The effects of goal difficulty on performance: a field experiment.

Abstract : Perceptions of a goal in an area as challenging, easy, and impossible did not produce performance improvement in that order in the area; nor did performance in the other area follow the reverse order. Sample size was insufficient to test the greater effect to two difficult goals on production of impossible perceptions. Support was provided for the proposition that difficult goals perceived as impossible produced poorer performance improvement than goals perceived either as easy or challenging. Further analysis of the data revealed that, had the performance hypotheses been stated in the absence of perception -- i.e., difficult goals will produce either very good or very poor performance relative to normal goals -- confirmation would have been obtained. Futhermore, difficult goals in an area appeared to be associated with extremes in performance when the other area had a difficult goal, but this effect was not observed with a normal goal in the second area. Finally, although perceptions were not successful in predicting performance in one area, the combined performance in the two areas could be represented quite well as a linear function of the goal perceptions in the two areas. (Author)