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The Effects of Self‐Set Goals on Task Performance
Author(s) -
HARKINS STEPHEN G.,
LOWE MALIA D.
Publication year - 2000
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.1559-1816.2000.tb02303.x
Subject(s) - set (abstract data type) , psychology , task (project management) , goal setting , social psychology , meta analysis , cognitive psychology , applied psychology , computer science , management , economics , medicine , programming language
Locke & Latham (1990a) report that specific, difficult goals lead to better performance than “do‐your‐best” instructions, whether the goals are self‐set or are set by an external source. However, in Experiment I, as well as in previous research (White, Kjelgaard, & Harkins, 1995), we did not find self‐set goal effects. A meta‐analysis showed that self‐set goal effects can be produced if two conditions are met: Prior to setting their goals, participants take part in a pretest that is equal in duration to the experimental task; and the experimenter has access to the participants' goals and the performances. Experiment 2 confirmed these meta‐analytic findings by showing that when these two conditions were met, goals stringent enough to produce the effects were set, and goal‐setting effects were obtained.