Attractive Task Research Articles

Self-assessment, self-enhancement, and task preference

If task choice depends on a person's interest in the accurate assessment of his or her abilities, task attractiveness should be positively related to the diagnosticities of all performance outcomes with regard to one's ability level. In contrast, the view that people are primarily interested in maximizing pride or mininizing shame would predict that task attractiveness is positively related to the diagnosticity of success but negatively related to the diagnosticity of failure. To test these predictions, subjects were presented with tasks that varied orthogonally in the extent to which success was diagnostic of high ability level and the extent to which failure was diagnostic of low ability level. Consistent with the self-assessment view, task attractiveness increased both with the diagnosticity of success and with the diagnosticity of failure. Furthermore, both effects were more pronounced for high achievement motive subjects than for low achievement motive subjects. This result lends support to the self-assessment view, which assumes that high achievement motive subjects are more interested in attaining the ability-relevant information contained in any performance outcome.

The Effects of Discrepant or Congruent Behavior and Reward upon Attitude and Task Attractiveness

Two hundred German secondary school students were promised different monetary rewards for performing either attitude-discrepant or attitude-congruent behavior. After the performance they made ratings of their attitude toward the attitude-object and evaluated the attractiveness of the behavior. After attitude-congruent behavior, attitude change towards the performed behavior was stronger with decreasing amount of reward. This result supports self-perception theory and contradicts incentive theory. On the other hand, the task was evaluated as more attractive the more the amount of reward increased. After attitude-discrepant behavior, there was a dissonance effect if the Ss were insufficiently rewarded, and an incentive effect if the reward was sufficient or oversufficient. This result cannot be explained by any of the theories in question, but it is in accordance with recent theoretical propositions by Gerard, Conolley, and Wilhelmy.

Performance of an unpleasant task: Effects of over- vs under-payment on perception of adequacy of rewards and task attractiveness

Subjects who came to an experiment expecting to receive a moderate amount of money for performing a task were then told, either before or after performing it, that their pay would be higher than, equal to, or less than they had expected. When the actual payment was announced after the task was performed, subjects' evaluations of the task increased with the amount they were paid; however, they estimated a higher rate of pay to be appropriate if they received either more or less than they expected than if they received what they expected. When the actual payment was announced before the task was performed (and before subjects made their decision to perform it), a different pattern emerged. Subjects rated the task more attractive when they were offered either more or less than the expected amount, while their judgments of the appropriateness of the pay offered increased with the amount of the offer. Implications of the results for incentive and dissonance theories as well as self-perception and equity theories are discussed.

Canonical Relationships between Prestige and Interpersonal Attraction

Canonical correlation was employed to test the relationship between prestige and interpersonal attraction in a public speaking situation. The hypothesis was that, when responding to a public speech, subjects would make judgments about the prestige of the speaker that would serve as an inferential base regarding conclusions about the interpersonal attraction of that individual. Results indicated that males ( ns = 78, 48) made judgments of interpersonal attraction dominated by task attraction, while females ( ns 90, 69) made multiple judgments about interpersonal attraction encompassing social, task, and physical attraction. Different results were obtained for a male and a female speaker.

LEADERSHIP EMERGENCE AND SOURCE VALENCE: CONCEPTS IN SUPPORT OF INTERACTION THEORY AND MEASUREMENT

This study sought to determine what perceived characteristics discriminate between leaders and nonleaders in a small group situation. After interacting for three work periods, members of several groups evaluated one another on a source valence instrument containing measures of credibility, attraction, and homophily. During subsequent meetings, a computerized technique (PROANA5) was used to analyze group interaction and identify group leaders. Results indicated that three variables: task attraction, extroversion, and character provided reasonably accurate classifications of leaders and nonleaders. Findings were discussed in terms of Gibb's interaction theory of group leadership.

THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF UNCERTAINTY

Eckblad Gudrun. The attractiveness of uncertainty. III. Attractiveness of patterns in a guessing game. Scand. J. Psychol., 1972, 13, 292–305.—Visual displays, each consisting of three successive patterns of varying complexity and predictability, were presented as a guessing game to five groups of subjects. Six predictions about the development of task attractiveness over time were derived from the general hypothesis of an inverted U‐shaped relationship between task attractiveness and the level of subjective uncertainty induced by the task. All predictions were confirmed.

Amount of conflicting information in a group discussion and tolerance for ambiguity as predictors of task attractiveness

(1971). Amount of conflicting information in a group discussion and tolerance for ambiguity as predictors of task attractiveness. Speech Monographs: Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 121-124.

REWARD MAGNITUDE, TASK ATTRACTIVENESS, AND LIKING FOR INSTRUMENTAL ACTIVITY.

REWARD MAGNITUDE, TASK ATTRACTIVENESS, AND LIKING FOR INSTRUMENTAL ACTIVITY.