Relationship between protégés’ self‐concordance and life purpose: The moderating role of mentor feedback environment

Abstract Aim To deepen our research on how to develop a more positive life purpose, this study investigates the role of protégés’ self‐concordance and mentor feedback environment in shaping protégés’ life purpose. Method This study was a cross‐sectional study using a sample of nurses. 700 valid questionnaires were collected. Jamovi and Process Macro were used for analysis. Results The positive association between self‐concordance and protégés’ life purpose is stronger when mentor feedback environment is high than when mentor feedback environment is low. Conclusion Protégés’ life purpose can be enhanced by self‐concordance, especially for protégés who work in supportive mentor feedback environment. Implications for nursing management It is important to build a supportive mentor feedback environment. Further, protégés should promote the transformation of extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation.

Therefore, research is needed to fill a gap and explore the effect of mentor feedback environment on the purpose of life.

| Self-concordance and life purpose
Previous studies have found that intrinsic motivation plays an active role in the formation of college students' life purpose (Shin et al., 2018). Individuals with strong intrinsic motivation are willing to focus on tasks (Latham & Pinder, 2005). Similarly, the development of life purpose, especially self-confidence in life purpose, is affected by the degree of interest and enjoyment of the task itself (Damon et al., 2003).
For college students majoring in nursing, the college emphasizes achievements in learning and practice equally. All students must participate in practice to complete elective and compulsory courses, complete credits or earn additional credits for employment (Salili, Chiu, & Hong, 2001). Once the topic is related to work, external motivations such as salary and grades become salient. According to SDT, self-concordance refers to the degree of integration of the goals set by individuals with their internal interests and values. This can reflect the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, thus illustrating that goal self-concordance integrates intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Theoretically, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation conflicts can impair the sense of life purpose (Bono & Judge, 2003). Although the relative autonomy of extrinsic motivation is low, it will also promote the development of life purpose to a certain extent. Therefore, individuals who tend to experience greater subjective mixed emotions when conflicting motivations occur can deal with the negative consequences and rewarding features simultaneously, achieving a more purposeful life. Based on the above discussion, we offer the following assumption: Hypothesis 1: Self-concordance will relate positively to life purpose.

| Mentor feedback environment and life purpose
Prior literature has shown that feedback is associated with life purpose. Feedback can provide clear information to help one explore the meaning deeply and how their job influences the future of others and themselves. In turn, this sense stimulates a direction for life purpose. Shin et al. (2018) have found that informative feedback predicted confidence in purpose positively. Research has found that informative feedback can enhance the belief in their ability (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
A supportive feedback environment provides usable and high-quality feedback that serves as a useful resource for protégés to respond to expectations (Avey, Luthans, & Jensen, 2009). The informative feedback provided by the mentor successfully regulates the learning process by increasing protégés' confidence in their abilities (Beek, Zuiker, & Zwart, 2019). These positive feelings can encourage protégés to be more active in activities, thus providing a way for good reflection on life purpose (Bundick, 2011;Bundick & Tirri, 2014;Eyler, 2002;Damon et al., 2003). The mentor feedback environment, as support for psychological resources, can promote the improvement of life purpose. In view of the above research, we offer the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 2: Mentor feedback environment will relate positively to life purpose.

| The moderating role of mentor feedback environment between goal self-concordance and life purpose
Supportive social contexts can enhance the positive effect of selfconcordance. In the previous study, it has found that the supportive feedback environment had the function of information guidance, which can enhance the individual's recognition of the goal, improve the level of self-concordance and make the individual pay more effort in the process of achieving the goal (Gong & Li, 2019). In this paper, supportive mentor feedback environment will improve protégés' confidence in their ability, which enhances the protégés' motivation to pursue excellence, clarifies their true targets to achieve their goals with self-concordance and point out the direction for protégés' life purpose. At the same time, protégés will also seek feedback; they take the initiative to ask the mentor for feedback, and this initiative will be conducive to protégés on life purpose.
Extrinsic motivation may lessen the sense of enjoyment of a job primarily done for the reward (Ryan & Deci, 2000), but in some supportive contexts, extrinsic motivation can come to be felt by the person as motivated by responsibility. Because the mentor feedback environment can increase protégés' responsibility for themselves and others, it can enhance the positive effect of self-concordance impact on life purpose (Berrios, Totterdell, & Kellett, 2017).
However, even if the protégés' goals are consistent with their own interests and values such that they have self-concordance, if the protégés do not receive useful feedback, protégés will not feel supported and will lack reflection on life purpose (Dawson et al., 2019).
When a person has a high level of self-concordance, the person does not enjoy the task, but thinks the task is important and thus does it willingly (Bono & Judge, 2003). Thus, different supportive levels of feedback environment may affect the relationship between self-concordance and life purpose. In view of the above research, we offer the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 3: Mentor feedback environment moderates the relationship between self-concordance and life purpose; that relationship is stronger when mentor feedback environment is high than when mentor feedback environment is low. We describe our research model in Figure 1.

| Study design
This study was a cross-sectional study using a sample of 792 nurses who had an internship in China. All participants came from cities in Shandong and Hebei Province.

| Sample
The participants of this study were student nurses from China who were in nursing practice. Of the 700 nurses completing a valid survey, 83.28% (N = 583) were female and 16.72% (N = 117) were male.
Their average age was 21.46 (SD 1.13), and all were over 19 years old, the age of majority in Mainland China. Concerning education, 94.85% (N = 664) will hold a bachelor's degree and below within 1 year (such as graduate from 2 or 3 years of college and technical secondary school).

| Instruments
All items use a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 (none at all)-5 (a great deal) for measurement.

| Self-concordance
We measured self-concordance by using Sheldon and Elliot's scale (1998). Cronbach's α for the measure of self-concordance was .87. We used the standard of good fit to determine whether the variable had good structural validity (Hu & Bentler, 1999): χ 2 /df is <3, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) is <.05, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) and comparative fit index (CFI) are over .90. The fit indices of this scale were χ 2 /df = 2.87, RMSEA = .04, CFI = .91, TLI = .90. Hence, this is an appropriate survey to measure self-concordance.

| Mentor feedback environment
We measured mentor feedback environment with a scale established by Gong and Li (2019). This scale has been tested in China and has good reliability and validity. This instrument has 21 items in total with items like "My mentor gives me useful feedback about my job performance." Cronbach's α for this scale was .88. The fit indices were χ 2 /df = 2.37, RMSEA = .03, CFI = .93, TLI = .91.

| Life purpose
The purpose subscale of Psychological Well-Being by Ryff (2014) was used to test life purpose. The scale includes nine items measuring participants' future orientation, such as "Some people have no purpose in their lives, but I am not"; "I do not know exactly why I want to work hard in life." Cronbach's α for this scale was .94.

| Controls
We controlled for socio-demographic differences, including gender, age and education. We tested age as a discrete variable and gender and education as age groups.

Self -concordance
Mentor feedback environment Life purpose

| Data collection
With the agreement of the participants and the director of nursing of the hospital, all the questionnaires were completed during the work hours. The student nurses were measured by layer cluster sampling.
The questionnaires were sent to nurses at four hospitals. These nurses first read and signed a consent form indicating that their participation was voluntary and guaranteeing the anonymity of their responses. All participants were given a description of the purpose of this study. After signing and returning the consent form, each nurse was presented with the survey instrument. Using convenience sampling, 792 questionnaires were distributed, and 700 valid questionnaires were returned (an effective response rate of 88.38%).

| Ethical considerations
This study was conducted with the approval of the ethics committee of Liaocheng University (2017_7_14).

| RE SULTS
Among social-demographic variables, because we test age as a discrete variable and the cases of "other" education level were too few, we conducted t tests or analysis of variance for the life purpose based on gender and education. Female nurse (3.99 ± 0.94) had a higher life purpose than male nurse (3.28 SD 0.87) (t = 5.04, p < .01).
The nurse who holds a bachelor's degree and below within 1 year (such as graduate from 2 or 3 years of college and technical secondary school) (3.63 SD 0.76) had a higher life purpose than others (3.03 SD 0.78) (t = 3.84, p < .01).
From the data in Table 1, the mean scores for self-concordance, mentor feedback environment and life purpose were 2.61 (SD 0.65), 3.03 (SD 0.74) and 3.37 (SD 0.96), respectively. The association between self-concordance and life purpose is positive and significant (r = .58, p < .01). Positive associations were found between mentor feedback environment and life purpose (r = .42, p < .01). The association between self-concordance and mentor feedback environment is also positive and significant (r = .41 p < .01). Table 2 shows that self-concordance associated with life purpose (β = 0.41, t = 6.85, p < .01), supporting H1. Mentor feedback environment also associated with life purpose positively (β = 0.14, t = 2.17, p < .05), supporting H2.
The interaction term for self-concordance and mentor feedback environment was significant (β = 0.18, t = 3.11, p < .01). Figure 2 illustrates the form of the interaction. Table 3 shows that the conditional direct effect of self-concordance was stronger and significant at a high level of mentor feedback environment (conditional effect = 0.60, SE = .08, t = 7.79, p < .01, 95% confidence interval of 0.45−0.76) and at a moderate level of mentor feedback environment (conditional indirect effect = 0.41, SE = .06, t = 6.58, p < .01, 95% confidence interval of 0.29−0.52), but was positive and not significant at a low level of mentor feedback environment (conditional indirect effect = 0.21, SE = .10, t = 2.18, ns, 95% confidence interval of − 0.12 to 0.33). Hence, H3 was supported.

| D ISCUSS I ON
Prior research has mainly focused on the positive effect of intrinsic motivation on life purpose while failing to explore the effect of motivation when both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations exist simultaneously. We examined how self-concordance, which refers to the extent of internalization of extrinsic motivation, was associated with life purpose and the boundary condition of this relationship.
The study found that self-concordance associated with life purpose positively and when mentor feedback environment is high that the relationship is stronger than when mentor feedback environment is low.
The results support the positive association between self-concordance and life purpose. When protégés set goals that are consistent with their interests and values, they will be a higher intrinsic motivation to participate and glad to spend their energy on the tasks. At the same time, when protégés take part in activities to earn credits and complete courses, they are stimulated by extrinsic motivation and demonstrate a pursuit of goals. Although the positive function of extrinsic motivation is relatively low compared with intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation will play an important role in the reflection of protégés' life purpose when it is integrated with intrinsic motivation (Bono & Judge, 2003). Kashdan and McKnight (2009) (Dawson et al., 2019). Feedback environment is a broad concept of feedback, and feedback from mentors provides clear and descriptive information to help protégés understand their problems more deeply so that protégés receive useful feedback. In the unsupportive feedback environment, protégés do not receive useful feedback and lack initiative in feedback-seeking, thus fail to discover their life purpose (Gong & Li, 2019). Compared with supervisors and co-workers, the role of the mentor is special. Mentor feedback has the advantages of both supervisor feedback and co-worker feedback, that is, experience and accessibility. The mentor can better serve as a role model and provide feedback that is conducive to professional development and creative performance. In the mentor feedback environment, we should pay more attention to setting up role models for innovation. Mentors' expectations and goal setting for creative tasks can encourage protégés to connect ideas from different parts and find unique solutions to problems in unknown areas (Gong & Li, 2019). In the process of instructing the protégés, mentors should not only give the protégés time to think and explore, but also must be patient with the process of trial and error (Beek et al., 2019). Thus, the protégés who work in a supportive mentor

| CON CLUS ION
Self-Determination Theory offers a new perspective on life purpose.
This change of perspective highlights how self-concordance is a potential path to life purpose. Based on our findings, when nurses work in a supportive mentor feedback environment established, nurses' life purpose can be clarified and enhanced through perceived selfconcordance level improving.

ACK N OWLED G EM ENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge all the participants.

CO N FLI C T O F I NTE R E S T
No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).

AUTH O R CO NTR I B UTI O N S
ZG and VL: Conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data. WH and NZ: Manuscript drafting or revising it critically for important intellectual content. ZG, VL and WH: Final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. ZG and NZ: Accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

E TH I C A L A PPROVA L
This study was conducted with the approval of the ethics committee of Liaocheng University (2017_7_14).