Harming others’ task-related efforts: The distinct competitive effects of ranking information on performance and mastery goal individuals

This paper demonstrates that, when individuals with mastery goals and their exchange partners occupy increasingly higher ranks on a task (#4 and #5 vs. #51 and #52 or #96 and #97, on a top-100), they display stronger interpersonally harmful behavior in order to interfere with exchange partners’ task performance. In contrast, performance goal individuals damage the task performance of others more when ranks are low or high rather than average (#4 and #5 or #96 and #97 vs. #51 and #52). These results signify that social comparison information is processed differently by mastery and performance goal individuals. The resulting interpersonally harmful behaviors depend on whether such behavior is instrumental for their particular achievement goal pursuit or not