Exploring How Achievement Goal Orientation Profiles Shape Resilience, Psychological Richness, and Loneliness in Chinese University Students: A Latent Profile Analysis

Students’ goal orientation is not only highly relevant for academic achievement, but also can serve as a potential perspective for analyzing students’ emotional well-being. Our research explored the potential combination of achievement goals based on a 2×2 framework (i.e,mastery-approach, performance-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-avoidance ) by conducting latent profile analysis (LPA) and examined how achievement goal patterns affect students’ emotional well-being. A link to an online survey including scales of achievement goal orientations,resilience, psychological richness and loneliness was shared via the students’ online class groups.The final sample consisted of 2608 participants (1579 males & 1029 females), aged 18-21 (Mage = 18.84 years, SD ± 0.90). A person-centered approach was applied to identify four types of goal profiles, named as disengaged (low means on all dimensions), indifference (moderate means on all dimensions), success-oriented (high means on all dimensions), and approach (high mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, and performance-approach/low performance-avoidance). In general, students in the approach group scored highest on resilience and psychological richness and lower on loneliness than those in the other three groups. Compared with the low and moderate motivation groups, the succeed-oriented profile showed better resilience and psychological richness. There was also a significant difference in psychological richness between the indifference group and the disengaged group.Our results suggest that higher motivation leads to relatively better well-being outcomes, regardless of the type of goal orientation. It is worth mentioning that the most adaptive results can be observed when high motivation and low performance avoidance goals are combined.