PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Mark Johnston

Industrial/Organizational
May 1993
 

Effects of Goal Setting Strategies on Task Performance in Interdependent Work Groups

    Four goal setting treatments – group goal only, group goal plus individual goal, individual goal only and no specific goal – were studied in a group interdependent task to determine the most effective strategy.  Previous research has suggested that all strategies will result in successful task performance except for an individual goal alone.  The reasoning is that the nature of the task produces effective cooperation and work efficiency, but an individual goal alone produces competition which results in poor performance.

    It was hypothesized that setting an individual goal alone would result in significantly lower task performance, lower feelings of cooperation and fewer self-reports of cooperative task strategies than the other three goal setting strategies.  The results did not support these hypotheses.
    The individual goal only treatment may not have operated as expected, so the possibility that goal acceptance, cooperation or in-process planning explained performance differences was discussed.

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