Reducing Self-Discrepancies or Maintaining Self-Congruence?: Uncertainty Orientation, Self-Regulation, and Performance

Reducing discrepancies between performance and goals was predicted to motivate uncertainty-oriented people, but maintaining congruence was predicted to be more motivating for certainty-oriented people. Being motivated should lead to better performance when a person is focused on positive outcomes, or to worse performance if he or she is focused on negative outcomes (success-oriented vs. failure-threatened in Studies 1 and 2, ideal vs. ought discrepancy in Study 3). Three studies tested these hypotheses: an experiment that used bogus performance feedback, a field study of examination performance as a function of prior discrepancies from desired grades, and an experimental priming of standards associated with a discrepancy or with no discrepancy. All 3 studies revealed the predicted interaction, supporting the hypothesis that there are individual differences in motivation as a function of goal discrepancy or congruence.