Arts , Humanities & Social Science

Abstract

The current study examines whether gender differences exist in general academic contexts within three achievement emotions domains: prospective outcome emotions, retrospective outcome emotions and activity emotions. One hundred and forty-five undergraduates from a southwest public university participated in the study. Participants were asked to complete twenty-four items assessing their experience of emotions in learning. Discriminant function analysis revealed that gender differences exist statistically and practically in prospective outcome emotions and activity emotions, but not in retrospective outcome emotions. Moreover, female participants scored higher on prospective outcome emotions, retrospective outcome emotions and activity emotions than male participants. This study fills in the gap of prior studies only focusing on investigating gender in selected individual emotions (e.g., anxiety). Future studies may explore if other factors (e.g., culture, age) interact with gender differences in achievement emotions. Since gender matters in achievement emotions, assisting female and male students to develop effective strategies of managing emotions in studying may improve their academic performance.