To confirm or to conform? Performance goals as a regulator of conflict with more-competent others.

Despite the fact that most competence-relevant settings are socially relevant settings, the interpersonal effects of achievement goals have been understudied. This is all the more surprising in the case of performance goals, for which self-competence is assessed using an other-referenced standard. In the present research, performance goals are conceived as a social tool for regulating interpersonal behaviors with more-competent others. In the...