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The present study examined the relationship between dispositional achievement goal orientations and satisfaction and beliefs about success in sport. Participants were 333 students who were administered the Perception of Success Questionnaire (POSQ) (Roberts & Balague, 1989,1991; Roberts, Treasure, & Balague, 1995), Beliefs about Success, and Satisfaction/Interest/Boredom Questionnaires (Duda & Nicholls, 1992). Consistent with theory (Nicholls, 1984, 1989) and previous research, task and ego goal orientations were found to be orthogonal. Following an extreme group split of the task and ego subscales of the POSQ, results of a 2 X 2 (High/Low Ego; High/Low Task) multivariate analyses of variance revealed a significant interaction effect between task and ego orientation. Specifically, participants high in ego and low in task orientation believed effort to be less a cause of success while high tasMow ego-oriented individuals were the least likely to attribute success to external factors. The findings are discussed in terms of their motivational implications for athletes.

This study examined the relationship between self-efficacy, wrestling performance, and affect prior to competition. 15 minutes prior to competition, 70 male high school wrestlers (M = 16.03 years) completed a self-efficacy assessment, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), and the Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety Inventory-2 (Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump, & Smith, 1990). Self-efficacy was found to be significantly associated with positive and negative affect and cognitive and somatic anxiety. Consistent with social cognitive theory, self-efficacy was a stronger predictor of performance when the measure was process oriented rather than win-loss. The findings suggest that confusion and equivocality in the literature could be removed if researchers assessed self-efficacy in a microanalytical fashion. Future research investigating the affective antecedents of performance should go beyond merely assessing negative states and recognize the potential role positive affect may play in sport behavior.