I believe that this situation represents the concept of challenge in the cognitive appraisal process.
Cognitive appraisal a theory of emotion that involves personal interpretations of people in an event to determine their emotional reaction. The most important part of this theory is the way we interpret the event (as a positive or negative occurrence), as well as what we believe caused the situation. Challenge is experienced when there is an opportunity for self-growth with available coping strategies, whereas threat is experienced when the situation is perceived as leading to failure with no available strategies to cope with it. We hypothesized that participants who appraised the situation as a challenge would perform better and adapt better to changes under difficult goal conditions, as compared with general goals or strategy goals.
