Difficulty and instrumentality of imminent behavior as determinants of goal attractiveness

Subjects were presented with an easy or moderately difficult memorization task and told they could earn either a very low or very high chance of obtaining a modest prize if they did well. A measure of goal attractiveness was taken during an interval immediately preceding the task performance period. As expected, anticipatory goal attractiveness ratings were higher in the moderately difficult condition than in the easy condition when the probability of goal attainment (given success) was high, but were low in both task conditions when the probability of goal attainment (given success) was low. Results are discussed in terms of Brehm's recent theory of motivation.     

Perceived difficulty,energization, and the magnitude of goal valence

This paper examines the proposition that the mobilization of energy and consequent magnitude of valence of a potential outcome (e.g., goal) is a function of what the individual perceives can and must be done in order to attain or avoid the outcome. An outcome that is difficult to attain or avoid requires a relatively high level of energization and will be relatively attractive, if positive, or unpleasant, if negative. Outcomes that are easy or impossible to attain or avoid require little or no energization and will be relatively low in attractiveness, if positive, or low in unpleasantness, if negative. This formulation was supported by four experiments that demonstrated (a) attractiveness of a goal is a nonmonotonic function of perceived difficulty of attaining it; (b) unpleasantness of a potential negative outcome is a nonmonotonic function of perceived difficulty of avoiding it; (c) the nonmonotonic effect of perceived difficulty on goal attractiveness disappears once instrumental behavior has been completed; and (d) the nonmonotonic effect of perceived difficulty on unpleasantness of a potential negative outcome occurs in immediate but not distant anticipation of initiating instrumental behavior. Alternative explanations, theoretical problems, and implications are discussed.     

Task difficulty, cardiovascular response, and the magnitude of goal valence

Sixty-four young women expected to perform an easy, moderately difficult, or extremely difficult memory task with the opportunity to earn a small incentive for good performance. Cardiovascular (heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure) and subjective measures were taken immediately prior to task performance. Both systolic blood pressure (SBP) responses and ratings of goal attractiveness were nonmonotonically related to expected task difficulty, with the most pronounced SBP elevations and highest goal attractiveness in the moderately difficult task condition. Product-moment correlations among cardiovascular response measures revealed a strong positive association between systolic and diastolic pressure (but not heart rate) change in the easy condition, positive relationships among all measures in the moderately difficult condition, and no significant correlations in the extremely difficult condition. Subjective measures of arousal were not affected by the task difficulty manipulation. Principal findings are discussed in terms of a theoretical model proposed by Brehm (1979) that states that motivation varies as a nonmonotonic function of the difficulty of goal attainment. Intercorrelations among cardiovascular response variables are considered in terms of their possible indication of the mechanisms underlying blood pressure changes associated with variations in motivation.     

Determinants of the Magnitude of Goal Valence: The Interactive Effects of Need,Instrumentality, and the Difficulty of Goal Attainment

An experiment was conducted in which subjects could earn either a high (14/15) or a low (1/15) chance of winning a McDonald's Big Mac hamburger by successfully performing a difficult or very difficult memorization task. During the morning hours prior to the experimental session, half the subjects did not eat (high need) whereas the rest did (low need). As predicted, anticipatory ratings of the attractiveness of the hamburger increased across task difficulty for subjects in high need given the high chance and decreased across task difficulty for subjects in low need given the high chance. Furthermore, ratings were low and unaffected by task difficulty for the low-need subjects given the low chance. An unexpected increase in attractiveness ratings among subjects in high need given the low chance provided the impetus for a second experiment. In this study, subjects, all of whom were in high need, were given either an extremely high (79/80) or an extremely low 0/80) chance of winning the hamburger given success on the difficult or very difficult task. With this stronger manipulation, the attractiveness ratings of the hamburger increased as a function of task difficulty for subjects given the high' chance and, unlike the first experiment, decreased modestly as a function of task difficulty for subjects given the low chance. Results of the two experiments are discussed in terms of the energization theory of motivation.     

Cardiovascular Responses to Threat: Effects of the Difficulty and Availability of a Cognitive Avoidant Task

Measures of heart rate (HR), systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were taken during an interval immediately preceding a period in which male subjects were to perform an easy or difficult memory task to avoid a noxious noise, or simply wait to receive the noise. As predicted, anticipatory elevations in SBP and HR were relatively higher in the difficult avoidance condition than in the easy and impossible avoidance conditions. In contrast, anticipatory DBP change-scores decreased linearly from easy to difficult to impossible avoidance conditions. Results are discussed in terms of a recent motivational theory suggesting that energy mobilization in the face of threat should be a function of what can, will, and must be done to cope.     

Incidental learning as a function of anticipated task difficulty

Three experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effects of motivational arousal, due to anticipated task difficulty, on retention of familiar and unfamiliar incidental materials. Brehm, Wright, Solomon, Silka, and Greenberg (1983) have provided evidence that motivational arousal in immediate anticipation of a task is a nonmonotonic function of task difficulty, with difficult tasks producing a relatively higher level of motivational arousal than easy or impossible tasks. It was predicted that increased motivational arousal would facilitate retention of incidentally presented familiar materials (presumably more easily retained) and interfere with retention of incidentally presented unfamiliar materials (presumably less easily retained). In Study 1, subjects anticipating either an easy or a difficult task were exposed to familiar and unfamiliar first names. The predicted interaction between task difficulty and familiarity on recall of the first names was reliably supported. In Study 2, an impossible task condition was added. The results indicated that an effective impossible condition had not been created. In a third study designed as a procedural modification of Study 2, the predicted nonmonotonic interaction was found. Theoretical implications are discussed.These experiments were ably conducted by Ralph Young, whose help is gratefuly acknowledged. We would like to express our gratitude to Jack Brehm for invaluable suggestions concerning this research.     

Avoidant control difficulty and aversive incentive appraisals: Additional evidence of an energization effect

There is evidence that certain physiological and subjective indices of stress are relatively great when control over aversive outcomes is moderately difficult and relatively reduced when control over such outcomes is either easy or impossible. A possible explanation is suggested by Brehm's recent theory of motivation, which asserts that energy mobilization and the perceived unpleasantness of an aversive event will (a) increase with the difficulty of avoidant behavior so long as avoidance is believed to be possible and worthwhile, and (b) be low when avoidant behavior is impossible, not worthwhile, or simply unavailable. This article reports two experiments that examined appraisals of an aversive incentive under conditions where avoidance was expected to be easy, difficult, and impossible. The first demonstrated the complete nonmonotonic pattern of appraisals predicted by the energization theory, something that has proved elusive in previous investigations. The second study demonstrated this as well and, in addition, showed a correspondence between subjects' incentive appraisals and their cardiovascular responses immediately before and during an avoidance task period. Implications and alternative interpretations are discussed.This research was supported in part by a Faculty Research Award from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.     

Difficulty as a Determinant of Interpersonal Appeal: A Social-Motivational Application of Energization Theory

This experiment investigated the hypothesis, derived from energization theory, that a target person's interpersonal appeal should vary nonmonotonically with the difficulty of establishing a favorable relationship with her or him. Male subjects learned that it would be easy, difficult, or impossible to persuade a woman to choose them as a co-worker. As expected, those who believed it would be difficult to be selected appraised the woman more favorably than did those who believed it would be easy or impossible to be selected. The study also examined, and confirmed, the prediction that appraisals of the woman would be at least as favorable under conditions where the difficulty of persuading her was not known as under conditions where the difficulty of persuading her was high, but possible. Findings are discussed in terms of the perennial question of whether there is interpersonal advantage in making oneself hard-to-get.     

The functional anatomy of inspection time: a pilot fMRI study

Seven healthy subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain while performing an inspection time task. Employing a block-type design, the task had three difficulty levels: a control condition, an easy (200 ms stimulus duration), and a more difficult (40 ms) discrimination. Based on group results, there were widespread significant areas of difference in brain activation and deactivation when pairwise comparisons were conducted among the three task conditions. When the difficult condition was compared with the easy condition, there was relative activation in areas of the following brain regions: cingulate gyrus and some frontal and parietal lobe areas. Areas within the following regions showed relative deactivation (greater blood oxygenation level-dependent, BOLD, signal in the easy condition): frontal, temporal, and parietal lobe. There were overlaps between these areas and those found to be active while performing higher cognitive tasks in other functional brain imaging studies. These pilot data encourage future studies of the functional anatomy of inspection time and its relevance to psychometric intelligence.     

How wearing eyeglasses affects facial recognition

Two studies examine the ability to recognize previously seen persons embedded among foils. Subjects in Study I tried to identify 20 persons among 20 foils (an easy task), whereas subjects in Study II tried to identify 50 persons among 50 foils (a difficult task). There were three independent variables: the stimulus person’s eyeglasses and sex, and the subject’s depth of processing. The first two independent variables were varied by photographs of males and females with or without glasses; depth of processing was manipulated by having subjects either judge traits (deep) or describe appearance (shallow) of the stimulus persons during the initial exposure phase. Responses were scored for “hits,” and “false alarms,” and these were transformed intod’ and β indices. Generally speaking, eyeglasses hindered facial recognition; deep processing facilitated the difficult recognition task more than the easy task; and there was a same-sex advantage in recognition. Analyses of subjects’ judgments suggest that glasses lessen attractiveness and discriminability. This project was partially supported by a grant from the Faculty Development Committee, Hanover College.     

The Effects of Commitment to Performance Goals on Effort1

The laboratory experiments were designed to examine the effects of commitment to a performance goal on the level of effort exerted to achieve the goal. In both experiments, college students worked on two memorization tasks and, after receiving performance feedback on the first task, commitment to either an easy or a more difficult goal for the second task was varied. In the first experiment, goal commitment was manipulated either by giving the students perceived choice over setting their goal or by assigning them to one of the two goal levels. In the second experiment, goal commitment was manipulated by publicly identifying students' goals or by keeping the goals private. To assess effort, participants were allowed to spend as little or as much time as they desired studying for the second task. In both experiments, the commitment manipulations (high choice or public identification) led to significantly greater persistence in studying, regardless of the goal level. In addition, high-commitment subjects tended to be more successful in reaching their goals than low-commitment subjects. These experiments suggest that commitment to a goal has motivational properties that prompt an increase in effort.     

Motivation, anxiety, and the difficulty of avoidant control

The present research addresses the question of whether avoidant control that is difficult to exercise induces greater physiologic arousal and unpleasant affect than easy-avoidant control or no-avoidant control. Two types of control difficulty were distinguished and factorially varied: (a) control difficulty due to the effortfulness of a controlling activity and (b) control difficulty due to uncertainty about how to exercise control over an unpleasant outcome. To examine responses under conditions where avoiding an unpleasant event is impossible, a cell was included in which subjects were not given the means by which to exercise control. In all but one condition (the high-effort-exercise/high-response-uncertainty condition), when avoidance was expected to be easy or impossible (a) pulse rates were lower, (b) digital pulse volumes were higher (indicating reduced physiologic activity), (c) self-reported anxiety was lower, and (d) ratings of the stressor's unpleasantness were lower than they were when avoidance was expected to be difficult. In the high-effort-exercise/high-response-uncertainty condition, cardiovascular arousal, self-reported anxiety, and shock unpleasantness scores were relatively low, suggesting that control was sufficiently difficult in that condition to cause subjects to "give up." Results are discussed in terms of a recently proposed model of motivation, conceptions of anxiety, and the relation between stress and control.     

Social context and perceived task difficulty as mediators of depressive self-evaluation

This study examined two separate, but potentially interactive, influences on depressive self-evaluation: social context and perceptions of task difficulty. First, it was hypothesized that, if negative self-evaluations of depressed individuals are motivated by a desire to elicit attention and sympathy from others, depressed subjects should evaluate themselves more negatively than nondepressed subjects in a public setting, but not when they make self-evaluative judgments in private. Second, it was hypothesized that negative self-evaluation results from a bias to perceive tasks as being intrinsically easy, i.e., if a task is easy, a given score would be evaluated more poorly than if the task were difficult. It was found that the self-evaluations of depressed subjects were influenced by the social context, but not always in a negative direction. Depressed subjects did not differ from nondepressed subjects when performance evaluations were made in private. In a public condition, depressed subjects evaluated themselves more negatively than nondepressed subjects following an easy task, but evaluated themselves more positively following a difficult task. Depressed subjects did not evidence a bias to perceive tasks as being intrinsically easy. Depressed subjects did rate the tasks to be more difficult for themselves than they thought they would be for others and this expectancy was predictive of negative self-evaluation. These results were discussed in terms of alternative self-presentation motives and theories of social cognition. Self-evaluation often involves social comparison and researchers need to attend to the potentially complex interactions among social and cognitive processes.I would like to thank Deborah Davis and Paul Westerholm for their help in data collection, Ruth Maki for her statistical expertise, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, 1989.     

Toward an Integration of Goal Setting Theory and the Automaticity Model

Two laboratory experiments were conducted to assess the extent to which goal setting theory explains the effects of goals that are primed in the subconscious on task performance. The first experiment examined the effect on performance of three primes that connote the difficulty levels of a goal in the subconscious. Participants (n = 91) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions where they were primed with either a photograph of a person lifting 20 pounds (easy goal), 200 pounds (moderately difficult goal), or 400 pounds (difficult goal). Following a filler task, participants were asked to “press as hard as you can” on a digital weight scale. Participants who were primed with the difficult goal exerted more effort than those who were primed with the moderate or easy goal. The second experiment examined whether choice of goal difficulty level can be primed. Participants (n = 133) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Those primed with a difficult goal consciously chose to set a more difficult goal on a brainstorming task than those who were primed with an easier goal. Similarly, their performance was significantly higher. Conscientiousness moderated the subconscious goal–performance relationship while the self‐set conscious goal partially mediated the subconscious goal–performance relationship.     

Difficulty and interpersonal attraction

Male subjects learned that they would have to perform an easy, moderately difficult, or very difficult memory task in order to qualify for a “learning session” in which they would be accompanied by a moderately attractive female. Subjective measures taken just prior to task performance indicate that subjects viewed the female target as more attractive, sexy, and cute in the Moderately Difficult task condition than in the Easy and Very Difficult task conditions. Results are discussed in terms of a recently proposed model of motivation (Brehm 1979; Brehm, Wright, Solomon, Silka, & Greenberg, 1983), and research on the relation between difficulty and interpersonal attraction.     

The Moderating Effects of Dispositional Affectivity on Performance and Task Attitudes in a Goal‐Setting Context1

This study examined the effects of goal difficulty, negative affectivity (NA), and positive affectivity (PA) on performance and task attitudes on a complex task. Research participants played an air traffic controller (ATC) simulation and were assigned either an easy or difficult goal at 2 different points in time: early during skill acquisition, and after several experimental trials. We hypothesized that the effect of difficult goals would vary depending on whether they were administered early and late during skill acquisition. We also hypothesized that NA and PA would moderate the effect of goal difficulty. Neither the early nor late goal assignments related to performance or task attitudes as hypothesized. Instead, PA and NA both moderated goal‐outcome relationships.     

Differential Roles of Physical Attractiveness and Earning Capability in Explaining Sense of Power among Dating Individuals in China: A Gender Comparison

This cross-sectional study examined how self-assessed physical attractiveness and earning capability were associated with individuals’ sense of power through self-perceived mating success and investment size in romantic relationships among 196 young adults (88 men, 98 women) from Nanjing, China. Using path analysis, we tested the following hypotheses: self-assessed physical attractiveness would be more strongly associated with self-perceived mating success among women than men, whereas self-assessed earning capability would be more strongly linked to self-perceived mating success among men than women (H1); relative physical attractiveness, as compared to their partners’, would be more strongly associated with men’s rather than women’s self-perceived investment size, whereas relative earning capability would be more strongly related to women’s rather than men’s investment size (H2); for both men and women, self-perceived mating success would be positively associated with sense of power, whereas self-perceived investment size would be negatively associated with sense of power (H3). Results indicated that self-perceived physical attractiveness and earning capability were associated with self-perceived mating success similarly for both men and women, failing to support H1. Whereas relative physical attractiveness was negatively associated with investment in the relationship similarly for two genders, the negative association between relative earning capacity and investment size was only significant for women. H2 was partially supported. Finally, self-perceived mating success and investment size were significantly associated with sense of power in the expected directions for both genders, lending support to our H3. Results are discussed in light of gender differences in mate preferences and the investment theory.     

Effects of goal difficulty, self-set goals, and monetary rewards on dual task performance

The present study tests the effects of goal difficulty, goal origin (self-set vs assigned), and monetary rewards (present vs absent) on the simultaneous performance of two tasks (dual-task paradigm). Participants were 32 students working simultaneously on a computerized task of letter typing with the right hand and digit classification with the left hand. A 2 (self-set vs assigned goals) × 2 (present vs absent contingent monetary rewards) × 3 (easy, moderate, and difficult goals) factorial design with goal difficulty as the repeated factor was employed. Each task element was performed under easy, moderate, and difficult goals, which appeared in six consecutive trials of varied order within each experimental condition. Results indicate that self-set goals without monetary rewards led to the highest performance levels, whereas the combination of self-set goals and monetary rewards was detrimental to performance. These findings occurred (except in one case) only when goals were of either moderate Or high difficulty.     

Appearance-related social comparisons: the role of contingent self-esteem and self-perceptions of attractiveness

Two studies examined contingent self-esteem (CSE) and responses to appearance-related social comparisons. Study 1 was an experimental study in which women rated a series of advertisements from popular women's magazines. Study 2 employed an event-contingent diary recording procedure. In Study 1, women who were higher in CSE and lower in self-perceptions of attractiveness (SPA) experienced greater decreases in positive affect and greater increases in negative affect following the ad-rating task. Study 2 results supported a mediation model in which women who were higher in CSE felt worse after social comparisons because they made primarily upward comparisons. Overall, results suggest that appearance-related comparisons are more distressing for those who base their self-worth on contingencies and have lower self-perceived attractiveness.     

Goal Setting by Groups Performing an Additive Task: A Comparison With Individual Goal Setting1

This article compares goal levels and task performance of groups and individuals that are assigned or self-set goals. Groups performed an additive task that allowed for direct comparison with individuals' i]ndependent performance of the task. Consistent with predictions, groups and individuals selected goals that were less difficult than assigned goals which required only a modest increase in performance. Group members and individuals who were assigned goals attained higher levels of performance than self-set or no goal condition subjects. The prediction that group members and individuals who self-set their goals would have more positive affective reactions to the goal-setting situation than participants in assigned condition was supported. The results of this study are consistent with the existing literature on groups and individuals regarding effects of goals, performance, and affective reactions. Analyses also indicate that the group goal decision process involves a compensatory strategy in which an average of group member preferences for the goal was used to reach a group goal decision. Discussion focuses on the similarities and differences between the findings of self-set and assigned goal-setting situations for groups and individuals, with particular reference to goal choice strategies, goal expectancies, and efficacy.