Armstrong's Theory Of The Achievement Goal Theory

The Achievement Goal Theory (AGT; Nicholls, 1984) was developed in light of this criticism, to investigate the responses of an athlete to the type of career failure and/or decline that Armstrong experienced, particularly within a sporting context. This theory addresses the social-cognitive elements, which still provide a sound theoretical framework in the modern world of sport (Mallett & Hanrahan, 2004). AGT today is characterised by two types of motivation: Task goals and Ego goals. A task-orientated athlete would rate their competence based on their mastery of a task, and would strive for success through effort. This differs to an ego-orientated athlete who would base their competence on their superiority, and would strive for success by

1) (Conroy, Elliot & Hofer, 2003). This model is comprised of the mastery-approach (striving to attain task mastery and personal improvement), performance-approach (striving to achieve positive evaluations for abilities), mastery-avoidance (striving to avoid falling short of, or to lose ability, skills of knowledge), and performance-avoidance (striving to avoid negative evaluations of abilities). Research has shown that the mastery-approach and performance-approach mind-sets result in the experience of more positive emotions and often increased success rates (Stoeber & Crombie,

The link has been made between ego-orientated athletes and cheating as opposed to task-orientated athletes who are less likely to cheat (Marlow, 2012). Cheating has been shown to revolve around the ego-orientated motivation towards success, whereby an athlete focusses their emphasis on a successful outcome such as winning, with no view on the processes involved in attaining that outcome. Ego-orientated athletes are also likely to make inter-individual comparisons, such as in Armstrong’s case where he stated “other athletes were using the drugs, it was a level playing field out there” (Roan & Slater,