# Data from the Lord

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/data-from-the-lord/3342>\
**Category:** CSG1994\
**Created:** [September 25, 1994, 3:49am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/data-from-the-lord/3342 "1994-09-25T03:49:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Marken](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Richard\_Marken](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Richard_Marken)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 1994, 3:49am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/data-from-the-lord/3342/1 "1994-09-25T03:49:29Z")

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[From Rick Marken (940924.2050)]

Bill Powers (940924.0829 MDT)--

> Rick Marken, Jeff Vancouver --

> I'm beginning to get the feeling of watching trench warfare here.

> If we're going to make any pronouncements about Bandura's  
> scientific findings, how about someone summarizing the data? Even  
> just one experiment.

I don't have any Bandura papers at home, but how about the data from  
Kernan, M. C. and Lord, R. G. (1990) Effects of valence, expectancies and  
goal-performance discrepancies in single and multiple goal  
environments, J. Applied Psychology, 75, 194-203.

There is really only one experiment described in this article, but there  
were tons of data collected. The basic experiment seems to be as  
follows (the Method section is extraordinarily elaborate and not always  
clear):

Subjects performed clerical tasks. Basically, the tasks involved going  
through stacks of invoices or requisitions and totalling purchases or  
computing stock balances.

The experiment was a 2x2 factoral, completely between subjects with 40  
subjects per condition (a total of 160 subjects in the experiment). One  
independent variable is called "Goal" and it has two levels; one level is  
"single goal" because the subjects were asked to work on only one task  
(invoice) on each of the three trials of the experiment; the other level is  
"multiple goals" becuase the subjects worked on two tasks (in whatever  
way they wished apparently) in the three trial periods. The second  
independent variable is called "valence" and it also has two levels; one  
level is "high valence" because subjects got a reward for completing  
the assigned number of invoices (or requisitions); the other level is  
"low valence" because the subjects got nothing for reaching the assigned  
goal.

There were a whole collection of dependent variables measured in this  
experiment. One of the main dependent variables is "discrepancy"; this  
is the difference between the performance on a trial and the goal  
set on that trial (the latter, I presume, being the number of invoices  
that the subject said s/he would complete). Performance is subtracted  
from goal so this number (I presume) is positive if the person's goal  
exceeds actual performance and is negative otherwise. Another measure  
was "committment"; this is the difference between self-set and  
experimenter set goals.

There is more than the usual load of statistical analyses and tables. I  
don't know which are considered important so I'll just put up what  
appear to be some of the main summary results (abbreviated):

Table 3 Descriptive statistics for single goal condition (so this is  
averageing over 40 subjects in each condition):

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Valence  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lo High

Variable M Sd M SD

Trial 1 discrepancy 5.88 3.67 6.45 4.14  
Trial 2 discrepancy 1.00 2.98 2.43 3.10  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Committment -1.47 3.45 -.68 3.40  
Trial 3  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Committment -.5 2.94 -.18 3.24

I'm willing to bet that all differences between means are significant.  
The statistical tests on this particular data were not included in  
the article (halleluja -- just about every other possible statistical  
analysis was), but with 79 df for each comparison, how can you miss?

The researchers seem to think that the change in the size and variance  
of the discrepency and committment scores over trials is important.

The real fireworks seem to be saved for the analysis of the "multiple goal"  
condition of the experiment. There is still a "valence" factor to look at  
(with 40 subjects in each valence condition). They did a major analysis  
with "discrepencies" as an independent variable. It has 2 df and I see  
that they split the subjects in the "multiple goal condition" into three  
groups depending on whether the discrepency score for one task (the  
requisitions) was higher (1), the same (0) or less than (-1)the other task.  
The results of an ANOVA with "goal priority" as the dependent variable  
("goal priority" being the difference between the subjects goals for the  
requisition minus their goal for the other task) is as follows (this is  
just for trial 2 but the results are the same for all trials):

Factor df F eta^2

A (Valence) 1 .63  
B(Discrepancies) 2 7.88 .17  
AxB 2 4.57 .10

The big finding is that factor B and the interaction (AxB) are significant  
(p\<.05). The graph on the next page shows what the interation is: the  
discrepency variable has no effect on goal priority in the low valence  
condition but a marked effect on the high valence condition.

Eta^2, by the way, is a measure of the proportion of variance in the  
DV accounted for by the IV; it's equivalent to r^2 for ordinal data.  
So factor B and the interaction pick up a whopping 27% of the variance  
(across subjects, of course) in the goal priority variable.

That's it for now; I've got a headache. I think I'll read a couple  
chapters of "Mind Readings" to recover.

Best

Rick

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**Author:** ![Tom\_BOURBON3](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/85e7bf/32.png) [@Tom\_BOURBON3](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Tom_BOURBON3)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 1994, 4:01pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/data-from-the-lord/3342/2 "1994-09-26T16:01:30Z")

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Tom Bourbon [940926.0956]

Hi, Lord.

> [From Rick Marken (940924.2050)]
> 
> Bill Powers (940924.0829 MDT) commented on exchanges between
> 
> > Rick Marken, Jeff Vancouver --

Bill said:

> > I'm beginning to get the feeling of watching trench warfare here.
> 
> > If we're going to make any pronouncements about Bandura's  
> > scientific findings, how about someone summarizing the data? Even  
> > just one experiment.

Rick replied:

> I don't have any Bandura papers at home, but how about the data from  
> Kernan, M. C. and Lord, R. G. (1990) Effects of valence, expectancies and  
> goal-performance discrepancies in single and multiple goal  
> environments, J. Applied Psychology, 75, 194-203.

Rick went on to summarize the statistical results, if you can call them that.

My prioblem is the reverse of Rick's. I don't have any Bandura papers here  
at the office, but I have a file of them at home. This evening I'll punish  
myself with anther look through them to summarize the results. Also, Bill,  
in his reply to your comment on his article in American Psychologist,  
Bandura included a table summarizing the results of research on his  
constructs. As I remember, it was a list of correlations, none of which  
reached to a meaningful level, although all were statistically significant.  
Are you surprised?

Later,

Tom