The Effect of Achievement Goals on Academic Anxiety: Emotion Regulations Moderating Role

Abstract

This study demonstrates the impact of achievement goals on the levels of academic anxiety and to what extent emotion regulation moderates this effect. To be more specific, there are three orientations of achievement goals. Mastery goal, which focuses on task mastery, weakly affecting academic anxiety. The second orientation is performance-approach goal, which aims to receive positive judgement, and the third one is performance-avoidance goal, which emphasize avoiding negative judgement of competence; both enhance the levels of academic anxiety. For emotion regulation, there are two strategies. Cognitive reappraisal works by interpreting emotion-eliciting events by changing their emotional impact, effectively decreasing the levels of academic anxiety. Expressive suppression refers to inhibiting ongoing emotional response, enhancing the levels of academic anxiety. The anxiety set by performance-approach goal can be greatly modulated by reappraisal. However, suppression can significantly magnify anxiety, whatever the achievement goals orientation the individual chooses. That is why if students want to efficiently cope with academic anxiety and achieve better academic performance results, mastery goal is the most suitable orientation of achievement goals, and reappraisal is the most beneficial emotion regulation strategy for students.