No abstract

Researchers have suggested that receiving attribute affirmation (AA) may increase the motivation of students to confront a challenge. However, we posited that to determine whether AA increases the motivation of students to confront a challenging task, we must consider dispositional achievement goals of the students. The participants were 171 junior-high-school students, randomly assigned to an AA or no affirmation condition. The results showed that AA enhanced the tendency to confront a challenging task for students who endorsed low mastery-approach goals (MAGs) and low performance-approach goals (PAGs) simultaneously (b = 0.5, p = 0.015). The effect was mainly mediated by the increasing state performance-approach goals (SPAGs) in confronting the task (indirect effect = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.04–0.49); however, being attribute-affirmed decreased the tendency to confront the challenging task for students adopting a dominant PAG orientation (b = −0.76, p = 0.049). In addition, for students adopting a dominant MAG orientation or adopting high MAGs and high PAGs simultaneously, no difference was noted in the tendency to confront the task between participants in the control and attribute-affirmed conditions.

Studies on cyberbullying have revealed an inconsistent relationship between trait empathy and bystanders' aggressive tendencies towards victims. We believe that these studies have overlooked the role of social exclusion. We infer that