were added to the questionnaire to create one questionnaire with 21 items. Participants indicated on a scale from 1 (not at all true of me) to 7 (very much true of me) the extent to which they are motivated at work by performance-approach (termed “proving goals,” four items, α = 0.86; e.g., “I prefer to work on projects where I can prove my ability to others”), mastery (five items, α = 0.87; e.g., “I am willing to select a challenging work assignment that I can learn a lot from”), performance-avoidance (four items, α = 0.86; e.g., “I prefer to avoid situations at work where I might perform poorly”), and amity (eight items, α = 0.83; e.g., “It is important to me to assist my coworkers to succeed in their assignments”) goal orientations.…”

“…Recent research introduced amity achievement goal orientation, a pro-social goal orientation, the goal to improve others’ competence together with one’s own competence, which involves cooperation and assisting others to succeed (Levontin and Bardi, 2018). It was found that best performance results, both in education and work settings, are achieved by mastery combined with amity goal orientations.…”

“…This leaves us with the social aspect of self-transcendence values, which expresses the motivation for being prosocial. Amity achievement goal orientation (Levontin and Bardi, 2018) is focused exactly on such goals. People who hold amity goal orientation aim at the improvement of others’ competence together with their competence and aim for cooperation and assisting others to succeed.…”

“…Recent research (Levontin and Bardi, 2018) introduced a new goal orientation, amity goal orientation, showing its important consequences for success. However, the motivational basis of this new achievement goal orientation remains unclear.…”