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The Effects of Commitment to Performance Goals on Effort 1
Author(s) -
McCaul Kevin D.,
Hinsz Verlin B.,
McCaul Harriette S.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1987.tb00323.x
Subject(s) - psychology , task (project management) , memorization , social psychology , goal setting , goal orientation , goal pursuit , identification (biology) , organizational commitment , applied psychology , cognitive psychology , botany , management , economics , biology
The laboratory experiments were designed to examine the effects of commitment to a performance goal on the level of effort exerted to achieve the goal. In both experiments, college students worked on two memorization tasks and, after receiving performance feedback on the first task, commitment to either an easy or a more difficult goal for the second task was varied. In the first experiment, goal commitment was manipulated either by giving the students perceived choice over setting their goal or by assigning them to one of the two goal levels. In the second experiment, goal commitment was manipulated by publicly identifying students' goals or by keeping the goals private. To assess effort, participants were allowed to spend as little or as much time as they desired studying for the second task. In both experiments, the commitment manipulations (high choice or public identification) led to significantly greater persistence in studying, regardless of the goal level. In addition, high‐commitment subjects tended to be more successful in reaching their goals than low‐commitment subjects. These experiments suggest that commitment to a goal has motivational properties that prompt an increase in effort.