Specific, difficult goals tend to enhance task performance. The following exercise is designed to help you demonstrate this effect for yourself. All you need is a class of students willing to participate and a few simple supplies.

Questions for Discussion
1. Was there a statistically significant difference between the performance levels of the two groups? If so, did students in the “specific goal” group outperform those in the “do your best” group, as expected? What does this reveal about the effectiveness of goal setting?
2. If the predicted findings were not supported, why do you suppose this happened? What was it about the procedure that may have led to this failure? Was the specific goal (i.e., twice the fastest speed in the “baseline” group) too high, thus making the goal unreachable? Alternatively, was it too low, thus making the specific goal too easy?
3. What do you think would happen if the goal was lowered, thus making it easier, or raised, thus making it more difficult?
4. Do you think that providing feedback about goal attainment (e.g., someone counting the number of words copied and calling this out to the performers as they worked) would have helped?
5. For what other kinds of tasks do you believe goal setting may be effective? Specifically, do you believe that goal setting can improve your own performance on something? Explain this possibility.

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Directions 1. Select a page of text from a book and make several photocopies. Carefully count the words and number each word on one of the copies. This will be your score sheet. 2. Find another class of 30 or more students who do not know anything about goal setting. (We do not want their knowledge of the phenomenon to bias the results.) On a random basis, divide the students into three equal-size groups. 3. Ask the students in the first group the "baseline" group-to copy as much of the text as they can onto another piece of paper, and give them exactly one minute to do so. Direct them to work quickly. Using the score sheet created in step 1, identify the highest number of words copied by any one of the students and then multiply this number by 2. This will be the specific, difficult goal level. 4. Ask the students in the second group the "specific goal" group-to copy the number of words on the same printed page for exactly one minute. Tell them to try to reach the specific goal number identified in step 3. 5. Repeat this process with the third group the "do your best" group-but instead of giving them a specific goal, direct them to "try to do your best at this task." 6. Compute the average number of words copied in the "difficult goal" group and the "do your best" group. Have your instructor compute the appropriate statistical test (a t-test, in this case) to determine the statistical significance of this difference in performance levels.