Arousal, Goal Commitment, Goal Difficulty, and Performance

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of arousal on commitment to a goal, and secondarily, to test the assumption that more difficult goals result in better performance. It was predicted that arousal would cause research participants to be more committed to a goal, and that those participants assigned a difficult goal would perform better than those participants assigned an easy goal. Research participants were 124 active duty members of the United States Navy stationed at a remote military facility in Cornwall, England. Participants in the arousal group first viewed video clips designed to produce emotional arousal, whereas participants in the non-arousal group did not watch the video clips. Next, all participants were assigned goals varying in difficulty (easy or difficult), and then their commitment to those goals was assessed using a commitment scale developed by Hollenbeck, Williams, and Klein (1989) . There were no significant differences between the arousal and the non-arousal groups on a manipulation check of arousal, which might raise questions about the effectiveness of the arousal independent variable. However, there was a significant difference on the commitment measure between the arousal and the non-arousal groups. Participants in the arousal group reported greater commitment to their goals compared to participants in the non-arousal group. Previous research on goal setting has suggested that more difficult goals result in better performance on a task than easy goals. There were no observed effects of difficult versus easy goals on the performance of the research participants. Limitations in the present research and implications for future studies were discussed.