The Effects of Nonconscious and Conscious Goals on Performance

Abstract

The social loafing paradigm (Harkins & Szymanski, 1987) was used to examine how nonconscious motivation combines with the effects of the potential for self- and external evaluation to affect task performance. Before generating uses for a common object, participants were primed with an achievement goal or not, given one of three conscious goal instructions, and told that their outputs would be evaluated by the experimenter or not. Results suggest that the effects of the nonconscious prime are shaped by the way that the task is defined and the manner in which the participants consciously respond to these instructions. © 2014 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.