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Adjustment, Depression, and Minimal Goal Setting: The Moderating Effect of Performance Feedback
Author(s) -
Catanzaro Salvatore J.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1991.tb00775.x
Subject(s) - psychology , depression (economics) , cognitive psychology , clinical psychology , psychotherapist , social psychology , economics , macroeconomics
In this study I tested hypotheses about changes in expectancy and minimal goal statements and the relations of these variables to adjustment. Seventy‐seven male college students completed the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank and the Beck Depression Inventory and subsequently received success or failure feedback on tasks for which they provided expectancy and minimal goal statements. Expectancies and minimal goals changed differently, relative to each other, as a function of performance feedback. Modest relations of adjustment and dysphoria with minimal goals were found, but these were moderated by performance feedback: Under failure, poorer adjustment and greater dysphoria were associated with higher minimal goals; under success, poorer adjustment and greater dysphoria were associated with lower minimal goals, contrary to a widely held hypothesis. Moreover, although the effects of adjustment and dysphoria on minimal goal setting were similar in strength and direction, these effects were independent of each other. Thus, adjustment‐minimal goal relations must be understood in light of situational parameters and may reflect two processes, only one of which is related to mood.