Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1997, Vol. 73, No.

1, 171-185

Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/97/$3.00

Avoidance Achievement Motivation: A Personal Goals Analysis

A n d r e w J. E l l i o t a n d K e n n o n M . S h e l d o n University of Rochester The present research investigated one antecedent and various consequences of pursuing avoidance personal achievementgoals over the course of a semester. The authors assessed participants' achievement-relevantgoals using the newly devised AchievementGoals Questionnaire.The motive to avoid failure, assessed with self-report and projective measures, was established as an antecedentof avoidance goal pursuit. Avoidanceregulation was shown to have deleterious consequencesfor a host of achievement-relevantand general well-beingoutcomes at the end of the semester, includinglongitudinal change in subjective well-being. Perceived competence was validated as a mediator of the direct relationships observed. The results highlight the need to attend to avoidance, as well as approach, forms of self-regulation and the need to consider both motive disposition and goal constructs in accounting for competence-relevantbehavior.

The nature of achievement motivation, the energization and direction of competence-relevant behavior, has captured the interest of researchers and theorists since the beginning of this century. Early theoretical conceptualizations of achievement motivation focused on individual differences in global motivational tendencies as central determinants of achievement behavior (McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953; Murray, 1938; see also Lewin, Dembo, Festinger, & Sears, 1944). Two distinct motivational orientations were delineated in these "classic" conceptualizations: the desire to approach success (e.g., need for achievement) and the desire to avoid failure (e.g., fear of failure). In recent years, theorists have increasingly relied on various goal constructs to account for action in the achievement domain. Four basic variants, or levels, of goal representation have been introduced: (a) task-specific guidelines for performance, such as "Make this free throw" (Bandura, 1986; Harackiewicz & Sansone, 1991; Locke & Latham, 1990); (b) situation-specific orientations that represent the purpose of achievement activity, such as "Demonstrate my competence relative to others in this situation" (Ames, 1992; Dweck, 1991; Nicholls, 1989); (c) personal goals that represent idiographic, personalized achievement pursuits that often transcend particular situations, such as "Get good grades" (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; Emmons, 1989; Klinger, 1977; Little, Lecci, & Watkinson, 1092); and (d) self-standards and images of the self in the future, such as "Someday I will be a college graduate" (Higgins, Strauman, &

Andrew J. Elliot and Kennon M. Sheldon, Department of Psychology, University of Rochester. We express gratitude to the following individualsfor their assistance in the data collection and managementprocesses: Lorraine Colleyacame, Angela Keros, Stephanie Lin, Michelle Marco, Christine Perfetti, Heather Sherman, Rachel Stanek, and Asa Widman. Richard Koestner, Rich Ryan, and Ed Deci provided helpful commentson an earlier version of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Andrew J. Elliot, Departmentof Psychology, Universityof Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627. 171

Klein, 1986; Markus, Cross, & Wurf, 1990; for further elaboration on these goal constructs, see Cantor & Zirkel, 1990; Dweck, 1992; Harackiewicz & Sansone, 1991 ). These "contemporary," goal-based accounts of achievement motivation have focused almost exclusively on approach forms of regulation (i.e., trying to attain a positive outcome), and only in the past few years has research attention been allocated to avoidance forms of regulation (i.e., trying to avoid a negative outcome) as well. Specifically, researchers have begun to investigate the consequences of pursuing avoidance goals at the task-specific (Roney, Higgins, & Shah, 1995), situation-specific (Elliot & Church, 1997; Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996), and self-standard/futureself (Roney & Sorrentino, 1995; Ruvolo & Markus, 1992) levels of analysis. To date, however, researchers have yet to investigate the nature of avoidance achievement motivation at the personal goal level of analysis. In the present research we attempt to fill this void. Specifically, the present research investigated one antecedent and various consequences of pursuing avoidance personalachievement goals over the course of a semester. We assessed participants' achievement-relevant personal goals at the beginning of the semester and calculated their proportion of avoidance goals. We examined the motive to avoid failure, measured prior to the goal assessment, as an antecedent of avoidance regulation; to determine the consequences of avoidance regulation we assessed various progress-related, phenomenological, personal adjustment, and subjective well-being variables at the end of the semester. We measured subjective well-being at the beginning as well as at the end of the semester, thereby adding a longitudinal element to the study and affording a more stringent examination of the consequences of avoidance regulation. In addition, we assessed participants' ongoing perceptions of competence a number of times over the course of the semester in order to test this variable as a mediator of the anticipated direct relationships. The Motive to Avoid Failure as an Antecedent of Avoidance Goal Pursuit Elliot and Church (1997) recently proffered a model of achievement motivation that links goals to underlying motive

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ELLIOT AND SHELDON for task involvement, intrinsic motivation, and academic performance. Ruvolo and Markus (1992) conducted two experiments in which they primed approach and avoidance at the level of future self by having participants imagine positive (successful) or negative (unsuccessful) possible selves. In both experiments, negative-possible-selfparticipants evidenced less persistence on a mundane number-copying task than did positive-possible-self participants. Roney and Sorrentino (1995, Experiment 3) primed ideal (construed as approach-based) and ought (construed as avoidance-based) self-guides and demonstrated that the effect of ideal and ought regulation on task performance corresponds (respectively) to that previously documented for approach and avoidance global motivational tendencies. In sum, early returns from research at the task-specific, situation-specific, and self-standard/future-self levels of analysis suggest that the pursuit of avoidance, relative to approach, achievement goals has deleterious consequences for the following outcomes: performance, persistence, task involvement, and intrinsic motivation. All of the dependent measures utilized in the studies reviewed above have a common characteristic: They relate directly to the process or outcome of goal pursuit per se. Researchers in this nascent literature have yet to consider the ramifications of avoidance achievement regulation for more general issues, such as personal adjustment and well-being. This inattention to the global ramifications of achievement regulation is also evident in the more established fear of failure and need achievement literatures, although a few studies have documented a relationship between these motives and general personality functioning (e.g., stability of self-esteem, Hamm, 1977, and marital adjustment, Veroff & Feld, 1970). Personal goals are self-investments that provide individuals with a sense of meaning, structure, and identity (Emmons, 1989; Zirkel & Cantor, 1990), and a number of researchers have linked various characteristics of (domaingeneral) personal goals to variation in general psychological functioning (see Emmons, 1996, for a review). Accordingly, the personal goal level of analysis seems an optimal place to begin exploring the possibility that avoidance achievement regulation has negative implications for overall personal adjustment and well-being. In the present research, we investigated the effect of pursuing avoidance personal achievement goals on two basic classes of outcome measures. The first class was directly related to the process and outcome of goal pursuit: satisfaction with progress, positive and negative affective responses to progress, and the extent to which goal pursuit was experienced as enjoyable and fulfilling. These goal-specific measures are similar to those uti-

dispositions (see also Emmons & McAdams, 1991). In the model, achievement goals are construed as concrete self-regulatory representations focused on relatively specific outcomes or events, whereas achievement-relevant motives are viewed as more abstract, general orientations toward particular qualities of experience (i.e., success or failure). Achievement-relevant motives are posited to prompt the adoption of achievement goals, and these goals are presumed to function as the direct regulators of achievement behavior. That is, achievement-relevant motives are seen as exerting an indirect (distal) effect on achievement behavior by means of their influence on achievement goal adoption; achievement goals are construed as cognitive-dynamic "carriers" of their corresponding motives and direct (proximal) determinants of achievement behavior. Consistent with this conceptualization, in the present research we hypothesized fear of failure--the generalized desire to avoid failure (Atkinson, 1957; see Birney, Burdick, & Teevan, 1969, for a more elaborate definition)--to be the motive disposition underlying the pursuit of avoidance personal achievement goals. Individuals high in fear of failure characteristically orient toward the possibility of incompetence, and this general tendency likely promotes the use of specific self-regulatory forms focused on the avoidance of negative outcomes. We measured fear of failure with self-report and projective assessments and predicted that fear of failure, regardless of how assessed, would be positively related to the pursuit of avoidance achievement goals. Consequences o f Avoidance Regulation In addition to investigating fear of failure as an antecedent of avoidance goal pursuit, we sought to determine the consequences of pursuing avoidance achievement goals over the course of the semester. Achievement motivation researchers have demonstrated that fear of failure often has negative implications for achievement-related outcomes such as task choice, performance, persistence, affective experience, and attributional propensities (Birney et al., 1969; Heckhausen, 1975; Schmalt, 1982). A similar empirical pattern appears to be emerging from the aforementioned research on approach and avoidance achievement goals at the task-specific, situation-specific, and self-standard/future-self levels of analysis. A brief review of these studies will establish a context for delineating predictions at the personal goal level of analysis. Roney et al. (1995) conducted a set of experiments in which they manipulated approach and avoidance at the level of taskspecific performance guidelines by focusing participants' attention on a precise number of anagrams to try to solve (approach) or to avoid not solving (avoidance). Results indicated that participants in the avoidance condition performed worse and evidenced less persistence on unsolvable anagrams than did those in the approach condition. In a series of studies, Elliot and colleagues measured (Elliot & Church, 1997) and manipulated (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996) three situation-specific orientations: mastery (striving to attain task mastery), performanceapproach (striving to do well relative to others), and performance-avoidance (striving to avoid doing poorly relative to others) achievement goals. Results attested to the inimical effects of avoidance (performance-avoidance) relative to approach (mastery and performance-approach) achievement regulation

J Although personal goal research has yet to be conducted on the approach-avoidance distinction in the achievement domain, a few domain-general studies have incorporated a positive-negative dimension comparable to the approach-avoidance distinction (Emmons & Kaiser, 1994; Klinger, Barta, & Maxeiner, 1980; Moffitt & Singer, 1994; Roberson, 1990). Like the literature reviewed in the text, these studies tend to yield data that portray negative goals as nonoptimal forms of selfregulation. For example, in the Klinger et al. (1980) study, the proportion of negative "current concerns" listed by participants was negatively associated with their perceived probability of success, level of commitment, and amount of positive affect expected upon attainment.

AVOIDANCE ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION lized in the achievement goal studies conducted to date, and given the consistency in the extant empirical yield across level of goal, it seemed reasonable to anticipate that the pursuit of avoidance personal goals over the course of the semester would have negative consequences for each of these outcome measures. The second class of dependent measures extended beyond the achievement domain per se to the realm of global personality functioning. Three types of measures were used within this "general well-being" class. First, participants rated the effect that they thought their goal pursuits had on each of the following indicators of personal adjustment and well-being: their selfesteem (cf. Pelham, 1995), their personal control (cf. Skinner, 1995), their vitality (cf. Ryan & Frederick, 1996), and their life satisfaction (cf. Pavot & Deiner, 1993). Second, participants provided a retrospective rating of their overall subjective wellbeing (a composite of positive and negative affectivity and life satisfaction; cf. Deiner, 1984) over the semester. Third, participants' recent subjective well-being was measured at the beginning and end of the semester, and an indicator of change in subjective well-being over of the course of the semester was derived through data-analytic procedures. We predicted that pursuing avoidance personal achievement goals over the course of the semester would have negative consequences for participants' general adjustment and well-being as indicated by each of these three types of dependent measure. Across outcome measures, we anticipated that any negative effects observed for avoidance goals would remain significant when controlling for fear of failure, thereby establishing avoidance goals per se as the (proximal) self-regulatory culprit. Perceived C o m p e t e n c e as a M e d i a t o r Variable A clear understanding of the relationship between the pursuit of avoidance achievement goals and the various outcome measures requires a consideration of the psychological processes evoked by avoidance forms of regulation and the impact that these processes have, in turn, on the outcome variables. One important process to consider is perceived competence, the individual's belief that he or she is doing well on or making progress toward his or her goals (Bandura, 1991; Harter, 1989). A number of researchers have documented the mediational role of perceived competence within (Sansone, 1986) and beyond (Brunstein, 1993) the achievement domain, but perceived competence has yet to be examined as a mediator of approach-avoidance effects (either within or beyond the achievement domain). In the present research, we sought to test perceived competence as a mediator of the hypothesized direct relationships. There are a number of reasons why using negative outcomes or events as the hub of self-regulatory activity (i.e., pursuing avoidance goals) might reduce perceptions of competence. First, research on attentional, memorial, and mental control processes suggests that focusing on negative outcomes or events produces a perceptual-cognitive sensitivity to negative stimuli and heightens the accessibility of negative information (Derryberry & Reed, 1994; Higgins & Tykocinski, 1992; Wegner, 1994). Thus, pursuing avoidance goals may increase the amount of negative feedback encountered, thereby diminishing perceptions of competence. Second, regulating according to negative outcomes or events is likely to evoke threat appraisals and anxi-

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ety (particularly worry), as individuals are incessantly reminded of negative possibilities. Research has demonstrated that threat appraisals and anxiety often have negative implications for the quality of cognitive functioning (e.g., the ability to concentrate) and associated outcomes, including performance and perceived competence (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Hembree, 1988; Schroder & Hunt, 1957). Third, self-regulation is less efficient when a negative outcome or event is the frame of reference, and consequently, it is less likely to be effective (Carver, 1996; Schwarz, 1990). For example, avoidance regulation necessitates identifying and blocking all possible paths by which the negative outcome or event might occur, whereas approach regulation simply entails identifying and pursuing a single positive outcome or event. Thus, in the present research we anticipated an inverse relationship between the pursuit of avoidance goals during the semester and perceptions of competence assessed three times over the course of the semester. Theorists from a variety of perspectives have posited a link between perceived competence (or its conceptual equivalent) and positive outcomes, including general psychological adjustment and well-being. White (1963) viewed the exercising of competencies to be essential for self-esteem and self-confidence; social-cognitive theorists (e.g., Bandura, 1982) portray selfefficacy as a critical determinant of an assortment of affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes; and control theorists (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1990) propose a link between progress or rate of progress in discrepancy reduction and various psychological and physical health outcomes. An extensive body of research has accumulated to support these propositions (see Bandura, 1986; Ford, 1992, for reviews), and in the present research, we predicted a positive relationship between perceived competence and the goal-specific and general well-being outcome variables. In addition, we hypothesized that data-analytic procedures would validate perceived competence as a mediator of the direct relationships between the pursuit of avoidance goals and the outcome measures, indicating that avoidance regulation exerts its influence on the outcome measures through perceived competence processes. In summary, the present research represents a semester-long investigation of the pursuit of avoidance personal goals in the achievement domain. Avoidance achievement goals were construed as specific, cognitive-dynamic representations of the more abstract motive to avoid failure, and this failure-avoidant motive was predicted to be positively related to the proportion of avoidance goals pursued. Avoidance regulation over the course of the semester was presumed to have deleterious consequences for outcomes directly related to goal pursuit, specifically satisfaction with progress, positive and negative affective responses to progress, and the extent to which goal pursuit was experienced as enjoyable and fulfilling. In addition, the negative impact of avoidance achievement regulation was hypothesized to generalize to the realm of global psychological functioning, as indicated by (a) participants' reports of the effect that goal pursuit had on their self-esteem, personal control, vitality, and life satisfaction; (b) participants' retrospective ratings of their overall well-being during the semester; and (c) participants' change in subjective well-being from the beginning to the end of the semester. Furthermore, perceived competence was hypoth-

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ELLIOT AND SHELDON GPA, and Scholastic Aptitude Test scores (Alker, 1969; Griffore, 1977; Hembree, 1988). Participants' responses on the scales, which ranged from 1 (never, this never happens to me, etc.) to 5 (always, almost always, etc.) were summed to form a fear of failure index (Cronbach's a = .85). Hostile press. We used Birney et al.' s (1969) technique for assessing and scoring Hostile Press to obtain the projective indicator of the motive to avoid failure. Under neutral conditions, participants were given 4 min to compose a story in response to each of a series of Thematic Apperception Test-like pictures. Stories elicited by four of the pictures (boy in a checked shirt, female scientists, man at a mirror, and man in a barren room) were scored by two independent coders for hostile press imagery according to the procedures delineated by Birney et al. (1969). Each coder had demonstrated greater than 95% agreement with a set of scored protocols provided by one of the creators of the hostile press system (Teevan), and interjudge agreement for the protocols in the present study was 94.5% (with disagreements resolved through discussion). The hostile press measure was derived from Murray's concept of press, and individuals are presumed to be high in the motive to avoid failure if they compose stories in which the central character is experiencing or avoiding a fearful or threatening (hostile) situation (press). Participants' scores for each of the four stories were summed to form a composite hostile press index.4

e s i z e d to m e d i a t e the direct relationships b e t w e e n the pursuit o f a v o i d a n c e goals and the o u t c o m e measures. Method

Participants
A total of 145 University of Rochester undergraduates in a personality psychology class participated in the study in return for extra credit. Ten participants did not complete all of the goal assessments, resulting in an attrition rate of 6.9% and a final sample of 135 participants (51 men and 85 women).2 The mean age of participants was 20, with a range of 17 to 48.

Overview o f Procedure
Trained research assistants conducted a series of sessions throughout the course of the semester. During the first 2 weeks of the semester, participants completed self-report and projective assessments of the motive to avoid failure. Participants reported their subjective well-being "during the past couple of weeks" (beginning-of-semester subjective well-being assessment) and completed the Achievement Goals Questionnaire (AGQ) during the 3rd week of the semester. In completing the questionnaire, participants identified eight goals as representative of their achievement pursuits for the semester and answered a series of questions regarding these goals (Goal Assessment 1 ). Three times over the course of the semester (every 4 weeks), participants completed a mediator variable questionnaire on which they reported their ongoing perceptions of competence regarding their goals (Goal Assessments 2 - 4 ) . One week before the end of the semester, participants again reported their subjective well-being "during the past couple of weeks" (end-of-semester subjective well-being assessment) and completed a goal outcome questionnaire and an item regarding the social desirability of their goals (Goal Assessment 5 ). During the final week of the semester, participants completed a subjective well-being measure in which the entire semester was the temporal referent (semester-long subjective well-being assessment). In sum, motive dispositions, recent subjective well-being, and personal achievement goals were assessed as the semester opened; participants returned every 4 weeks to report on their ongoing perceptions of competence regarding their goals; and participants completed goal outcome, recent subjective well-being, and semester-long subjective well-being questionnaires as the semester drew to a close.

Beginning-of-Semester Subjective Well-Being Assessment

During the 3rd week of the semester, participants completed a beginning-of-semester (baseline) subjective well-being measure that assessed their positive affectivity, negative affectivity, and life satisfaction (the three primary components of subjective well-being identified by Andrews and Withey, 1976; see also Diener, 1984) "during the past couple of weeks." To measure positive and negative affectivity, we supplemerited Brunstein's (1993) eight-item affect scale (consisting of four positive items [e.g., happy and pleased] and four negative items [e.g., depressed and anxious]) with an additional eight items (four positive [excited, interested, proud, and determined] and four negative [e.g., upset, bored, ashamed, and uncertain]) drawn from the literature on affective experience. Participants indicated how often they had experienced each of the 16 affects on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 7 (very frequently). Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin's (1985) Satisfaction With Life Scale was used to assess life satisfaction (sample items include "In most ways, my life is close to my ideal" and "I am satisfied with my life" ). Participants indicated their responses to each of the five items on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (very much). Following Emmons

Measures Motive Disposition Measures

During the first 2 weeks of the semester, participants completed selfreport and projective measures of the motive to avoid failure. Fear offailure. In the achievement motivation literature, researchers typically have used measures of test anxiety to assess the motive to avoid failure through self-report. Alpert and Haber's (1960) 10-item Debilitating Anxiety Scale, one of the most commonly employed test anxiety measures in the achievement motivation literature, was used in the present research as the self-report indicator of fear of failure (sample items include "Nervousness while taking an exam or test hinders me from doing well" and "In a course where I have been doing poorly, my fear of a bad grade cuts down my efficiency").3 A great deal of research has attested to the reliability of the measure (e.g., Cronbach's a = .84, Sadd, Lenauer, Shaver, & Dunivant, 1978; 10-week test-retest reliability = .87, Alpert & Haber, 1960). The measures' construct and predictive validity also have been well documented; for example, correlates include other indicators of test anxiety and more direct measures of fear of failure (Elliot & Church, 1995; Gelbort & Winer, 1985), and the measure has been shown to predict exam performance, undergraduate

2 An additional 14 participants were dropped at the beginning of the study because they failed to follow instructions during the first assessment. 3 Some theorists have criticized the practice of using test anxiety measures as indicators of fear of failure in the achievement motivation literature (e.g., Heckhausen, Schmalt, & Schneider, 1985) and have recommended that researchers simply use direct measures of the motive to avoid failure. Accordingly, in addition to the Debilitating Anxiety Scale, we also administered two recently developed measures of fear of failure (Herman, 1990; Houston & Kelly, 1987). Analyses with these measures yielded the same results reported in the text for the Debilitating Anxiety Scale. A second measure of test anxiety, Sarason's (1978) Test Anxiety Inventory, was also administered, and it, too, produced the same results as the Debilitating Anxiety Scale. 4 Ten participants did not complete the hostile press assessment. Thus, all analyses involving the hostile press variable presented in the text were conducted with a sample size of 125, as opposed to 135, participants.

AVOIDANCE ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION and Colby (1995; see also Brunstein, 1993), we formed subscales for positive and negative affectivity and life satisfaction and created a composite beginning-of-semester subjective well-being index by summing the standardized scores for positive affectivity and life satisfaction and subtracting the standardized score for negative affectivity (Cronbach's a = .92).

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D e v e l o p m e n t o f the A c h i e v e m e n t Goals Questionnaire

We used Emmons's (1986) personal striving construct to operationalize achievement-relevant personal goals, although two deviations from the standard striving methodology are noteworthy. Personal strivings are conceptualized as enduring goals that individuals are trying to accomplish in their everyday behavior, and these goals are commonly assessed by having participants freely generate a list of their most representative strivings. In the present study, we focused participants on a semesterlong period and asked them to select their strivings from an established list (the AGQ, described below) in order to sample exclusively from the achievement domain. Given these deviations from the standard striving procedure, participants' achievement pursuits will continue to be generically labeled "personal goals" rather than "personal strivings" in the interest of conceptual precision. Development of the AGQ commenced with the selection and pilot testing of a preliminary set of 92 approach and avoidance personal goals deemed representative of the achievement domain. This preliminary set of goals was selected from two sources: a pool of over 4,200 personal strivings generated by participants in prior research (e.g., Sheldon & Kasser, 1995 ) and a list of 84 personal strivings identified as examples of achievement strivings in Emmons's ( 1995 ) Personal Strivings Coding Manual. Thus, each of the 92 selections was actually generated by a participant in a previous personal strivings study, although minor modifications were made in the wording of some goals to correct grammar and extend applicability (e.g., "Improve my drawing skills" was modified to "Improve my specific talents"). The preliminary list of goals was presented to 90 pilot participants at the University of Rochester with an explanation of the achievement goal concept and instructions for participants to rate how well each of the goals describes what they typically try to do in their everyday behavior (1 = not at all, 9 = perfectly). After rating the goals, pilot participants were asked to select, in order, the eight goals that they thought best represented their achievement pursuits. On the basis of these pilot data, 51 (29 approach and 22 avoidance) of the 92 preliminary goals were selected for inclusion in the final set of achievement goals; each of the selections had a mean descriptiveness rating in the top third of the scale (greater than 7) or was identified as a "top eight" goal by at least one pilot participant.

goals, and the observed range for the avoidance goals variable was 0 5 (62.5%). 5 Miscellaneous goal variables. After selecting their eight most representative goals, participants rated each goal in regard to how important it was for them to do well, how well they expected to do, and how hard they intended to try during the semester. Participants responded to these queries on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (very much), and their ratings were averaged across the eight goals to form importance, competence expectancy, and intended effort indexes, respectively. Two trained coders rated the level of "generality versus specificity" (Emmons, 1992) of each of the 51 AGQ goals (and each participant-generated addition to the list) on a scale of 1 (very specific) to 4 (very general); interjudge agreement was 78.4%, with disagreements resolved through discussion. "Be on time for appointments" is an example of a very specific goal; " D o things the best I can" represents a very general goal. We created a goal level variable from these ratings by summing across participants' eight goals. 6 The order in which each goal was selected was used as an indicator of goal representativeness. These variables (as well as the Competence Expectancy x Importance interaction product term and the goal social desirability variable, introduced shortly) were used primarily as covariates in ancillary analyses with the avoidance goals index.

Goal A s s e s s m e n t s 2 - 4
Three times over the course of the semester (every 4 weeks), participants reported their current perceptions of competence for each of their goals. In each assessment period, participants rated how well they thought they were doing on each goal on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (very). We averaged these ratings across the eight goals and then averaged them across the three assessment periods to form a perceived competence index (Cronbach's a = :89).

End-of-Semester Subjective Well-Being A s s e s s m e n t

One week before the end of the semester, participants completed an end-of-semester subjective well-being measure that was identical to the beginning-of-semester subjective well-being measure. This end-of-semester subjective well-being index proved highly reliable (Cronbach's a = .94).

Goal A s s e s s m e n t 5
One week before the end of the semester, participants also completed a goal outcome questionnaire consisting of the goal-specific and the goal-based general well-being measures and an item regarding the social desirability of their goals. Goal-specific measures. Participants reported their satisfaction with their degree of progress at each goal on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (very). We averaged participants' ratings across their eight goals to form a satisfaction with progress index. For each goal, participants also reported their progress-relevant affect, that is, how happy, proud, disappointed, and anxious they felt about their degree of progress. We created a positive progress affect variable by averaging the happy and proud scores for each goal and then averaging across the eight goals (Cronbach's a = .94); an analogous procedure was used with the

Goal A s s e s s m e n t 1 Selection of goals. In the final version of the AGQ, administered during the 3rd week of the semester, participants were asked to rate the descriptiveness of each achievement goal and to select, in order, the eight goals most representative of them, as in the pilot study, but they were also provided the option of generating novel achievement goals (not on the list of 51 ) for inclusion in their top eight (this option was provided to bolster the idiographic nature of the goal assessment). In addition, participants were instructed to focus specifically on their personai goals "for this semester" in considering their ratings and in making their selections (see the Appendix for the list of 51 goals and a summary of the assessment procedure). Proportion of avoidance goals. We created an avoidance goals index for each participant by summing the number of avoidance goals included in their list of eight most representative goals (this variable may alternatively be construed as the proportion of avoidance goals selected). Of the 1,080 selections in the present study, 242 (22.4%) were avoidance

5 These descriptive statistics are highly comparable to those obtained by Moffitt and Singer (1994) in their study of domain-general personal strivings assessed by means of the standard striving elicitation procedure (in which participants' only option is to generate their own list of strivings). Moffitt and Singer reported that 20.2% of participants' listings were avoidance strivings, with a range of 0-67.0%. 6 The relatively low interjudge agreement for goal level may warrant caution in interpreting results of analyses using this variable.

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ELLIOT AND SHELDON composite semester-long subjective well-being index by summing the standardized scores for positive affectivity and life satisfaction and subtracting the standardized score for negative affectivity (Cronbach's ot = .92). Results

disappointed and anxious ratings to create a negative progress affect index (Cronbach's a = .68). Two items were used to assess the degree to which participants perceived the pursuit of each goal to have been an enjoyable experience and a fulfilling experience. Participants' ratings on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (very) were averaged across their eight goals to form enjoyable and fulfilling indexes, respectively. Goal-based general well-being measures. Four items were used to assess the effect that the pursuit of each goal had on participants' current perceptions of personal adjustment and well-being: their self-esteem, sense of personal control, sense of vitality, and life satisfaction. Participants' indicated their ratings on a scale of 1 (decreased my __) to 9 (increased my __), with 5 (no effect at all) as a midpoint; we averaged these ratings across the eight goals to yield self-esteem, personal control, vitality, and life satisfaction indexes, respectively. Goal social desirability. At the end of the assessment, participants rated the social desirability of each goal (the extent to which others would like to have it) on a scale of 1 (not at all socially desirable) to 9 (very socially desirable). We averaged participants' eight ratings to form a goal social desirability index.

Preliminary Analyses Participant Attrition

We c o n d u c t e d t tests to d e t e r m i n e w h e t h e r participants w h o did versus those w h o did not c o m p l e t e the study systematically differed on any o f the Goal A s s e s s m e n t 1 variables, sex, or age. N o significant d i f f e r e n c e s were f o u n d in these analyses.

Gender Differences
We c o n d u c t e d a series o f t tests to p r o b e for sex differences on any o f the variables used in the study. A single effect e m e r g e d f r o m these analyses: M e n r e p o r t e d higher effort intentions than w o m e n , t ( 1 3 3 ) = 2.30, p < .05. Given the general a b s e n c e o f gender effects, w e c o l l a p s e d all s u b s e q u e n t analyses across this variable.

Semester-Long Subjective Well-Being A s s e s s m e n t

During the final week of the semester, participants completed a semester-long subjective well-being measure that assessed their positive affectivity, negative affectivity, and life satisfaction "this semester." The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Tellegen, & Clark, 1988) was used to assess the extent to which participants perceived they had experienced positive and negative affect during the semester. Participants indicated their responses to the 10 positive affect items (e.g., excited, proud) and 10 negative affect items (e.g., upset, ashamed) on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (very much). Life satisfaction was measured with the five-item Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985), in which participants indicated their responses on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (very much). As with the beginning- and end-ofsemester subjective well-being assessments, we formed subscales for positive and negative affectivity and life satisfaction, and we created a

Miscellaneous Goal Variables

The m e a n ratings on the 1 - 9 scales for i m p o r t a n c e and intended effort were 7.85 and 7.75, respectively, suggesting a high d e g r e e o f i n v e s t m e n t in the goals selected ( s e e Table 1 for the means, standard deviations, and ranges for these and other variables in the s t u d y ) . We c o m p u t e d P e a r s o n p r o d u c t - m o m e n t correlations to investigate w h e t h e r a v o i d a n c e goals was s y s t e m atically related to any o f the following goal variables: goal

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics for All Variables

Outcome variable Fear of failure Hostile press Beginning-of-semester subjective well-being Avoidance goals Goal level Goal social desirability Goal representativeness Importance Competence expectancy Intended effort Perceived competence End-of-semester subjective well-being Satisfaction with progress Positive progress affect Negative progress affect Enjoyable Fulfilling Self-esteem Personal control Vitality Life satisfaction Semester-long subjective well-being

M
27.74 1.61 0.00 1.79 2.32 6.71 6.84 7.85 7.39 7.75 5.52 0.00 5.62 5.18 3.73 4.54 5.28 5.73 5.90 5.73 5.81 0.00

SD
7.41 1.74 2.48 1.49 0.36 1.35 1.62 0.79 1.08 0.98 1.38 2.59 1.61 1.74 1.68 1.70 1.81 1.32 1.32 1.21 1.29 2.35

Range 11 0 -6.89 0 1.38 1.0 1.0 4.5 3.25 4.38 1.8 -8.58 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.5 1.38 1.38 1.75 -6.20 to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to 45 7 5.47 5 3.13 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 8.54 5.19 8.5 8.0 8.93 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 8.75 9.0 5.94

Note. N = 135 for all but hostile press (N = 125).

AVOIDANCE ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION representativeness, goal social desirability, goal level, intended effort, competence expectancy, and importance. A multiple regression analysis tested the relationship between avoidance goals and the Competence Expectancy Importance interaction product term. The only significant relationship was with competence expectancy (r = - . 19, p < .05), indicating that participants with a greater number of avoidance goals expected to do worse on their goals during the semester.

177

a greater number of avoidance goals reported experiencing less well-being over the course of the semester.

End-of-Semester Subjective Well-Being, Controlling for Beginning-of-Semester Subjective Well-Being (Change in Subjective Well-Being)
Assessing participants' recent subjective well-being at both the beginning and the end of the semester afforded a more stringent, longitudinal test of the effect of l~Ursuing avoidance goals on subjective well-being. A simultaneous multiple regression analysis was conducted in which end-of-semester subjective well-being was regressed on avoidance goals with beginningof-semester subjective well-being also in the equation. The regression revealed a significant positive relationship between beginning- and end-of-semester subjective well-being, F( 1, 132) = 56.93, p < .0001 (/3 = .54), indicating that participants reporting high levels of subjective well-being at the beginning of the semester also reported high levels of subjective wellbeing at the end of the semester. More importantly, the avoidance goals effect also attained significance, F(1, 132) = 7.43, p < .01 (13 = - . 19), indicating that participants pursuing a greater number of avoidance goals evidenced a decline in subjective well-being from the beginning to the end of the semester. This finding, in conjunction with the semester-long subjective wellbeing result, suggests that the deleterious consequences of pursuing avoidance achievement goals documented in the above analyses has implications for participants' overall perceptions of well-being.

The Relationship Between the Motive Disposition Variables and Avoidance Goals
We computed Pearson product-moment correlations to determine the relationship between each of the measures of the motive to avoid failure and avoidance goals. Both correlations attained significance: High fear of failure scores were associated with a greater number of avoidance goals (r = .33, p < .001 ), and high hostile press scores were also associated with a greater number of avoidance goals (r = . 19, p < .05). These results support the proposition that the motive to avoid failure promotes the pursuit of avoidance achievement goals.

The Relationship Between Avoidance Goals and the Outcome Variables Goal-Specific Outcome Variables
We computed Pearson product-moment correlations to investigate the relationship between avoidance goals and each of the goal-specific outcome measures. Participants with a greater number of avoidance goals reported less satisfaction with their progress at the end of the semester (r = -.27, p < .005). Avoidance goals was also negatively associated with positive progress affect (r = -.29, p < .001 ) and positively associated with negative progress affect (r = .24, p < .005). Analyses with the experience variables revealed a comparable set of relationships. Participants with a greater number of avoidance goals perceived the pursuit of their goals to have been a less enjoyable (r = -.40, p < .0001 ) and a less fulfilling experience (r = -.29, p < .001).

The Observed Relationships, Controlling for the Motive to Avoid Failure and Goal Variables
In addition to the aforementioned analyses, we conducted a series of stepwise multiple regression analyses to investigate the robustness of the obtained results, controlling for the motive to avoid failure. In step one of each analysis, we regressed one of the outcome measures (a goal-specific variable, a goal-based general well-being variable, semester-long subjective well-being, or end-of-semester subjective well-being, with beginning-of-semester subjective well-being controlled) on avoidance goals to obtain a beta coefficient for the relationship. In step two of the analysis, one of the motive disposition variables (fear of failure or hostile press) was added to the equation, and the beta coefficient for the step one relationship was again observed (see Lecci, Okun, & Karoly, 1994, for a similar data-analytic strategy). All of the significant relationships documented at step one of these analyses remained significant at step two, and inspection of the beta coefficients in Tables 2 and 3 reveal that controlling for the motive to avoid failure had a minimal impact on the magnitude of the step-one relationships. Thus, it appears that the influence of avoidance goals on the outcome variables may be attributed to the pursuit of avoidance goals per se; the observed relationships are not simply reducible to a generalized avoidance tendency.7 7Of peripheral interest is the direct relationship between the motive to avoid failure and the outcome variables and the relationship between the motive to avoid failure and the outcome variables controlling for the (presumably proximal) influence of avoidance goals. We conducted a series of stepwise regression analyses to determine the nature of these

Goal-Based General Well-Being Variables

The correlations between avoidance goals and each of the goal-based general well-being variables corresponded closely to the aforementioned relationships. Participants with a greater number of avoidance goals were more likely to report that the pursuit of their goals decreased their self-esteem (r = -.30, p < .001), personal control (r = -.22, p < .05), vitality (r = -.28, p < .005), and life satisfaction (r = -.32, p < .0005). These results provide support for the hypothesis that the pursuit of avoidance achievement goals has a negative influence on individuals' perceptions of personal adjustment and well-being.

Semester-Long Subjective Well-Being

We computed a Pearson product-moment correlation to determine the relationship between avoidance goals and the semester-long subjective well-being variable. The correlation was significant (r = -.39, p < .0001 ), indicating that participants with

178 Table 2

ELLIOT AND SHELDON

Relationships Between Avoidance Goals and the Goal-Specific Outcome Variables, With and Without Controlling for the Motive to Avoid Failure
Outcome variable Satisfaction with progress Positive progress affect Negative progress affect Enjoyable Fulfilling *p <.05. **p <.01. tence. The correlation was significant ( r = - . 3 2 , p < .0005), indicating that participants with a greater number of avoidance strivings reported feeling less competent in their goal pursuits during the semester. Beta for direct relationship -.31 ** -.29** .24** -.40** -.29"* Beta controlling for fear of failure -.30"* -.31"* .18* -.41 ** -.35"* Beta controlling for hostile press -.27"* -.24** .26"* -.36** -.24"*

Note. N = 135 for all but the hostile press column (N = 125).

We conducted a similar series of stepwise regressions to test the robustness of the obtained results across the following goal variables: goal representativeness, goal social desirability, goal level, intended effort, competence expectancy, importance, and the Competence Expectancy x Importance interaction product term. As in the preceding analyses, the first step of each analysis involved regressing one of the dependent measures (a goalspecific variable, a goal-based general well-being variable, semester-long subjective well-being, or end-of-semester subjective well-being, with beginning-of-semester subjective well-being controlled) on avoidance goals to obtain a beta coefficient for the relationship. In the second step of the analysis, one of the goal variables was added to the equation (or, for Competence Expectancy Importance, the two main effects and the interaction product term), and the beta coefficient for the step one relationship was again observed. All of the significant relationships evidenced in the first step of these analyses remained significant at the second step, and the beta coefficients revealed that controlling for the goal variables had little effect on the magnitude of the step-one relationships. These results suggest that the observed relationships may indeed be attributed to the avoidance goals construct per se and are not merely an artifact of any of these other dimensions of personal goals. Parenthetically, we also conducted analyses combining the two aforementioned data-analytic procedures (simultaneously controlling the motive disposition and miscellaneous goal variables), and these analyses also attested to the robustness of the obtained results.

Mediation Analyses: The Relationship Between the Mediator Variable and the Outcome Variables, With Avoidance Goals Controlled
We conducted path-analytic mediation analyses to test perceived competence as a mediator of the direct relationships observed between avoidance goals and the outcome variables. According to guidelines developed by Judd and Kenny ( 1981 ), empirical validation of a hypothesized mediational model entails satisfaction of three basic requirements. First, a direct relationship between the predictor variable and the outcome measure must be established for mediation to be a relevant issue. Second, the predictor variable must significantly affect the hypothesized mediator, thereby establishing the first link in the mediational chain. Third, to complete the mediational chain, the mediator variable must significantly affect the outcome variable with the predictor variable controlled, and the direct relationship between the predictor variable and the outcome measure should be reduced. The first and second requirements for mediation were documented in the preceding analyses (i.e., avoidance goals was significantly related to the goal-specific and general well-being outcome variables, thereby establishing the direct relationship; avoidance goals was significantly related to perceived competence, thereby establishing the first link in the mediational chain); the following analyses tested the third and final requirement. We tested the final link in the hypothesized mediational model by conducting multiple regression analyses in which one of the outcome measures (a goal-specific variable, a goalbased general well-being variable, semester-long subjective well-being, or end-of-semester subjective well-being, with beginning-of-semester subjective well-being controlled) was regressed on perceived competence with avoidance goals also in the equation (henceforth, the mediation model).8 Tables 4 and 5 display the results of these analyses. For each of the dependent measures, the regression revealed a significant association 8 The mediational results reported in the text were the same whether or not the motive to avoid failure was included in the mediational model.

The Relationship Between Avoidance Goals and Perceived Competence

A Pearson correlation was computed between avoidance goals and the hypothesized mediator variable, perceived compe-

associations. In step one of each analysis, one of the outcome measures was regressed on one of the motive disposition measures to obtain a beta coefficient for the direct relationship. We entered avoidance goals in step 2 of the analysis to obtain a beta coefficient for the relationship with avoidance goals controlled. Step one of the fear of failure analyses yielded significant relationships (p < .05 at minimum) with negative progress affect and semester-long subjective well-being; both of these relationships remained significant when avoidance goals was entered into the equation at step two. No significant relationships were revealed in either step of the hostile press analyses. Thus, overall, only 2 of the 22 direct relationships attained significance.

AVOIDANCE ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION Table 3

179

Relationships Between Avoidance Goals and the General Well-Being Outcome Variables
Outcome variable Self-esteem Personal control Vitality Life satisfaction Semester-long subjective well-being Change in subjective well-being *p <.05. **p<.01. Beta for direct relationship -.30** -.22** -.28"* -.32** -.38** - . 19* Beta controlling for fear of failure -.29** -.23** -.29"* -.32** -.31"* -.21" Beta controlling for hostile press -.29** -.20* -.26"* -.29** -.33** - . 17"

Note. N = 135 for all but the hostile press column (N = 125).

with perceived competence in the anticipated direction. That is, higher levels of perceived competence were related to higher values of each of the dependent measures, except for negative progress affect, for which the reciprocal relationship was observed. Tables 4 and 5 also display the beta coefficients for the relationships between avoidance goals and the outcome variables both with and without perceived competence in the regression equation. For each dependent measure, insertion of the mediator variable into the equation resulted in a substantial diminution of the beta coefficient for the direct relationship. Furthermore, in most instances (enjoyable, life satisfaction, and semester-long subjective well-being being the exceptions), the direct relationship no longer remained significant with the mediator variable in the equation. This pattern in the beta coefficients, in conjunction with the relationships documented in analyses with the mediation model, provides strong evidence for perceived competence as a mediator of the direct relationships observed. 9 Utilization of Sobel's (1982) procedure for testing the significance of indirect, mediational relationships provided further substantiation of the hypothesized mediational processes, as each indirect relationship was shown to be highly statistically reliable (see Tables 4 and 5). Figures 1 and 2 represent a pictorial summary of the processes documented in the mediational analyses. These data are clearly in accord with the hypothesis that the pursuit of avoidance goals leads to low perceived competence during the semester and that this low perceived competence has deleterious consequences for perceptions of personal adjustment and well-being at the end of the semester.

revealed that all of the significant relationships between avoidance goals and the mediator and outcome variables documented at the between-subjects level were also significant when analyzed at the within-subject level with the exception of the associations between avoidance goals and negative progress affect and personal control. Furthermore, all of the significant relationships evidenced in the between-subjects mediation analyses were also significant when analyzed at the within-subject level (mediation analyses with the negative progress affect and personal control variables were precluded because of the absence of a direct relationship). In summary, results from the within-subject analyses nicely replicated those observed at the between-subjects level of analysis. This impressive degree of convergence indicates that the same set of processes were operative at both the person and the goal levels." Discussion Although the distinction between approach and avoidance has deep theoretical roots in the achievement motivation literature, contemporary goal theorists have only recently begun to explore the nature of avoidance, as well as approach, forms of achieve-

Ancillary Within-Subject Analyses

We conducted a series of ancillary analyses to determine whether the results obtained at the between-subjects, or person, level of analysis (using each participant's set of eight goals as the primary unit) would replicate at the within-subject, or goal, level of analysis (using each individual goal as the primary unit).m Prior to conducting these analyses, we transformed the data by standardizing each variable within subjects and then pooling these standard scores across participants. This procedure has the effect of partialing out individual differences in means and standard deviations so that all variables have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1 (cf. Emmons, 1991 ). Analyses

9 We tested the hypothesized mediational models using structural equation modeling (SEM) as well as multiple regression procedures. In the SEM analyses, the variance-covariance matrix was used as input, and LISREL VIII (J6reskog & Sorbom, 1993) generated standardized parameter estimates based on maximum likelihood estimation. These analyses yielded results virtually identical to those reported in the text. All of the path coefficients from the SEM analyses were either the same as or slightly stronger than the path coefficients from the regression analyses. Thus, results from the SEM analyses provided additional support for our substantive hypotheses. to Only variables requiring an independent response for each goal may be analyzed at the within-subject level; therefore, the motive disposition and subjective well-being variables were not utilized in these analyses. " The supplementary analyses reported at the between-subjects level of analysis testing the observed effects controlling for the miscellaneous goal variables were also conducted at the within-subject level. As with the between-subjects effects, the within-subject effects proved highly robust in these analyses. All of the observed relationships remained significant except for the life satisfaction effect holding goal social desirability, competence expectancy, importance, or the Competence Expectancy Importance interaction constant (in these analyses, the effect was p < .12 at minimum).

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Table 4 Relationships Establishing Perceived Competence as a Mediator o f the Direct Relationships Between Avoidance Goals and the Goal-Specific Outcome Variables R2 for the overall model .62** .50** .25** .32** .27** Beta for perceived competence .76** .68** -.46** .43** .46** Beta for avoidance goals without perceived competence in the equation -.31"* -.29** .24** -.40** -.29** Beta for avoidance goals with perceived competence in the equation -.06 -.07 .10 -.26** -.14

Outcome variable Satisfaction with progress Positive progress affect Negative progress affect Enjoyable Fulfilling **p < .01.

Sobel's test z z z z z = = = = = 2.81"* 3.60** 3.26** 2.89** 3.08**

ment regulation. The present research focused on avoidance achievement motivation at the personal goal level of analysis, with the specific aim of identifying an antecedent and various consequences of pursuing avoidance personal achievement goals over the course of a semester. Results provided strong support for each of the hypothesized relationships. Both self-report and projective indicators of the motive to avoid failure were validated as predictors of the proportion of avoidance goals pursued. Avoidance regulation proved deleterious for outcomes directly related to goal pursuit, specifically, satisfaction with progress, positive and negative affective responses to progress, and the extent to which goal pursuit was experienced as enjoyable and fulfilling. The negative consequences of pursuing avoidance achievement goals extended beyond the achievement domain to the realm of overall personal adjustment and well-being. Participants reported that the pursuit of avoidance goals decreased their self-esteem, personal control, vitality, and life satisfaction, and avoidance regulation had a negative influence on participants' subjective well-being, as indicated by their retrospective ratings for the semester-long period and their end-of-semester ratings with their beginning-of-semester ratings held constant (i.e., longitudinal change in well-being). Furthermore, a series of regression analyses established perceived competence as a mediator of the direct relationships. The antecedent data support our conceptualization of avoidance achievement goals as concrete manifestations of the more

abstract motive to avoid failure. However, the relationships observed between the fear of failure measures and avoidance goals were far less than unity, and it is likely that other, domaingeneral personality dispositions contributed to the pursuit of avoidance goals, either independent of or in concert with the motive to avoid failure. Viable candidates include BIS reactivity (cf. Gray, 1987), neuroticism (cf. Watson & Clark, 1984), pessimism (cf. Scheier & Carver, 1985), and low self-esteem (cf. Tice, 1992), and a priority for future research is the testing of these variables as additional antecedents of avoidance regulation. From a somewhat different perspective, the fact that fear of failure was linked to avoidance goal pursuit does not preclude the possibility that fear of failure could underlie some forms of approach regulation as well. Theorists in the situation-specific achievement goal literature have delineated two types of approach orientations--a performance goal focused on the demonstration of competence relative to others and a mastery goal focused on the development of competence and task mastery (Ames, 1992; Nicholls, Patashnick, Chung Cheung, Thorkilson, & Lauer, 1989) - - a n d recent research by Elliot and Church (1997) demonstrated that the adoption of performance (approach) goals can be prompted by fear of failure. Performance and mastery goals were not differentiated in the present study; attending to the performance-mastery distinction in future personal goal research could provide additional insight into the

Table 5 Relationships Establishing Perceived Competence as a Mediator o f the Direct Relationships Between Avoidance Goals and the General Well-Being Outcome Variables R2 for the overall model .32"* .25** .23** .31 ** .48** .50** Beta for perceived competence .51"* .47** .42** .49** .61 ** .39** Beta for avoidance goals without perceived competence in the equation -.30** -.22** -.28** -.32** -.38** -.19"* Beta for avoidance goals with perceived competence in the equation -.14 -.07 -.14 -.16" -.19"* -.11

Outcome variable Self-esteem Personal control Vitality Life satisfaction Semester-long subjective well-being Change in subjective well-being *p <.05. **p < .01.

Sobel's test z z z z = = = = 3.68** 3.30** 3.12"* 3.42**

z = 3.76** z = 3.16"*

AVOIDANCE ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION

181

Satisfactionwith Progress Positive ProgressAffect

Avoidance Goals

-.32**

~ Perceived v Competence

Negative ProgressAffect Enjoyable Fulfilling

Figure I. The mediational model for the goal-specific outcome variables. Path values are standardized regression coefficients, and residual direct relationships are omitted for presentation clarity. **p < .01.

channels through which fear of failure "clears its way in the behavioral world" (Nuttin, 1984). t2 Results from the consequences analyses highlighted the reason that it is important to investigate the antecedents of avoidance goal pursuit: Avoidance regulation over the course of the semester had negative implications for both goal-specific and general well-being outcomes. Recent research on achievement goals at the task-specific, situation-specific, and self-standard or future-self levels of analysis has documented the deleterious effects of avoidance regulation on various goal-specific outcomes, and the goal-specific outcome data in the present study may be viewed as an extension of this work to the personal goal level of analysis. Thus, the clear portrait emerging from the nascent approach-avoidance achievement goal literature is that avoidance goals, regardless of how represented, lead to negative achievement-relevant outcomes. Of course, it is doubtful that avoidance regulation is inimical for all achievement-relevant outcomes at all levels of analysis, and it will be important as this fledgling literature develops to attend to issues of empirical discrimination (e.g., Which outcomes are negatively affected by avoidance regulation and which are not?) and conceptual differentiation (e.g., At which level is avoidance regulation most or least negative?). In accord with nearly all of the research conducted on achievement motivation, each of the studies in the extant approach-avoidance achievement goal literature has limited the scope of its investigation to achievement-relevantoutcomes. The present study extends this nomological network by demonstrating, across three different types of outcome measures, that the pursuit of avoidance achievement goals over the course of a semester can have deleterious consequences for overall personal adjustment and well-being. The longitudinally based subjective well-being measure yielded the most impressive data: Participants pursuing a greater proportion of avoidance goals evidenced a decrease in subjective well-being from the beginning to the end of the semester. These data serve as a reminder that competence-relevant functioning has broad ramifications for the self-system as a whole; the consequences of achievement regulation are not isolated to the confines of the achievement domain. Accordingly, we believe that the achievement goal literature, and the achievement motivation literature in general, would benefit from an enhanced allocation of research attention to more global outcome measures. A series of analyses clearly demonstrated that the relation-

ships observed between avoidance regulation and the goal-specific and general well-being outcome variables remain significant with the generalized motive to avoid failure controlled. These results are important, because they indicate that avoidance achievement goals are not mere epiphenomena of the motive to avoid failure; they actually play a central role in the regulation of achievement behavior. In conjunction, these and the antecedent data discussed earlier provide nice support for our conceptualization of avoidance goals as cognitive-dynamic "carriers" of the motive to avoid failure. It appears that fear of failure leads to the pursuit of avoidance achievement goals, and it is this avoidance regulation itself that has deleterious consequences for achievement-relevant and general well-being outcomes. In addition to identifying various consequences of avoidance regulation, the present results established perceived competence as a mediator of each of the direct relationships observed. The pursuit of avoidance achievement goals was associated with low perceptions of competence during the semester, and this low perceived competence had negative implications for achievement-relevant and general well-being outcomes at the end of the semester. Thus, these data suggest that the self-regulatory path to positive outcomes runs through perceived competence, a position advocated by theorists from diverse quarters (cf. Bandura, 1986; Carver & Scheier, 1990; Ryan, Sheldon, Kasser, & Deci, 1996). Experiencing feelings of competence in regard to one's goal pursuits appears to be something of a psychological necessity or "need" (Ryan, 1995; White, 1959), and failure to satisfy this fundamental requirement bodes ill for one's goal-specific and general well-being outcomes. From this perspective, avoidance goals may be construed as incongruent with one's essential psychological needs (Sheldon & Kasser, 1995; Sheldon,

~2Although performance and mastery goals were not differentiatedin the present study,both forms of regulationwere undoubtedlyrepresented under the approach goat rubric. Assuming that this is true and that the Elliot and Church (1997) finding generalizesto the personal goal level, our analyses using fear of failure to predict avoidance relative to approach (mastery and performance) goal pursuit represent conservative tests of the antecedent hypothesis. On a related note, achievementgoal theorists have yet to consider the possibility of various forms of avoidance regulation (e.g., trying to avoid doing worse than others vs. trying to avoid doing worse than one's own past performance), and the empirical ramifications of this lack of differentiation are unknown.

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ELLIOT AND SHELDON

Self-Esteem Personal Control Vitality Avoidance Goals -.32"* Perceived Competence .49"* --~ Life Satisfaction

~~______ Semester-long Subjective Well-being

Change in Subjective Well-being
The mediationalmodel for the generalwell-beingoutcomevariables. Path values are standardized regression coefficients, and residual direct relationships are omitted for presentation clarity. * *p < .01.
Figure 2.

Ryan, & Reis, 1996), and the adoption of avoidance goals must be considered a psychological vulnerability in that it places one at risk for a host of negative experiences and outcomes. Inclusion of the mediational component in the design of this study clearly afforded a more focused analysis of the nature of avoidance regulation than that provided by the direct relationships alone. Further research is needed, however, to pinpoint the precise mechanisms responsible for the avoidance goalperceived competence relationship itself. Avoidance regulation could have a negative influence on perceptions of competence by means of many different mechanisms (e.g., threat appraisals, anxiety, perceptual-cognitive sensitivity to negative information), and the testing of such variables in a "linked" mediational model (e.g., avoidance goals ~ high anxiety --* low perceived competence ~ decreased well-being) would undoubtedly yield a more perspicuous account of the process of avoidance goal pursuit. It should also be noted that the present research focused exclusively on perceived, rather than actual, competence. Subsequent work incorporating both objective and subjective indicators of competence would be valuable, although actual competence is difficult to operationalize at the personal goal level of analysis (see the "goal attainment scaling" evaluation procedure, Kiresuk, Smith, & Cardillo, 1994, that emerged out of the community mental health center movement, for an intriguing possibility). Our conceptualization of personal achievement goals grants them causal status in relation to perceived competence and the goal-specific and general well-being outcomes. However, despite the temporal sequencing of the assessments and the inclusion of a longitudinally based measure, the present results remain correlational in nature, and therefore, unequivocal causal statements are not justified (this statement is equally applicable to the antecedent component of the study). Definitive causal inferences require experimental manipulation, a methodology that is probably not applicable to personal goal research. Our exclusive focus on the achievement domain in the present study presented an additional methodological constraint, specifically, the need to assess personal goals using a representative list rather than the typical free-listing procedure. Although this may have reduced the idiographic nature of the assessment to some extent, by their own report, participants were highly invested in the

goals they selected, and goal pursuit was systematically related to a host of self-relevant variables. Thus, the AGQ appears to have served its purpose quite well in the present study, and we invite other researchers to utilize this flexible assessment tool (see Appendix) in their own investigations of achievement-relevant personal goals. Achievement motivation theorists are guided by the objective of developing a comprehensive account of competence-relevant behavior. The two most prominent traditions in the achievement motivation literature have focused on distinct explanatory constructs--the "classic" approach has focused on motive dispositions, whereas the "contemporary" approach has focused on goals. Both of these traditions have made substantial contributions to the literature, yet historically there has been little "cross-talk" between the two perspectives. An important feature of the present research was the inclusion of both motive disposition and goal variables. The empirical yield attested to the utility of both constructs: avoidance goals served as direct predictors of achievement-relevant and general well-being outcomes, and the avoidance motive predicted the adoption of these avoidance forms of self-regulation. We believe that neither the classic nor the contemporary traditions, in isolation, offer a definitive account of competence-relevant behavior; a comprehensive understanding of achievement motivation will be acquired only when a dialogue between the two perspectives (and other viewpoints; see Dweck & Elliott, t 983) is established and integration takes place. References Alker, H. (1969). Rationality and achievement:A comparison of the Atkinson-McClelland and Kogan-Wallach formulations. Journal of Personality, 37, 207-224. Alpert, R., & Haber, R. (1960). Anxiety in academic achievementsituations. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 61, 207-215. Ames, C. (1992). Achievementgoals, motivationalclimate, and motivational processes. In G. Roberts (Ed.), Motivation in sports and exercise (pp. 161-176). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Books. Andrews, E, & Withey, S. (1976). Social indicators of well-being: America's perception of life quali~: New York: Plenum Press. Atkinson, J. (1957). Motivationaldeterminants of risk-taking behavior. Psychological Review, 64, 359-372.

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AVOIDANCE ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION Appendix The Final Set of A p p r o a c h and Avoidance A c h i e v e m e n t Goals U s e d in t h e A c h i e v e m e n t G o a l s Q u e s t i o n n a i r e ( A G Q )

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

try new and challenging activities avoid procrastination fulfill my potential avoid doing or saying something stupid avoid wasting time impress others with my accomplishments avoid worrying about my schoolwork make my parents proud of me be efficient avoid making mistakes I can't fix not let my parents down write and speak well avoid stressful situations do better than others fulfill all of my responsibilities avoid getting bad grades be on time for appointments avoid being such a perfectionist do things the best I can get good grades learn new things avoid being pessimistic perform well in my work complete assignments on time motivate myself toward my goals work hard

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

accomplish something every day avoid being overwhelmed by all I have to do avoid feeling insecure about my work improve my specific talents be creative avoid doing things I'm not good at not set my goals too high avoid settling for mediocrity be a good student not get behind in my work finish what I've started excel in sports/extracurricular activities overcome obstacles avoid failure not be late for my appointments make clear goals for my future approach tasks with optimism improve on my weaknesses avoid situations where my ability is "on the line" concentrate on the task at hand avoid looking inferior to others get ahead of schedule in my work avoid doing poorly in school not be lazy achieve my goals

Note. In completing the AGQ, participants read an explanation of the achievement goals concept and then rate how well each of the 51 goals describes what they typically try to do in their everyday behavior on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (perfectly). Participants also select, in order, the eight goals that they think best represent their achievement pursuits and are provided the option of generating novel achievement goals if they so desire. The temporal focus of the assessment in the AGQ may be left unspecified or may be confined to a specific time period (e.g., a particular semester).
Received March 11, 1996 Revision received August 9, 1996 Accepted December 23, 1996