Date of Award

Spring 2000

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Psychology

Committee Director

Valerian J. Derlega

Committee Member

Glynn D. Coates

Committee Member

Michelle Kelley

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P65 R428

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of arousal on commitment to a goal, and secondarily, to test the assumption that more difficult goals result in better performance. It was predicted that arousal would cause research participants to be more committed to a goal, and that those participants assigned a difficult goal would perform better than those participants assigned an easy goal. Research participants were 124 active duty members of the United States Navy stationed at a remote military facility in Cornwall, England. Participants in the arousal group first viewed video clips designed to produce emotional arousal, whereas participants in the non-arousal group did not watch the video clips. Next, all participants were assigned goals varying in difficulty (easy or difficult), and then their commitment to those goals was assessed using a commitment scale developed by Hollenbeck, Williams, and Klein (1989) . There were no significant differences between the arousal and the non-arousal groups on a manipulation check of arousal, which might raise questions about the effectiveness of the arousal independent variable. However, there was a significant difference on the commitment measure between the arousal and the non-arousal groups. Participants in the arousal group reported greater commitment to their goals compared to participants in the non-arousal group. Previous research on goal setting has suggested that more difficult goals result in better performance on a task than easy goals. There were no observed effects of difficult versus easy goals on the performance of the research participants. Limitations in the present research and implications for future studies were discussed.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/z3gb-9388

Download

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS