Mood, self-efficacy, and performance standards: Lower moods induce higher standards for performance.

Abstract

This research examined the effects of induced mood on personal standards for performance and judgments of one's performance capabilities, or self-efficacy judgments. In Experiment 1, standards and self-efficacy judgments were assessed on common social and academic tasks. In Experiment 2, these variables were assessed on 2 novel tasks. In both experiments, negative mood induced higher standards for performance. Induced mood had no effect on perceived self-efficacy. Negative mood Ss thus held minimal standards for performance that significantly exceeded the levels of performance they judged they actually could attain. A 3rd experiment provided support for the hypothesis that negative mood raises standards by lowering evaluations of prospective outcomes. Processes underlying the results and their relation to research on naturally occurring depressed mood and stringent personal standards are discussed. The relation between people's expectations of their capabilities and their standards and goals for performance has been of fundamental interest in numerous areas. In motivation research, high standards and expectations are found to enhance performance, whereas expectations that fall below one's goals lead to reduced effort, goal abandonment, and lower achievement (Bandura, 1986; Carver S Cervone, 1993; Locke & Latham, 1990). Clinical theory and research indicate that negative discrepancies between expectancies and goals foster negative affective states such as depression (Beck, 1967; Rehm, 1977, 1982) and anxiety (Schlenker & Leary, 1982; Wallace & Alden, 1991). Social cognition research finds that distinct negative emotions result from discrepancies between current self-concept and different types of self-regulatory standards (Higgins, 1987; Higgins, Vookles, & Tykocinski, 1992). In general, patterns of cognition in which expectations fall below one's goals are seen as self-defeating (Beck, 1967; Wright & Mischel, 1982). Relatively low expectations may inhibit people from working toward valued aims that could be achieved with greater effort. In the present research, we investigate the possibility that negative affect not only is a consequence of expectation-standard discrepancies, but also a cause. Negative mood itself may foster self-defeating patterns of cognition. Specifically, we hypothesize that experimentally induced negative moods will cause people to hold standards for performance that signifi