Cjr. Roney et Rm. Sorrentino, REDUCING SELF-DISCREPANCIES OR MAINTAINING SELF-CONGRUENCE - UNCERTAINTY ORIENTATION, SELF-REGULATION, AND PERFORMANCE, Journal of personality and social psychology, 68(3), 1995, pp. 485-497
Reducing discrepancies between performance and goals was predicted to
motivate uncertainty-oriented people, but maintaining congruence was p
redicted to be more motivating for certainty-oriented people. Being mo
tivated should lead to better performance when a person is focused on
positive outcomes, or to worse performance if he or she is focused on
negative outcomes (success-oriented vs. failure-threatened in Studies
1 and 2, ideal vs. ought discrepancy in Study 3). Three studies tested
these hypotheses: an experiment that used bogus performance feedback,
a field study of examination performance as a function of prior discr
epancies from desired grades, and an experimental priming of standards
associated with a discrepancy or with no discrepancy. All 3 studies r
evealed the predicted interaction, supporting the hypothesis that ther
e are individual differences in motivation as a function of goal discr
epancy or congruence.