Locke, E. A. (1968). Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives. Organizational behavior and human performance, 3(2), 157-189.
Summary
Behaviorism attempts to explain behavior solely through the use of quantitative, objective facts. The prevalence of behaviorism research has caused psychology at large to neglect the study of subjective states (see Kuhn). Task performance is directly influenced by goals and intentions - both non-observable factors. Even many unconscious acts find their roots in conscious intentions (a tennis player who swings without thinking first had to consciously learn to swing).
Hard goals, while successfully completed less frequently, elicit higher performance than easy goals. Results include controlling for ability and are robust across a variety of domains including cognitive (e.g., brainstorming, complex computation), perception (perceptual speed), and even physicality (e.g., reaction time). One experiment showed that having an experimenter set a hard goal before asking the subject to set their personal goals resulted in higher performance, while allowing the subject to set their personal goals first resulted in poor performance (possibly due to an anchoring effect).
Setting specific hard goals elicits higher performance than simply attempting to “do your best.” One experiment showed that setting a performance goal during an appraisal interview caused 65% of subjects to improve in relation to a specific item, while, in items that didn’t have a specific goal, only 27% showed improvement. Another experiment provided evidence that thinking through specific goals completely resulted in greater goal achievement.
Behavioral intention, or the intention to respond in a certain way, also influences performance. One study assigned three different goals to subjects: to try to “succeed” as much as possible, to “get as great a sense of personal achievement as possible.” and to “overcome the greatest possible challenges.” The challenge group performed the highest, followed by the achievement group (the “succeed” group came in last).
It is not enough to simply assign a goal. There was a relationship between assigned goals and performance only when subjected accepted their goals and actually worked for them. External incentives are “an event or object external to the individual which can incite action.” Money does not always work as intended. In one experiment, subjects with the same goal produced the same amount regardless of whether or not they were paid a bonus for goal completion. Another study showed that a piece-rate system of pay did not increase productivity. Post-task feedback (what the authors called “knowledge of score”) had no effect, while goal-setting did. Only when “knowledge of score” was related to goal-setting (e.g., using and reporting on a key metric), did performance increase. Artifically stringent time limits increased performance, ostensibly because they induced different subgoals. The results disappeared when work was self-paced. Participation in goal-setting increased performance, but the influence was smaller than that of simply setting goals. Competition appears to increase performance because it facilitates “the setting of goals that might not have been set at all” otherwise.
Application
Set hard, specific goals. For highest performance, a third party (e.g., a boss) should set hard goals before employees set goals themselves. Ask someone else to set you a hard goal. It needs to be something that you will buy into though, otherwise your performance won’t increase. I wonder if repeated failure to achieve a hard goal results in increased frustration and a subsequent decrease in performance.
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