Setting Goals for Success

Question 1

• The Bobo Doll Experiment:
  Sample children were presented with new social models of violent and nonviolent behavior toward an inflatable rebounding Bobo doll.
  Result were: The group of children who saw the violent behavior model became violent to the doll, while the control group who was presented with the nonviolent behavior model was rarely violent
  to the doll.
• This experiment has proven the hypothesis that
  social modeling is a very effective way of
  learning.
• Bandura’s social cognitive theory states that
  people are active participants in their
  environment and are not simply shaped by that
  environment.

Answer 1

Albert E. Bandura’s Self-efficacy

Question 2

is “a person’s estimate that a given behavior will lead to certain outcomes.”

Answer 2

Outcome expectancy

Question 3

is “the conviction that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce the outcomes.”

Answer 3

Efficacy expectation

Question 4

described people with two types of
mindset:
People who believe that success is based on their innate abilities have a “fixed” theory of intelligence and go under a fixed mindset.
People who believe that success is based on hard work, learning, training, and perseverance have a growth theory of intelligence, which goes under growth mindset.

Answer 4

Carol S. Dweck’s Fixed and Growth Mindset
Theory

Question 5

___ individuals dread failure because it is a negative statement on their basic abilities;

Answer 5

Fixed-mindset

Question 6

____ individuals do not mind or fear failure as much because they realize their performance can be improved and learning comes from failure

Answer 6

Growth-mindset

Question 7

The basic contents of goal setting theory are summarized in terms of 14 categories of findings:
1. The more difficult the goal, the greater the achievement.
2. The more specific or explicit the goal, the
more precisely performance is regulated.
3. Goals that are both specific and difficult lead to the highest performance.
4. Commitment to goals is most critical when goals are specific and difficult.
5. High commitment to goals is attained when:
a. the individual is convinced that the goal is important;
and
b. the individual is convinced that the goal is attainable (or that, at least, progress can
be made toward it).
6. In addition to having a direct effect on performance,
self-efficacy influences:
a. the difficulty level of the goal chosen or
accepted;
b. commitment to goals;
c. the response to negative feedback or failure; and
d. the choice of task strategies.
7. Goal setting is most effective when there is feedback that shows progress in relation to the goal.
8. Goal setting (along with self-efficacy) mediates the effect of knowledge of past performance on subsequent performance.
9. Goals affect performance by affecting the direction of action, the degree of effort exerted, and the persistence of action over time.
10. Goals stimulate planning in general. Often, the planning quality is higher than that which occurs without goals. When people possess task or goal-relevant plans as a result of experience or training, they activate them automatically when confronted with a performance goal. Newly learned plans or strategies are most likely to be utilized under the stimulus of a specific, difficult goal.
11. When people strive for goals on complex tasks, they are least effective in discovering suitable task strategies if:
a. they have no prior experience or
training on the task;
b. there is high pressure to perform well; and
c. there is high time pressure (to perform well immediately).
12. Goals (including goal commitment), in
combination with self-efficacy, mediate or partially mediate the effects of several personality traits and incentives on performance.
13. Goal-setting and goal-related mechanisms can be trained and/or adopted in the absence of training for
the purpose of self-regulation.
14. Goals serve as standards of self-satisfaction, with harder goals demanding higher accomplishment in order to attain self-satisfaction than easy goals. Goals
can also be used to enhance task interest, reduce boredom, and promote goal clarity. When used to punish or intimidate people, however, goals increase stress and anxiety.

Answer 7

Edwin A. Locke’s Goal Setting Theory