The Contest of Motivational Theories in Explaining Performance: Expectancy vs. Goal setting

This thesis tested the theoretical constructs of two motivational theories, expectancy and goal setting, and their accuracy to predict performance. An experiment, with 130 participants, was used to control behaviour and to create a moderate and a hard goal context. These contexts were specially to control for a difference with respect to goal difficulty, since according to goal setting theory performance will increase when given a hard goal compared to an easier goal, but according to expectancy theory performance will be determined by an interaction of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence into a force value. The results show that expectancy, instrumentality, and valence have added value, but force has little. Because of the latter, the accuracy of the expectancy theory is low. The results show in addition that the goal-performance relation is influence by persistence as positive mediator and by task strategy and commitment as positive moderators. Goals themselves have a significant influence on performance and are accurate in predicting performance, although only when controlling for the mediators and moderators. Finally, some limitations of this thesis and suggestions for future research are discussed.