The Effect of Goal-Setting and Encouragement on the Performance of Imbecile Men

Abstract

Following previous work, three groups of imbecile men were asked to carry out a simple task over a period of nine trials. Self-competition (Goal) had previously improved the performance of one sub-group on this task significantly, and experiment showed that this improvement had been retained. By re-dividing the subjects, three groups were matched and asked to perform under different motivating conditions. These were: Control, Goal with Encouragement, and Goal with Indifference or neutrality shown by the investigator. Treatment of the results was based on the slope of regression lines. It was found that encouragement had a significant effect on the performance of subjects working under goal conditions, but that goal conditions without encouragement did not significantly improve performance over control conditions.