Mastering One's Destiny: Mastery Goals Promote Challenge and Success Despite Social Identity Threat

We used an achievement goal framework to enhance identity-threatened individuals' motivation and performance by way of an understudied mechanism,namely,challenge appraisals. in three experiments,women were given a mastery goal (focus on building skills) or a performance goal (perform well,avoid errors) before a mock job interview. women who focused on mastery rather than performance felt more challenged and less threatened when anticipating an identity-threatening interview; goals did not affect appraisals of a nonthreatening interview (experiment 1). mastery relative to performance goals enhanced women's intention to be assertive (experiment 2) and their actual face-to-face performance during the job interview (experiment 3); challenge appraisals (but not threat appraisals) served as a mediator for these effects. whereas a great deal of prior work has alleviated identity threat by altering construals of one's identity,the current research uses an alternative strategy-modifying appraisals of the situation,leaving one's self-concept intact. © 2013 by the society for personality and social psychology,inc.