Social Mobility and Motivational Payoff: Achievement Motivation Is More Important in Students' Performance and Well-Being in Cultures With High Versus Low Social Mobility.

This article examines how societal-level social mobility moderates the effects of two types of achievement motivation—mastery goals (MG), defined as the intrinsic desire to improve competence, and fear of failure (FoF), the motive to avoid failure—on high school students' academic performance and psychological well-being across 65 regions using data from the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The findings indicate that both MG and FoF more strongly predict academic achievement in societies with high social mobility, where individuals have greater opportunities to improve their social status, whereas these motivational effects are diminished in low-mobility societies. Additionally, FoF negatively impacts students' well-being more severely in high-mobility contexts, while MG consistently relates to better well-being regardless of social mobility levels. These results highlight the importance of considering socioecological factors like social mobility when applying achievement motivation theories across diverse cultural settings and suggest that educational interventions may need to be tailored according to societal context.