Exploring Achievement Striving as a Moderator of the Grading Leniency Effect

Abstract

Graduate and undergraduate students were asked to rate hypothetical teachers in a full-factorial, full-profile conjoint task. Teacher attributes of grading leniency, workload assigned, enthusiasm, and real-world orientation were manipulated. Achievement striving, a subscale of the Type A personality scale, was found to be inversely related to the tendency to give higher evaluations to lenient-grading teachers at the undergraduate level but not at the graduate level. Additional analyses and implications are discussed.