Motivation and Performance Following Failure: The Effortful Pursuit of Self-defining Goals

In this paper, I summarise theory and research, highlighting the role of self-defining goals in how individuals react to and try to cope with failure outcomes. I propose that three factors are fundamental to the understanding of whether failure stimulates or impairs motivated behaviour: the relevance of failure to a self-definition, the substitutability of tasks in the service of striving for a self-definition, and a person's commitment to pursuing the respective self-definition. Focusing on students' occupationally directed self-definitions, I first review research showing how the interplay among these factors is reflected in varied measures of achievement behaviour and then discuss practical implications of the theory.