The impact of situational and dispositional achievement goals on performance

Achievement goal theorists propose that both situational factors and indivi dual differences influence which type of achievement goals individuals adop t. That is, instructions can be used to make a situation task-involving or ego-involving, but individuals also have dispositional tendencies to approa ch achievement tasks with task and/or ego orientations. In this experiment we investigated the independent and interactive effects of situational and dispositional achievement goals on performance. College students performed a brainstorming task after receiving neutral, task-involving, or ego-involv ing instructions. General task and ego orientations toward achievement task s were assessed before the students tried the task, and perceived ability w as assessed after a practice trial. Consistent with the predictions of achi evement goal theorists, perceived ability was more strongly related to perf ormance when students were given ego-involving rather than task-involving i nstructions. In addition, task orientation was more strongly related to per formance when task-involving rather than ego-involving instructions were gi ven. The results demonstrate that dispositional and situational factors may interact to predict performance.