Andrew J. Elliot

University of Rochester | UR · Psychology

The present experiment examined how individuals’ motor response execution and inhibition – as measured by a Go/No-Go (GNG) task – is modulated by social influence arising from competition. We found that participants in a competition group responded significantly faster to frequently occurring Go stimuli than those in a control group, while no betwe...

The present research is the first to integrate metamotivation and achievement goals and comprises two pre-registered experiments examining metamotivational task knowledge regarding the types of performance goals that are best and worst for students. Study 1 (N = 239) revealed that participants rated performance-approach goals higher than performanc...

A focal stimulus (object, end state, outcome, event, experience, characteristic, possibility, etc.) may represent a presence, an occurrence, or something, or it may represent an absence, a nonoccurrence, or nothing. This presence–absence distinction has received extensive and explicit attention in cognitive psychology (it is the central figure), bu...

Emotion transmission often occurs in social interactions but has attracted limited attention in the education domain. Given the frequent interactions among teachers and students, not only teachers’ emotions but also peers’ emotions may influence students’ learning. This preregistered experimental study investigated how peers’ emotions (either enjoy...

Introduction Our recent research has demonstrated that social comparison orientation of ability (SCO-ability) is an antecedent of trait competitiveness (TC), and TC mediates the relation between SCO-ability and domain-specific risk-taking. TC is a multi-dimensional trait, therefore we sought to expand on prior research by examining whether SCO-abil...

Research on the effects of exposure to economic inequality has primarily focused on adults in their everyday lives. In this review, we argue that these effects extend to children and adolescents in their school environments. We begin by presenting evidence that economic inequality promotes students’ competitive motivations. We then examine three cr...

This special issue was motivated by the realization that student motivation is inherently complex and no single framework can capture it in its full richness. How- ever, the current zeitgeist in educational psychology seems to explicitly discourage attempts at integration as researchers are incentivized to stay within their own theoretical camps. I...

Achievement goals have been overlooked in the emerging literature on metamotivation. In the present research, we conducted three experiments (two preregistered) with large samples (total N ∼ 3,600) designed to test metamotivational accuracy of others’ achievement goals in a work context. We put participants in the role of employer and provided them...

Stability and change in students’ achievement goals (AGs) are of great relevance for educational research and practice. In two separate meta-analyses, we investigated the rank-order stability (93 studies, 569 effect sizes, 54,736 students), as well as the mean-level change (157 studies, 1,170 effect sizes, 81,464 students) in AGs throughout student...

Background Research on predictors of test anxiety has focused primarily on the role of psychological factors and the proximal environment. However, the role of the broader socio-ecological context, specifically, national income inequality, is seldom explored. Aims The present study aimed to test whether national income inequality is associated wit...

Integration is a valuable yet underutilized process in scientific literatures, including the achievement motivation literature. In this piece, we advocate for and illustrate the benefits of giving integration a central place within the achievement motivation literature. We pay particular attention to the hierarchical model of achievement motivation...

The present research investigated principals’ achievement motives and implicit theories of intelligence as predictors of their desired achievement goals for their students. The research was highly powered and conducted in the understudied cultural context of Saudi Arabia. Data were collected from 326 principals (175 female and 151 male) in single-s...

This research examined the influence of Black–White income inequality on negative interracial psychological outcomes and the role of perceived interracial competition as a mediational mechanism. The research utilized three different designs across three preregistered experiments to assess the proposed processes. Study 1 (N = 846) used a measurement...

Social scientists have begun to extensively study how living in contexts with high income inequality affects psychological outcomes. Herein we overview a conceptual framework that integrates, organizes, and extends these complex (and sometimes contradictory) findings. First, we describe studies showing that income inequality breeds an ethos of comp...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Research on achievement goals is voluminous but focused primarily on intrapersonal regulation. In the present article, we emphasize the integral role that achievement goals also play in the broader process of interpersonal judgment. We establish a new interpersonal approach to achievement goals that integrates the extensive achievement goal literat...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

Eccles and Wigfield's situated expectancy-value theory is an impressive, integrative model of achievement motivation, well-deserving of the legacy moniker. With this laudatory statement as context, I offer a few observations about how I believe the model could be developed even further. These observations focus on clarifying the nature and role of...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

We present a three-dimensional taxonomy of achievement emotions that considers valence, arousal, and object focus as core features of these emotions. By distinguishing between positive and negative emotions (valence), activating and deactivating emotions (arousal), and activity emotions, prospective outcome emotions, and retrospective outcome emoti...

Perceiving learning environments as competitive shapes how students think, feel, and behave. We conducted two preregistered studies designed to examine three central constructs in the achievement motivation literature as predictors of perceived academic competitiveness: Trait competitiveness, fear of failure, and general self-efficacy. In Study 1,...

Income inequality is commonly posited to elevate concerns about social status that undermine psychological health, but the empirical evidence is inconsistent. Here we propose that these inconsistencies conceal opposing processes: Income inequality prompts perceived competitiveness, which can both negatively predict psychological health via avoidanc...

Mastery-approach (MAP) goals, focusing on developing competence and acquiring task mastery, are posited to be the most optimal, beneficial type of achievement goal for academic and life outcomes. Although there is meta-analytic evidence supporting this finding, such evidence does not allow us to conclude that the extant MAP goal findings generalize...

Power analysis for first-order interactions poses two challenges: (i) Conducting an appropriate power analysis is difficult, because the required sample size depends on the shape of the interaction and the size of the simple slopes; (ii) Achieving sufficient power is difficult, because interactions tend to be modest in size. This paper consists of...

Goal complexes, which are formed by pairing standards of competence strivings with their underlying reasons, are essential to an understanding of achievement goal regulation. This paper examines goal complexes that cross other-approach and other-avoidance goals with the approach-avoidance dimensions of Big Three motives as underlying reasons. 220 u...

Laboratory research has demonstrated that when students are instructed to use retrieval (i.e., recalling from memory information to be learned) rather than rereading (i.e., reading the material repeatedly) they learn better. However, little is known about spontaneous use of retrieval. In the present studies, we designed a scale to measure spontaneo...

Given that avoidance motivation is often related to negative outcomes, it is surprising that little research has investigated the economic factors that correlate with avoidance motivation. The current meta-analysis synthesized 40 studies (Ntotal = 771,690) on the relation between economic status and avoidance motivation. Economic status was operati...

Purpose A popular idea in the social sciences is that contexts with high income inequality undermine people’s well-being and health. However, existing studies documenting this phenomenon typically compare a small number of higher-level units (countries/regions). Here, we use local income inequality indicators and temporal designs to provide the mos...

Mastery-approach (MAP) goals, focusing on developing competence and acquiring task mastery, is posited to be the most optimal, beneficial type of achievement goal for academic and life outcomes. Although there is meta-analytic evidence supporting this finding, such evidence does not allow us to conclude that the extant MAP goal findings generalize...

Competitiveness and cooperativeness are important predictors of social and learning outcomes at school. Drawing on evidence suggesting that contexts with high income inequality foster an ethos of competitiveness and inhibit cooperativeness in the economic environment, we examine whether income inequality is also associated with more competitiveness...

Research on literacy interventions occasionally focuses on motivation, but such research in low- and mid-income countries is all but nonexistent. Recently, Guzmán, Schuenke-Lucien, D’Agostino, Berends, & Elliot (2021) demonstrated that an intervention, Read to Learn, had a positive influence on literacy skills of first and second grade Haitian stud...

The big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), the negative effect of school-/class-average achievement on academic self-concept, is one of educational psychology’s most universal findings. However, critiques of this research have proposed moderators based on achievement motivation theories. Nevertheless, because these motivational theories are not suffi...

Background: Motivation scientists study goals, self-regulatory tools that are used to help people approach or avoid objects of desire or disdain. Purpose: Using these tools, motivation science can offer insights to guide behaviour and help individuals maintain optimal health and well-being during pandemics, including COVID-19. Results: Avoidance go...

Awe is a fascinating emotion, associated with positive consequences such as greater prosociality, generosity, and epistemic openness. Unfortunately, in spite of the weighty consequences of awe, the exact way in which it arises, and what it entails, is still a puzzle. Particularly puzzling is the question of whether awe is the result of expectancy v...

Competitiveness and cooperativeness are important predictors of social and learning outcomes at school. Drawing on evidence suggesting that contexts with high income inequality foster an ethos of competitiveness and inhibit cooperativeness in the economic environment, we examine whether income inequality is also associated with more competitiveness...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Previous research has shown that red can increase men’s perception of women’s attractiveness. However, this effect is absent under certain conditions, such as when women have masculine, unattractive, or older features. We sought to test whether this red-attraction effect would be present at the other end of the continuum, specifically, for highly a...

This research examined the effects of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on perceived Black-White intergroup competition and negative intergroup psychological outcomes. Two datasets (collected before [2018] and after the onset of [April, 2020] COVID-19) were combined (N = 2,131) for this research. The data provided support for the hypothesis that p...

There remains a dearth of research on causal roles of perceived interracial competition on psychological outcomes. Towards this end, this research experimentally manipulated perceptions of group-level competition between Black and White individuals in the U.S. and tested for effects on negative psychological outcomes. In Study 1 (N = 899), particip...

The present research examines the processes through which competitive contexts influence performance in an understudied domain: social perception. In two experiments (one preregistered), we test how competition (relative to control) influences performance on a measure of emotion decoding: The Reading-the-mind-in-the-Eyes (RME) task. Specifically, w...

In accord with Festinger (1954) and Garcia et al. (2013), we investigate the understudied link between social comparison and competition. Specifically, in two correlational studies using university undergraduate (N = 298) and adult worker (N = 645) samples, we used path models to test relations between two types of social comparison orientation (SC...

The cultivation of interest is an important aim of education. When encountering new information, the learners’ situational interest is an essential step in the interest development process. Situational interest represents the learner’s heightened attentional focus toward task characteristics (triggered interest) and elevated positive feelings and v...

Seven experiments conducted in India and the United States (N ∼7,000; 5 preregistered) examined the effects of wealth on warmth and competence, 2 fundamental dimensions of social impressions. Wealth causally influenced perceptions of a target's competence: high wealth increased perceived competence and low wealth decreased perceived competence (Exp...

The present research comprised two experiments (Ns = 792 and 1056) focused on linking social comparison information to performance goal adoption via performance expectancy. In Experiment 1, participants were randomly assigned to receive positive or negative information regarding how they had performed on a novel ability task compared to another per...

In Haiti, 49% of students cannot read a single word in Creole by the time they start grade 3, which is reflective of a broader learning crisis in low-income and fragile contexts. Read to Learn, an early-grade literacy intervention, was implemented and evaluated from fall 2014 through spring 2016 with the aim of improving students' reading skills. S...

Adolescence is important for the development of achievement motivation, including achievement goal pursuit. Longitudinal research is scarce on adolescents' goal development and its implications for academic outcomes. In our research, we first present a systematic review of findings on achievement goals in adolescence. Then we report 2 longitudinal...

Competition is a much debated topic, with some scholars arguing that competition is good for achievement outcomes and others arguing that competition is bad for achievement outcomes. In this article, I address this issue using motivational theorizing and empirical studies designed to test this theorizing. Specifically, I make use of 2 motivational...

Research on aesthetic science has demonstrated that people generally prefer symmetrical over asymmetrical compositions. However, it remains unclear whether and how such compositions relate to the concepts of approach and avoidance motivation, especially, in consumer contexts. In addition, it is not known how symmetry may influence such concepts in...

Women are less competitive than men in most contexts studied. This difference has been linked to the gender gap in socio-economic outcomes. To examine whether this gender difference is linked to differential beliefs about competition, we developed a scale measuring lay beliefs about competition and tested whether these beliefs account for gender di...

The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Second Edition, addresses key advances made in the field since the previous edition, offering the latest insights from the top theorists and researchers of human motivation. The volume includes chapters on social learning theory, control theory, self-determination theory, terror management theory, and regula...

OBJECTIVE. Scholars disagree on whether income inequality has incentive or disincentive effects. In the present research, we move beyond such debate and focus on the motivational processes that income inequality predicts. First, income inequality makes economic stratification salient, and therefore should promote perceived competitiveness. Second,...

This research investigated whether highlighting the difference between norm-based approach and avoidance motivation impacts performance goal reporting accuracy. Participants were randomly assigned to receive no instructions, or reading materials indicating that norm-based approach and avoidance motivation are the same (Same condition) or different...

The present research sought to integrate self-determination theory and the achievement goal approach to achievement motivation by examining achievement goals as mediators of the link between psychological need support and both intrinsic and external motivation. We found support for our proposed integration, as mastery-approach and performance-appro...

There exists a racial income gap in America: Blacks earn ∼38% less than Whites, but little is known about its relation to interracial psychological outcomes. Toward this end, the present research examined associations between the Black–White income gap and perceptions of interracial competition and, subsequently, negative intergroup outcomes. Study...

Typical human color vision is trichromatic, on the basis that we have three distinct classes of photoreceptors. A recent evolutionary account posits that trichromacy facilitates detecting subtle skin color changes to better distinguish important social states related to proceptivity, health, and emotion in others. Across two experiments, we manipul...

Low socioeconomic status (SES) students have a lower sense of belonging to college than high SES students. Due to the importance of sense of belonging in the college pathway, understanding the reason for this relation is particularly important. Here, we argue that in addition to having less access to resources, low SES students in the college conte...

We examined the coping potential of nostalgia in an educational setting. In particular, we investigated whether nostalgia can protect students from the pernicious link between threat appraisal and low intrinsic motivation. Undergraduate students (N = 382) reported threat and challenge appraisals in regards to a class they were taking, their nostalg...

Empirical work on color and psychological functioning has a long history, dating back to the 19th century. This early research focused on five different areas: Arousal, physical strength, preference, time perception, and attention. In the present paper, I overview the relations observed in this early research, and detail methodological weaknesses t...

Background and objectives: Effects of reappraising stress arousal during an interpersonal competition were tested on physiological functioning and performance. Additionally, the moderating role of gender was explored. Design and method: Participants (N = 279) were randomly assigned to a stress reappraisal, stress-is-debilitating, or a neutral contr...

We conducted meta-analyses of studies that test the red-romance hypothesis, which is that the color red enhances heterosexual attraction in romantic contexts. For men rating women, we found a small, statistically significant effect (d = 0.26 [0.12, 0.40], p = .0004, N = 2,961), with substantial heterogeneity, Q(44) = 172.5, pQ < .0001, I² = 89% [82...

Objective Performance‐approach goals and performance‐avoidance goals are conceptually distinct, but they are often moderately or even highly positively correlated. The present research examines lay conceptions of approach and avoidance motivation as a moderator of this intergoal relation. Method Study 1 (N = 281) assessed whether participants cons...

OBJECTIVE. Scholars disagree on whether income inequality has incentive or disincentive effects. In the present research, we move beyond such debate and focus on the motivational processes that income inequality predicts. First, income inequality makes economic stratification salient, and therefore should promote perceived competitiveness. Second,...

Facial expressions of emotion include both muscular and color modulations that contribute to the accurate perception of emotion. However, some emotion categories share common facial-muscular features during the dynamic expressive sequence, which can lead to confusion and misidentification. The current research posits that a potential social functio...

This research examined an important applied question: whether viewing ambient green (relative to red) on the wall of a workspace would facilitate creativity. A methodologically sound experiment revealed no influence of green on creativity. Care must be taken when interpreting a null result, but these data do not provide support for the presence of...

We created a life-goal assessment drawing from self-determination theory and achievement goal literature, examining its predictive power regarding immoral behavior and subjective well-being. Our source items assessed direction and energization of motivation, via the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic aims and between intrinsic and extrinsi...

Objective: Novelty seeking (the tendency to explore things novel and unfamiliar) has been extensively researched in the clinical and health domains, but its effects on creative performance are largely unknown. We examined whether creativity-related personality traits (openness to experience and extraversion) associate with novelty seeking, and whe...

Facial expressions of emotion contain important information that is perceived and used by observers to understand others’ emotional state. While there has been considerable research into perceptions of facial musculature and emotion, less work has been conducted to understand perceptions of facial coloration and emotion. The current research examin...

Prior research has shown that for women viewing men, perceiving the color red can enhance attractiveness judgments in some contexts. Additionally, an association exists between the processing of color words and the perception of color stimuli. The present studies examined whether processing the word red would lead to similar psychological effects o...

Facial color is a significant source of social information, providing cues to physiological and psychological phenomena, such as physical health and emotion. On the basis that detecting such cues in others is advantageous, past work has shown that individuals detect color differences with more accuracy when viewing faces than non-faces. The current...

Objective: Trait and perceived environmental competitiveness are typically studied separately, but they undoubtedly have a joint influence on goal pursuit and behavior in achievement situations. The present research was designed to study them together. We tested the relation between trait and perceived environmental competitiveness, and tested the...

In the present research, we proposed a systematic approach to disentangling the shared and unique variance explained by achievement goals, reasons for goal pursuit, and specific goal-reason combinations (i.e., achievement goal complexes). Four studies using this approach (involving nearly 1,800 participants) led to three basic sets of findings. Fir...

We investigated the appraisal processes and personality antecedents that regulate people’s attraction to schema-violations - targets and objects that disconfirm schema - and stereotype-based expectancies. In two studies a preference for schema-violations (vs. consistencies) correlated positively with openness to experience, and negatively with the...

Past research has shown that peripheral and facial redness influences perceptions of attractiveness for men viewing women. The current research investigated whether a parallel effect is present when women rate men with varying facial redness. In four experiments, women judged the attractiveness of men’s faces, which were presented with varying degr...

Although commonly used as predictors of academic achievement, achievement goals have an unexplained oddity—a moderate, positive association among performance goals. Two studies used crowd-sourced samples to explore this unexplained positive correlation. Study 1 measured whether respondents recognized approaching norm-based success and avoiding norm...

Achievement goals are self-regulatory commitments that provide direction to individuals as they interpret and respond to competence-relevant situations. Four types of achievement goals have been the primary focus of the literature: Mastery-approach goals (master a task; improve over time), performance-approach goals (outperform others), mastery-avo...

People prefer curved and symmetrical shapes to their angular and asymmetrical counterparts. While it is known that stimulus valence is central to approach and avoidance motivation, the exact nature of the relationship between curvature/symmetry and approach/avoidance motivation still needs to be clarified. Experiment 1 was designed to investigate w...