Workers’ metamotivational beliefs about achievement goals.
Motivation Science, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1037/mot0000435
- Dergi Adı: Motivation Science
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
- Anahtar Kelimeler: achievement goal, metamotivation, motivated reasoning, work motivation
- Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
What do workers believe about motivation, specifically about achievement goals and their links to valued outcomes? How accurate are their beliefs relative to the scientific literature? What are the sources of these metamotivational beliefs? The present research comprises two highly powered, preregistered, online experiments (Ns = 628 and 812 workers in diverse occupations in Türkiye) designed to examine these questions. In Study 1, we manipulated the achievement goal of a target employee and asked participants to estimate the employee's achievement and intrinsic motivation, two critically important outcomes in work settings. We also tested several different potential moderators (including the target employee's career stage and participants’ work-related and demographic variables) to examine the robustness of the focal effects. In Study 2, we sought to replicate Study 1 while also incorporating leadership, another critically important outcome in work settings, and we examined participants’ own achievement goals as predictors of their goal–outcome ratings. Our research revealed that participants were quite accurate overall in their estimates. We also found evidence for two sources of metamotivational beliefs: participants’ education level (a cognitive source), with more highly educated participants showing greater accuracy, and participants’ own achievement goals (a motivational source), with participants rating outcomes higher for the goal types they personally endorsed. We discuss the conceptual and applied implications of these findings, as well as directions for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)