Effects of social values, effort training, and goal structure on task persistence

Abstract

A study to examine how learned industriousness, social values, and cooperative-versus-competitive goal structures interact to influence task persistence was carried out. The relative strengths of college students' cooperativeness, individualism, and competitiveness were assessed with an experimental game. The students later solved easy or difficult problems involving mathematics and perceptual discriminations. Next, the generalized effects of this effort training were tested by measuring persistence on a difficult anagram task with either a cooperative or competitive goal structure. Cooperators showed greater generalized persistence with the cooperative task, and Individualists showed greater generalized persistence with the competitive task. Competitors showed equivalent generalization of effort to both tasks. These results suggest that learned industriousness provides a dynamic mechanism through which rewarded effort is channeled into goal-oriented behavior.