that maximizes individual effort. Aside from valued sports competitions, the
availability of substantial monetary awards that are characteristic of tele-
vised game shows, or a few isolated educational situations (such as a final
oral examination), and few other interventions are similarly effective in ob-
taining maximal levels of effort for all or most individuals. Past research has
suggested that less severe situations often don’t have a great influence on spe-
cific behaviors (see Funder & Ozer, 1983, for a discussion of this issue).
The effectiveness of miscellaneous extrinsic motivational interventions,
such as competition in the classroom, personalized goal setting, small mone-
tary rewards, and the like, almost certainly interact with interindividual dif-
ferences in motivational and personality traits. Individual differences in
nAch, in competitive excellence, in social potency, susceptibility to demand
characteristics, and a variety of other needs (e.g., see Murray, 1938) will af-
fect the utility of performance differentially (see Kanfer, 1987), and thus af-
fect the level of effort allocated by different individuals to the task at hand. In
addition, individuals differ in their own personal effort-utility function
(Kanfer, 1987). That is, some individuals seek a low level of typical effort to
most tasks, while others seek a higher level of effort, even under the same de-
gree of situational press. There are probably underlying personality and
physiological bases to this variable (e.g., Guilford’s notion of activity—see
Guilford & Zimmerman, 1957). Just being able to assess what proportion of
the individual’s total effort available is actually allocated to a task would be
an important contribution to the field.
It is unknown to what degree long-term environmental presses have on
typical behaviors. The concept of a long-term environmental press may be
implicit, but it is central to innumerable educational interventions (such as
enrolling a child in a challenging private school environment or taking an ex-
tensive scholastic aptitude test preparation course). In some sense, school in
general, or job training programs can be thought of as long-term environ-
mental press interventions. In many cases, the long-term goals of the individ-
ual are instrumental determinants of an increase in typical intellectual effort.
An intention to make partner in an accounting firm or a law office, or to be-
come a board-certified physician, can be expected to change an individual’s
typical intellectual effort, at least until such time as the goal is reached (or
failure occurs). We would speculate that this is a fundamental issue in the
process of acquiring tenure in academic settings. That is, some individuals
choose to devote extraordinary levels of intellectual effort through the seven
or so years it takes to achieve tenure. We cannot remember how many tenure
meetings we have attended where the central question on the minds of many
discussants is ‘Does the individual’s scholarly output represent his or her
baseline level, or could one expect that output level will drop precipitously
once tenure is granted?’ This question is a fundamental one about inferring
typical intellectual engagement from observation of what may be either typi-
136 ACKERMAN AND KANFER