By Jingyu Zhang and Xijing Wang.

What goals do you value the most as a student? Getting outstanding scores, ranking among the best, or exploring knowledge and mastering skills? If grades and rankings are your top priorities, do you ever feel like a ‘learning machine’ and lose touch with your true self? Drawing on Achievement Goal Theory (Dweck, 1986), our new study (Zhang et al., 2024), published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, examines how performance goals negatively influence students’ self-perceptions.

The Psychology Behind the ‘Learning Machines’ Faced With Performance Goals

How do students perceive themselves when performance goals (e.g., getting high grades, outperforming peers, and demonstrating competence) become dominant? Take, for example, college students who spend many hours memorizing materials for an upcoming exam. They’re not exploring the subject out of intrinsic motivations, like curiosity or interest; they’re just doing it to get an A. This rote learning, driven by performance goals, may lead to a ‘robotic’ or ‘machine-like’ learning style.

In a performance-oriented educational context, self-objectification occurs when students view themselves as tools or objects meant to meet external standards or others’ expectations, often at the expense of their own emotions, interests, and sense of subjectivity. For example, a high school student might deeply enjoy oil painting but abandon this passion because it doesn’t directly contribute to their GPA. This deprivation of their full humanity transforms students into “learning machines,” where their self-worth is solely tied to their transcripts, rankings, or others’ approval.

During this process of self-objectification, students increasingly lose connection with their authentic selves—a concept known in academia as authenticity. Authentic learning means staying true to one’s interests, engaging in introspective questioning, and pursuing subjects with genuine curiosity and passion. However, an overemphasis on performance goals can stifle such authenticity. As a result, students may feel compelled to conform to what they believe will secure good grades, often at the expense of their genuine thoughts and feelings.

What Are the Research Findings?

Our research showed that when students are predominantly driven by performance goals, they often perceive themselves as tools or instruments for achieving high performance (self-objectification). In this process, they lose connection with the intrinsic aspects of learning. For example, instead of exploring knowledge for personal interests or self-development, they view learning solely as a means to attain high grades and see themselves as tools for academic success rather than individuals with critical thoughts, feelings, and autonomy. Consequently, this self-objectification leads to a diminished sense of authenticity, the feeling of being true to oneself.

In particular, our research involved six studies, involving participants ranging from middle-schoolers to college students, and from different cultural backgrounds in China and the UK. We employed various methods, including two cross-sectional surveys (Studies 1 and 3), a two-wave longitudinal study (Study 2), and three online experiments (Studies 4-5b). In these studies, we measured students’ performance goal orientation, self-objectification, and authenticity. Studies 1-3 provided convergent evidence: a strong performance goal orientation was associated with higher levels of self-objectification, which in turn led to reduced authenticity. In Study 4, we manipulated students’ goal orientations, and results suggested that compared to students in the control condition, those in the performance goal condition reported significantly higher levels of self-objectification and lower levels of authenticity. In Studies 5a and 5b, we found that a mastery goal condition (focusing on the understanding and mastery of knowledge) did not lead to self-objectification. This finding further indicated that self-objectification is specifically triggered by an emphasis on performance goals, rather than all types of goal pursuit.

Taken together, our research provided robust empirical evidence that the more students focused on performance goals, the more they turned themselves into “learning machines” (self-objectification) and lost touch with their true selves (authenticity).

What Can Be Done to Overcome Self-objectification?

Performance goals have become a dominant force in today’s educational system. Schools set various external standards to evaluate and compare students, pushing them constantly to achieve high grades, outperform peers, and meet academic benchmarks. But what does this focus really do to students? According to the Stress in America study by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2009, achieving excellent school performance was one of the top stressors among adolescents. Building on these findings, our research highlights the harmful effects of performance goals on students’ self-perception: they lead to self-objectification and alienation from their true selves, contributing to reduced mental health among students.

To address self-objectification and its negative effects in educational settings, educators can implement several strategies. First, it’s crucial to avoid creating a performance-oriented goal structure that encourages social comparison. For instance, teachers should refrain from publicly praising top performers and ensure that evaluation standards are not solely based on normative performance (Kaplan and Maehr, 2007). Instead, students should be acknowledged for mastering content, exploring their interests independently, and fostering personal growth through learning. In essence, learning tasks should be designed to facilitate education, not merely as an endpoint.