The calendar year is winding down, and many of you may be making goals for next year. How you frame them, though, will affect feelings of pride or shame, say researchers from Penn State and Central Queensland University in Australia.
“Our research suggests that when your goal is to outperform others, your feelings of pride will be amplified when you succeed,” said Amanda Rebar, a postdoctoral researcher at Central Queensland University, in an interview by Sara LaJeunesse for Penn State News. “But when your goal is to avoid being outperformed by others, your feelings of shame will be amplified when you fail.”
Study participants played 24 rounds of Tetris and were told to earn as many points as they could.
“Before each round, one of four different criteria for earning a point was presented onscreen, the goal of which was to elicit different achievement goals among the participants,” LaJeunesse reported. “Immediately following each round, the researchers provided the participants with bogus feedback and the participants rated their shame and pride.”
According to David Conroy, a professor of kinesiology at Penn State, motivation and purpose play a key role in how we feel at the end of a task.
“Whether that task is a video game, a race or an academic exam, [motivation and purpose] impacts the amount of pride or shame he or she will experience in response to success or failure,” Conroy said. “And the amount of pride or shame a person feels can influence whether he or she will persist in the task or drop out.”
Comparing your performance to others isn’t always bad, though.
“Pride is known to invoke a boost of confidence, persistence, and problem-solving ability, which can help people perform at their best,” Rebar said.
Shame, however, is a different story.
“If a baseball player is the first to strike out in a game, his shame may cause him to become distracted or to worry too much about his precise movements, both of which can hurt his performance,” Rebar said.
Conroy suggests that people “focus on what they can achieve rather than on what they can lose.”
“It may be particularly helpful if coaches and teachers understand these results so they can help influence their athletes’ and students’ achievement goals so as to minimize feelings that can hurt performance,” he said.
(photo credit: Scott Ableman via photopin cc)
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