Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1997, Vol. 73, No. 6, 1284-1295 0022-3514/97/$3.00 Predictors and Consequences of Achievement Goals in the College Classroom: Maintaining Interest and Making the Grade Judith M. Harackiewicz, Kenneth E. Barron, Suzanne M. Carter, and Alan T. Lehto University of Wisconsin--Madison Andrew J. Elliot University of Rochester The authors investigated personality predictors of achievement goals in an introductory psychology class, as well as the consequences of these goals for the motivation and performance of 311 undergrad- uates. Two dimensions of achievement motivation (workmastery and competitive orientations; J. T. Spence & R. L. Helmreich, 1983) predicted the goals endorsed. Individuals high in workmastery were more likely to adopt mastery goals and less likely to adopt work avoidance goals, whereas competitive individuals were more likely to endorse performance and work avoidance goals. Students adopting mastery goals were more interested in the class, but students adopting performance goals achieved higher levels of performance. These results suggest that both mastery and performance goals can lead to important positive outcomes in college classes. Each semester as students decide whether to enroll in a partic- ular class, those of us lurking in the halls hear students asking each other the following questions: "How much will I learn in this class?," "How did you do in this course?," and "How much work is required for this course?" These questions illustrate the issues that are important to college students in academic achievement situations and provide insight into the types of goals they might adopt for a particular course. Achievement goals are situationally specific orientations that represent the desire to develop, attain, or demonstrate competence in a partic- ular context (Ames, 1992; Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984, 1989), and they can affect the way that students approach and perform their coursework (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Maehr & Braskamp, 1986). Although theoretical perspectives and labels differ, there is an emerging consensus that two primary types of achievement goals are important determinants of motivation and performance (Ames & Archer, 1988): Mastery goals concern the desire to develop competence (e.g., "I want to learn as much as I can about psychology this semester" ), whereas performance goals concern demonstrating competence relative to others (e.g., "I want to be the best student in my class this semester" ).l Many theorists endorse a multiple goals perspective and dis- cuss the ways in which individuals might sequentially or simulta- neously integrate and pursue mastery and performance goals (Harackiewicz & Sansone, 1991; Maehr, 1983; Pintrich & Gar- cia, 1991; Veroff, 1969; Wentzel, 1.991). Indeed, striving to outperform others is not necessarily inconsistent with trying to attain task mastery, and adopting both goals might enhance flexibility in achieving different academic outcomes. For exam- ple, mastery goals may foster task involvement and help students maintain interest in a class, whereas performance goals may motivate students to remain focused on what they have to learn to perform well, and thus help them attain higher grades. Ac- cording to a multiple goals perspective, then, mastery and perfor- mance goal orientations are independent motivational dimen- sions that represent different types of positive strivings toward achievement (Nicholls, 1984). However, not all students are positively motivated in the col- lege classroom, and several theorists have identified a third type of achievement goal orientation: work avoidance (Brophy, 1983; Duda & Nicholls, 1992). Students who endorse work avoidance goals are motivated to complete their work with minimal effort, and research indicates that work avoidance goals have detrimen- tal effects on motivation and performance (Archer, 1994; Meece, Blumenfeld, & Hoyle, 1988; Nicholls, Patashnick, & Nolen, 1985; Nolen, 1988). The present research was designed to fur- ther the understanding of the personality predictors of the multi- ple goals that students pursue in college classes, and the conse- quences of these goals for important classroom outcomes. Judith M. Harackiewicz, Kenneth E. Barton, Suzanne M. Carter, and Alan T. Lehto, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-- Madison; Andrew J. Elliot, Department of Psychology, University of Rochester. This research was supported by a grant from the Vilas Associates Program, University of Wisconsin. We thank Krisie Augustine and Ro- berta Deppe for their help in collecting and coding these data, and Carol Sansone and Randy Young for their helpful comments on drafts of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Judith M. Harackiewicz, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, 1202 West Johnson Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. Electronic mail may be sent via the Internet to jmh@macc.wisc.edu. I Other theorists have labeled mastery goals as learning or task involvement goals (e.g., Dweck, 1986, and Nicholls, Patashnick, & Nolen, 1985) and performance goals as ego incentives or ego involve- ment goals (Maehr & Braskamp, 1986; Nicholls et al., 1985). Some achievement goal formulations implicitly assume that students adopt mastery or performance goals to the exclusion of the other (cf. Meece & Holt, 1993), but in previous correlational studies, some researchers have found mastery and performance goal measures to be essentially uncorrelated (e.g., Ames & Archer, 1988; Nicholls, Cheung, Lauer, & Patashnick, 1989), and others report small positive correlations between them (e.g., Archer, 1994; Meece et al., 1988; Nolen, 1988). 1284