Effects Of Goal Settings And Feedback On Intrinsic Motivation

The research on Intrinsic Motivation is emphasized in the academic settings. Among all that relate to the intrinsic motivation, Goal Setting and Feedback are the two fundamental factors. However, formal research used to analyze the two factors separately and emphasize the main effect of the two, failing to consider the two factors as a whole and thus leading the results self-contradicted. This thesis tries to analyze the interactive effects of Goal Setting and Feedback so as to reveal the whole picture of their effects.This thesis adopts 2*3 experimental design and samples 73 college students in the Sociology Department of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. It reveals the relationship between Goal Setting and Intrinsic Motivation in different feedbacks. The Independent Variables are Goal Setting and Feedback. Goal Setting has there level which are Learning Goal Group, Performance Approach Group and Performance Avoidance Group while Feedback has two, Positive Feedback and Negative Feedback. The Dependant Variable is Intrinsic Motivation. The results suggest:Generally speaking, the Intrinsic Motivation Level of Learning Goal Group is higher than that of Performance Goal Group; Performance Approach Group has a higher level of Intrinsic Motivation than Performance Avoidance Group.To discuss the main effect of Feedback, Positive Feedback generates a higher Intrinsic Motivation than Negative Feedback. But specifically, only for the Learning Goal Group, the main effect of Feedback is significant while for the Performance Approach and Performance Avoidance Group, the variation is insignificant.In Positive Feedback setting, Learning Goal Group subjects possess a higher level of intrinsic motivation than Performance Goal Group, while the variation of the intrinsic motivation between Performance Approach Group and Performance Avoidance Group is insignificant. In Negative Feedback setting, both of Learning Goal Group and Performance Approach Group generates a higher level of intrinsic motivation than the Performance Avoidance Group.