Social Value Orientations and the Expression of Achievement Motivation

Destructive Criticism Revisited: Appraisals, Task Outcomes, and the Moderating Role of Competitiveness

“…Compared to experiencing constructive criticism, experiencing destructive criticism led to greater appraisals of intent to harm, blame, lowered trust, and anger. Consistent with our arguments that destructive criticism is especially threatening to competitive people due to the self‐relevant nature of destructive criticism, coupled with the centrality of superiority in their identities (Houston et al., 2002; Platow & Shave, 1995), highly competitive people evidenced significantly higher intentions to work harder when they received destructive criticism rather than constructive criticism. By contrast, people who were low on trait competitiveness showed no difference in working harder intentions as a function of the type of criticism received, suggesting that the self‐relevant nature of destructive criticism was less meaningful for them.…”

“…Specifically, we examined individual differences in trait competitiveness , “the enjoyment of interpersonal competition and the desire to win and be better than others” (Spence & Helmreich, 1983, p. 41). Superiority is central to competitive people's self‐concept (Platow & Shave, 1995). Competitive people aim to achieve high performance while simultaneously ensuring that they outperform their peers (Houston, McIntyre, Kinnie, & Terry, 2002; McClintock & Liebrand, 1988); therefore, harsh performance critiques from a peer are likely to activate this aspect of one's identity.…”

“…We argue that the effects of destructive versus constructive criticism on working harder intentions are contingent on one's level of trait competitiveness. When a peer provides insensitive personal criticism that attributes the recipient's poor performance to internal causes (Baron, 1988), highly competitive people's identity is more strongly threatened (compared to low competitive people) due to the centrality of achievement and superiority in their self‐definitions (Houston et al., 2002; Platow & Shave, 1995). Destructive criticism from a peer may also lead highly competitive people to frame the situation as a competition in which they need to prove themselves, versus simply being a performance task.…”

“…Gender was also used as a control variable because past research has suggested that there are gender differences in achievement motivation (Hyde, 2005). These differences have been associated with competition (Platow & Shave, 1995) and might have affected participants' appraisals, emotions, or task‐related rumination.…”

A case study of cooperation in a commission‐based organization

“…Or are organizations that are seemingly designed to be more competitive-or have pay structures in which organizational members are less reliant on their coworkers to accomplish tasks-seeing the pro-cooperation bias permeate their boundaries, as well? Competitive people value individualism and independent goal achievement plus have high achievement motivation (Platow & Shave, 1995). So one might expect this type of person-individual and independent-to be in a commission-only career.…”