Experimental Study Of Unconscious Target Incentive Task Performance

The goal is a mental representation of the expected end state (Locke,&Latham,1990) Traditionally, the goal pursuit theory emphasizes the process of pursuit is undersomebody’s consciousness control,(Ajzen,1991; Bandura,1986; Deci&Ryan,1985;Locke&Latham,1990). Such as; individuals adapt to the new environment, or trying tomake money. Achieving their goals are a process which seems to need awareness andeffortsBut this view began to change in the early1990s when John Bargh and ArieKruglanski presented the unconscious goal pursuit model (Bargh,1990; Kruglanski,1996), the model told us that goals can be activated in the individual unconscious state,then led to the individual goal pursuit behavior.The field of social psychology research on the unconscious provides direction forthe establishment of a new theory of motivation. Based on this, The paper firstlyreviews the goal setting theory, followed the latest researches of the goal setting theory,especially the unconscious goal pursuit theory, pursues the originals, history and combsthe relationship between unconscious goal; conscious goal and task performance, thensort and summarize it. Finally, we summarize the related researches on goalcommitment. On this basis, we use three studies to test the relationship amongunconscious goals, conscious goals and their impact on task performance when they arein consistency and in conflict, and explore the relationship among primed unconsciousgoal, primed unconscious goal commitment and task performance. The experimentalresults show that1、 When the unconscious goal and conscious goal in the consistencycircumstances, there exist two main effects and a significant interaction;2、 When the unconscious goal and conscious goal in case of conflict, there are two significant main effects, but no significant interaction not;3、 Finally, unconscious goal commitment can affect the level of taskperformance; the interaction of unconscious goals and unconscious goalcommitment is not significant.The results support parts of hypothesis, at the same time, it supplies the directionof follow-up study.