Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Task Experience, Assigned Goals, And Performance Norms As Determinants Of Goal Choice And Performance, Jon Shanahan

Student Work

A cognitive mediation model of goal setting (Garland, 1985; Meyer & Gellatly, 1988) is explored from a perspective that combines the social information processing, expectancy-valence, and control systems literatures. Assigned goals, performance norms, and task experience are viewed as information sources that influence goal choice, and therefore effort and performance, through performance expectancy (expectancy of success) and performance valence (anticipated satisfaction with any given performance level). Subjects were 100 introductory psychology and sociology students who participated in exchange for extra credit. Subjects performed a card sorting task and were assigned to one of five treatment conditions. Each experimental subject was …