Feedback: A necessary condition for the goal setting-performance relationship.

The study focused on feedback as a necessary condition for goals to affect performance. It was predicted that feedback and goals would be interactively related to performance. This prediction compliments findings by Locke and his colleagues that knowledge alone is not a sufficient condition for effective performance. Also, it was suggested that the interaction of feedback, and environmental attribute and self goals, an individual characteristic, be thought of in terms of an individual x environment interaction model. In that sense, it was hypothesized that feedback would facilitate the display of individual differences in self-set goals and hence, the self-set goals-performance relationship. Results supported the hypothesis by indicating that the individual differences in self-goals were significantly higher in the feedback group (N = 38), than in the no feedback group (N = 48), and that it was in the feedback condition that the relationship between goals and performance (r = .60) was significantly higher than in the no feedback (r = -.01). (Author)