The Relationship of Outcome Valence, Personal Goal and Commitment to Performance When NO Goals Are Assigned

摘要

A 3x3 factorial design examined the effects of three degrees of feedback/feedforward (given before task performance) and three levels of objective probability of success on task performance. Subjective expectancy, personal goal, valence of winning, and commitment to winning were also measured. The experimental manipulations had no effect on performance, indicating once again the extreme fragility of Atkinson's (1958) widely cited finding of a curvelinear relationship between probability of success and performance. Personal goal, valence and commitment, however, were significantly related to performance with commitment showing the strongest relationship. This is the first goal-setting study to obtain a significant effect for commitment, a finding which may be the result of goals (including the goal of winning) being self-set rather than assigned. (Author)