Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Goal challenge or difficulty

According to Locke and Latham (1990), the more challenging the level of a goal in
organisational settings, the more motivation it elicits. This principle does not seem to
apply to sport, however. Thus surveys of goal-setting practices in athletes (reviewed in
Burton and Naylor, 2002) indicated that sports performers are motivated best by
moderately challenging goals.

Goal proximity

The issue of how far into the future goals are projected tends to affect people’s
motivation. Thus Bandura (1997) claimed that whereas “proximal” or short-term goals
mobilise effort and persistence effectively, “distal goals alone are too far removed in time
to provide effective incentives and guides for present action” (p. 134).
In addition to these features, goals should be stated positively as much as possible. For
example, in soccer, it is better for a striker to set a positive goal such as “I am going to
practise timing my runs into the box” than a negative goal such as “I must try not to get
caught off-side so often”. The reason for this advice is that a goal which is stated
positively tells the person what to do, whereas a negatively stated goal does not provide
such explicit guidance.

Does goal-setting really work?

A rigorous “meta-analytic” review on the effects of goal-setting was conducted by Kyllo
and Landers (1995) using data from thirty-six studies in this field. Briefly, meta-analysis
is a quantitative statistical technique which combines the results of a large number of
studies in order to determine the overall size of a statistical effect. According to Kyllo
and Landers (1995), goal-setting was effective in enhancing performance in sport over
baseline measures by about one third of a standard deviation (mean effect size of 0.34).
This effect was increased when goals of a moderate level of difficulty were used. Also, as
mentioned earlier, these researchers found that the greatest effects were obtained when
the goals were result-based (which contradicts the received wisdom that performance
goals work best), moderately difficult and agreed by the athletes themselves (i.e., self-set)
rather than imposed from outside.
Earlier, we learned that most studies on goal-setting have been based on the theories of
Locke and Latham (1985, 2002) in organisational psychology. These authors predicted
that relative to either “no goal” or vague “do your best” instructions, athletes’
performance should be enhanced when they use goals that are specific, short-term and
difficult yet realistic. Unfortunately, research designed to test Locke and Latham’s
predictions in sport has produced equivocal findings. For example, several studies have
failed to establish the allegedly beneficial effects of specific and realistic goals on
people’s performance of motor tasks. Thus Weinberg, Bruya, Garland and Jackson
(1990) found that the performance of hand strength and “sit-up” tasks was related neither
to goal difficulty nor to goal specificity. In an effort to explain this anomaly, a variety of
conceptual and methodological issues in research on goal-setting in sport may be
identified (Weinberg, 2002). These issues are discussed in Box 2.6.

Motivation and goal-setting in sport 57