Despite the accumulating evidence about the role of perceived cost in influencing academic performance and persistence, the distinction between different dimensions of perceived cost, especially between emotional cost and psychological cost, is far from well understood. Some researchers have treated emotional cost and negative emotions as equivalent, even though these constructs did not stem from the same theoretical root. Across three studies (N = 263, 143, and 170 respectively), I sought to disentangle the relations between emotional cost, psychological cost, and anxiety. I examined evidence for the structural, discriminant, and predictive validity of the three constructs. Results generally supported the empirical distinction between emotional cost and psychological cost, but opposed the distinction between emotional cost and anxiety. Results also indicated that emotional cost and psychological cost predicted academic performance with different strength, whereas emotional cost and anxiety showed almost identical predictive power. Implications for future motivation research were discussed.
