Effects of task- and ego-achievement goals on information seeking during task engagement.

Two studies tested the proposal that information seeking is affected by achievement goals and by stages of skill acquisition (D. N. Ruble & K. S. Frey, 1991). College students (N=188) worked on problems in a task- or an ego-goal condition and could request task (best solutions), objective, normative, or no information after each. As expected, task-goal Ss requested more task information, which predicted subsequent performance, and requested normative information mainly for later problems. Ego-goal Ss made more normative requests also for early problems, and information requests were modified by skill level