Goals Flashcards
What is a goal?
The object or aim of an action, usually within a specific time frame. A mental representation of the desired endpoint that impacts evaluations, emotions, and behaviour.
What is the relationship between task difficulty and the amount of effort exterted?
The highest or most difficult goals produced the highest levels of effort. Performance only decreased when personal limits were reached, or commitment to the highly difficult goal lapsed. Specific, difficult goals almost always lead to higher performance than simply telling people to do their best.
“Do your best goals”: no external refernece, up to interpretation
Which theory stands in contrast to goal-setting theory? Why?
Vroom’s valence-instrumentality-expectancy theory argues that since difficult goals are harder to attain, the expectancy of goal success would be negatively correlated with performance. The contradiction is resolved when distinguishing within versus between goal conditions. When goal level is held constant, higher expectacy leads to higher levels of performance. Across goal levels, lower expectancies, associated with higher goal levels, are associated with higher performance.
Through which mechanisms do goals affect performance?
- Directive function: Goals direct attention and effort toward goal-directed activities.
- Energizing function: high goals lead to greater effort than low goals.
- Persistance: hard goals prolong effort.
- Goals affect action indirectly by leading to arousal, discovery, and/or use of tasking-relevant knowledge and strategies.
What is the importance of strategies and knowledge in goal-setting?
When confronted with task goals, people automatically use the knowledge and skills they already have. If they do not have the needed skills, they draw from a repertoire of skills they already have. If the task is new, people engage in deliberate planning. People with high self-efficacy are more likely to develop effective task strategies. When confronted with very complex tasks, it is better to urge people to do their best than to set specific goals because those can lead to anxiety. When people are trained in the appropriate strategies, specific high-performance goals lead to better use of those strategies than other types of goals.
What factors facilitate goal commitment and how can these be moderated?
Factors that make goal attainment important to the person and the belief that they can attain the goal (self-efficacy). To make goals important, people can publically commit to them, assign them, let the individual participate in setting them, and provide monetary incentives (only when it is a task they can do). Leaders can enhance self-efficacy by providing adequate training and thereby giving workers the necessary skills, role modeling, and persuasive communication that expresses belief in the person’s ability to attain the goal. Other moderating factors include feedback and task complexity.
What is the motivation hub?
The motivation hub is where the action is. It consists of personal goals, including goal commitment and self-efficacy. These variables are often the immediate motivational determinants of behaviour. As such, they mediate the effects of external incentives.
What is the relationship of satisfaction to goals?
Goals are an object or outcome to aim for and a standard for judging satisfaction. The more goal successes one has, the higher one’s total satisfaction.
What are some practical applications of goal-setting theory?
- Setting specific goals leads to increased employee productivity.
- Higher goal-setting is related to more positive appraisals.
- Training in self-regulation enables employees to cope effectively with personal and social obstables to their job attendence as well as increasing self-efficacy by giving them influence over their own behaviour.
What are some limitations of goal-setting theory?
- Goal conflict undermines performance if it motivates incompatible action tendencies.
- Goals tend to mask the effects of personality on performance.
- Lack of focus on the subconscious
What is the relationship between subconscious motivation and goals?
Ryan’s first-level explanation of motivation (conscious goal-setting) may be more reliable and tied to action than second-level explanations. Conscious and subconscious aspects of achievement motivation are unrelated. However, it is undeniable that the subconscious holds important knowledge and values, resulting in people acting without being aware of it.
What is the high-performance cycle?
Explains how high goals lead to high performance, which in turn leads to rewards; rewards result in high satisfaction and self-efficacy, espeically high self-efficacy regarding perceived ability to meet future challenging tasks through the setting of even higher goals.
What is the relationship between goal difficulty and task performance?
Locke and Latham: “So long as a person is committed to the goal, has the requisite ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.”
When are goals too specific?
Specific goals focus people’s attention on a single objective. However, goals can focus attention so narrowly that people overlook other important features of a task, they become blind to important issues unrelated to the goal. Goal setting may cause people to ignore important dimensions of performance that are not specified by the goal-setting system. Focus on short-term = lose sight of the long-term.
When are there too many goals?
When confronted with multiple goals, we tend to focus on one only. In a multigoal situation, goals that are easier to achieve and measure (quantity goals) may be given more attention than other goals (quality goals).
When are goals too challenging?
Goals should not be so challenging that employees see no point in trying. These so-called “stretch goals” have side effects: shifiting risk attitudes (riskier strategies/gambles), unethical behaviour (may use unethical methods to achieve their goal or misrepresent their performance level when reporting it), and triggering the psychological costs of goal failure (reduced self-efficacy and self-esteem).
