The effect of motive-goal congruence on adolescents’ academic goal engagement and disengagement

Abstract

Academic achievement is an important developmental goal during adolescence. Two independent factors involved in academic motivation are implicit motives and explicit goals. In this study, we examined whether high school students’ (N = 213) implicit achievement motive, explicit achievement goals, and their interactions were associated with academic goal engagement and disengagement. Our findings showed that academic goal engagement and disengagement were associated with explicit achievement goals only, and not with the implicit achievement motive. However, interactions between the implicit achievement motive and grade aspiration (i.e., a specific explicit achievement goal) revealed that individuals with a low implicit achievement motive can still attain high goal engagement if they have a high grade aspiration. We also found that motive-goal congruence was associated with lower goal disengagement. Overall, these findings suggest that explicit achievement goals and specific academic goals play a dominant role in goal engagement behavior in the structured setting of high schools, and may allow youth to overcome the constraints of having a low implicit achievement motive.