This study explores how motivational factors are associated with Taiwanese college students' cognitive, personal, and social development by incorporating both relatively global, static self-attributes, such as social-oriented achievement motivation and individual-oriented achievement motivation, which are considered to be culturally balanced conceptions of achievement motivation for Chinese people, and more domain-specific self-attributes, such as achievement goals, which are widely adopted internationally. The findings suggest that institutions can encourage students to set their own motivational goals, rather than adopting goals set by the family or the clan, and to focus on self-referenced competence development and personal improvement.