The process by which an increase in assigned goal affects an individual's choice of personal goal was examined in a within-subjects laboratory experiment in which 51 undergraduate students responded to a series of decision-making scenarios. Analyses supported the idea that formal goal assignment affects personal goal choice via the assigned goal's influence on subjects' judgments of valence and motivational force across various levels of task performance (i.e., performance-valence and performance-force functions). Distinctions between within-persons and across-persons research on these issues are discussed.
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