The Effect of Goal Specificity on the Relationship between Expectancy and Task Performance.
Abstract
One hundred seventy-five male undergraduates solved arithmetic problems under one of three experimental conditons of objective probability of task success and one of two conditions of 'goal specificity', i.e., subjects had either a 'specific' goal of some explicit number of problems to solve or an 'ambiguous' goal of beating some proportion of other subjects in their experimental groups. The relationship between the objective probability of task success and performance was found to be curvilinear in both goal conditions such that maximum performance occurred at the intermediate probability level. There was also a significant relationship between the subjects' expressed subjective expectancies of success (which were only slightly related to the objective probabilities) and performance. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1972
- Accession Number
- AD0747954
Entities
People
- Marvin D. Dunnette
- Stephan J. Motowidlo
- Virginia Loehr
Organizations
- University of Minnesota