The Experiments On Self-worth And Goal Orientation

Self-worth/esteem is a multi-dimensional and multi-level psychological structure, which could reflect how people like and view themselves and how people are regarded by others indirectly. To study self-worth/esteem is rather valueable both theoretically and practically. Goal, cognitive representations of desired or undesired end states that serve as standards for guiding behavior, affects the process of achieving end states, the alternatives considered for a choice, and evaluations of alternatives. Higgins identifies two distinct goal orientations: promotion-focused orientation and prevention-focused orientation. The promotion goal orientation can be described along these characteristics: the needs that individuals seek to develop, to succeed, and to achieve ideal self. Promotion goal orientation can be reflected in an individual's hopes and aspirations. In contrast, the prevention orientation can be defined as follows: it is the goal with the needs for safety, security, and the needs to achieve ought self, and can be reflected in duties and obligations. This research aims to study the relationship between self-worth/esteem and goal orientation, and tries to explain how the self-worth/esteem activates different goal orientations.This study is comprised of two experiments. A scale of Chinese Students' Self-worth (Huang, Yang, 1999) was administered to screen out 61 participants (30 with high score and 31 with low score). The hypothesis of experiment 1 is: individuals with high self-worth should be more likely to choose promotion goal orientation; in contrast, individuals with low self-worth should be more likely to choose prevention goal orientation. Participants are given the task of choosing a risk assignment—a task conceptually similar to the one used by Lee, Aaker & Gardner (2004). The results agree with the hypotheses. The hypothesis of experiment 2 is: each individual have a "decision threshold" to evaluate the risk of choice. When the risk is higher...