Interrelationships between expressive individualism and other achievement goal orientations among African and European American athletes

Much research has focused on how the African American culture differs from those values and motivational perspectives exhibited in the European American culture. In such work, however, it is important to examine potential variations in motivation using goals that may be more pertinent to African Americans. The purpose of this study was to examine the construct of expressive individualism and its relationship to other goal perspectives established in the sport literature. High school athletes (116 European Americans, 55 African Americans) completed a multisection inventory that revealed that the expressive individualism scale had two dimensions, personal expression and appearance. Correlational and second-order factor analyses indicated that the personal expression dimension was associated with task orientation for African Americans, whereas for European Americans it was related to ego orientation. The appearance dimension was associated with an ego orientation for both groups. Thus, the goal of expressive individualism in sport appears to have both a self-referenced and normative component that is culturally dependent.