More is not better: Two failures of incentive theory.

Conducted 2 nationwide interview surveys of 16–22 yr old civilian males (each sample greater than 850 Ss) to assess the influence of incentives on enlistment in the US Navy. The 1st survey employed 17 different incentives, and the 2nd employed 15. Responses on a 5-point scale for single incentives and sets of 2 and 3 incentives were compared. Comparisons were also made of incentives differing in magnitude: $1,000 vs $3,000; 2 yrs vs 4 yrs of free college after 4 yrs of service; and 10% vs 25% of base pay for exceptional performance. No significant changes were found in disposition to enlist when either the number or the absolute magnitude of incentives was increased, thereby countering the assumption that a larger incentive is better. It is suggested that too large an incentive may even lead to distrust or a perceived threat to freedom. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the self-serving function of social anxiety: Shyness as a self-handicapping strategy.

Tested the hypothesis that socially anxious or shy individuals use their anxiety symptoms as a strategy to control attributions made about their performances in social-evaluative settings (i.e., self-handicapping strategies). 70 female and 72 male undergraduates, classified as low and high socially anxious on the basis of the Social Anxiety and Distress Scale, were given role-play tasks in a 3?×?2?×?2 design. It was predicted that trait-socially anxious or shy Ss would report more symptoms of social anxiety in an evaluative setting in which anxiety or shyness could serve as an excuse for poor performance than would Ss in (a) an evaluative setting in which shyness was precluded as an excuse or (b) a nonevaluative setting. It was also predicted that this self-protective pattern of symptom reporting would not occur for Ss who were not trait-socially anxious because these Ss would not commonly use such symptoms as a self-handicapping strategy. Results support these predictions for males but not for females. Sex differences in the strategic use of shyness are discussed in relation to other research on sex differences in the etiology and correlates of social anxiety. (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol consumption as a self-handicapping strategy in women.

Assessed whether women self-handicap with alcohol consumption prior to engaging in a social evaluation task, which may be more relevant to their self-esteem than the intellectual tasks used in past self-handicapping studies on substance use. 113 women (aged 19–32 yrs), who were evaluated as normal drinkers, performed either a solvable or an insolvable social judgment task and then received either success feedback or no feedback. Ss received access to alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages while awaiting a retest. The study terminated before the retest. The self-handicapping hypothesis that noncontingent success would produce relatively greater alcohol consumption was not supported. Regardless of feedback, insolvable test Ss consumed more alcohol than did solvable test Ss. Findings suggest that the hypothesis may be limited as a general model of alcohol consumption in both sexes. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contingent pay and intrinsic task interest: Moderating effects of work values.

Examined the hypothesis that Ss' work value orientations would moderate the effect that contingent extrinsic incentives may have in reducing intrinsic task interest. 74 business undergraduates were administered demographic and work value questionnaires and the Clerical Abilities subtest of the Short Employment Tests. Ss were asked to proofread 2 short stories (high interest) or 2 law review article sections (low interest) under noncontingent, contingent, or no-pay conditions. Analyses showed that under contingent pay conditions, Ss with relatively higher extrinsic than intrinsic work values reported lower task satisfaction than Ss with relatively higher intrinsic work values. In contrast, under no-pay conditions, Ss with relatively higher extrinsic than intrinsic work values were actually more satisfied than their intrinsic counterparts. Results, therefore, support the existence of both an overjustification and an insufficient justification effect for financial incentives. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Goal setting: The effects on an academic task with varying magnitudes of incentive.

Conducted an experiment with 80 6th graders to determine if goals mediate the effects of incentives on performance and if specific difficult goals raise and maintain performance on academic tasks. Ss were assigned either specific difficult goals or nonspecific general goals. There were 4 levels of monetary incentive with 2 levels of ability blocked within each group. Each S received 3 trials: baseline, acquisition, and withdrawal of reinforcement. Results indicate that specific difficult goals led to higher levels of performance than nonspecific goals across various incentive conditions and maintained those higher levels when previously available incentives were withdrawn. It is concluded that goals have a strong and direct effect upon the level, persistence, and content of subsequent behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An impression management interpretation of the self-handicapping strategy.

Explored the impression-management underpinnings of the self-handicapping strategy of S. Berglas and E. E. Jones (see record 1979-05889-001). 64 male undergraduates were given success feedback after completing soluble or insoluble analogies. While anticipating a 2nd test, Ss were allowed to choose between drugs that would enhance or encumber their performance. Ss who had worked on insoluble problems chose the debilitating drug, but only when the experimenter (E) witnessed the choice. They were most likely to choose the debilitating drug when the E was present and when they believed that the E would have access to their score on the anticipated 2nd test. The data are cautiously interpreted as consistent with an impression management view of self-handicapping. The authors suggest that although it appears that self-handicapping is an impression management strategy at least under some circumstances, the exact nature of the strategy needs further specification. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectations for success on effort-determined tasks as a function of incentive and performance feedback.

Conducted 2 experiments to investigate an attributional analysis of the consequences of perceiving one's effort as stable, as opposed to unstable, on future performance expectancies. In Exp I, 32 male undergraduates were told that performance on the experimental tasks was purely effort determined; they expected a monetary incentive for good performance on half the tasks and received preprogrammed feedback that their performance was either variable or consistent. In Exp II, both 45 male and 51 female Ss believed the tasks were either effort or ability determined and received variable or consistent feedback; incentive was operationalized as the level of task interestingness. As predicted, Ss who believed performance was effort determined and received variable feedback had higher expectations for performance on a later task when its incentive value was high than when it was low. Ss receiving consistent feedback did not differ in their expectations, regardless of the incentive value of the task. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing the prediction of self-handicapping.

Levels of test anxiety, Type A and Type B coronary-prone behavior, fear of failure, and covert self-esteem were studied as predictors of self-handicapping performance attributions for college women who were placed in either a high- (N?=?49) or low- (N?=?49) evaluative test or task situation. We hypothesized that test anxiety, Type A or Type B level, and their interaction would account for reliable variance in the prediction of self-handicapping. However, we also theorized that underlying high fear of failure and low covert self-esteem would explain the self-handicapping claims of test-anxious and Type A subjects. The results indicated that only high levels of test anxiety and high levels of covert self-esteem were related to women's self-handicapping attributions. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol consumption as a self-handicapping strategy.

Two experiments with 128 male undergraduates evaluated the self-handicapping hypothesis that alcohol consumption varies directly with individuals' uncertainty of their ability to perform successfully. In a 2–3 factorial design, Exp I manipulated difficulty of an initial intellectual test (insolvable or solvable), feedback regarding test performance (success or none), and instructions regarding the difficulty of a retest (identical to or harder than the initial test). Ss then received access to an alcoholic beverage (self-handicapping option) and to study materials (performance-enhancing option). The experiment terminated before the retest. Results indicate that when a performance-enhancing option is available, Ss generally do not use alcohol to self-handicap. Exp II omitted the study option and manipulated the test difficulty and retest instruction variables. All Ss received success feedback. Results show that Ss use alcohol to self-handicap when denied access to a performance-enhancing option. With important qualifications, these data support the self-handicapping hypothesis of human drinking behavior. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitions of test-anxious children.

Compared the cognitions of 294 low, moderate, and high test-anxious (the Test Anxiety Scale for Children) 5th and 6th graders in an analog test situation. High test-anxious Ss reported significantly more task-debilitating cognitions than either moderate- or low-anxious Ss, including negative evaluations and off-task thoughts. High test-anxious Ss also reported fewer positive evaluations than low test-anxious Ss, whereas moderately anxious Ss did not differ significantly from either extreme group. It was unexpected that the moderate- and high-anxious groups reported significantly more on-task thoughts than the low-anxious group and did not significantly differ from each other. Both test anxiety and cognitions showed significant although modest relations with actual task performance after the effects of ability were partialled out. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomic reactivity of high and low ego-strength subjects to repeated anxiety eliciting scenes.

Conducted an experiment to answer the question of whether patients labeled high or low in ego-strength differentially responded to scenes designed either to elicit anxiety or produce little (neutral) affect. Ss were 48 18-62 yr old male psychiatric inpatients. High ego-strength Ss initially responded to anxiety scenes with reliably more affect than to neutral scenes as indexed by their skin conductance level, heart rate measures, and by responses to the Fear Thermometer test and Affect Adjective Check List. Repeated presentations of anxiety scenes across 4 sessions led to a rapid extinction effect for the autonomic measures recorded. The same comparisons over these indices for low ego-strength Ss failed to produce any reliable differences. This latter result occurred despite the finding that low ego-strength Ss reported reliably more psychopathology on the pretest MMPI and Fear Survey Schedule when compared with high ego-strength Ss. Differences in baseline autonomic reactivity and responding to a standard stressor test were not obtained between ego-strength conditions. Data from nontreated Ss suggest that the presentation of anxiety scenes produced no ill effects for either ego-strength population. A tentative learning theory interpretation of the data is advanced. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional impact of videotape and reenacted feedback on subjects with high and low defenses.

A group of 40 high and low defensive college students were given reenacted videotape and videotape feedback of an earlier stressful interview. Defensiveness was based upon the L and K scores from the MMPI. The stress interview was reenacted by having an actor or actress portray the earlier interview performance. The Ss rated the emotional impact of the experience 5 times during the feedback interview and again at its conclusion. All Ss had more negative feelings when viewing actor/actress self-portrayals. Low defensive Ss viewed both themselves and the actor/actress portrayals more negatively than did high defensive Ss. Many of the low defensive Ss still had negative feelings after viewing themselves, whereas none of the high defensive Ss did. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adler's psychology (of use) today: Personal history of traumatic life events as a self-handicapping strategy.

Investigated the hypothesis that the reporting of a history of traumatic life events may serve as a strategy to control attributions about performance in an evaluative setting (i.e., self-handicapping). 140 female undergraduates completed the state form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental conditions (i.e., 2 evaluation threats by 2 traumatic history instructions). In groups of 7, Ss received specific (the project concerned development of local norms for measures of social intelligence) or innocuous information. After completion of an initial questionnaire, Ss either were told that traumatic history has no effect on task performance or received no instructions about filling out measures of the traumatic value of past life experiences and 2 manipulation checks. Results, as predicted, show that Ss emphasized the adversity of events and experiences in their background when an uncertain evaluation was expected and when a traumatic background would serve as a suitable excuse for potential failure. Results generally support the hypothesized self-protective reporting of traumatic life events. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the self-serving function of an academic wooden leg: Test anxiety as a self-handicapping strategy.

Hypothesized that highly test-anxious Ss would report anxiety symptoms in a pattern that reflected strategic presentation of symptoms. More specifically, it was predicted that greater reported anxiety should result when anxiety was a viable explanation for poor performance on an intelligence test and that lower reported anxiety should result when anxiety was not a viable explanation for poor performance. 117 female undergraduates served as Ss. Analysis of state measures of self-reported anxiety supported these predictions. Further analysis indicated that when anxiety was not a viable explanation for poor test performance, high test-anxious Ss reported reduced effort as an alternative self-protective strategy. Results are discussed in terms of traditional models of symptoms as self-protective strategies, current social psychological models of symptoms, and recent theory and research about the nature and treatment of test anxiety. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-handicapping and defensive pessimism: Exploring a model of predictors and outcomes from a self-protection perspective.

The present study is centrally concerned with self-handicapping and defensive pessimism (comprising defensive expectations and reflectivity), the factors that predict these strategies, and the associations between these strategies and a variety of academic outcomes. Major findings are that task orientation negatively predicts both self-handicapping and defensive expectations and positively predicts reflectivity; uncertain personal control positively predicts defensive expectations, and to a lesser extent, self-handicapping; and an external attributional orientation is positively associated with self-handicapping, and to a lesser extent, defensive expectations. Both self-handicapping and defensive expectations are negatively associated with self-regulation and persistence, whereas reflectivity is positively associated with these outcomes. Students high in self-handicapping received lower end-of-year grades than did students low in self-handicapping and were less likely to be in attendance 1 year later. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Test anxiety and visual vigilance.

Conducted a visual vigilance task (VVT) to determine sensitivity and criterion measures for 20 male and 20 female undergraduate students scoring high or low in test anxiety under either test or no-test conditions. Ss, who were classified as high or low on the basis of the Test Anxiety Scale, were instructed to report the occurrence of brief visual signals over a 36-min period of continuous watchfulness. The VVT was described to half the Ss as a measure of ability on which they were being tested; to the other half, it was described as an investigation of the usefulness of the procedure for future research. Findings show that the detection rate declined across the 36 min of the task among Ss high in test anxiety who believed that they were being tested and in Ss low in test anxiety who did not. False detection rates revealed no significant differences among conditions. Analysis of sensitivity to signals according to statistical decision theory revealed low sensitivity in both the high-anxiety test and low-anxiety/no-test conditions than in the other 2. Analysis of decisional criteria showed that Ss in the high-anxiety test condition were more conservative in setting a criterion than Ss in the other 3 conditions. No sex differences were found. Results are discussed in terms of an elaboration of I. G. Sarason's (1979) model of test anxiety. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contingency management in cocaine abusers: A dose-effect comparison of goods-based versus cash-based incentives.

Goods-based contingency management interventions (e.g., those using vouchers or prizes as incentives) have demonstrated efficacy in reducing cocaine use, but cost has limited dissemination to community clinics. Recent research suggests that development of a cash-based contingency management approach may improve treatment outcomes while reducing operational costs of the intervention. However, the clinical safety of providing cash-based incentives to substance abusers has been a concern. The present 16-week study compared the effects of goods-based versus cash-based incentives worth $0, $25, $50, and $100 on short-term cocaine abstinence in a small sample of cocaine-dependent methadone patients (N = 12). A within-subject design was used; a 9-day washout period separated each of 8 incentive conditions. Higher magnitude ($50 and $100) cash-based incentives (checks) produced greater cocaine abstinence compared with the control ($0) condition, but a magnitude effect was not seen for goods-based incentives (vouchers). A trend was observed for greater rates of abstinence in the cash-based versus goods-based incentives at the $50 and $100 magnitudes. Receipt of $100 checks did not increase subsequent rates of cocaine use above those seen in control conditions. The efficacy and safety data provided in this and other recent studies suggest that use of cash-based incentives deserves consideration for clinical applications of contingency management, but additional confirmation in research using larger samples and more prolonged periods of incentive delivery is needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Additivity versus nonadditivity of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives: Implications for work motivation, performance, and attitudes.

80 male Ss were randomly assigned to either an intrinsically appealing or an intrinsically nonappealing assembly task. Half of the Ss were paid according to a highly salient, continuous, contingent reward schedule, while the other half were paid according to an extremely noncontingent payment schedule. Thus, 20 Ss worked for both intrinsic and extrinsic incentives, 20 for extrinsic only, 20 for intrinsic only, and 20 for minimal incentives of either type. Data on 4 dependent variables (performance, intrinsic motivation, orientation toward the task, and intrinsic satisfaction) provided convergent support for E. L. Deci's (see record 1968-02190-001) hypothesis that intrinsic and extrinsic incentives are not additive in determining attitudes and behavior. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Test anxiety and blame assignment in a failure situation.

It was found that high anxiety Ss tended to blame the self for failure to a significantly greater extent than did the low anxiety Ss. Also, high anxiety Ss proved more consistent in the direction of blame assignment than did the low anxiety Ss. A discussion of the order of presentation of test materials reveals a possible source of significant difference between groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pessimistic self-preoccupation, performance deficits, and depression.

Conducted 3 studies to test a model of the cognitive performance deficits shown in depression. The model proposes that such deficits occur as an interaction of expectancy and focus of attention variables, that is, in the presence of both low expectancy of success and high self-focus. In Study 1 (a pilot study), 11 depressed Ss (DSs) and 16 nondepressed Ss (NSs) were selected from a large pool of undergraduate students who were administered the Beck Depression Inventory. Results indicate that DSs evidenced poorer anagram performance, greater self-focus, and lower pretask expectancies than did NSs. Study 2, conducted with 60 Ss drawn from the Study 1 S pool, showed that NSs evidenced performance deficits only when both expectancy was lowered and self-focus was increased. Data from the 59 Ss (also selected from the Study 1 S pool) in Study 3 suggest that DSs' performance deficits were overcome either by lowering self-focus or by raising expectancy. Discussed are discrepancies between self-report and performance data; the relevance of these studies to the test anxiety literature; the need to integrate literature concerning the effects of depression, anxiety, and self-esteem on performance; and how the interactive roles of positive expectancy and focus of attention may be related to effective coping in a variety of situations. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)