The effects of goal difficulty on physiological arousal, cognition, and task performance.

Ian R. Gellatly · John P. Meyer

108 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Applied Psychology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Education, Achievement, and Giftedness Sport Psychology and Performance Behavioral Health and Interventions

Abstract

Two laboratory experiments with 117 undergraduate students were conducted to examine (a) the effect of assigned goal difficulty on arousal (self-report and heart rate), cognition (perceived norm, self-efficacy strength, and personal goal), and behavioral (task performance) measures and (b) the role of heart rate as a mediator of the goal-difficulty-performance relation. All Ss performed a task requiring cognitive and physical responses. Results of both experiments demonstrated that assigned goal difficulty affected heart rate, cognition, and task performance and that heart-rate change was positively related to the cognitive and behavioral measures. Regression analyses suggested that a cognitive-affective mechanism may mediate the goal-difficulty-performance relation. Discussion is focused on the theoretical and practical implications of integrating an arousal concept within goal-setting theory.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 108 citations exist upstream.

References

1970Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory 1977Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.1991A Theory of Goal Setting and Task PerformanceA Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance, by LockeEdwin A. and LathamGary P.. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990.1952Handbook of Experimental Psychology 1991Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: Foundations of Social Behavior, Vol. 2.1963Expression of the emotions in man

Cited by

2002The joint effect of informational mood impact and performance-contingent consequences on effort-related cardiovascular response.2008The interactive effect of achievement motivation and task difficulty on mental effort 2005Incentive effects on cardiovascular reactivity in active coping with unclear task difficulty 2018Translating Informal Theories Into Formal Theories: The Case of the Dynamic Computational Model of the Integrated Model of Work Motivation

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.