Abstract
While most work on motivational climate in physical activity contexts examines only mastery and performance climates (e.g., Duda & Balaguer, 2007), a look to earlier and current work in the educational domain (e.g., Ames, 1984; Roseth, Johnson, & Johnson, 2008) demonstrates the need to examine cooperative climates as well. Cooperative climates emphasize working together to reach group goals. The current study examined the influence of assigned individualistic, competitive, and cooperative goals on behavior, performance, and task, ego, and cooperative goal orientations. College students (N =198) were randomly assigned to experimental conditions. After hearing the assigned goal, participants played prisoner's dilemma tasks and completed questions assessing task, ego, and cooperative goal orientations. Results showed that the cooperative group participants used significantly fewer competitive behaviors and scored more points than competitive and individualistic group participants did, even after controlling for partner's behavior and points scored. Cooperative group participants also defined success in terms of working with partners more than competitive and individualistic group participants did; task and ego orientations did not vary between the three groups. As social orientations generally predict beneficial motivation-related outcomes (e.g., Hodge, Allen, & Smellie, 2008; Stuntz & Weiss, 2009), promoting a cooperative atmosphere in sport appears to have multiple benefits.
