The Credibility of Goal Priming Research in Work and Organizational Psychology

• Authors: Gary P. Latham
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Four criteria attest to the credibility of subconscious goal effects on organizational related behavior. First, the findings support hypotheses derived from goal setting theory. Second, the empirical experiments, conducted in both laboratory and field settings, have both internal and external/ecological validity. The dependent variables include brainstorming, negotiations, task/job performance, and satisfaction with customer service. Third, the results of these experiments have been shown to be robust with regard to exact and conceptual replications. Fourth, a meta-analysis has shown the practical as well as the theoretical significance of these findings. A goal primed in the subconscious and a consciously set goal have additive effects on job performance and negotiations.

Keywords

EN

goal setting theory; primed/subconscious goals; exact and conceptual replications; organizational behavior

• Publisher: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II. Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL
• Journal: Roczniki Psychologiczne
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 213-226

Dates

published

2021-02-16

Contributors

author

Gary P. Latham

• Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5922-0321

References

• Bargh, J. A. (1990). Goal intention: Goal directed thought and behavior are often unintentional. Psychology Inquiry, 1, 248–251
• Bargh, J. A. (1992). Why subliminality does not matter to social psychology: Awareness of the subliminal versus awareness of its influence. In R. F. Bornstein & T. S. Pittman (Eds.), Perception without awareness (pp. 236–255). Guilford Press.
• Bargh, J. A. (2005). Bypassing the will: Toward demystifying the nonconscious control of social behavior. The New Unconscious, 12, 37–58.
• Bargh, J. (2017). Before you know it: The unconscious reasons we do what we do. Simon and Schuster.
• Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (2000). Studying the mind in the middle: A practical guide to priming and automaticity research. In H. T. Reis & C. M. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. Cambridge University Press.
• Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A., Barndollar, K., & Trötschel, R. (2001). The automated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1014–1027.
• Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2010). Motivation. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology. Wiley.
• Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Strauss, J. P. (1993). Conscientiousness and performance of sales representatives: Test of the mediating effects of goal setting. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 715–722.
• Bipp, T., Kleingeld, A., Van Den Tooren, M., & Schinkel, S. (2015). The effect of self-set grade goals and core self-evaluations on academic performance: A diary study. Psychological Reports, 117(3), 917–930.
• Brcic, J., & Latham, G. P. (2016). The effect of priming affect on customer service satisfaction. Academy of Management Discoveries, 2(4), 392–403.
• Cesario, J. (2014). Priming, replication, and the hardest science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 40–48.
• Chen, X., & Latham, G. P. (2014). The effect of priming learning vs. performance goals on a complex task. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 125, 88–97.
• Chen, X., Latham, G. P., Piccolo, R. F., & Itzchakov, G. (2020). An enumerative review and a meta‐analysis of primed goal effects on organizational behavior. Applied Psychology. An International Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12239
• DeMarree, K. G., Loersch, C., Briñol, P., Petty, R. E., Payne, B. K., & Rucker, D. D. (2012). From primed construct to motivated behavior: Validation processes in goal pursuit. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1659–1670.
• Ganegoda, D. B., Latham, G. P, & Folger, R. (2016). The effect of a consciously set and a primed goal on fair behavior. Human Resouce Management, 55, 789–807.
• Itzchakov, G., & Latham, G. P. (2020). The moderating effect of performance feedback and the mediating effect of self-set goals on the primed goal-performance relationship. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 69(2), 379–414. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12176
• James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. Henry Holt and Co.
• Kahneman, D. (2012, September 26). A proposal to deal with questions about priming effects (email). Nature, https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/7.6716.1349271308!/suppinfoFile/Kahneman%20Letter.pdf
• Latham, G. P. (2012). Work motivation: History, theory, research, and practice. Sage.
• Latham, G. P. (2018). The effect of priming goals on organizational-related behavior. My transition from a skeptic to a believer. In Oettingen, G., Sevincer, T. A., & Wollwitzer, M. (Eds.), The psychology of thinking about the future (pp. 392–404). Guilford Press.
• Latham, G. P., & Locke, E. A. (1975). Increasing productivity with decreasing time limits: A field replication of Parkinson’s law. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60, 524–526.
• Latham, G. P., & Locke, E. A. (2018). Goal setting theory: Controversies and resolutions. In D. Ones, N. Anderson, C. Viswesvaran, & H. Sinangil (Eds.), Handbook of Industrial, Work & Organizational Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 103–124). Sage.
• Latham, G. P., & Piccolo, R. F. (2012). The effect of context specific versus non-specfic subconscious goals on employee performance. Human Resource Management, 51, 535–538.
• Latham, G. P. & Seijts, G. H. (2016). Similarities and differences among performance, behavioral, and learning goals. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 1–9. (A Distinguished Scholar Invited Essay.)
• Latham, G. P., Brcic, J., & Steinhauer, A. (2017). Toward an integration of goal setting theory and the automaticity model. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 66, 25–48.
• Latham, G. P., Hu, J., & Brcic, J. (2020). The effect of a context‐specific primed goal on goal commitment and team performance. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 69(3), 805–833. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12207
• Locke, E. A. (2015). Theory building, replication, and behavioral priming: Where do we need to go from here? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 408–414.
• Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1990). A theory of goal setting and task performance. Prentice Hall.
• Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57, 705–717.
• Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2004). What should we do about motivation theory? Six recommendations for the twenty-first century. Academy of Management Review, 29, 388–403.
• Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (Eds.). (2013). New developments in goal setting and task performance. Routledge.
• Mawritz, M., Folger, R., & Latham, G. P. (2014). Supervisors’ exceedingly difficult goals and abusive supervision: The mediating effects of hindrance stress, anger, and anxiety. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35, 358–372.
• Molden, D. C. (2014). Understanding priming effects in social psychology: An overview and integration. In D. C. Molden (Ed.), Understanding priming effects in social psychology (pp. 252–258). Guilford Press.
• Pessiglione, M., Schmidt, L., Draganski, B., Kalisch, R., Lau, H., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2007). How the brain translates money into force: A neuroimaging study of subliminal motivation. Science, 316(5826), 904–906. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1140459
• Seijts, G. H., & Latham, G. P. (2005). Learning versus performance goals: When should each be used? Academy of Mangement Perspectives, 19, 124–131.
• Seijts, G. H., & Latham, G. P. (2011). The effect of commitment to a learning goal, self-efficacy, and the interaction between learning goal difficulty and commitment on performance in a business simulation. Human Performance, 24, 189–204.
• Shanks, D. R., Newell, B. R., Lee, E. H., Balakrishnan, D., Ekelund, L., Cenac, Z., ... Moore, C. (2013). Priming intelligent behavior: An elusive phenomenon. PloS one, 8, e56515.
• Shantz, A., & Latham, G. P. (2009). An exploratory field experiment of the effect of subconscious and conscious goals on employee performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109, 9–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.01.001
• Shantz, A., & Latham, G. P. (2011). The effect of primed goals on employee performance: Implications for human resource management. Human Resource Management, 50, 289–299.
• Stajkovic, A. D., Locke, E. A., & Blair, E. S. (2006). A first examination of the relationships between primed subconscious goals, assigned conscious goals, and task performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(5), 1172–1180.
• Stajkovic, A., Latham, G. P., Sergent, K., & Petersen, S. (2018). Prime and performance: Can a CEO motivate employees without their awareness? Journal of Business and Psychology, 34(5), 791–802. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9598-x
• Takarada, Y., & Nozaki, D. (2018). Motivational goal-priming with or without awareness produces faster and stronger force exertion. Scientific Reports, 8(1), no. 10135.
• Weingarten, E., Chen, Q., McAdams, M., Yi, J., Hepler, J., & Albarracín, D. (2016). From primed concepts to action: A meta-analysis of the behavioral effects of incidentally presented words. Psychological Bulletin, 142(5), 472–497. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000030
• Winters, D., & Latham, G. P. (1996). The effect of learning versus outcome goals on a simple versus a complex task. Group and Organization Management, 21, 236–250.

Identifiers

DOI

10.18290/rpsych20233-2