EFFECT OF EGO AND TASK INSTRUCTIONS ON COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE

To evaluate whether motivation is influenced by the way a task is pres ented, 80 college students were randomly assigned to receiving either ego or task instructions for an anagram and a coding task. Attribution al beliefs were assessed. Scores on the anagram task were related to i nstructions and attributional beliefs. Persons receiving task instruct ions and persons with beliefs indicating ability to control academic o utcomes had higher scores. Performance on the coding task was not rela ted to beliefs and instructions. Finally, persons receiving task instr uctions rated themselves as performing better, enjoying me tasks more, and being more willing to participate in similar research again. It w as concluded that performance in a difficult verbal task can be suppor ted by the use of task-oriented instructions.